NPP and DMV

Registering as an independent or "no party preference" does not necessarily reveal much about voter preferences.  Philip Reese reports at the Sac Bee that a surge in NPP registration was largely an artifact of the process:

In the mid-2010s, California passed a “motor voter” law that automatically registered people getting a driver’s license or ID at the DMV, as well as those changing their address — unless they opted out of registration.

Voter registration boomed, rising by nearly 5 million, or 28%, from January 2016 to October 2023.

At first, a huge proportion of the new voters registered as “no party preference.”

When [Paul] Mitchell explored why, he noticed that the DMVs registration form asked residents if they wanted to pick a political party. If they answered “yes,” it would take them to another page where they would choose their party.

“You had to actively say, ‘I want a party,’” he said.

The problem, Mitchell and others said, is that many people don’t like standing in front of a computer at the DMV. To get away quickly, many chose “no.”

“The default dumped them into this big pit of no party preference voters,” said Wesley Hussey, professor of political science at Sacramento State.

The DMV changed the process in 2019, Mitchell said. Instead of asking voters if they wanted to pick a party and then asking them to pick a particular party on a new screen, the DMV created a dropdown menu that immediately allowed voters to choose a party. “Republican” and “Democrat” were on the dropdown list, along with third parties. Voters also have a nearby option for “no party preference.”

The effects were immediate.

In December 2018, before the change went into effect, about 53% of voters who registered at the DMV signed up as Democrats or Republicans, according to registration data collected by Mitchell. Three months later, after the change went into effect, that figure jumped to 74%. The shift has mostly held. During the first ten months of 2023, about 70% of voters registered as either Democrats or Republicans. A DMV spokesman said that the agency “streamlined the political party selection process” in 2019 based on feedback from the Secretary of State.

Support for a Third Party

 Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Americans' desire for a third party has ticked up since last fall and now sits at a high in Gallup's trend. Sixty-two percent of U.S. adults say the "parties do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed," an increase from 57% in September. Support for a third party has been elevated in recent years, including readings of 60% in 2013 and 2015 and 61% in 2017.

Meanwhile, 33% of Americans believe the two major political parties are doing an adequate job representing the public, the smallest percentage expressing this view apart from the 26% reading in October 2013.

The latest results are from a Jan. 21-Feb. 2 poll. The survey was conducted before recent news reports that dozens of government officials in prior Republican administrations were in discussions to form an anti-Donald Trump third political party.

The survey found Americans' favorable opinion of the Republican Party has declined to 37%, while 48% view the Democratic Party positively. The poll also shows 50% of U.S. adults identifying as political independents, the highest percentage Gallup has ever measured in a single poll.

Independents and Leaners

From Pew:

An overwhelming majority of independents (81%) continue to “lean” toward either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Among the public overall, 17% are Democratic-leaning independents, while 13% lean toward the Republican Party. Just 7% of Americans decline to lean toward a party, a share that has changed little in recent years. This is a long-standing dynamic that has been the subject of past analyses, both by Pew Research Center and others.

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.

Confusing Names of Third Parties

Our chapter on political parties discusses the potentially pivotal role of third-party and independent candidates

John Myers, Christine Mai-Duc and Ben Welsh report at The Los Angeles Times:

With nearly half a million registered members, the American Independent Party is bigger than all of California's other minor parties combined. The ultraconservative party's platform opposes abortion rights and same sex marriage, and calls for building a fence along the entire United States border.

Based in the Solano County home of one of its leaders, the AIP bills itself as “The Fastest Growing Political Party in California."

But a Times investigation has found that a majority of its members have registered with the party in error. Nearly three in four people did not realize they had joined the party, a survey of registered AIP voters conducted for The Times found.

That mistake could prevent people from casting votes in the June 7 presidential primary, California's most competitive in decades.

Voters from all walks of life were confused by the use of the word “independent” in the party’s name, according to The Times analysis.

...
Of the 500 AIP voters surveyed by a bipartisan team of pollsters, fewer than 4% could correctly identify their own registration as a member of the American Independent Party.

“That’s what we call a finding with real statistical viability,” said Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who helped craft the survey in collaboration with The Times and Republican pollster Val Smith. “It’s overwhelming and it’s indisputable.”

