Simply put for me is I have not felt I have a party for the last decade. I'd prefer government to be moderate, stay out of people's personal lives and healthcare, protect our borders and country, make reasonable immigration policies and reasonably support citizens who are struggling with programs that actually bridge them to becoming financially independent (which can't happen when benefits are yanked month to month). Both parties, especially at the national level, keep supporting the most extreme ideas, dumbest candidates, keeping Congress deadlocked, and police my thoughts, words and body one way or another. Drink my kool-aid or else. Any politician who dares be moderate or compromise is immediately stamped out by their own party. And meanwhile, the gift and corruption and wealth building in both parties is ridiculous. And I'm absolutely sick of the hypocrisy of politicians. I keep thinking a strong, moderate party could rise up, but now I think we should eliminate parties completely and demand each candidate tell us what they really stand for and cut all the money and influence coming from all the wealthy PACS, big business and billionaires. It's a sh*t show.
So how can us middle “Earth” 😆 folks make a difference in a political binary that is swinging even more extreme (DSA vs whatever horror follows MAGA)? And OMG, if the Democratic party could JUST find a strong, moderate presidential candidate for 2028 to counteract these Trump years, I'd be so happy. But as I've followed articles about state politics and the national party, they have LEARNED NOTHING from 2024. They constantly freeze out more moderate candidates and the Republicans do too.
Independents can make a difference by demanding open primaries, so their voices can be heard before they end up having to choose between the DSA nightmares and MAGA nightmares chosen by a plurality of relatively small groups of party activists.
As a former insider, I think primaries themselves are the problem. Primaries draw the most partisan voters in a party to the polls. If someone dares to think independently, they get "primaried." Both sides openly threaten that.
Both parties are political organizations that control who is on their party's ballot. Think of the number of states that require primary runoffs if a person does not win by a certain percentage. That is a ruse to keep control in the hands of the political organization rather than the voters.
These political organizations have conned everyone into paying for their control of the ballot through public financing of primaries. It is like "The Sting," supersized.
Independents, as well as those sick of our current political environment, should advocate for party-financed primary elections. Why should anyone who is not a member of a political party be forced to finance a non-binding primary election? But that is the way we've always done it! Well, actually it isn't! And considering the cost-benefit factor, it is time to abandon it.
My question is, "How can independents demand open primaries?" Of course individuals can act independently, but a collective effort often has more power. If independents want their demands respected, then proving solidarity through an organization would be beneficial. So should independents create their own political organization?
In order to eliminate all political parties, would the federal government need to pass a law at the national level prohibiting all political parties? In order to get that federal law passed, would it need to be a collective effort to make it happen? Causing a collective effort requires leadership and administrative action. The irony is, that a strong political organization would need to be created in order to dismantle the existing political organizations. How do we eliminate all political parties completely? I suppose it could be done simply by everyone un-enrolling from their political party. Democracy can only exist when enough citizens volunteer to be involved in government decision making. How should problems be solved that require a collective effort? How many candidates can be on the ballot? What if 100 people want to be on the ballot for state governor?
I think the data tells us something important. It shows that people who become less favorable toward their own party, its standard bearer, or some of its policies are more likely to shift toward independent identification. At this point, I’m less interested in trying to determine which of those is most important than in the question the data does not answer: why did those evaluations change in the first place?
There seem to be at least three plausible explanations. The parties themselves may have changed. The voters may have changed as their education, age, economic circumstances, and other characteristics changed. And the information environment may have changed what people know or perceive about the parties. Looking at some of what has been presented in The Long View, there seems to be evidence that all three kinds of change have been occurring. What we do not know is which of them is most important, or perhaps more importantly, how they are interacting
I am a former Democrat now independent. I have grown to genuinely loathe the Democratic party for many reasons. Every year it seems like they give me a few more. But I can't see myself joining the GOP, especially not with Trump in charge. When people ask me my politics I usually say "I hate everybody. "
I was a republican "supervoter" for years. In 2009, I was elected to the county committee, became very involved in local and national party politics, and am a fiscal conservative. The same people I carried ballot petitions for in freezing weather, by 2017, adopted identity politics and were more about a man. The standards they held others to no longer mattered when it was their guy doing it.
