The Independent Voter Surge

In a groundbreaking shift, more voters now identify as independent than with any specific political party. This evolution is predominantly driven by millennials and Gen Z voters, who often prioritize issues over party allegiance. Many people also feel a growing disconnect or disillusionment with the traditional parties.

Join us for an enlightening discussion regarding the profound implications of this pivotal change. How could it redefine the political landscape and mold future campaigns? Is this the precursor to the emergence of new political entities?

Join our discussion with:

• Arnon Mishkin, director, FOX News Decision Desk; fellow, USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future
• Lisa D. T. Rice, political strategist, keynote speaker, author
• Sara Sadhwani, PhD ’19, assistant professor of politics, Pomona College

Co-moderated by:

• Bob Shrum, director, USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future
• Mike Murphy, co-director, USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

Learn more about the Dornsife Dialogues and sign up for the next live event here.

Transcript

00:00:00:02 - 00:00:27:02
Speaker 1
Welcome to Dornsife Dialogs. It's hard to believe, but the next presidential election cycle is already just around the corner, and all of us political junkies are anxiously watching to see how the shifting landscape will impact the campaigns. One interesting development is in America's fastest growing political party isn't Democrats or Republicans. It's those who identify with neither one. 20 years ago, fewer than a third of respondents identified as independents.

00:00:27:12 - 00:00:50:18
Speaker 1
But a recent Gallup poll found that today, 49% of Americans do. So today's panel will help us make sense of who these voters are, what they want and how they are shaking up our two parties system. Our conversation will be moderated by Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy, co-directors of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future. Bob, is it Carmen and Lois Warshaw?

00:00:50:19 - 00:01:18:12
Speaker 1
CHAIR In Practical Politics, he is among the most sought after Democratic political strategists in the nation with an unparalleled record of consulting for high level campaigns and administrations, including John Kerry's campaign in 2004 and Al Gore's 2000 race for the White House. Mike is a conservative political media consultant, a longtime senior analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and has served as a top campaign advisor to John McCain.

00:01:18:12 - 00:01:39:20
Speaker 1
Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with dozens of other GOP senators, governors and members of Congress. Today, they have been working to change the way we talk to each other across the aisle, focusing on civil debate, policy solutions and new ideas. So I'll now pass it off to Mike and Bob. We'll introduce our terrific group of panelists.

00:01:40:02 - 00:01:44:17
Speaker 1
Thank you again for joining us and enjoy the conversation.

00:01:48:10 - 00:02:12:14
Speaker 2
Good afternoon. Mike and I welcome you to this latest Dornsife dialog, where the dean just noted, We will discuss the rise of the independent voters. Mike and I will lead this discussion for about 40 minutes and then turn to questions from the audience, as Sarah said earlier. Please enter your questions in the Q&A feature on Zoom. We have a terrific panel with us today.

00:02:13:03 - 00:02:43:03
Speaker 2
Aren't in Michigan is the groundbreaking guru in charge of calling elections at Fox News as director of its decision desk. His team famously called Biden for Arizona in the 2020 election, and we are proud to say he joined us as a fall 2023 fellow at the center. Lisa Reiss is a political strategist, keynote speaker and author. She is leading a major effort to bring more open primaries and ranked choice voting to the nation's capital.

00:02:43:13 - 00:03:11:13
Speaker 2
Sarah, 70, is assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. Co-host of the Inside the Issues podcast with Alex Cohen. She is a scholar who focuses on elections and she served as a commissioner on the 2020 California Citizens Redistricting Commission, redrawing district lines for Congress, the state legislature and the Board of Equalization. Let me kick off the session with this question.

00:03:11:22 - 00:03:23:19
Speaker 2
Why are more voters identifying as independent than Republican or Democratic? What's caused the increasing disillusionment with the major parties? Arnold If you want to start, that's fine.

00:03:24:20 - 00:03:48:17
Speaker 3
Starting with the easy ones. First up, I think it's a really good question. I don't think there is a straightforward answer to it. I think it's two things. First of all, I think that there is, as the parties grew very, very powerful and as the reputation of parties and party bosses grew powerful, there became a social value in saying, I'm actually not beholden to any specific party.

00:03:49:00 - 00:04:29:13
Speaker 3
I am beholden to my own thoughts or to my. And I evaluate each character, the character of each candidate based on their positions, on the issues and whatever else goes into that thing, which I think there's a social value to it. The second one that I think is actually probably more relevant is I think one of the reasons that independent voters have grown is because and it's an important reason, and I think it is worth discussing is that neither party has presented a platform or a vision of who they are that is congruent with large numbers of people.

00:04:29:13 - 00:04:52:15
Speaker 3
And I think if you think about American politics, I think to a great extent it was the fact that modern American politics has been defined by sort of Ronald Reagan or your views of Ronald Reagan and the Ronald Reagan sets of issues that that arguably are what made the Republican Party sort of a dominant force in American politics starting 43 years ago.

00:04:54:08 - 00:05:25:08
Speaker 3
And that was balanced budget, have a strong defense and a strong international position, a very conservative positions on social issues and lower taxes. And that that appealed to a large group of Americans. And they saw that even though they may have, you know, some there were many sort of Republicans who were kind of pro pro-choice. They nonetheless felt comfortable with that positioning and with hanging out with those kinds of people.