Tulchin has done polling for Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign and Smith's firm has done polling of California Republican voters on their presidential preferences. No data from this poll, conducted on a pro-bono basis for The Times, was shared with any campaigns.

...
After being read excerpts of the platform, more than 50% of those surveyed in the poll said they wanted to leave the American Independent Party. The more specific the platform position, the weaker the support of those surveyed. Most of the voters who were polled knew little, if anything, about the party to which they belong.

In 2012, The New York Daily News found that the same thing had happened with the state's Independence Party:

When he registered to vote last year, the 34-year-old Queens plumber checked a box beside the name Independence Party, believing he had filed to be independent of any party affiliation.

Informed of his mistake — one made by 85% of Independence Party enrollees interviewed by the Daily News — Marino got to the heart of the deception by which party leaders keep power and exercise undue influence over the ballot. He said:

“I registered as an independent. I didn’t intend to join the Independence Party. They are putting two words that are similar together. If you put them together in the same sentence, if you are not paying attention, you are not going to catch that. We all can’t make the same mistake.

Millennials

Pew reports:

The Millennial generation is forging a distinctive path into adulthood. Now ranging in age from 18 to 331, they are relatively unattached to organized politics and religion, linked by social media, burdened by debt, distrustful of people, in no rush to marry— and optimistic about the future.

They are also America’s most racially diverse generation. In all of these dimensions, they are different from today’s older generations. And in many, they are also different from older adults back when they were the age Millennials are now.

Pew Research Center surveys show that half of Millennials (50%) now describe themselves as political independents and about three-in-ten (29%) say they are not affiliated with any religion. These are at or near the highest levels of political and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on these topics.

...

These findings are based on a new Pew Research Center survey conducted Feb. 14-23, 2014 among 1,821 adults nationwide, including 617 Millennial adults, and analysis of other Pew Research Center surveys conducted between 1990 and 2014.

Independents and Party Identification

Gallup reports:

Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008.

The results are based on more than 18,000 interviews with Americans from 13 separate Gallup multiple-day polls conducted in 2013.

In each of the last three years, at least 40% of Americans have identified as independents. These are also the only years in Gallup's records that the percentage of independents has reached that level.

Americans' increasing shift to independent status has come more at the expense of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. Republican identification peaked at 34% in 2004, the year George W. Bush won a second term in office. Since then, it has fallen nine percentage points, with most of that decline coming during Bush's troubled second term. When he left office, Republican identification was down to 28%. It has declined or stagnated since then, improving only slightly to 29% in 2010, the year Republicans "shellacked" Democrats in the midterm elections.

Weather, Independents, and Belief in Climate Change

Abstract of: Hamilton, Lawrence C., Mary D. Stampone, 2013: Blowin’ in the Wind: Short-Term Weather and Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change. Wea. Climate Soc., 5, 112–119.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-12-00048.1

A series of polls provides new tests for how weather influences public beliefs about climate change. Statewide data from 5000 random-sample telephone interviews conducted on 99 days over 2.5 yr (2010–12) are merged with temperature and precipitation indicators derived from U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) station records. The surveys carry a question designed around scientific consensus statements that climate change is happening now, caused mainly by human activities. Alternatively, respondents can state that climate change is not happening, or that it is happening but mainly for natural reasons. Belief that humans are changing the climate is predicted by temperature anomalies on the interview day and the previous day, controlling for season, survey, and individual characteristics. Temperature effects concentrate among one subgroup, however: individuals who identify themselves as independent, rather than aligned with a political party. Interviewed on unseasonably warm days, independents tend to agree with the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change. On unseasonably cool days, they tend not to agree. Although temperature effects are sharpest for just a 2-day window, positive effects are seen for longer windows as well. As future climate change shifts the distribution of anomalies and extremes, this will first affect beliefs among unaligned voters. [emphasis added]

The Week presents a graph from the article:


 

Party Identification in 2012

Gallup reports:

An average of 47% of Americans identified as Democrats or said they were independents who leaned Democratic in 2012, compared with 42% who identified as or leaned Republican. That re-establishes a Democratic edge in party affiliation after the two parties were essentially tied in 2010 and 2011.

Without leaners, however, the picture is different: 40% independent, 31% D, 28% R.

