Introduction
My theory of society is that people are increasingly detaching themselves from large institutions while retaining behavioral patterns and beliefs consistent with those institutions. This applies to to institutions ranging from religious to political. So, while discussing the indie voter has been all the rage during the 2016 election, I don’t believe that somehow the independent vote is going to dramatically swing the election in untold ways, or that indie voters are the key to Democrats winning the White House. However, I do believe the Democratic Party could strongly benefit itself by considering what an independent voter actually is and how they can work in the party’s favor.
Who is an Independent Voter?
The independent voter is also known as a swing voter: an individual who doesn’t strongly identify with either party and could swing the election in either direction through their vote. 16 years ago, a swing voter could be someone who occupied a comfortable middle and who could be swayed by a candidate from either party. If you put them on a scale, there would be highly partisan Republicans and Democrats at either end, with independents sitting comfortably in middle range (this is no longer the case). The idea used to be that both parties should expend their energies not trying to win their partisans, but trying to swing the voters in the middle toward their party during the election. There is a subset of swing voters, the poorly informed voter, that usually votes for either party because they don’t feel strongly about either one. These voters typically vote based on one or two issues, and one of those issues is usually the economy. The other is often foreign affairs. These are two big, headlining topics that attract low information voters. Are we winning overseas? Is the economy doing okay? Then I’m voting for the president’s party.
Now, let’s begin with what we know what distinguishes many current indie voters: those that self-identify as indies usually know more about mid-term elections and ballot initiatives. Data gathered between 2004 and 2006 showed that independents typically knew more about candidates and initiatives than partisan voters who were affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican party. During presidential years, this truth doesn’t hold. Why? The importance of the presidential race mobilizes even voters who are on the fringes and gives them a reason to become more informed or engaged. Consequently, the independent voter may actually be more important in off-year elections than during presidential year elections. Voters during presidential years are motivated by the office, while indie voters in off-year elections are mobilized by issues. We know this because they respond to ballot initiatives that other voters forget about once the glamor of the presidential race is over.
The high information indie voter seems to be distinguished from the low information voter in at least one key way: low information voters respond to moderate candidates. High information voters are typically party affiliated to some level. When we discuss the independent voter, there’s an impulse to argue that independent voters will swing the election. However, we don’t always talk about what could swing them. For many low information voters, a moderate candidate with an engaging campaign has usually won their vote. So, it’s clear when we make references to the independent vote, we can’t possibly be talking about one group. What is appealing to one segment of the indie vote won’t be appealing to a different segment, and this might be related to how informed a particular indie voter is about current political issues.
How do Independent Voters act?
Now let’s discuss how people actually vote. While there is a subset of swing voters, since 1975, partisan voting has been the trend, not the exception. The impact of a party, either Republican or Democrat, on the lives of the American public have come to seem so consequential that individuals feel a stake in voting for one or the other. Regardless of how they identify, people have become increasingly divided across partisan lines in terms of actual voting habits. We can actually trace why this is to one man: Ronald Reagan. The rise of social politics into political parties, and the prominent place of the Religious Right in the Republican Party for close to two decades, had a real and lasting impact on people’s lives. While the government has never been a perfect player in people’s personal lives, the increasing role of personal moral and religious ideologies in shaping laws made it difficult for certain segments of the population to align with the Republican Party. On the other hand, as the Republican Party became more associated with certain morals and ideologies (whether truly or falsely), it drew a certain segment of the voting population. The increasing role of ideology made it the most important factor in creating a highly partisan environment. To avoid social issues in the modern partisan political environment is a suicide note. Of course, there were other events after 1975 that helped increase partisan behavior, like the realignment of political parties after the breakup of the old southern Democratic coalition. Still, this all contributed to one result: two parties, and a highly partisan public. By 2012, the political parties had become highly differentiated distillations of their former selves and fell along the same social divides begun by Reagan in the 1980s.
Now, to be sure, the number of independent voters has risen sharply. However, what’s important to consider here is not how they identify, but how they actually behave. We know the political parties divided sharply once ideology became a large part of voting, and that the voting public began to divide sharply because of this, voting for either one party or the other almost as an act of self-preservation. The truth is that we come back to the same truth we began with: there are at least two, and more accurately three, types of independent voter. At least half of all independents behave in a partisan way because there is a perception that the ideologies at play in the election will have a true and lasting impact on their lives. Despite how low social issues rank compared to the economy in national polls, people still vote based on social issues and have done so since the Regan era. Gallup polls revealed that the number of partisan independents may be even higher, and that true independents, with no leaning preference toward either the Republicans or Democrats, may be as low as 5%.
Now this is where it gets interesting for Bernie. The largest group of those using the Independent label are highly partisan Democrats who don’t feel the party is liberal enough for them. When surveyed for attitudes and opinions, the largest group of self-identifying independents in the current era are those who hold the most liberal views. This may be precisely where he is generating his base from and why Democrats sometimes wonder where some of these individuals are coming from.
Conclusions
We’ve previously said that there are no true independents, and this remains true. There is conflicting information with regard to voting patterns. Low information voters may occupy the middle group of true swing voters. I like to think that the highly informed indie voter makes up the core of the large, liberal indie voting bloc. However, predictably, people vote along increasingly partisan lines as a result of party collapse in the 1970s as well as the Reagan era influence of ideology. People increasingly feel the need to vote simply to survive.
However, it’s not wise to take advantage of that position for too long. By the numbers, there are more Democrats than Republicans, so the Democratic Party can win the election without taking home a large chunk of indie voters. It has done so before. 2006 may have been a perfect example of when people were so motivated by the threats to their lives that they came out in great numbers to reject Republican ideology. However, conversely for Hillary Clinton, you don’t hurt yourself by going more liberal. You don’t hurt yourself by playing to your base. Regardless of what some may think of Clinton supporters and Kos himself, there have been regular efforts imploring Democrats to play to their base rather than run away from what defines a Democrat. This occurred only in the last few years, when Democrats in Republican states tried to become Republican lite and lost, rather than embracing Obama’s policies. There is no middle, or at least there’s a vanishingly small slice of it. By the numbers, a candidate is more likely to do themselves harm by playing to that middle than by playing to their extremes.
Because polarization has become the norm in politics, not the exception, since the Reagan era. If you don’t believe this, look at the Donald Trump phenomenon. Bernie Sanders may not win the election (he still has a chance, of course), but he’s doing what all future Democratic candidates should do moving forward: playing to the base. For the future, candidates should address both the economic issues and the social issues that play such a pivotal role in the survival of people day to day. I don’t think either Bernie or Hillary have been perfect candidates. My perfect candidate would have been able to adequately capture both the economics and social elements. However, I can summarize my position this way: go to the extremes, not the middle.
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