Voters outside a polling place in St. Paul, Minnesota on November 3, 2020 (Lorie Shaull/Flickr)
For independents, lack of party loyalty can be a badge of honor. Independents often say that they are focused on issues, not whether one is a Republican or a Democrat. And in a close election, they can make or break a campaign.
But conservative GOP pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, in an op-ed published by the New York Times on January 19, emphasizes that lack of party affiliation doesn't necessarily mean that one is centrist or moderate.
"In 2004, the percentage of Americans identifying as political independents hit the lowest point since Gallup began regularly tracking party identification in 1988," Anderson explains. "That year, only 31 percent said they were independent, while Republicans and Democrats were evenly matched among those choosing a party. That percentage has risen from that record low in 2004 to a record high today — a whopping 45 percent, according to Gallup."
According to Anderson, it is "important to first remember what the word independent is not."
"These days, it does not necessarily signify moderation or centrism," Anderson notes. "Less than half of independents today consider themselves moderate in the Gallup data, with 27 percent identifying as conservative or very conservative and 24 percent identifying as liberal or very liberal. Plenty of people who are independent declare themselves as such because they find both parties ideologically unsatisfactory, not because they feel they fit somewhere in the middle."
The GOP pollster points out that according to the Pew Research Center, many of the independents who voted in the 2024 presidential election "acknowledged they generally leaned more toward one party or another." And that included both Donald Trump voters and Kamala Harris voters.
"Of those who said they leaned more toward the GOP," Anderson observes, "87 percent voted for Mr. Trump, while 91 percent of Democratic-leaning independents voted for Ms. Harris. Each voter may initially tell a pollster like me that they are an independent, but in truth, they behave much more like their Republican and Democratic brethren when they get to the ballot box."
Anderson adds, "In my own surveys, most voters who identify as independents do go on, when pressed, to say they lean more toward one party than the other. Ultimately, I find only that only 9 percent of voters firmly insist they do not pick one side more often than the other."
Kristen Soltis Anderson's full op-ed for the New York Times is available at this link (subscription required).