The independent share stood at 34% in the latest update of Edison’s exit poll, compared with 34% for Republicans and 32% for Democrats.
Like self identified vegetarians increasing big mac sales
So what this really tells us is that Republicans are staying solid at 1/3 the voting population, and fewer people are identifying as Democrats.
I stopped registering as a Democrat before the 2016 election. I heard the MAGA language then and refused to put myself on a registered enemies list. I vote D, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to just put a sign over my head that says “sic the hounds on me” when the time comes. :/
Same here. I have to think tho if they really wanted to could the find out who we voted for or does it just check you that voted and your ballot gets mixed in with everyone else’s?
You register with a party, but if you vote in person they just verify your name against the registration, you don’t sign your ballot.
If you mail in your ballot, you signed the outer envelope, not the ballot, so after verification of the signature hypothetically they discard the envelope and just run the ballot.
In any case I don’t think there is any record kept of who votes for what candidate.
Speaking only for myself, but I’d wager this is pretty common: registered independent, but my voting pattern is consistently solid blue. Historically I mostly just don’t want to give the poll worker any reason treat me less-than-ethically due to not aligning with their party of choice. Now-a-days, I don’t want a D next to my name when the Nazis we just elected start making their lists of undesirables.
Don’t kill me, but I actually registered as a Republican so I can vote in their primaries and other elections, and have a say in who gets elected instead of choosing the Democrat that will get voted out of my Republican state.
Of course, recently, I’ve always voted blue unless the Dem is a massive jerk for some reason. Registering as a Republican doesn’t stop me from doing that.
In my state, independents can vote in any party’s primary. There’s basically no benefit in registering with a specific party.
It bears repeating: “unaffiliated” != “independent”. And that confusion is not helped by the fact that the media calls unaffiliated politicians “independent”, and that there’s ALSO an “American Independent Party” that you can register for.
On your registration, if your state has semi-open primaries, you need to pick “unaffiliated/no party”. You should NOT pick “Independent” (note the capital I), unless you specifically mean to.
I’m stuck as a “Republican” until the next primary. Ohio automatically registers you with the party of the last primary you participated in and doesn’t allow changes or revocations other than choosing a different primary next time.
If I’d known that ahead of time I wouldn’t have bothered with my pointless protest vote against Trump in this year’s Republican primary. I have never, and will never, voted for a Republican in a general election, but as far as they’re concerned I’m a card carrying member that needs to be on every mailing list they can think of.
