Alan I. Abramowitz, Senior Columnist July 7th, 2011
There they go again. The presidential campaign season is barely under
way but already pundits and pollsters are making misleading claims
about independent voters and the role they play in presidential
elections. Here are some of the things you’ve probably read or heard in
recent weeks:
- Independents make up the largest segment of the American electorate.
- Independent voters are up for grabs in 2012.
- Whichever party wins a majority of the independent vote will almost certainly win the presidency.
These beliefs about the crucial role of independent voters in
presidential elections have become the conventional wisdom among the
Washington commentariat, reinforced by groups like “No Labels” and
“Third Way” that try to promote centrist solutions to the nation’s
problems. Recently, the Pew Research Center provided additional support
for this theory with a report claiming that independents constitute a
rapidly growing and diverse group of voters who swing dramatically back
and forth from election to election.
It sounds convincing, but when it comes to media commentary about
independent voters, you shouldn’t believe everything you read or hear.
It’s true that independents are a diverse group. But that’s mostly
because the large majority of independents are independents in name
only. Research by political scientists on the American electorate has
consistently found that the large majority of self-identified
independents are “closet partisans” who think and vote much like other
partisans. Independent Democrats and independent Republicans have little
in common. Moreover, independents with no party preference have a lower
rate of turnout than those who lean toward a party and typically make
up less than 10% of the electorate. Finally, independents don’t
necessarily determine the outcomes of presidential elections; in fact,
in all three closely contested presidential elections since 1972, the
candidate backed by most independent voters lost.
Let’s start with the claim that independents make up the largest
segment of the American electorate. That’s true only if you lump all
independents together including those who don’t vote and those who lean
toward a party. In 2008, according to the American National Election
Study, independents made up 40% of eligible voters but only 33% of those
who actually voted. Moreover, of that 33%, only 7% were true
independents with no party preference. The other 26% were leaners.
And what about those independent leaners? Fully 87% of them voted for
the candidate of the party they leaned toward: 91% of independent
Democrats voted for Barack Obama while 82% of independent Republicans
voted for John McCain. That 87% rate of loyalty was identical to the 87%
loyalty rate of weak party identifiers and exceeded only by the 96%
loyalty rate of strong party identifiers.
It’s hardly surprising that the vast majority of independent leaners
voted for their party’s presidential candidate in 2008. The evidence
from the 2008 ANES in the following chart shows that independent
Democrats and Republicans held very different views on major issues —
views that were very similar to those of their fellow partisans.
Independent Democrats were more liberal than weak Democrats and about as
liberal as strong Democrats while independent Republicans were less
conservative than strong Republicans but just as conservative as weak
Republicans.
Chart 1. Liberalism of party identifiers and leaners in 2008
Source: 2008 American National Election Study
These results suggest that the high level of support given by
independent leaners to their own party’s presidential candidate was not
due simply to a short-term preference for that candidate over his
opponent but instead reflected longer-term ideological and policy
preferences. Based on this evidence, independent leaners are unlikely to
be “up for grabs” in 2012. Regardless of who wins the Republican
presidential nomination, we can expect the overwhelming majority of
independent leaners, like the overwhelming majority of strong and weak
identifiers, to remain loyal to their party because they strongly prefer
their party’s policies to the opposing party’s policies.
Finally, no matter how independents vote in the 2012 presidential
election, their preferences will not necessarily determine the winner.
If the election is close, it is entirely possible that the candidate
chosen by most independents will lose the overall popular vote.
Based on the national exit polls, that’s what happened in each of the
last three presidential elections that were decided by a margin of less
than five points.
In 1976, most independents voted for Gerald Ford but Jimmy Carter won
the overall popular vote. In 2000, most independents voted for George
W. Bush but Al Gore won the overall popular vote (despite losing the
Electoral College). And in 2004 most independents voted for John Kerry
but George W. Bush won the overall popular vote.
In a close election, a candidate with an energized and unified party
base can sometimes overcome a deficit among independent voters. That
doesn’t mean the candidates should ignore independents, but it does mean
that unifying and energizing their own party’s base is just as
important as appealing to the independents.
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