While I was a supervoter (meaning I voted in every single election), I have never pulled a party lever. I vote for people. Ironically, once I became intimately involved in politics and got to know the candidates, I was more likely to not vote for people in my party for specific reasons.
When it came down to not being able to vote for more than 50% of your party's candidates, it was time to leave the county committee. I have found that in recent elections there was no candidate I could support. After the 2024 election cycle, I changed my voter registration to Independent. Since there is no Independent party to register with in Pennsylvania, I checked the no party affiliation box when I recently moved.
I no longer identify with either party's policies or platforms; however, I can still find people I can vote for and support. When I can not, I do not vote in that "race." Parties have become a team sport, and I have been left without a political team. It is good to know that I am not the only one who has transitioned in response to the toxic political environment.
The bigger government becomes, the less popular it is, and by extension the parties that govern. Cause or effect?
When you consider what passing a bill entails; log rolling (trading favors or votes) to corral enough votes and rent seeking (the beneficiaries of the bill making deals with legislators to secure their vote) it is a recipe for less than ideal policy.
Add to that, once a policy once becomes law, it is shaped and molded by unelected officials, far into the future.
In the past when there were fewer laws and regulation the political parties were more popular and diverse within each party with fewer areas in which to disagree. It may have been causation or coincidence.
The Democrat Socialists are experimenting with heading in the opposite direction, creating additional ways to annoy and offend voters.
Betsy Chapman wrote that "The bigger government becomes, the less popular it is . . . " I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is necessarily true. The Chinese Communist Party, perhaps the biggest government in the world, retains a considerable amount of public support. There has never been another government in the history of the world that has lifted almost its entire population out of poverty into top-tier wealth so quickly. On the one hand, China has allowed industrial capitalists to develop its economy with. Inimal disruptions from recessions, rent-seeking, monopolists and other forms of corruption. At the same time, the central government has wisely managed to keep control of credit, which it treats as a public utility, like water or electricity. The central government also has used five-year plans to guide its growth and infrastructure planning, to avoid waste, duplication and bottlenecks and perhaps most important, a bloated military. Most important, the government has managed to keep its focus in every sphere on improving or maintaining the quality of life for the greatest number of its people. I don't have any polling numbers handy (though good ones do exist), but the government is far more popular than any in the West.
I would briefly remind everyone that the most popular government ever to exist in the U.S., the FDR administration, greatly expanded the size of the government.
Indeed, as I have heard other women say, it's not the size that matters. It's what you do with it.
This is interesting; I fit this perfectly. At 18 I registered as a Republican (and took a huge amount of crap from my working-class, union family) but by 1992 became an independent because of terrible Republican candidates and absolutely ludicrous policies (literally the Republican party at that time said tax cuts would solve everything; want to raise revenue? Cut taxes. Want to decrease the deficit? Cut taxes.). The rise of Newt Gingrich to be speaker of the House only deepened the schism, as did the ridiculous impeachment of Clinton.
I've never rejoined a party, have voted third party often, and am less and less likely to ever belong to a party.
I was once a strong Republican best succinctly described as of the Theodore
Roosevelt “progressive” variety. I became independent for the standard reasons. But those reasons are largely academic.
The relevant question now is what moderates should do to regain effective representation. Although I support open primaries and ranked choice voting, I would particularly like to see the emergence of a credible centrist third party. The Forward Party has the potential to fill that role, but two problems are (1) the attitude of most voters that only Democrats and Republicans can win and govern, and (2) competition among the Forward Party and other centrist groups for limited funds and media exposure.
