The Monkey Cage

The increase in people calling themselves Independents by definition points to people self-identifying as “not” the party they lean towards.

This simple act of saying, “I’m not this,” has deep implications compared to 20 years ago, when people eagerly attached themselves to a party label.

If the shift continues for another 20 years, even only half as strong, that’s still a positive thing for the country.

What’s actually more important is people ID’ing as Liberal, Independent, or Conservative. I suspect you think “liberal” has been turned into a dirty word… this is not the case… people know what the word means and they don’t identify with the thinking.

I only have two quibbles with this discussion: 1) leaners behave like partisans, but it’s weak partisans they most closely resemble; 2) leaners may behave like partisans because they dislike the opposing party more than the one they lean to—if given different choices (a la Fiorina), they might make different decisions.
Point #1 is evident in the classic Keith, et al. book on this subject. Point #2 has never been empirically tested, as far as I’m aware.

From Keeter: “This idea of the sage citizen who eschews party affiliation, is unbiased and persuadable by reason and facts, is very much a myth. Most people are committed to a party.”

Well, just how committed are they?

If you believe the graphs that have been posted on this site showing the movement of partisans and independents, the partisans don’t seem all that committed and loyal to me.

Seems like some of the posters on this site want it both ways: They want to say that many so-called independents are committed partisans and not truly independent, and then they want to show us pictures of how these very same partisans are wavering and waffling and displaying all of this uncertainty.

To outsiders this looks like plain old political science confusion and double-speak. And the outsiders seem right to me (an insider).

Morgan: I think what these various analysts and scholars are suggesting is that there isn’t any deep implication to people self-identifying as independent. I’m also a bit cautious about ideological self-identification. People often have attitudes about specific policies that are at odds with their ostensible ideology.

Eric: Sure, it’s weak partisans. Strong partisans are clearly a group unto themselves, which is why the standard measure rightly distinguishes them. As to choices, it’s quite possible you’re right. But we’re still awaiting the set of choices that will lead independent leaners to desert their party en masse. In the earlier comment thread, see my little analysis of the Perot vote.

Jim: I guess I’m just not sure where you see all this waffling and wavering. In elections, rates of party loyalty have increased (see Bartels’ piece, for example). My data show that as well. In 2008, rates of loyalty among strong partisans, weak partisans, and independent leaners were 96%, 87%, and 87%, respectively. Presidential approval since Clinton is strongly polarized by party (Jacobson). The vast majority of Democrats support Obama and the vast majority of Republicans do not. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be changes in approval within groups of partisans — i.e., Democrats are a bit less supportive of Obama than they were after inauguration — but those mild trends don’t strike me as waffling. The Petrocik article cites a ton of data on this score. I’m just curious where you see that data as lacking.

Well what is all this four-fifths stuff about from the other day? You won’t allow anyone to call those people independents, but they’re certainly behaving like independents. So they must be partisans.

Just not strong partisans, I guess.

Moreover, who are these people who are shifting over in elections (e.g., MA) once you account for turnout? Are these just the 10% of pure independents? Or what portion of them are partisans?

And if they are ‘partisans’ where is this vaunted stability partisans are supposed to exhibit?

It’s an easy confusion to see. These political science accounts are a mess, and make no more sense than the journalistic ones.

Jim: This all started when various journalists were portraying independents as larger and less partisan than most of them actually are. If think that journalists are correct in how they portray independents, then I’d be interested in your thoughts on Petrocik’s piece.

Then there’s the question of how partisan you have to be to be called partisan. That’s a separate issue. To my mind, the evidence of the stability in partisanship (Green, Palmquist and Schickler) and the evidence of partisanship’s growing impact on vote choice (Bartels) and presidential approval (Jacobson) suggest that we aren’t living in an era of partisan waffling. Do you disagree?

Do defections happen? Yes, although the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats in MA were loyal to their party’s candidate. Does every partisan always support his party’s president or always oppose the other party’s president? No. But I don’t think that makes partisanship meaningless.

Perhaps our standards are just different. I think of mine as essentially The American Voter’s: party identification is a standing decision, but not a deterministic force.

