Independents Day
ByThe National Journal‘s Mark Blumenthal analyzes this CNN poll of Tea Party independents:
Pollsters from CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation had identified 11 percent of Americans who said they have given money, attended rallies or taken other “active steps” to support the Tea Party movement. Of those who had, more identified themselves as independent (52 percent) than Republican (44 percent) or Democratic (4 percent).
But the article then adds a caution from CNN pollster Keating Holland that some will find puzzling: The apparent independence of Tea Party supporters “might be slightly misleading,” he said, “because 87 percent say they would vote for the GOP candidate in their congressional district if there were no third-party candidate endorsed by the Tea Party.”
After New Orleans drowned and Democrats swept the next two general elections, a lot of the Bush base became born-again independents and, as Digby said, have tried “to pretend that they weren’t genuflecting to his picture for the first six years of his presidency.”
Like many others on the political left, while the country went slowly to hell I spent years as an independent, partly because I was never much of a “joiner” and partly to avoid any taint on my clean, white vinyl soul. As John Sides, the George Washington University political scientist Blumenthal quotes writes, being registered independent doesn’t mean one is not an “independent leaner.†A friend once described himself as such an outsider that if he ever actually found himself on the inside of some group he would have to create an outside just to feel at home. Even he isn’t as independent as he lets on. Nor are most of the callers to the Ed Schultz show who preface their remarks by proclaiming their independence.
Blumenthal digs deeper into the CNN poll numbers:
Remember the 52 percent of Tea Party activists who initially identify as independent? It turns out that virtually all of them lean Republican. According to CNN, 88 percent of the activists identify or lean Republican, 6 percent identify or lean Democratic and only 5 percent fall into the pure independent category.
The lack of followup questions in much opinion polling clouds the view, leading to the Beltway’s belief that independents have grown to a third of the country since Obama took office. We’ll see just how independent they are this November.
4 Comments
February 24th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Ok, your telling us that people who think the government spends too much, taxes too much, and believe it has massively expanded beyond it’s Constitutional limitations will not vote for the party that publicly and proudly advocates exactly that? What other wisdom do these oracles have to share?, they believe that after a brief interval of darkness there will be daylight again. The problem is the voting system favors the two(?)party monopoly. Third party efforts are at best a spoiler, giving the election to the party least wanted by the electorate,or at worst a “wasted vote” unless it can miraculously overcome media exclusion/bias and displace one of the two.Just the way the dominant parties like it.What we need is score voting, where any number of candidates running for an office are scored 1 to 10 with the highest scoring candidate winning. No primaries needed, no wasted votes, equal chance for all candidates and voters. Combine that with no campaign contributions from anyone not eligible to vote for the office,thus eliminating PAC,and corporate money, and money from out of the jurisdiction of the office campaigned for. Can’t be worse than what we have now, unless you’re an incumbent benefitting from the status quo.
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February 24th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Maybe all the polling says is that independents aren’t as numerous as “pure independents” wish they were – too few and not independent enough to affect the kinds of changes they long for.
No one is looking over our shoulders in the voting booth and there’s no distracting corporate money in there either. All people have to do is vote out the entire House and a third of the Senate twice in a row. That would send a potent message and change the whole dynamic. It’s as easy as voting against the incumbents regardless of party – even the ones we like.
Just twice. Just a little personal discipline. No laws or organizing required. If voters aren’t independent enough to do that, then independent’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.
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February 25th, 2010 at 1:33 am
There is nearly always only two choices presented to the potential voters through the media filter before the election. The third parties are invisible or are dismissed as “fringe” candidates who “can’t win”. The politically informed are either partisans who cannot be influenced, independents who know who they will not vote for and would like to support a third party but don’t want to “waste” their vote, and those who will not vote for demopublicans no matter what. The uninformed don’t know, don’t care, or think “they are all crooks” They too can be partisans, vote based on others advice, vote a “protest” vote, or not vote. Unfortunately these folks seem to be the majority of the electorate, who don’t vote strategically for the direction the country takes, only for their own (or their own immagined) interests. In many cases they can’t name their representative, or which party holds office, so are unlikely to vote out an incumbent. That said I believe real change is going to be very difficult, with a large voter education component, outside of the traditional media, necessary for success. National sovereignty is constantly being eroded by globalism,regardless of administration, to the world’s detriment. Time is short.
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February 25th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Like I was saying… http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-security-and-prosperity-partnership-militarized-nafta/
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