How do citizens who are not enrolled in a political party collectively exert political influence? Are "independent" voters represented in the media? Who is the spokesperson for "independent" voters? What economic philosophy do the majority of independents agree to? Wouldn't an organized effort improve the recognition and influence of independents. Where do I sign up to be part of an organization that represents independent voters? There are political parties and organizations that claim to officially be non-partisan, but it seems like they always have some pre-existing bias towards the beliefs of the founders. Let's try to get independents to agree on what the basic role of government should be. Write it down and then vote on it. Define where the "line" is for too much government interference in people's lives. What would the official belief be of independents on the subject of authority to order military action? States rights? Abortion? Birthright citizenship? Tax code reform? If independents won't ever officially organize and define their beliefs and values, then how do they achieve any type of collective influence? Or maybe that's not a concern?
The idea that choosing a party is difficult is objectively wrong.
The Democrats love socialism, think racism is so deeply embedded in America that only socialism can fix it, and have insane ideological beliefs like 'some women have penises.'
The Republicans have moved so far left on social issues and economics that they're basically 90s Democrats.
The only reason why choosing a party is difficult is that being a Republican means being hated by the left. So if you have you friends on the left, its a socially difficult choice.
I'm an engineer who spends his time trying to navigate working deals for water between western farmers and the municipal utility that employs him.
The deals and terms have to work and building them is very difficult.
The point: our parties simply don't work anymore. And we need them to, or else we need a functional arrangement that replaces them. We can't go on like this.
Both political parties are corrupt to the core. In the end they both vote to expand the DC swamp and destroy Freedom and Liberty. They have both failed us and we fail ourselves by continuing to re-elect the same corrupt politicians over and over again.
I hated Trump at first but then realized that he might be the only chance left in my lifetime (68) to actually make some real changes in DC (IE drain the swamp) So I have voted for him three times now. However its become clear that the swamp has won (new war in Iran, Throttled DOGE because of Republican opposition, actual deportations are minimal in relation to the numbers or actual illegals in the country and he turned tail and allowed the blue states (Minnesota, California, Illinois etc.) to ignore Federal supremacy in terms of immigration law enforcement.
The Republicans in Congress have once again failed to do anything with their majority to change how DC works so when the Democrats get back in power they can't blow out the budget once again based upon bad financial assumptions and they continued the same bloated budget levels that Biden passed on his way out. They all lie about being fiscally conservative and one of the few actual fiscal conservatives was voted out based upon Trump's recommendation's (Massie)
Your interpretation of Tolkin's results is incorrect, or at least misleading. The identification of favorability towards preferred party, favorability towards the standard bearer, and favorability towards the party's policies are done in single-equation logistic estimation. This is perfectly fine if your comparison is between something that affects the probability of switching or not.
However, your text appears to compare the probability of switching given different changes in favorability. This is not okay because of the endogeneity problem. One's favorability towards preferred party is affected by the favorability towards the standard bearer or the party's policies. And the party's policies are strongly affected by the policy preferences of the standard bearer. To be able to compare these effects, the estimation needs to be done as a system of logistic regressions, not as single-equations. Since you are not performing new estimations, you need to understand the limitations of the results you describe.
Finally, in a field as rapidly moving as politics, a paper from 2024 is old, especially since it uses data from 2016 to 2022. There is no reason to expect that these probabilities are covariance-stationary, and Tolkin concedes this by including time-fixed effects (levels, not variances).
Thanks, Raphael. I’m quoting results directly from his paper. But you raise good points (reminds me of grad school). Maybe the author addresses it more elsewhere. I’ll look into it. The paper was just released in the fall edition of POQ so clearly the poli sci field doesn’t view it as irrelevant. https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/90/3/866/8661111?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Simply put for me is I have not felt I have a party for the last decade. I'd prefer government to be moderate, stay out of people's personal lives and healthcare, protect our borders and country, make reasonable immigration policies and reasonably support citizens who are struggling with programs that actually bridge them to becoming financially independent (which can't happen when benefits are yanked month to month). Both parties, especially at the national level, keep supporting the most extreme ideas, dumbest candidates, keeping Congress deadlocked, and police my thoughts, words and body one way or another. Drink my kool-aid or else. Any politician who dares be moderate or compromise is immediately stamped out by their own party. And meanwhile, the gift and corruption and wealth building in both parties is ridiculous. And I'm absolutely sick of the hypocrisy of politicians. I keep thinking a strong, moderate party could rise up, but now I think we should eliminate parties completely and demand each candidate tell us what they really stand for and cut all the money and influence coming from all the wealthy PACS, big business and billionaires. It's a sh*t show.
