In a typically smart and analytical piece about post-election pundit-izing, Nate Silver makes this point about independents:
Part of the problem is that 'independents' are not a particularly coherent group. At a minimum, the category of ‘independents’ includes:
1) People who are mainline Democrats or Republicans for all intents and purposes, but who reject the formality of being labeled as such;
2) People who have a mix of conservative and liberal views that don’t fit neatly onto the one-dimensional political spectrum, such as libertarians;
3) People to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum, who consider the Democratic and Republican parties to be equally contemptible;
4) People who are extremely disengaged from politics and who may not have fully-formed political views;
5) True-blue moderates;
6) Members of organized third parties.
These voters have almost nothing to do with each other and yet they all get grouped under the same umbrella as 'independents'.
Along with the
civility problem, the way independents are understood and described is one of American political punditry's biggest faults. Independents aren't like Democrats or Republicans, which are relatively monolithic ideologically and vote as one large group. They are
independent; even the name itself implies that it would be hard to define their voting patterns as a group because they all act
independently. Pollsters and politicians and reporters tend to think of them as a group of skeptical moderate voters, some kind of mythical voting unicorn with game-changing powers. The importance independents are given strategically in turn bleeds into political writing, where they are portrayed as the sensible, free-thinking voters (that somehow all vote as a free-thinking bloc) that all Americans should try and be. The praises heaped upon this illusory people eventually come full circle: they become
the reason elections are won or lost. And so, as Silver points out, a writer with a deadline and a pre-developed narrative (paging Mssrs. Brooks and Broder) can glance over some exit polls, highlight one or two numbers on independents, and pen an entire column around how an entire group of people who probably have little to do with each other believe this or that about Barack Obama, without having to back that up with anything.
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I don't necessarily agree that Democrats and Republicans, in contrast to Independents, hold identical views and vote in identical ways. There is a wide divergence in core beliefs that is ultimately squeezed together to produce one 'ideology' by institutional arrangements and the national leadership. I use the word 'ideology' very, very loosely, of course; the extreme heterogeneity in the stances of many Democrats is probably one of the reasons why the national Democratic party is so limp and self-contradictory.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans, on the other hand, have succeeded in transforming their big tent strategy--a genuine consensus that helped all sorts of conservatives put aside their differences to focus on what they have in common, a ravenous appetite for other peoples' money--into something more like a big stage. That's a stage from which the reactionaries can scream down at everyone else with megaphones, silencing any debate. Despite how loud they are, though, I have a hard time believing that the Republican party really is so homogeneous.
Yes, it is true that the Democratic and Republican parties are composed of factions that don't always agree, but my point is that party members vote for their party. Partisanship in voting has been on the rise in the last 30 years and is, as I put it, essentially monolithic: nowadays, when you declare yourself a Democrat or a Republican, you vote with your party upwards of 90% of the time. Electorally, then, the parties are homogenous - ideological and policy work are more the province of lengthy plank fights behind the scenes at conventions, lobbying, and what have you. What you're referring to is ideological variance on a congressional/legislative level. What I'm talking about is what happens when people who self-identify with a party or not go into a voting booth, and how being independent is absolutely nothing like being a partisan.
ReplyDeleteFollowing Lion's point about heterogeneity within the parties, I think most of the "true blue moderates" and the real "independent" voters who push the elections in either direction are probably registered in one party or another. In fact, though I have no legitimate statistics to prove it, I would argue that people who vote across party lines, on the basis of a regional affiliation or (how, how strange) the competence of the candidate, have a far greater say in determining election results in this country than any independent voters. The nature of party affiliation is different here- choosing not to join a party makes one more, not less, reliant on the party leaders and ideologues. By deciding not to join a party one forfeits their right to vote in the primary, and along with it, any electoral say in the direction that the party takes. Thus there is even an advantage for a hard-line leftist (or as we have seen, kooky rightist) to join a party vocally, rather than step outside the lines.
ReplyDeleteAs might have been Silver's point all along, it is useless to talk about "independents" in this country, because those who care affiliate, those who don't care don't vote, and those who affiliate with a third party spoil their vote. Not until we have a third party that is well known for more than a famous leader (most mind as well be eponymous - how many "Green Party" voter wouldn't have gone for the "Nader Party"), and doesn't rely on a self-defeating anti-government bent, we will be able to have other-affiliated voters that mean something.
It is true that people who cross party lines are very important, but again, in most cases (90% of the time), when they show up to vote, party people vote their party. They generally express their displeasure by not showing up, as Democrats did in New Jersey and Virginia, rather than switching over. That said, gubernatorial races are interesting for this because party loyalty is much weaker in state-based races rather than national ones, so you may be right that non-Democrat Democrats are the real story here. Of course, we base most of this on exit polls, which are notoriously unreliable (they predicted a John Kerry win, for example). If you were an otherwise proud democrat, how willing would you be to tell a pollster you just voted against your party? You might very well lie.
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