Thanks for the link.
Apparently I’ve never looked at those poll results before; never crossed my mind that more people consistently claim to be independent than either Rep or Dem. I guess it should’ve since I’m registered as an independent. (socialist wasn’t an option)
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It’s important to remember that Republicans are only 25% of the population, while Democrats barely do better at 30%. Of course, a lot of Independents reliably vote for one party or the other.
So… what’s the big hold out on the jan 6th commission? I mean their behavior wasn’t their fault right? Why the fight?
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Do they ask from which direction they lean? A left wing Democratic leaning independent will have very different views than a right wing one. Lumping them both together will not give useful results.
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In late January, nearly three-quarters of them (71 percent) told Yahoo News and YouGov that the Capitol attack was “not justified”; today that number has fallen 14 points, to 57 percent.
If this isn’t evidence of the right-wing media echo-chamber (and Youtube algorithms)'s manipulation of a well-trained gullible public, I’m not sure what is.
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This poll asks “who do you consider yourself” instead of how you’re registered. I would imagine going by registration would cause problems. I would think this would be standard for other polls since it makes more sense when you think about it.
I don’t tend to look at that data, but I believe the intention is to look at it along with party affiliation; Democrat, Democrat-leaning independent, Republican-leaning independent, Republican. The value comes from longevity and watching them change over time.
I’m not sure how much you could gather of people’s views from something like this other than an inflection point over a significant event.
Thing is, that only helps if said independants will vote for dems. If they reject the racist, omniphobic party stance, but still check the R boxes when voting, it really doesn’t matter. I fear a good number will do that. Now, my realistic hope is that a goodly number will just stay home and not vote at all. That would be, well, not good, but better than the alternative.
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As much as this is laughable and stupid, I think it is also very dangerous and will have ugly consequences further down the road.
The thing is, Most independents aren’t actually between the two parties, and very few of them are swing voters. This means that there’s not a lot of information in the party registration figures.
This has a bunch of consequences for polls. If independents are split out as a group, you have a bunch of people who are basically Democrats and a bunch of people who are basically Republicans in your “independent” bucket, which leads to the result that Independents always look to be split on every issue.
Another thing that confounds the issue is that people’s party registration is “sticky”. It takes effort to change so a lot of people don’t bother. We saw that with the implementation of the southern strategy, when lots of conservative southerners remained registered to the Democratic party even as they started voting for Republican candidates.
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they probably should be asking both. im registered as a democrat so i can vote in the primary, but i don’t consider myself one. im sure there are also people who consider themselves democrats who aren’t registered as such.
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the premise of that first, more recent, article is that americans are so turned off by the partisanship of both sides that they choose neither side.
that so completely misses the state of american politics. it’s a myth just like one from the synopsis of the second article linked.
we don’t have two hyper partisan parties. we have one hyper partisan party, and a broad tent party who doesn’t want to alienate white supremacists so they generally can’t be bothered to do much about racial justice or meaningful social reforms ( see also gun control )
the both sideism premise might have made sense back early 2000, but in 2021? that ship is sunk
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I think it’s not only realistic, but intended (i.e. on the part of the campaigns themselves).
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Far-left independent, Democrat, centrist independent, Republican, far-right independent
Accordingly “Democrat-leaning independent” could mean at least two different things
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What would that tell anyone? As a country-wide number that doesn’t really say anything since each state is so different. @Scientist‘s preferred party wasn’t an option in that state, a persons motivations are different in a state with open primaries versus closed primaries differ, it looks like 20 states don’t offer party preference when registering. Like @Purplecat said, registration can be “sticky” where people don’t bother changing it long after their voting patterns change.
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