Independents will decide the election – more independents in swing states than ever

At first glance, becoming president looks like simple arithmetic: Carry at least 90% of your party’s adherents and win more independents than the other candidate and voilà, you’re in the White House.

That’s how Donald Trump won in 2016. It’s also how Joe Biden defeated Trump four years later. The equation works as long as there is near-parity between the parties, as in 2020 when the electorate was 36% Republican, 37% Democratic and 26% Independent.

Still, given how close the last two presidential races were, small changes in partisanship in key states can have huge consequences. A mere 77,744 total votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin gave Trump his victory in 2016, and 42,918 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin produced Biden’s 2020 victory.

The political makeup of several swing states has changed in the past four years. Having voted Democratic for president since 2008, Nevada is more of a battleground this cycle because of a declining Democratic registration advantage.

Nevada has 32,856 more registered Democrats than Republicans, a decline of 53,867 since November 2020. The Democratic registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania is 399,494, a decline of 286,324.

While those states swung right, Arizona and North Carolina have possibly done the opposite. In the Grand Canyon State, Independents grew from 31.8% of registrations in November 2020 to 34.1% today. Republican voter registrations were nearly flat while the Democratic share dropped about 3 points, to 29.3%. In the Tar Heel State, “unaffiliated” voters grew from 33.3% of the rolls in November 2020 to 36.8% as of March 30. Republicans dipped a little, going from 30.3% of all voters to 30%, while Democrats dropped from 35.6% to 32.3% of voters. But new Independent voters in both states appeared to be mostly the college-educated suburbanites who disfavored Trump in 2020.

Three battleground states — Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — don’t register voters by party, so trends in those states are harder to discern. But there is enough movement in the other four swing states to give both the Biden and Trump camps indigestion. And that’s before taking account of turnout.