Americans last year continued their trend toward greater political independence. The 40% who initially identified as political independents matched the record high from 2011. That is particularly notable, given that the usual pattern is for the percentage of Americans identifying as independents to decline in a presidential election year. In each of the last four presidential election years, dating back to 1996, the percentage of independents was lower than in the year prior to the election.

Registered Independents

A new report from Third Way examines voter registration data, showing an increase in the the number of voters not formally affiliated with either party.

The number of registered Independents has increased since 2008 in many of the battleground states that will decide the 2012 election. Among 12 likely battleground states, 8 have partisan voter registration—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. In 7 of these 8 battleground states (all but Iowa), Independent registration gained ground relative to both parties in terms of voter registration between 2008 and 2011.

In each battleground state, Democratic registration fared worse relative to both Republican and Independent registration between 2008 and 2011. In all eight states, Republican registration gained relative to Democratic registration between 2008 and 2011.

The importance of Independents has grown over time as voters are increasingly leaving the traditional two-party system. Based on the combination of this general trend and the rise in both registration and self-identification of Independents since 2008, the most likely scenario for 2012 is that Independents will make up a bigger portion of the electorate next year than in any election since 1976, based on national exit polls.

Open publication - Free publishing

Independents

In our chapter on political parties, we discuss the concept of party identification. In The California Journal of Politics and Policy, Edward L. Lascher, Jr. and John L. Korey explode some myths about independent voters in California:

Most California independents lean toward one or the other major political and this has changed little over time. Pure independents amount to only about one in 10 voters. Independents leaning toward one of the major parties tend to have voting preferences similar to those who at least weakly identify with the Republicans or Democrats. Partisanship dominates vote choices. With respect to civic engagement, pure independents are mainly distinguished by their lower interest in politics, weaker commitment to voting in upcoming elections, and lower levels of knowledge about basic facts of government and politics.

We do not wish to argue that partisanship in the mass public has been static. Indeed, our prior research emphasized a pronounced shift toward the Democrats among California adults during the 1990s and analyzed some of the reasons for this major change. We also find evidence in California for the ideological sorting emphasized by other scholars examining the United States as a whole. That is, liberals in the state are more consistently Democrats and conservatives more consistently Republicans than was the case in the past. ... So it is not the case that parties at the mass level are “forever the same” in the Golden State. However, what does seem inaccurate is the notion that Californians are losing their party moorings.

Independents in Elections

Florida Governor Charles Crist has announced that he will drop out of the state's Republican primary for the US Senate and instead seek the seat as an independent. In our chapter on political parties, we discuss the fate of third-party and independent candidates. In a New York Times blog post, I connect this analysis to Crist:

Polls show a lot of unhappiness with both major parties. But don’t expect an independent surge in November. At no time over the past half-century has either the House or the Senate had more than a couple of independent or third-party members.

There is currently no reason to think that the 2010 election will produce anything different. The dominance of the Democrats and Republicans stems in part from the mechanics of the electoral process.

Ballot access poses a big hurdle: it can be difficult and costly for other kinds of candidates to get on the general election ballot. Then they find it tough to get campaign money. The major parties have well-established fundraising networks, including contributors seeking to curry favor with incumbent politicians. Those on the outside have nothing comparable.

They also have to contend with the “spoiler” image. Voters worry that, by supporting a minor candidate, they could be helping a major-party candidate that they dislike.

In 2000, Ralph Nader drew votes from Al Gore, thus tipping Florida to George W. Bush — a result that most Nader voters probably did not intend. Six years later, a Republican senator from Montana got “Nadered” by a Libertarian, and his loss enabled the Democrats to take control of the Senate.

Of the few victorious off-brand candidates, most have not been true independents at all, but Republicans or Democrats carrying on a factional struggle. In 1970, New York State elected James L. Buckley as a Conservative. He won because many Republicans saw him as a more faithful representative of their party than incumbent Charles Goodell. Once in the Senate, he caucused with the G.O.P.

Governor Crist is hardly avatar of independence. He was very happy to receive the endorsement of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and was looking forward to the support of the party establishment. He bolted only because rank-and-file primary voters were about to reject him with a thump.

His decision to run as an independent is not the tip of the iceberg. It is a lonely chunk of ice with very little beneath.