This startling news comes from WaPo: A Political Force With Many Philosophies. The piece is a report on

a new, in-depth study by The Washington Post in collaboration with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University.

The study is a comprehensive examination of a broad segment of the electorate — about three in 10 voters call themselves independents — that is poised to play the role of political power broker in 2024.

Aren’t we told every election cycle that independents are a critical bloc of voters who will end up deciding the outcome of the election? And isn’t it always reported as if it is a new revelation that somehow is endemic to the current cycle? Moreover, it seems that the argument is always that this is a growing group.

However, the bottom line would be that in any given election those voters who might be willing to vote for either party are decisive and they always exist. No doubt that the number of voters at a given point in time who identify as “independent” fluctuates cycle to cycle, but the basic phenomenon is nothing new.

No doubt the number of “independents” is up right now as a result of the simple fact that there are a lot of voters out there who are upset with President Bush. A lot of nominal Republicans aren’t considering themselves Republican at the moment, and, no doubt, there are even some long-term GOPers who are currently embarrassed to publicly affiliate with the party (or even privately in a survey).

All sarcasm and criticism of the reportage aside, the survey itself has some interesting findings:

The survey data established five categories of independents: closet partisans on the left and right; ticket-splitters in the middle; those disillusioned with the system but still active politically; ideological straddlers whose positions on issues draw from both left and right; and a final group whose members are mostly disengaged from politics.

More specifically:

“Deliberators,” who are classic swing voters.

“Disillusioned,” who are acutely upset with politics today.

“Dislocated,” who are both social liberals and fiscal conservatives.

“Disguised,” who are partisans on the left and right who behave almost identically to Democrats or Republicans.

“Disengaged,” who generally sit on the political sidelines.

Specifically we are talking about:

29 percent of U.S. adults self-identified as independents. The average in Post-ABC News surveys over the past year is 34 percent.

Of course one thing that I would like to see out of such a study is how much the given “independent” is actually a party leaner, if not a consistent Republican or Democratic voter over time. A lot of people like to talk about how they vote for the person or the issue, but one would guess that if one was, in fact, voting on specific issues that a certain voting pattern would emerge, and that that pattern would have some partisan leanings to them.

The study partially addresses this issue, insofar as clearly the “Disguised Partisans” would fit that description (and that accounts for 24% of the independents in this study). Although in looking at some of the other categories, they appear to be largely Democratic-leaners (although the degree to which they are always predisposed in that direction and the degree to which it is more an artifact of Bush and the war is not entirely clear).

Of the independents in the study only 18% of independents in the study (the “Deliberators”) are “classic swing voters” who might change party to party in a given election.

In looking at some of the links to the study itself, much of my question is answered:

most independents, when prompted in the second, follow-up poll question do accept partisan taglines. Here, two-thirds of self-identified independents said they lean toward one of the two major political parties. To some analysts this means that many independents are in fact “closet partisans,” with fewer, around 10 percent, being “true” independents.

This actually strikes me as accurate. It is one thing to think of oneself as “independent” but the system tends to force voters into a binary choice: R or D and over time one is likely to lean more towards one than the other if one might prefer another choice. It would seem that given our current system that most voters would fall into a particular, even if they aren’t all that fond of the party with which they affiliate. The number of voters who are truly comfortable moving freely between the two parties would therefore be small. And this group would be the ones that I would truly classify as “independent.”

Update: Yglesias seems to share my general attitude towards the WaPo piece:

Big survey, little new information. Many independents are actually partisans. Many others just have no idea what they’re talking about. A few really do pay attention and swing anyway. The party that wins more independent votes tends to win elections.

Indeed.