independent voter

An independent voter, often also called an unaffiliated voter or non-affiliated voter in the United States, is a voter who does not align themselves with a political party. An independent is variously defined as a voter who votes for candidates on issues rather than on the basis of a political ideology or partisanship; a voter who does not have long-standing loyalty to, or identification with, a political party; a voter who does not usually vote for the same political party from election to election; or a voter who self-describes as an independent. Voting systems outside of the United States, including the British parliamentary system, do not utilize a party affiliation system as part of their voter registration process; rather, participation in party affairs is based on enrolling as a member within the party itself, and the number of party members is much smaller than the party's total electorate (for example, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which received 12 million votes in the 2021 German federal election, only has 400,000 members). The closest equivalent is the so-called "floater voters" or swing votes, who do not consistently vote for a particular party. Definition The earliest concept of independents is of a person whose political choices, by definition, were made based on issues and candidates (due to lack of party affiliation). Furthermore, early studies of voting behavior conclusively demonstrated that self-identified independent voters are less interested in specific elections than partisan voters, poorly informed about issues and candidates, and less active politically. However, a contrary view emerged: The independent usually voted on the basis of deeply ingrained beliefs, attitudes and loyalties, and is more like the strongly partisan voter than any other voter (or the idealized "independent"). By the 1960s, scholars attempted to define the independent based on behavior, rather than party identification or loyalty. Focusing on ticket splitters, these studies depicted an independent voter who had the same level of political interest as strong partisans and who voted largely based on the issues with which they strongly agreed or disagreed. However, by focusing on voting behavior, this definition of the independent ignored non-voters. Critics claimed that the independent voter is merely a subset of the larger set of independents, which should also include non-voters.