What Surging Numbers of Independent Voters Could Mean for This Fall’s Election
Article shared by Cathy L. Stewart on April 15, 2024 at 12:03 PM
What Surging Numbers of Independent Voters Could Mean for This Fall’s Election
From coast to coast, and in crucial swing states, independent voters are making their voices heard and will have an outsize role in 2024 and beyond.
By Scott Klug - Originally posted April 4, 2024 on USAnews.com
Getty Images - Independent voters are an increasingly influential bloc in the U.S.
If the Republican and Democratic parties were stocks, you might want to call your broker and dump them. Across the country, the growing number of self-identifying independents should be rattling the two major parties.
Ground zero for the movement is the American Southwest. Throughout most of 2024, independents were the largest bloc of registered voters in Arizona (now just a hair behind Republicans). The same is true for neighboring Nevada. But perhaps nowhere is this more true than among voters under 30 who are often disgusted with both major parties.
Kevin Kansas is an Arizona State University student who is a proud independent, he tells me, “because the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are constantly fighting all the time.”
He thinks there is an interesting political stew in the region, which breeds independents. Older conservative retirees are moving in, though California’s liberal still culture has a strong influence. Meanwhile, generations of Latino voters and Mexican Americans are straddling both parties – and many are not happy with either.
That said, some political pros aren’t buying the spike. They include Mike Murphy, co-director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, who is also a former senior strategist for the 2000 presidential campaign of notorious political “maverick” John McCain.
“Independents,” Murphy says, “are just closet Republicans and Democrats who don’t want to admit they are Republicans or Democrats. Put them in a room together to talk about issues and a fight breaks out within minutes. They can’t describe what they want to be for.” Self-described independents, he contends, are actually “leaners” and will eventually predictably vote with one party or the other.
Interestingly, the political science program at ASU in Tempe has a specialized center for the study of independent voters. And its co-director, Thom Reilly, says that campaign operatives have it wrong. In any given election, independents might lean to one party, but over time, they really are free agents.
“They are hard to typify. Some of them are leaners. Some of them are clueless. Some of them are anti-party, right?” he notes.
Reilly points out that, in the 2012 election, independents across the country voted for Barack Obama, pivoted to Donald Trump in 2016 and then opted for Joe Biden in 2020.
“To understand independent voting, you have to look at voting patterns over time,” says Reilly. “They’re unpredictable. They’re all over the place.”
I think many of these people belong to the more than 2 in 5 American voters who I describe in my podcast as “political orphans.” They are unhappy with both parties which they say are dominated by the extremes and characterized by visceral hate for each other.
Middle-aged Phoenix residents Mike Johnson and Julie Goldammer had a long journey from party loyalists to independents. She was the Democrat and he the Republican.
Today, they are beyond frustrated with the current state of our politics. They’ve lost friends over election outcomes and recoiled over family fights during holiday dinners.
“It's getting really old at this point,” Goldammer says. “I'm respectful when people want to bring up issues and their positions. I have had some real estate clients call me a snowflake, because I said something to them in a weird way about something political. And I was like, ‘What did you just call me?’”
To be clear, the Southwest is not an exception. In fact, it’s just one data point.
Let’s jump to New England, where New Hampshire voters have a reputation as cantankerous and unpredictable. New Hampshire election law doesn’t have a registration option for independents, but it does have an “unaffiliated” option. Today, roughly 40% of the state’s voters opt for that designation.
In the recent New Hampshire presidential primary, such unaffiliated voters cast 70% of the votes for Nikki Haley.
However, no one should be surprised. In a recent Harvard-Harris poll, nearly 80% of independents want a choice other than Trump or Biden.
The results in November are likely to be razor-thin, and the election will be decided by a slim pool of voters in the usual swing states. This election season, independents will play an outsize role. Four years from now, they may even become the most powerful force in American politics.
It’s not too late to call your broker.