4 ms·
Looking at a chart of registered voter affiliation by party at https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-2020-electorate-looks-like-by-party-rac
by ThrowawayR2 5y ago
Looking at a chart of registered voter affiliation by party at https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-2020-electorate-looks-like-by-party-race-and-ethnicity-age-education-and-religion/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-20... shows the percentage of voters identifying as independent to be roughly similar to the size of the groups identifying as Democrats or Republicans. The chart immediately below that does show leanings among the independent voters as nearly evenly split between the two parties but even accounting for that doesn't really seem to support the idea of there not being a center?
- dragonwriter 5y agoSure, polls like that categorizing voters in D/R/I and identifying D/R leanings for the I group can’t support (or contradict) the (non) existence of a large center because it doesn't tell you anything about where the I voters views are (between D/R? more extreme than the nearer of D/R? Way off to the side of axis between D and R?) It's completely irrelevant to the question.
- jfengel 5y agoThe thing is that the independent voters are independent of each other, as well as of the two major parties. They don't agree on anything, other than opting out of the national discussion and accepting the decisions of the other two. This is often mis-represented as a "third party". There is no third party. There are nineteeth, twentieth, twenty-first, etc. parties. Technically some party must be "third" but it's so far behind the two major ones that it doesn't matter. Elections only have one winner. You can have as many losers as you want, but in the end you must assemble a large enough coalition to be the single largest vote-getter. "None of the above" is not such a coalition.