Dr. Thom Reilly, co-director with Jackie Salit of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at ASU, argues that there’s a need to study independent voters through a new lens.
“So while there’s not consensus on how many independent voters there are in the U.S., their numbers do seem to be growing. The increase may require scholars, media outlets and the public to shift their traditional two-party view of American politics. It’s possible that the long-standing survey questions are no longer – or maybe never were – actually good at identifying political views of independent voters.