Thanks, a lot of Americans feel similarly!
So how can us middle “Earth” 😆 folks make a difference in a political binary that is swinging even more extreme (DSA vs whatever horror follows MAGA)? And OMG, if the Democratic party could JUST find a strong, moderate presidential candidate for 2028 to counteract these Trump years, I'd be so happy. But as I've followed articles about state politics and the national party, they have LEARNED NOTHING from 2024. They constantly freeze out more moderate candidates and the Republicans do too.
Independents can make a difference by demanding open primaries, so their voices can be heard before they end up having to choose between the DSA nightmares and MAGA nightmares chosen by a plurality of relatively small groups of party activists.
Bill,
As a former insider, I think primaries themselves are the problem. Primaries draw the most partisan voters in a party to the polls. If someone dares to think independently, they get "primaried." Both sides openly threaten that.
Both parties are political organizations that control who is on their party's ballot. Think of the number of states that require primary runoffs if a person does not win by a certain percentage. That is a ruse to keep control in the hands of the political organization rather than the voters.
These political organizations have conned everyone into paying for their control of the ballot through public financing of primaries. It is like "The Sting," supersized.
Independents, as well as those sick of our current political environment, should advocate for party-financed primary elections. Why should anyone who is not a member of a political party be forced to finance a non-binding primary election? But that is the way we've always done it! Well, actually it isn't! And considering the cost-benefit factor, it is time to abandon it.
There is an organization named Open Primaries that advocates for open primaries:
https://ballotpedia.org/Open_Primaries
My question is, "How can independents demand open primaries?" Of course individuals can act independently, but a collective effort often has more power. If independents want their demands respected, then proving solidarity through an organization would be beneficial. So should independents create their own political organization?
Ballotpedia.org says Georgia, where I live, is an open primary state
In order to eliminate all political parties, would the federal government need to pass a law at the national level prohibiting all political parties? In order to get that federal law passed, would it need to be a collective effort to make it happen? Causing a collective effort requires leadership and administrative action. The irony is, that a strong political organization would need to be created in order to dismantle the existing political organizations. How do we eliminate all political parties completely? I suppose it could be done simply by everyone un-enrolling from their political party. Democracy can only exist when enough citizens volunteer to be involved in government decision making. How should problems be solved that require a collective effort? How many candidates can be on the ballot? What if 100 people want to be on the ballot for state governor?
I think the data tells us something important. It shows that people who become less favorable toward their own party, its standard bearer, or some of its policies are more likely to shift toward independent identification. At this point, I’m less interested in trying to determine which of those is most important than in the question the data does not answer: why did those evaluations change in the first place?
There seem to be at least three plausible explanations. The parties themselves may have changed. The voters may have changed as their education, age, economic circumstances, and other characteristics changed. And the information environment may have changed what people know or perceive about the parties. Looking at some of what has been presented in The Long View, there seems to be evidence that all three kinds of change have been occurring. What we do not know is which of them is most important, or perhaps more importantly, how they are interacting
Great points, thanks.
I am a former Democrat now independent. I have grown to genuinely loathe the Democratic party for many reasons. Every year it seems like they give me a few more. But I can't see myself joining the GOP, especially not with Trump in charge. When people ask me my politics I usually say "I hate everybody. "
You and lots of others! Thanks
I was a republican "supervoter" for years. In 2009, I was elected to the county committee, became very involved in local and national party politics, and am a fiscal conservative. The same people I carried ballot petitions for in freezing weather, by 2017, adopted identity politics and were more about a man. The standards they held others to no longer mattered when it was their guy doing it.
