New Reality: 'Independent Voters' No Longer Decide Elections
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  New Reality: 'Independent Voters' No Longer Decide Elections
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Author Topic: New Reality: 'Independent Voters' No Longer Decide Elections  (Read 1858 times)
Frodo
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« on: December 20, 2012, 06:55:54 PM »

The disappearing independent

By LOIS ROMANO | 12/20/12 4:44 AM EST

As Republicans sift through the wreckage of the presidential election and Democrats brace for the 2014 midterms, there is one clear point of agreement between them: Independent voters no longer decide elections.

In 2012, Mitt Romney became the first presidential candidate in recent history to decisively win the independent vote — yet just as decisively lose the election. Pollsters and campaign strategists — particularly Republicans — are scrambling to understand what happened — and more important, what it means for future campaign strategies.

Romney trounced Barack Obama with independents in five of the eight battleground states that Obama won, including all-important Ohio. In four of those states, Romney won the demographic by a healthy 10 percentage points. These numbers were reflected in most pre-election polls, giving Team Romney and Republicans overall a deluded confidence they had the race in the bag.

Strategists in both parties now believe that the Romney campaign and the GOP in general completely missed a significant new reality: Many voters who chose to remain unaffiliated with either party are no longer shifting their allegiance from election to election, candidate to candidate. Instead, they are becoming increasingly partisan and predictable. That means that in order to win, each party must be far more ambitious in cementing its base — as Team Obama did — to win elections.
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Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/the-disappearing-independent-85340.html#ixzz2FdiKZtTM
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old timey villain
cope1989
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« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2012, 07:03:27 PM »

Or maybe Obama lost the independent vote because many of these self identified Independents used to call themselves Republicans.

Moderates still decide elections, but there's a big difference between moderates and independents these days.
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Smid
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« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2012, 07:15:34 PM »

Or maybe Obama lost the independent vote because many of these self identified Independents used to call themselves Republicans.

Moderates still decide elections, but there's a big difference between moderates and independents these days.

The article says precisely that...

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memphis
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« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2012, 09:10:05 PM »

Democrats have to win moderates heavily though because conservatives vastly outnumber liberals.
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Knives
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« Reply #4 on: December 20, 2012, 09:11:59 PM »

Imagine if voting was compulsory and how Obama would've won almost every state.
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memphis
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« Reply #5 on: December 20, 2012, 09:22:19 PM »

Imagine if voting was compulsory and how Obama would've won almost every state.
No
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Benj
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« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2012, 10:01:13 PM »

Democrats have to win moderates heavily though because conservatives vastly outnumber liberals.

Sort of. Democrats do much better with conservatives than Republicans do with liberals, though, mainly because black voters heavily self-identify as conservatives but most are also dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. (And just because they self-identify as conservatives doesn't mean they support what are traditionally considered conservative policies, though it does reflect much greater social conservatism than in the broader Democratic coalition.)
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politicallefty
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« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2012, 11:26:56 PM »

You also have to keep in mind that many moderates are actually liberals who just don't call themselves liberals (sort of like what happens with so-called Independents). The right-wing has had some success with making "liberal" a dirty word. Democrats pretty much always win moderates, short of a huge landslide. Even Dukakis won moderates in 1988. It's not whether or not Democrats win moderates, but by how much. (I'm speaking nationally. Things get more complicated among individual states.)
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old timey villain
cope1989
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« Reply #8 on: December 22, 2012, 12:47:09 AM »

Yes, the breakdown of ideology doesn't have as much to do with actual ideology as it does with how voters prefer to label their views. Some people still have a hard time calling themselves liberals, don't know why- maybe it conjures of images of dirty hippies and draft dodgers. People do seem to be more willing to call themselves conservatives though, probably because the GOP has embraced the term while you rarely hear Democratic politicians calling themselves liberal.

But it's no matter to me. Republicans love to mention the fact that there are more self identified conservatives, but the "liberal" party seems to be winning a lot more elections lately...
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old timey villain
cope1989
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« Reply #9 on: December 22, 2012, 12:55:20 AM »

Or maybe Obama lost the independent vote because many of these self identified Independents used to call themselves Republicans.

Moderates still decide elections, but there's a big difference between moderates and independents these days.

The article says precisely that...

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sorry, I only read the portion in the original post. Glad to see the media taking note of this shift in independents. I heard the guys on Fox repeat constantly the fact that Romney won independents- just another means to diminish Obama's win by making the false assumption that Obama eeked out a victory with a coalition of leftists and 47 percenters while the valiant Mitt Romney won real Americans.
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Beezer
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« Reply #10 on: December 22, 2012, 11:11:27 AM »

Independents I suppose just like to think of themselves as not being partisan even though they're just as likely to stick to their electoral preferences as Republicans and Democrats.

In January 2008, 32% of respondents in the ANES panel survey described themselves as independents. And these independent voters were, in fact, less certain about their presidential vote choice in June than voters who identified with a party. Only 61% of independent voters were extremely or very sure about their choice compared with 81% of partisan voters. However, despite their lower level of subjective certainty, independent voters were only slightly less stable in their candidate preferences between June and November than party identifiers: 11% of independents switched sides, compared with 7% of partisans. Fully 89% of independents maintained the same candidate preference over this five month period, including 90% of independents who leaned toward a party and 88% of “pure independents” who expressed no party preference whatsoever. Based on these results, the popular image of independents as unstable voters moving back and forth between candidates in response to news stories and campaign events is a major distortion of reality.

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/it-dont-mean-a-thing-if-it-aint-got-that-swing/
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #11 on: December 22, 2012, 12:31:03 PM »

I think independents be more likely to swing between elections than within elections.  It's a reason why Mitt was mistaken in waiting till the last moment in the campaign to blitz with his ads.  Once a voter has made a decision it's far more difficult to get him to unmake it than to make it in the first place.  It's also why Mitt got fooled by the results of the first debate.  The polling didn't reflect Barack voters deciding they'd made a mistake and would now vote for Mitt.  It reflected mainly voters who had decided they weren't voting for Barack, but hadn't yet been persuaded to vote Mitt.
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justfollowingtheelections
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« Reply #12 on: December 26, 2012, 04:26:08 AM »

Yes, the breakdown of ideology doesn't have as much to do with actual ideology as it does with how voters prefer to label their views. Some people still have a hard time calling themselves liberals, don't know why- maybe it conjures of images of dirty hippies and draft dodgers. People do seem to be more willing to call themselves conservatives though, probably because the GOP has embraced the term while you rarely hear Democratic politicians calling themselves liberal.

But it's no matter to me. Republicans love to mention the fact that there are more self identified conservatives, but the "liberal" party seems to be winning a lot more elections lately...


Democrats never call themselves liberal.  And actually a lot of them in red states call themselves conservative.  Gillibrand when she was running in upstate New York used to call herself the most conservative Democrat in the House.  The most left wing caucus in the House call themselves the Progressive Caucus.  Hilary when asked during one of the debates in '08 whether she is liberal, said that she prefers being called progressive.  I think CNN needs to stop asking people to self-identify as liberals and use the term progressives instead.
Even I wouldn't describe myself as a liberal because liberalism is a right wing ideology, and I'm certainly no right-winger.
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #13 on: December 27, 2012, 12:03:09 AM »

That's because the term independent has come to mean Republicans who think their party hasn't gone sufficiently far off the deep end.

It used to be that independents and moderates basically overlapped and Obama won moderates hands down. That's where the rational center of the American electorate resides.
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BaldEagle1991
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« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2012, 12:27:54 AM »

Imagine if voting was compulsory and how Obama would've won almost every state.


No incumbent President would win if that was the case.
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