scholarly journals The Changing Independent Voters in American Politics

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-43
Author(s):  
Hong, Jung-Min
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Independent Voters

The Partisan Affinities of Independent ‘Leaners’

1986 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce E. Keith ◽  
David B. Magleby ◽  
Candice J. Nelson ◽  
Elizabeth Orr ◽  
Mark C. Westlye ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Place ◽  
Striking Finding ◽  
Democrats And Republicans ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
Independent Voters

For almost a decade we have taken issue with the prevailing view of independent voters. We showed that Independents, as they were usually defined, had nothing in common, and in fact were more diverse than either Democrats or Republicans. Virtually no generalizations about Independents were correct, except by accident, because they comprise three very different kinds of people. Most Independents acknowledge that they are closer to one or the other party. The crux of our argument was that this ‘leaning’ should outweigh an initial claim of independence when deciding how to classify respondents. Our most striking finding was that leaners vote like outright partisans. We interpreted this as evidence that most professed Independents are not neutral between the parties, but are nearly as partisan as avowed Democrats and Republicans. This conclusion had major implications for both mainstream and revisionist views of American politics, all the more so because of the growing numbers of Independents, who accounted for 38 per cent of the adult population by 1978, thus matching the Democrats and leaving Republicans in a distant third place.

scholarly journals The Study of Independent Voters

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Intergroup Bias ◽  
The Other ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Party Identity ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The One ◽  
Independent Voters

More Americans identify as Independent than as Republican or Democrat. Who are Independents and how do they impact American politics? This question does not have a clear-cut answer. On the one hand, American Independents are pursued by media and politicians for their (perceived) nonpartisan behavior and their ability to swing elections. On the other hand, Independents are ignored for their low political engagement and dismissed as “closet partisans.” As a result, many analyses of American voters either remove Independents entirely or combine leaners—those Independents who admit feeling closer toward one party or the other—with weak partisans. This puts Independents and the researchers who study them in a strange position as we attempt to understand the role of Independent voters in American politics. The debate about whether Independent leaners are truly independent or whether they are “closet partisans” dominates the literature, but a thorough review of the evidence reveals many interesting findings and generates many interesting research questions surrounding the motivations for an Independent identity and its consequences. We address the who, how, why, and where of Independent voters: Who Are Independents? discusses Measurement of Party Identity and Independence, Partisan Dealignment, and Demographics of Independent Voters; How Do Independents Behave? discusses Voting, Political Interest and Engagement, and Implicit Attitudes and Intergroup Bias; Why Identify As Independent? discusses intrapersonal and interpersonal motivations for identifying as Independent; and Where Do We Go From Here? suggests common practices for researchers to enhance the study of Independent voters.

Refusal to Mourn

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Runions
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
American People ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Public ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
The Us ◽  
Robert Bellah

In her recent book Precarious Life, Judith Butler points out that not more than ten days after 9/11, on 20 September 2001, George W. Bush urged the American people to put aside their grief; she suggests that such a refusal to mourn leads to a kind of national melancholia. Using psychoanalytic theory on melancholia, this article diagnoses causes and effects of such national melancholia. Further, it considers how a refusal to mourn in prophetic and apocalyptic texts and their interpretations operates within mainstream US American politics like the encrypted loss of the melancholic, thus creating the narcissism, guilt, and aggression that sustain the pervasive disavowal of loss in the contemporary moment. This article explore the ways in which the texts of Ezekiel, Micah, Revelation, and their interpreters exhibit the guilt and aggression of melancholia, in describing Israel as an unfaithful and wicked woman whose pain should not be mourned. These melancholic patterns are inherited by both by contemporary apocalyptic discourses and by the discourse of what Robert Bellah calls ‘American civil religion’, in which the US is the new Christian Israel; thus they help to position the public to accept and perpetuate the violence of war, and not to mourn it.

The Political Impact of Affective Polarization: How Partisan Animus Shapes COVID-19 Attitudes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Druckman ◽  
Samara Klar ◽  
Yanna Krupnikov ◽  
Matthew Levendusky ◽  
John B. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
American Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Citizens Attitudes

Affective polarization is a defining feature of 21st century American politics—partisans harbor considerable dislike and distrust of those from the other party. Does this animus have consequences for citizens’ opinions? Such effects would highlight not only the consequences of polarization, but also shed new light onto how citizens form preferences more generally. Normally, this question is intractable, but the outbreak of the novel coronavirus allows us to answer it. We find that affective polarization powerfully shapes citizens’ attitudes about the pandemic, as well as the actions they have taken in response to it. However, these effects are conditional on the local severity of the outbreak, as the effects decline in areas with high caseloads—threat vitiates partisan reasoning. Our results clarify that closing the divide on important issues requires not just policy discourse but also attempts to reduce inter-partisan hostility.

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