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.
Not fully open, since as I understand it you still have to choose to vote in one partisan primary or the other.
Truly open “jungle” primaries - to which I would add ranked choice voting and ban collusive cross endorsements - would take away the power of party labels, donors, and activists and return it to voters.
If the best candidates for the general election turn out to be all Democrats or all Republicans, or something else entirely, so be it.
I'm with you in supporting jungle primaries/ranked choice voting (like Alaska's system). I'm not sure what a "ban" on cross-endorsements would even mean and how it would be enforced, though. I tend to think that's not really necessary. The places ranked choice voting have been implemented often have highly skewed partisanship and I think that's driving the problem you're alluding to - not some nefarious cross endorsement activity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ballotpedia.org says Georgia, where I live, is an open primary state
Not fully open, since as I understand it you still have to choose to vote in one partisan primary or the other.
Truly open “jungle” primaries - to which I would add ranked choice voting and ban collusive cross endorsements - would take away the power of party labels, donors, and activists and return it to voters.
If the best candidates for the general election turn out to be all Democrats or all Republicans, or something else entirely, so be it.
I'm with you in supporting jungle primaries/ranked choice voting (like Alaska's system). I'm not sure what a "ban" on cross-endorsements would even mean and how it would be enforced, though. I tend to think that's not really necessary. The places ranked choice voting have been implemented often have highly skewed partisanship and I think that's driving the problem you're alluding to - not some nefarious cross endorsement activity.
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.
Yep, that’s me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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