While I was a supervoter (meaning I voted in every single election), I have never pulled a party lever. I vote for people. Ironically, once I became intimately involved in politics and got to know the candidates, I was more likely to not vote for people in my party for specific reasons.
When it came down to not being able to vote for more than 50% of your party's candidates, it was time to leave the county committee. I have found that in recent elections there was no candidate I could support. After the 2024 election cycle, I changed my voter registration to Independent. Since there is no Independent party to register with in Pennsylvania, I checked the no party affiliation box when I recently moved.
I no longer identify with either party's policies or platforms; however, I can still find people I can vote for and support. When I can not, I do not vote in that "race." Parties have become a team sport, and I have been left without a political team. It is good to know that I am not the only one who has transitioned in response to the toxic political environment.
A true independent! Thanks, John.
The bigger government becomes, the less popular it is, and by extension the parties that govern. Cause or effect?
When you consider what passing a bill entails; log rolling (trading favors or votes) to corral enough votes and rent seeking (the beneficiaries of the bill making deals with legislators to secure their vote) it is a recipe for less than ideal policy.
Add to that, once a policy once becomes law, it is shaped and molded by unelected officials, far into the future.
In the past when there were fewer laws and regulation the political parties were more popular and diverse within each party with fewer areas in which to disagree. It may have been causation or coincidence.
The Democrat Socialists are experimenting with heading in the opposite direction, creating additional ways to annoy and offend voters.
Betsy Chapman wrote that "The bigger government becomes, the less popular it is . . . " I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is necessarily true. The Chinese Communist Party, perhaps the biggest government in the world, retains a considerable amount of public support. There has never been another government in the history of the world that has lifted almost its entire population out of poverty into top-tier wealth so quickly. On the one hand, China has allowed industrial capitalists to develop its economy with. Inimal disruptions from recessions, rent-seeking, monopolists and other forms of corruption. At the same time, the central government has wisely managed to keep control of credit, which it treats as a public utility, like water or electricity. The central government also has used five-year plans to guide its growth and infrastructure planning, to avoid waste, duplication and bottlenecks and perhaps most important, a bloated military. Most important, the government has managed to keep its focus in every sphere on improving or maintaining the quality of life for the greatest number of its people. I don't have any polling numbers handy (though good ones do exist), but the government is far more popular than any in the West.
I would briefly remind everyone that the most popular government ever to exist in the U.S., the FDR administration, greatly expanded the size of the government.
Indeed, as I have heard other women say, it's not the size that matters. It's what you do with it.
Yep, that’s me.
This is interesting; I fit this perfectly. At 18 I registered as a Republican (and took a huge amount of crap from my working-class, union family) but by 1992 became an independent because of terrible Republican candidates and absolutely ludicrous policies (literally the Republican party at that time said tax cuts would solve everything; want to raise revenue? Cut taxes. Want to decrease the deficit? Cut taxes.). The rise of Newt Gingrich to be speaker of the House only deepened the schism, as did the ridiculous impeachment of Clinton.
I've never rejoined a party, have voted third party often, and am less and less likely to ever belong to a party.
I was once a strong Republican best succinctly described as of the Theodore
Roosevelt “progressive” variety. I became independent for the standard reasons. But those reasons are largely academic.
The relevant question now is what moderates should do to regain effective representation. Although I support open primaries and ranked choice voting, I would particularly like to see the emergence of a credible centrist third party. The Forward Party has the potential to fill that role, but two problems are (1) the attitude of most voters that only Democrats and Republicans can win and govern, and (2) competition among the Forward Party and other centrist groups for limited funds and media exposure.
Yes, valid observations about limitations.
I live in a state that has moved from purple to red and is also a closed primary state.
Switching to independent means accepting what the Republicans decide in the Primary.
That doesn’t make any sense. So I stay Republican so I can vote in the primary.
And the same is true for me, as a registered Democrat in a heavily blue state.
If there's a moderate Democrat, I will vote for him or her in the primary.
If there's a moderate Republican, I can back a crazy Democrat who will either:
- lose to the moderate Republican in the general election, or
- win, do crazy stuff, and erode the reputation of the far left.
