More Americans Call Themselves Independents

[applegrove]

https://politicalwire.com/2018/01/08/americans-call-independents/

"SNIP............


Gallup: “Last year, 42% of Americans, on average, identified as political independents, erasing the decline to 39% seen in the 2016 presidential election year. Independent identification is just one percentage point below the high of 43% in 2014. Twenty-nine percent of Americans identify themselves as Democrats and 27% as Republicans.”

............SNIP"

[louis-t]

1. Gee, every time a repug manages to steal a presidency

and takes a dump in the WH, suddenly everyone's an "independent". Happened under idiot bush also.

[Fresh_Start]

2. From WaPo 2014

people have come to believe that they will make a better impression if they say they are independent.

In one of our first studies on the topic, we randomly assigned survey respondents to two groups. We instructed the first group to answer the question “what is your partisanship?” in a way that they believed would make the most positive impression on another person. We instructed the second group to answer the very same question in a way that they believed would make the most negative impression on another person.

The results were striking: when asked to make a “positive impression” nearly 60 percent more people reported that they were independents, as compared to those who were asked to make a negative impression.

This belief that independence is more socially acceptable than partisanship is magnified by news coverage that highlights partisan disagreement

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/10/why-people-call-themselves-independent-even-when-they-arent/?utm_term=.b7de5bf4fa2b

[vi5]

3. Oh just fucking great.....

....now our wonderful, brilliant Democratic strategists will view that as an even bigger pool of bullshit that they need to pander to.

Spoiler Alert: They are not independents. They are embarrassed Republicans who will still never vote for a Democrat no matter how much that Democrat panders to them, no matter how many cowboy hats that Democrat puts on, no matter how many military budget increases that Democrat votes for, no matter how many years in the military that Democrat served, no matter how many times a week that Democrat goes to church.

[Sophia4]

5. Some of them are embarrassed Democrats.

Some, probably many, would agree with you on pandering to Republican values. Some would probably vote Democratic if the Democratic Party stood even more strongly for peace and economic as well as social justice.

[Sophia4]

4. This is why Democrats need to reach out to non-Democrats and not insult them.

Independents vote too. In fact, it is often their votes that decide elections.