Perhaps rporter. But what do we generally have when folks go vote or decide who they’ll vote for? Most voters aren’t even close to being a political junkies along or pay a lot of attention to government or even elections. 49% of all Americans are paying a lot of attention to this election, the other 51% fall somewhere in-between none to a little to some attention. Paying a lot of attention to politics and government falls off to 25% in non-election years.
Voting habits, history shows that on average since 2000 93% of republicans and democrats, both parties will vote for their candidate regardless of who that candidate is. One can say it’s about party, not the individual candidates. But those who are party members or identify with the major parties do vote. According to Gallup both major parties make up 60% of the electorate either up or down a point or two based on the monthly figures from Gallup and Pew Research. But they made up 74% of those who voted in 2020 and 76% in the 2022 midterms. Independents who make up roughly 40% of the electorate, only made up 26% of those who actually voted.
Independents are more prone to vote the candidates, not the party. Although I need to be more specific about this. Independents can be broken down into three groups, independents lean democratic, independents lean republican and independents with no leans. The historical trend for independents who lean toward one party or the other is that they’ll vote for the party’s candidate 75% of the time that they lean toward. That’s down from 93% of those who identify themselves as republicans or democrats. Independents with no leans, around 10-12% of the electorate, who knows how they will vote. They’re finicky and usually vote based on their personal likes or dislikes of the candidates. Usually they do no research. One can never know, not even by polling how this latter group will vote. They’re all over the place, change constantly, can vote for one party in large numbers one election and turn around and vote for the other party in large numbers the next election. You can’t get the exact numbers or percentages on these folks as exit polling doesn’t divide independents into the three groups that make them up. They treated all the same. But it’s this 10% or so that decide elections. Not either major parties base nor independents which lean toward one or the other party.
Are they stupid or just different? I suppose if one is a republican or a democrat one would look on this 10% as being stupid. Rough figures from July which are dynamic and change constantly. 30% of all Americans say they’re republicans, 28% democrats, 41% independents. Of that 41% who state they’re independents, 41% lean republican, 32% lean democratic, 27% no leans or pure/true independents.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspxBut the above numbers are so old they don’t apply anymore. But take a hard look at the monthly figures and you can see how dynamic they really are. There can be huge differences from month to month. Many Americans really don’t know what they are politically. It’s those who don’t know that usually decide elections.