Again, we are comparing to 20 years ago… and as much as these “scholars” might like it to be so:

1. more than 20% of the population is in play. Certainly MA proves that.

2. The persuasive discussion would be about polling from 20 years ago… WHY according to the “scholars” were people ID’ing as something and voting another way? Were they more enlightened? Less rigid? Labels didn’t matter? They lied more in polls?

3. all we are left with for SURE - people are indicating they are “not” the party they lean towards.

To me this requires a historically accurate explanation of why people identify more as “not” something these “scholars” (third time in quotes) insist they are.

I don’t have links to the news stories (sorry), but I recall during the last U.S. election cycle (2006 - 2008) there were quite a number of news articles that discussed the issue of “independent voters”. One of the interesting elements of those articles is that some pollsters were allowing those they were surveying to self-identify as independent or as identifying with one of the parties. There was some discussion from the pollsters mentioning that there were a significant number of Republicans who were self-identifying as independents - but who were really partisans (or leaners, to use your phrase) that didn’t want to be associated with the Republican party and its policies (and President) at that time.

The pollsters said during interviews, that the results from these self-declared “independents” were therefore skewed toward the Republican party and a conservative outlook - and that the number of “non-admitted” Republicans in their “independent” voter samples made the “independent” cohort results suspect.

One of the key giveaways for them was the responses to the question of whether the voter would ever vote for party NNNNNN. A person who said they would never vote for one of the Republican or Democratic parties (even if they stayed home) was considered to be suspect as a true independent voter by the pollsters.

The pollsters interviewed also discussed a higher level of voter identification with Barack Obama (and therefore the Democratic party) and saw a reduction in the number of “independent” voters with Democratic or liberal leanings/responses.

Are independents self declared independents? Or registered independents? Or what?

Hmm.. We’re comparing to 20 years ago? OK, Pew’s been polling party id since 1990. Let’s see, they show the partisan breakdown in 1990 as 31% R, 33% D and 29% I.

At the end of 2009, they showed the partisan breakdown as 23% R, 35% D, and 36% I. That doesn’t look like decreasing partisanship. That looks like the collapse of the Republican party.

The good news for the Republican party is that their 23% vote at a higher rate than the rest of the population. The bad news is that Republicans (and Republican leaners) are much older than Democrats.

The simplest explanation for the data is that George W. Bush destroyed the Republican brand, especially with younger voters.

Please imagine me saying this very slowly. As a lifetime independent and a Ph.D. in political science, I have made a conscious choice not only not to be part of either party but also to repudiate them. However, if asked by your pollsters, I would only vomit a couple of times at voting for the usual Democrat while I would vomit a dozen times at voting for the usual Republican. According to your logic, this makes me really a Democrat, just a weak puking one. Please stop these silly assertions that we don’t really know what we’re doing and start paying attention to the implications that there are so many of us. And start asking your “weak” partisans if they actually lean “independent” for a change. The fact that you and your colleagues don’t even seem to think that relevant or probably even scoff at the suggestion says a great deal about both your blinkeredness on this and your results. Thank you.

How much is the frequent misunderstanding of the political science position - independents generally aren’t - a misunderstanding of the nature of social science? As political scientists, we’re interested in establishing strong correlations and causal relationships between certain variables (i.e. party ID) and certain behaviors (i.e. vote choice). We certainly aren’t making judgments, just establishing empirical regularities and hopefully causes.

Outsiders, to borrow another poster’s term, seem to think that we are addressing the behavior of discrete individuals or making some kind of normative judgment about what ‘independent’ means. I mean, it’s hard to argue with the evidence that self-identification as an ‘independent’ really doesn’t affect individual vote choice from election to election. Vote choice for a party/candidate is a behavior; we’ve established a pretty good variable to explain it. I mean, whether or not someone is puking while doing it, is fairly incidental, behaviorally speaking (unless you’re talking about turnout, which is also fairly well accounted for by the typical 7-point party ID score).

Anyway, my basic question is this, how much is this specific misunderstanding related to the larger issue of a misunderstanding of what social science is primarily engaged in, explaining behavior in the most rigorous, replicable way possible?