00:05:25:12 - 00:05:53:06
Speaker 3
And I think on the Democratic side, people who sort of came, even though they may have disagreed with some positions on the anti side of that, I think they were very comfortable with that. I think a lot of that has been redefined. It's been redefined by young people. It's been redefined by Donald Trump and others. And so where, you know, a few years ago, we thought of the the perfect candidate as being someone who was sort of liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues.

00:05:54:04 - 00:06:18:02
Speaker 3
And that was the candidate, the candidacy that Mike Bloomberg designed, an independent candidate campaign around planning for 2016, and the rest that's been turned on its head. And one of the things Donald Trump has shown is that actually people that that the appeal is for a candidate who basically says, I'm going to support all entitlements and I'll be conservative on, you know, the exact opposite of that.

00:06:18:02 - 00:06:49:08
Speaker 3
He was conservative on many social issues or so he campaigned, and he developed an enormous populist view of that. So I think one of the things is I think that the neither party has figured out where the bulk of voters really are, particularly where the bulk of young voters are. And I think that, you know, one of the things I tried to talk in the Dornsife Center Study Group that I had and I must say I was really impressed with the students I dealt with was the idea that, remember, the goal of a political party is to win elections.

00:06:49:15 - 00:07:06:22
Speaker 3
And the goal of a candidate is to figure out how do I position myself? And this will sound cynical and it's not meant cynically, but it's is worth sort of thinking about what the goal of a candidate is. How do I form positions that will get me the, you know, the majority of the votes or enough votes to win an election?

00:07:07:18 - 00:07:19:12
Speaker 3
And I think if you and I think neither party has figured out what that right position is for the future as of now. And I think that's one of the reasons you see a lot of candidates, a lot of voters identifying themselves as independent.

00:07:20:16 - 00:07:21:23
Speaker 2
Lisa And then Sarah.

00:07:23:06 - 00:07:55:04
Speaker 1
Well, you know, I think that voters are really disenchanted with the candidates that are being offered by the Republican and Democratic parties, especially at the federal level, a large number of people, I think it's about 70, 72% have an unfavorable view of Congress. And who's in Congress? People who identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats. And so most, you know, more than half of voters even have an unfavorable view of the president.

00:07:55:05 - 00:08:29:00
Speaker 1
And so I think that saying I'm independent, rather than aligning myself with these hours or days, gives people a more bold way to to walk into to this abyss that that they feel that we're facing. I mean, gosh, you know, so many people disenchanted with Congress and and how do I separate myself from that disenchantment? Declaring myself an independent is one way to do that.

00:08:29:00 - 00:09:01:00
Speaker 1
And I think that's a lot of what's going on as well. SARA Yeah, you know, and I so appreciate the comments of both Alison, Ana and I completely agree actually with all of what of what they've said. But as the political scientist on the panel, I would be remiss to not talk about who are we actually talking about when we say independents and when pollsters go out to ask people who the which party they identify, which candidate with which candidate they're going to support?

00:09:01:20 - 00:09:26:02
Speaker 1
You know, more and more often we're hearing 40, 45% of respondents saying that they identify as independents. Miller, of course, pointing to 49% in that recent Gallup poll, which is an astronomical number. And we've been seeing that rise over time. That being said, the typical follow up question to that is, is there a party that you usually identify with or lean toward?

00:09:26:02 - 00:09:57:05
Speaker 1
So in political science, we often refer to many independents as leaners. And so while there are more and more people identifying as independents, it's typically 80 or 85% of those people actually identify with one of the two parties and will typically support a specific party and specific kinds of candidates again and again. So when we're talking about these independents, yeah, there are folks that that aren't necessarily going to fly the flag of either the Democrats or the Republicans.

00:09:57:05 - 00:10:36:05
Speaker 1
They might not be putting out yard signs per say, but they have a preference at the ballot box, even though they might have some questions about it. Maybe they don't agree with everything that they say. And I wanted to pick up particularly on one thread that Arnon raised around social values. And I think that's right. When we look at the American populous, we certainly have large proportionate well, actually small proportions of of folks who are actively involved in the political process, who are engaged in Twitter debates, who are reading the news and really engaged and informed.

00:10:37:01 - 00:11:13:17
Speaker 1
The vast majority of the American populace, however, includes and even folks who are registered to vote and plan to vote in a presidential election don't necessarily weigh in on political debates. You know, the vast majority of people are concerned about paying their bills, making sure their kids go off to school, that their families are cared for. And so when they turn on the TV and see all of the vitriol in Congress, seeing the the the the arguments between Democrats and Republicans and even intra party debates, they say that's not that's not me.

00:11:14:05 - 00:11:36:01
Speaker 1
And it's easier, I think, for many people today to identify as an independent, because at the end of the day, they want to be able to get along with their neighbor. They don't want to have fights on the next door in their neighborhood. And I think that's a big piece that's pushing people to identify as independents. But at the end of the day, most of those independents do have political preferences.

00:11:36:19 - 00:11:57:19
Speaker 2
Mike, you want to pick this up? Yeah. Thank you, Bob, and welcome, everybody to the conversation. Yeah, I totally agree with Sarah. It's interesting, Independents are somewhat misnamed because they're really Republicans and Democrats who don't admit they're Republicans or Democrats out of embarrassment or that social value of saying, you know, I'm too smart to fall into a trap.

00:11:57:19 - 00:12:22:12
Speaker 2
There's an old joke and market research about