Independents not key – secret partisans, vastly overcounted

Every presidential election season, the breathless questions start from the get-go: What do independents think? Who will they likely support? Will they turn out? Pundits paint a picture of an important, distinct, yet elusive set of voters critical to determining who takes the White House. Unlike partisans, these voters are hard to pin down. They are special.

Independents are deeply interesting to academics like us. However, one of the best ways to annoy a political scientist is to call an independent special. Here’s why: In survey after survey, political scientists find that independents have political preferences that are largely identical to those of their partisan counterparts.

As we write in our book:

Independents, political scientists argue, are nothing more than partisans who don’t want to admit that they are partisans. Despite decades of surveys, political science articles and books that reach this very point, the media often trumpet independents as voters untainted by partisan bias, unattached and poised to change the course of history by voting for the candidate that makes the best case during the campaign. This type of coverage is frustrating for many academics.

The crux of this disagreement between the media and academics lies in how one defines an independent.

The simple definition of an independent is a person who does not affiliate with the Democratic or Republican Party. Some voters choose to register as an independent, but as far as political scientists and pollsters are considered, an independent is anyone who says she is an independent.

Most of what we know about independents comes from surveys. Originally, pollsters and political scientists merely asked Americans to identify as Democrat, Republican, or independent — no further questions asked. It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that pollsters and political scientists began to press self-identified independents further, asking them for a bit more information. Specifically:

Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican Party or to the Democratic Party?

The introduction of this follow-up question meant that people could say they were independent and that they liked one party better than the other. And with that came the introduction of a group of people political scientists affectionately call leaners: independents who will admit, when asked, that they do in fact prefer one party over the other.

Leaners may seem like a friendly, best-of-both-worlds group of people, but their existence makes the "independent" substantially more difficult to define. The problem with leaners is that there is almost no difference between people who identify as partisans and people who say they are independent and then say they lean toward a particular party. More often than not, we can count on leaners to vote for that party, support the party’s positions, and sometimes even donate money to the party’s candidates. What’s more, leaners consistently support their party from election to election.

This has led some (but certainly not all) political scientists and journalists to suggest that independents who lean toward a party cannot truly be considered independents, but are rather just partisans in hiding.

Myth 2: A small subset of voters call themselves independents

The number of people who tell pollsters they are independent has been steadily increasing over nearly a century. Today they represent the largest proportion of the electorate. Gallup reports that in 2015, roughly 42 percent of people said that they are "independent" when asked a question about their party. Compare that with either Democrats (29 percent) or Republicans (26 percent).

Still, the difficulty in classifying who is and is not independent also makes it difficult to estimate how many people in America are actually independent. If we can’t count independents who lean toward a party as actual independents, then our count should only include people who report that they do not lean toward either party.

The very same Gallup data that demonstrates that 42 percent of people call themselves independents, for example, shows that only 13 percent of people are independents who don’t lean toward either party. By this definition, independents are a political minority, and while their numbers have increased over the past decade the increase has been very slight.

In short, like many political questions, the number of independents depends on whom you ask.

Myth 3: Independents are unbiased

We conducted more than a dozen experiments and surveys across the country and came to the following conclusion. To put it plainly:

People think that being independent is cool.

Using large, nationally representative samples of American adults, we randomly assigned some to tell us how they might go about making the best impression on someone new they meet. Others were asked to explain how they could make the worst impression. A striking consensus emerged that identifying as independent makes the best impression and identifying as a strong partisan (either Democrat or Republican) makes the worst. Partisans admitted to us that even their own party affiliation makes a negative impression on others.

People want to present themselves in the most positive way possible, and being a partisan does not seem all that impressive. Much of what people see in the news about the parties is ugly. Candidates are angry, and party activists often seem stubborn and aggressive. As a result, it makes sense to tell people you are independent.

Our research suggests that people believe identifying as an independent makes the best impression on others. Independents seem calm and reasonable — we even find that people rate independents as more likable, trustworthy, and physically attractive. So why not say you are a political independent?