Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune

In modern times, most of us have viewed politics in the U.S. through the lens of the two-party structure–Democrats and Republicans.

Is that still accurate?  Do independents suddenly play a much bigger role in deciding who wins a presidential election?

Increasingly, the national media, pollsters, pundits and campaigns themselves are focusing on independent voters, saying they will be crucial to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

An opinion I read recently by Thom Reilly, a professor and co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at the School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, states while independent  voters are out there, there’s a lot of disagreement about determining how many there actually are.

Here are some excerpts from Reilly’s opinion.

“It’s possible that some voters identify as independent but really just have weaker political preferences than party die-hards, while still maintaining some loyalty to one party or the other. And some independent voters change their political identification from one cycle to another. That makes it hard to tell who an independent voter is and how many of them exist,” he wrote in a recent “community voice” opinion on minnpost.com.

“Since 1952, researchers and pollsters have typically asked a follow-up question to those who identify as independents to determine whether respondents prefer one party over the other if they had to vote. Most independents reported that they lean toward either Democrats or Republicans.

“In the 1990s, however, the idea of nuance among independent voters came under scholarly scrutiny. The 1992 book “The Myth of the Independent Voter” argued that there really were only the three main categories and that most people who said they were independent really preferred one party or the other.

“When those independents who report a lean toward a party are counted as supporters of that party, the overall proportion of independents is small — about 10% of the total electorate. That level has remained roughly constant since the 1950s. About two-thirds of independents lean toward one of the two major political parties’ candidates.

“Some researchers have argued that independents’ responses to questions asking whether they lean toward the Democratic or Republican parties are significantly affected by short-term factors related to whatever campaign is happening at the time, such as particular candidates and specific issues. This is one reason it would be useful if surveys asked all respondents — not just independents — how closely they identify with one party or the other.

“In our January 2023 article “The Fluid Voter,” my colleague Dan Hunting and I analyzed ANES data on political identification and voting choices from 1972 to 2020. We observed significant volatility in loyalty to party among independent voters over more than one election. We also found evidence that a sizable number of independents move in and out of independent status from one election to another. We argue there is a need to look at long-term voting behavior of specific voters.

“So while there’s not consensus on how many independent voters there are in the U.S., their numbers do seem to be growing. The increase may require scholars, media outlets and the public to shift their traditional two-party view of American politics. It’s possible that the long-standing survey questions are no longer — or maybe never were — actually good at identifying political views of independent voters.”