Registered independents are the largest political group. Who are they and what are their views?

[AgnosticBoy]

Political independents have outnumbered Democrats and Republicans since 2010 (according to a chart on Gallup), and continue to do so. SO I think it's worth taking a deep dive into who they are and what do they think on political issues. Are there enough similarities for them to unify into one party? Imagine if they voted all for the same candidate, that person would win just based on most voters being independent.

For Discussion:
1. What are the views of independents on political issues?
2. Are there enough similarities for them to unify into one party?

Related threads:
1. Undecided voters
2.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

What are the views of independents on political issues?

Some key facts I found is that most independents actually lean towards one of the two major parties, and their views tend to be closely aligned to the party that they lean towards.

Here's how Pew Research explains it:

Yet the reality is that most independents are not all that “independent” politically. And the small share of Americans who are truly independent – less than 10% of the public has no partisan leaning – stand out for their low level of interest in politics.
...
In their political attitudes and views of most issues, independents who lean toward a party are in general agreement with those who affiliate with the same party. For example, Republican-leaning independents are less supportive of Donald Trump than are Republican identifiers. Still, about 70% of GOP leaners approved of his job performance during his first two years in office. Democratic leaners, like Democrats, overwhelmingly disapprove of the president.

If that's the case, what would make independents different than Republicans or Democrats? Or is it that they vote towards one particular party because of a lack of other choices? Although interestingly, the independents who leaned towards a party can still have vary significantly as well like in this example on the approval of gay marriage (from a 2017 survey - Pew Research Center):
40% of Republicans were okay with gay marriage, while 58% of Republican leaning independents favored gay marriage. That's an 18% percentage points difference. So maybe we can draw from this that Republican-leaning independents can be more tolerant or open than Republicans? In fact, the support for gay marriage was higher among Democrat-leaning independents (82% favor it) than Democrats (73%).

Are there enough similarities for them to unify into one party?

IF there are similarities it wouldn't be in terms of political views based on the response to the previous question. But there might be similarities on other levels, like when it comes to why they became independent or unaffiliated.

For instance, most Americans view their own party favorably. Most independents that lean towards a party are also favorable to the party they lean towards but not in as high percentages as Republicans and Democrats.

Independents who lean toward a party are less likely than partisans to view their party favorably. In addition, far more independents (28%) than Republicans (10%) or Democrats (9%) have an unfavorable opinion of both parties.

Source: Pew Research

Here's a demographic breakdown of independents in terms of gender and age:

Source: Pew Research

 

[AgnosticBoy]

What are the views of independents on political issues?

I already addressed this question in the previous post but found some more good information. The following gets into the types of issues that independents care about (as opposed to specific views about each issue):
(click on chart to make it bigger).

Source: Chart is from Reuters

Imagine if they voted all for the same candidate, that person would win just based on most voters being independent.

This is a distant dream for now since the majority of Independents don't vote. Here's good information on that from Reuters (graph below also from same source):

What is clear among Independents, however, is that while voting may be a new experience for many of them, it’s possible many didn’t vote in 2020 because they lacked the motivation to cast a ballot.

Do independents think their vote will make a difference this year? Only one in three say yes.

53% of independents didn't vote in 2020? That's huge and partly explains why Independents don't have as much of an impact on elections as they could have.