Independents' shifting allegiances set political pace

WASHINGTON —

Forget the red-state, blue-state construct.

Independents rule.

SUE OGROCKI / AP
Independents are turned off by the religious right and the ideological left, even as GOP partisans rampage Republicans-in-name-only and the left mounts its own "DINO" hunts against Blue Dog Democrats.

The real stunner of the Massachusetts Senate race was not just that independent voters outnumbered Democrats and Republicans combined in an ostensibly deep blue state. Or that they swung 2-1 for GOP upstart Scott Brown.

It was the terrifying velocity of their mood swing.

A year after Barack Obama rode to the White House on a wave of independent votes in swing states, Republicans have ridden that same wave in reverse to the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey and now "the Kennedy seat."

Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from mercurial Missouri, said the day after the upset, "In a state like mine, you've got to be really careful that you're listening, especially to those independent voters. And clearly, the independent voters do not support what we've done so far."

For partisans on the left and right who view independents as fickle, ill-informed rubes untethered to any ideological verities, this is really bad news.

For the House and Senate, where partisanship grows more ferocious by the day, it could spell total dysfunction — precisely the state of affairs independents seem to loathe.

Both parties seem "impervious to reality," said Stanford University political scientist Morris Fiorina, the author of "Disconnect: the Breakdown of Representation in American Politics," who contends the nation is not as polarized as many assume.

"Say there is a big defeat for Democrats in November," he said. "The Democrats will say, 'It's because we didn't motivate our base.' Republicans will say, 'We have a conservative mandate.' They're both wrong."

Surpassed parties

In 2008, independents outnumbered both parties combined in six states. Today they make up more than half the voters in 11 states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia, Iowa, Colorado and Alaska. This year they surpassed both parties nationally.

RUTH FREMSON / AP
Ross Perot, the third-party presidential candidate who ran in 1992.

In California, voters checking "decline-to-state" as their party affiliation are the fastest-growing voting bloc, up by a third in just 10 years to make up 20 percent of the state's voters, said Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo.

A survey by the nonpartisan Pew Center in May found that independents had reached their highest share of the electorate in 70 years. Despite GOP defections after the Bush years, there was no sign of a "realignment" toward Democrats. By February, a month after Obama's inauguration, independents had surpassed Democrats as a share of voters nationally.

By April, Pew found independents at 39 percent and rising fast; just 33 percent of voters were Democrats and 22 percent were Republicans.

So who are these voters and what do they want?

"Independent voters have been deficit hawks since the days of Ross Perot, and they like divided government," said John Avlon, author of the forthcoming book, "Wing Nuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America." Culturally they are "socially liberal to libertarian. They're alienated by the extremes of both parties."

Independents are turned off by the religious right and the ideological left, even as GOP partisans rampage against "RINOs," (Republicans-in-name-only) and the left's "net-roots" mount their own "DINO" hunts against Blue Dog Democrats.

Such struggles are on vivid display with South Carolina's two Republican senators. Jim DeMint is embracing the Tea Party, which is attacking Lindsey Graham for working across the aisle in a way independents prefer.

Obama won independents with his "post-partisan" campaign, but neither party leadership on Capitol Hill bought into the idea.

Last spring's shift by independents away from Obama was "directly and precisely in response to the stimulus bill, bailout backlash and the unprecedented deficit spending," Avlon maintained. "It accelerated over the summer in the debate over health care, which unfairly or not came to symbolize the growth of government."

Independents also rebelled against unified GOP control of Washington, D.C., under the Bush administration. "Independents have actually been consistent," Avlon said. "The parties don't understand the message."

Striking parallels

Many political scientists see striking parallels between the rise of independents in the Obama era and Ross Perot, the third-party presidential candidate and deficit hawk who won 19 percent of the vote in 1992, costing former President George H.W. Bush re-election and elevating Bill Clinton to the presidency with less than a plurality of voters.

"The results in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts have enough in common to put Democrats on notice that suburban independents who have been a linchpin of our majorities over the past two decades want results and will drive a hard bargain," said Bruce Reed, Clinton's former top domestic- policy adviser.

"Independents are extremely results-driven and cost-conscious and tax-averse. They don't like partisan bickering, they don't like government dysfunction, they don't trust either party and they're not shy about making their discomfort known."

Independents also tend to be younger than the general electorate. In California, DiCamillo said, they are also more ethnic, with non whites making up 41 percent of non partisans.

Republicans warned

Tea Party celebrity Joseph Farah, editor of WorldNetDaily, warned that Republicans should not assume a sweep in November. He sees instead an "anti-incumbent atmosphere" that has benefited Republicans so far, "but it's certainly not because Republicans have put out a vision that people are accepting. It's more like they look around at what's happening and they want somebody to blame, and it's the guys in power."

Boston University historian Bruce Schulman said that since the 1970s, "the parties have become much more ideologically pure, for better or for worse. I think that makes them less able to gather up a group of Americans that don't identify strongly with one particular ideology."

Schulman had thought that Obama's election in the midst of a historic financial crisis made great legislative achievements possible, as had earlier periods of upheaval and ferment.

"We thought that 2009 might be one of those moments," Schulman said. "Certainly President Obama did. But I guess we were wrong."