New high of 45% in US identify as political independents
news.gallup.com
news.gallup.com
In other words, if there's a record-high number of independents, how much of it is "market failure" where people want more options than the usual 2 parties?
I wonder if this is the first step toward the end of the two party system but I fear it is a move toward a Russialike "I'm not political" status quo.
Conservative has remained more or less static the whole time, 36% in 1992, 35% in 2025, which I guess makes a kind of sense, while moderate has dropped 10%, with a corresponding increase in liberal.
I would personally call this social progress, though of course conservatives would disagree. On the other hand, the specific political policies supported by self-described conservatives and liberals has sometimes changed radically over those years, which can make my eyes roll and my head spin—for example, I remember a time when conservatives were free-trade internationalists—so I think it's a separate question whether US political policy itself has become too conservative or too liberal. In any case, the leaders of both parties tend to advance the interests of themselves and their donors over the interests of their voters or the public at large.
I've come to see political parties, political ideologies, and even religions more as social groups than as repositories for specific beliefs, where the identity and attitude of the members is more important than consistency, logic, or truth.
Even more concerning is when you realize no one even formally controls these beasts. Doing “what is best” for the party/church/company is sufficient to both drive the outcomes we observe, make it impossible to ever effect change from status quo since this is what any replacement piece would do, and offer a fig leaf of moral justification or even cognitive dissonance that this is what ought to be done whether you like it or not. Thousand generations upholding these zombie meta human organizations that march towards what, no one knows.
No. They are almost always fairly tightly and heavily lockstep aligned with the Republican party.
My fiance has a few friends in the dating scene. Their comments mirror this: "If someone has "apolitical/I'm not into politics/centerist" on their profile you can generally assume they are quite conservative.
According to the article, 27% of independents describe themselves as conservative (not to mention the 20% of Republicans who describe themselves as moderate). Also, the article talks about the "Republican-leaning independents" category, so I'm not sure about the basis for skepticism here.
Nobody is denying the existence of this phenomenon. And there's perhaps good reason for people to eschew identification with political parties, which are corrupt in various ways, though one may hold one's nose and vote for some major party candidate on election day.
I dispute the "always" claim, however, which appears to be based on your own anecdotal experience. I would trust Gallup polling more than that. Moreover, the existence of the Green party for example would appear to be proof that independent does not equate with conservative/Republican. The Libertarian party of course gets votes too.
There are far more NPA than either democrats or republicans.
Independents almost by definition have less trust in institutions, and that includes voting. They're also quite unpredictable in what issues they'll find salient. For example, I suspect that in 2026, there will be a lot of independents who are directionally aligned with Trump on immigration, DEI, etc., but who will vote Democrat because Trump hasn't brought down grocery store prices like he promised.
But I also think its worth noting that there's a difference between the group of people who are legitimately not political (don't really think or talk about politics) and the group of people who proactively identifies themselves as "independent" or "apolitical" when not specifically asked.
It is the latter group of people who (in my experience also) are very likely to be conservative.
Harvard-Harris does great issue polling that breaks down views on issues by political affiliation. Check out page 23 of the following: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/HHP...
Independents clearly are aligned with Trump on many issues. For example, 63% support eliminating racial preferences in hiring and awarding government contracts, 65% favor closing the border, and 63% align with Trump on various gender-identity issues.
On the other hand, independents also in-conflict with the establishment GOP on a number of other issues. 86% favor measures to lower Medicare drug prices, while only 36% support adding work requirements to Medicaid. (Harvard-Harris doesn't poll on abortion, but independents tend to be genuinely between the parties on that issue.)
I think in the social circles of people who are still dating, whether someone is liberal or conservative is defined in terms of views on immigration or gender, rather than medicaid work requirements. So independents present as overwhelmingly conservative in that context. But that doesn't mean that independents are "lockstep aligned with the Republican Party" on tax cuts or other issues like that.
We're commenting on a pool that shows the % of independents growing and now at all time high. If you were right, these new independents would come from the Democratic side, essentially moving to the conservative side in order to maintain the lockstep leanings... but that doesn't make sense given the recent events.
Moreover, instead of biased speculation and hating on everyone who isn't in a total lockstep with our hating, we can look at the real data:
At the moment, the share of Democratic-leaning independents is higher than the Republican-leaning ones and that share grew since last year [1] - very understandable because we have two parties who always promise but never deliver, so round and round we (independents) go.
The extremist nature of both parties - "you're either with us or against us" - is the fundamental reason why more and more people don't want to associate with either of them.
[1] Poll: Nearly half of Americans identify as politically independent
It takes years to shrug off the programming.
lol!
How could someone become so stingy in life?