Independent Voters 'Not a Homogeneous Group'

The approximately three in 10 Americans that identify themselves as political independents actually fall into five separate categories, according to the results of a poll released earlier this week by a joint team from Harvard, the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post.

The study found that the most common of those five distinctions are the "disengaged"—those who are relatively apathetic to the political sphere—and the "disguised" partisans, those who have a clear and distinct party affiliation in everything except name.

Those two groups make up nearly half of all independents, while the so-called "dislocated," the "disillusioned" and the "deliberators" combined comprise just over 50 percent of independents—about 15 percent of all American voters.

Kennedy School Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis Robert J. Blendon led the Harvard research team in conjunction with three representatives from the Kaiser Foundation and two polling-specialists from The Washington Post.

"Our first question was, is this a homogeneous group?" Blendon said. "But it's more complex than that. We ended up dividing the independents into five categories, and someone could have had even more."

The month-long study used results from the "Survey of Political Independents," a long-running national telephone-survey that interviewed 2,140 adults nationwide. Just under half of those interviewed identified themselves as independents; 542 people were Democrats and 462 were Republicans.

The findings of the study bode well for Democrats entering the run-up to the 2008 election. Though independents were divided between John Kerry and George W. Bush in the 2004 election, they proved invaluable in helping Democrats win both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm election.

"They're quite Democratic-leaning in terms of preference," Blendon said of independent voters. "Those more politically active were also more likely to lean towards the Democratic side than the Republican. The exception was terrorism."

The issue in which independents most side with Democrats is the war in Iraq, where consistently more than 60 percent of those polled thought the U.S. would not be able to stabilize the region, the war wasn't worth fighting, and that the anti-terrorism campaign could have success without a victorious outcome in Iraq.

"Half of them say they don't see any difference in the issues between the parties, but on no issue did they not have stronger beliefs with one party than the other," Blendon said.

But depending on which candidates ultimately decide to declare their candidacy for next year's election, the large presence of independents could have other effects, too.

Although New York City Mayor R. Bloomberg has yet to enter the race, he would be the only seriously-considered independent candidate, giving him an immediate leg up in garnering votes from the vital group.

Additionally, many of the independents who switched their party vote in the last two presidential elections voted Democrat when Kerry was running in 2004, but not when Al Gore '69 was the party's nominee in 2000.

And exactly half of respondents said that if Gore were the one on Democratic ticket next year, they would not vote for the former vice president.

"They had somewhat stronger views around particular candidates," Blendon said. "Some of the surprises were that former Vice President Al Gore didn't rate very high nor did former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich."

The number of self-described independents is at a higher mark than it was during either of the last two presidential elections, though the last 35 years saw the number of independents peak in 1976.

More men than women tend to be independent voters, though they span a wide array of age ranges.

In addition to the "disengaged" and the "disguised" partisans, the "dislocated" tend to agree with one party more fiscally than they do socially, the "disillusioned" are fundamentally troubled by politics today, and the "deliberators" define the swing voter who fails to toe party lines.

Blendon said that regardless of the classification system used to categorize different types of independent voters, the most important thing his study cemented was just how different they really are.

"The big takeaway is that they're not a homogeneous group," he said, "and that many care a lot about issues even though they're skeptical and cynical about the political system."

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.