My problem is the lack of moderate candidates in either party.
I can understand why people leave a party. Would someone please explain why they join them in the first place.
How do citizens who are not enrolled in a political party collectively exert political influence? Are "independent" voters represented in the media? Who is the spokesperson for "independent" voters? What economic philosophy do the majority of independents agree to? Wouldn't an organized effort improve the recognition and influence of independents. Where do I sign up to be part of an organization that represents independent voters? There are political parties and organizations that claim to officially be non-partisan, but it seems like they always have some pre-existing bias towards the beliefs of the founders. Let's try to get independents to agree on what the basic role of government should be. Write it down and then vote on it. Define where the "line" is for too much government interference in people's lives. What would the official belief be of independents on the subject of authority to order military action? States rights? Abortion? Birthright citizenship? Tax code reform? If independents won't ever officially organize and define their beliefs and values, then how do they achieve any type of collective influence? Or maybe that's not a concern?
The idea that choosing a party is difficult is objectively wrong.
The Democrats love socialism, think racism is so deeply embedded in America that only socialism can fix it, and have insane ideological beliefs like 'some women have penises.'
The Republicans have moved so far left on social issues and economics that they're basically 90s Democrats.
The only reason why choosing a party is difficult is that being a Republican means being hated by the left. So if you have you friends on the left, its a socially difficult choice.
I'm an engineer who spends his time trying to navigate working deals for water between western farmers and the municipal utility that employs him.
The deals and terms have to work and building them is very difficult.
The point: our parties simply don't work anymore. And we need them to, or else we need a functional arrangement that replaces them. We can't go on like this.
Both political parties are corrupt to the core. In the end they both vote to expand the DC swamp and destroy Freedom and Liberty. They have both failed us and we fail ourselves by continuing to re-elect the same corrupt politicians over and over again.
This is a common sentiment among many independents. Thanks.
I hated Trump at first but then realized that he might be the only chance left in my lifetime (68) to actually make some real changes in DC (IE drain the swamp) So I have voted for him three times now. However its become clear that the swamp has won (new war in Iran, Throttled DOGE because of Republican opposition, actual deportations are minimal in relation to the numbers or actual illegals in the country and he turned tail and allowed the blue states (Minnesota, California, Illinois etc.) to ignore Federal supremacy in terms of immigration law enforcement.
The Republicans in Congress have once again failed to do anything with their majority to change how DC works so when the Democrats get back in power they can't blow out the budget once again based upon bad financial assumptions and they continued the same bloated budget levels that Biden passed on his way out. They all lie about being fiscally conservative and one of the few actual fiscal conservatives was voted out based upon Trump's recommendation's (Massie)
Your interpretation of Tolkin's results is incorrect, or at least misleading. The identification of favorability towards preferred party, favorability towards the standard bearer, and favorability towards the party's policies are done in single-equation logistic estimation. This is perfectly fine if your comparison is between something that affects the probability of switching or not.
However, your text appears to compare the probability of switching given different changes in favorability. This is not okay because of the endogeneity problem. One's favorability towards preferred party is affected by the favorability towards the standard bearer or the party's policies. And the party's policies are strongly affected by the policy preferences of the standard bearer. To be able to compare these effects, the estimation needs to be done as a system of logistic regressions, not as single-equations. Since you are not performing new estimations, you need to understand the limitations of the results you describe.
Finally, in a field as rapidly moving as politics, a paper from 2024 is old, especially since it uses data from 2016 to 2022. There is no reason to expect that these probabilities are covariance-stationary, and Tolkin concedes this by including time-fixed effects (levels, not variances).
Thanks, Raphael. I’m quoting results directly from his paper. But you raise good points (reminds me of grad school). Maybe the author addresses it more elsewhere. I’ll look into it. The paper was just released in the fall edition of POQ so clearly the poli sci field doesn’t view it as irrelevant. https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/90/3/866/8661111?redirectedFrom=fulltext