Half of Americans Now Identify as Independents

By artappraiser on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 10:18pm |

HALF of Americans now identify as Independents.
This is a record-high in Gallup polling. And a huge jump since the election.
This disaffiliation from the two major parties is very dangerous for democracy. It reveals deep, deep dissatisfaction. https://t.co/01p54BAiRA pic.twitter.com/6IgzRltAod
— Lee Drutman (@leedrutman) March 1, 2021

URL:

https://twitter.com/leedrutman/status/1366400818300215298?s=20

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America is a center-left country. https://t.co/Xu9w8bmsRe pic.twitter.com/5z5TuetJg7
— Lee Drutman (@leedrutman) March 1, 2021

.@perrybaconjr, @sfrostenson, @leedrutman and I talked CPAC/Trump.

Notes: Talk abt “cancel culture” unites Rs, Trump/his agenda might be here to stay, we need more stories abt how state/local Rs are pushing Trumpism — & less on Trump’s personal musings.https://t.co/WMTfvOCPCe
— Alexandra Samuels (@AlexSamuelsx5) March 1, 2021

by artappraiser on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 10:23pm

Great thread from a super-smart scholar who has written a great book on political independents. https://t.co/Xj6XzF4Z7u
— Lee Drutman (@leedrutman) March 1, 2021

As many noted in replies to @LeeDrutman, leaners are generally not party switchers, they vote for their preferred party, & hold party-aligned issue preferences.

The question Yanna & I pursue vigorously in our work is: so WHY the hell do they call themselves independents?? 2/n
— Samara Klar (@SamaraKlar) March 1, 2021

We find that partisanship itself has become stigmatized. Our surveys & experiments show that voters associate partisanship with anger & hostility--traits they don't associate with themselves. Partisanship generally is socially undesirable, across both parties. 3/n
— Samara Klar (@SamaraKlar) March 1, 2021

When we show respondents real-life politics--including transcripts from presidential debates--the people who are most concerned with social desirability (measured using a self-monitoring scale) become more likely to identify as leaners, rather than partisans. 4/n
— Samara Klar (@SamaraKlar) March 1, 2021

Their issue preferences don't change and probably neither does their vote. So why does this matter? Because they become less likely to publicize their partisanship: they don't talk about it, they don't put it on social media, they don't want a campaign sticker, etc. 5/n
— Samara Klar (@SamaraKlar) March 1, 2021

So a rise in independents matters because it signals: (a) growing negativity in the parties, which most Americans generally reject; and (b) Americans' subsequent reluctance to support parties from the grassroots. (Book, btw, is here: https://t.co/gJJQqYlfXv) 6/6
— Samara Klar (@SamaraKlar) March 1, 2021

I just want you to know that I talked about your book to a NICU night nurse while I was in the hospital with the baby and she *wrote down the details* to follow up on.
— Laurel Eckhouse (@l_eckhouse) March 1, 2021

haha, that is the most on-brand story you could have told me! thanks for keeping our work in mind in literally any setting.
— Samara Klar (@SamaraKlar) March 1, 2021

that's just the start of many replies

by artappraiser on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 10:37pm

David Shor responding to Yglesias:

If our class of 18 incumbents ran last year then we would have lost 4-6 seats. Even if we have another wave year in 24, less ticket splitting combined with increased urban-rural polarization will lead to large certain losses without changes to our coalition and structural reform https://t.co/HC1UudwszY pic.twitter.com/S4qDchsNS5
— (((David Shor))) (@davidshor) March 1, 2021

by artappraiser on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 10:50pm

Biden’s COVID relief bill widely popular among swing voters, Democratic poll finds https://t.co/C0oDUUniPP
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 28, 2021

by artappraiser on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 1:25am

Udi of the ACLU advises that Democrats need to make their party smaller and purer by having more congresspersons vote against their constituents wishes:

Here is the state of the Democratic Party today: a whopping 119 DEMOCRATS just voted AGAINST restoring voting rights to people in prison. Congress Member @CoriBush heroically tried to add this provision to HR 1. Her own party failed her. We still have so much to teach Democrats. pic.twitter.com/71TYUnTfEb
— Udi Ofer (@UdiACLU) March 2, 2021

by artappraiser on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 11:13pm

Reality check for liberals from FiveThirtyEight.com, March 5

[ ...] How popular is your governor?

Between scandals and recall elections and COVID-19, governors have been in the news a lot lately. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence, then, that we’ve gotten quite a few polls of governors’ approval ratings in the past month.

[See CHART AT LINK How governors stack up

Share of respondents in 12 states saying they approve or disapprove of their governor’s job performance, according to polls conducted since Feb. 5]

Because these numbers come from several different pollsters (and some are of adults while others are of registered voters), be careful making direct comparisons between governors — but we can still draw a few undeniable conclusions. For example, Govs. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire are still extremely popular — despite being Republicans in not-very-red states. And although liberals have lambasted them for their permissive COVID-19 safety protocols, Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Greg Abbott of Texas are doing just fine politically, with average net approval ratings1 of +17 points, +11 points and +19 points, respectively. (Note that, in Abbott’s case, the polls were all conducted before this week’s announcement that he’d be fully reopening the state. However, there’s good reason to believe that won’t harm his approval rating much.)

by artappraiser on Fri, 03/05/2021 - 7:42pm

Half of Americans Now Identify as Independents

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