The Great Illusion
Ruy Teixeira
TNR
March 7, 2012 | 12:00 am
The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents
by Linda Killian
St. Martin’s, 336 pp., $25.99
I SUPPOSE WE should be grateful to Linda Killian. Her new book collects in one place every clichéd and suspect empirical generalization about political independents. So in that sense—and only in that sense—it is a useful volume.
Start with the premise of the book. It is that independents are all swing voters ready to move right or left politically—or in Killian’s feverish imagination, toward some inchoate centrist formation of the No Labels variety. This premise is based on the greatest myth in American politics: that independents are actually independent. They are not. As numerous studies have shown, the overwhelming majority of Americans who say there are “independent” lean toward one party or the other. Call them IINOs, or Independents In Name Only. IINOs who say they lean toward the Republicans think and vote just like regular Republicans. IINOs who say they lean toward the Democrats think and vote just like regular Democrats.
Just how strong is this relationship? In 2008, according to the University of Michigan’s National Election Study (NES), 90 percent of independents who leaned Democratic voted for Obama, actually a higher level of support than among weak Democratic partisans (those who said they were “not very strong” Democrats), 84 percent of whom voted for Obama. Among Republican-leaning independents, a still-high 78 percent voted for McCain, compared to 88 percent support among weak Republican identifiers.
(More here.)
TNR
March 7, 2012 | 12:00 am
The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents
by Linda Killian
St. Martin’s, 336 pp., $25.99
I SUPPOSE WE should be grateful to Linda Killian. Her new book collects in one place every clichéd and suspect empirical generalization about political independents. So in that sense—and only in that sense—it is a useful volume.
Start with the premise of the book. It is that independents are all swing voters ready to move right or left politically—or in Killian’s feverish imagination, toward some inchoate centrist formation of the No Labels variety. This premise is based on the greatest myth in American politics: that independents are actually independent. They are not. As numerous studies have shown, the overwhelming majority of Americans who say there are “independent” lean toward one party or the other. Call them IINOs, or Independents In Name Only. IINOs who say they lean toward the Republicans think and vote just like regular Republicans. IINOs who say they lean toward the Democrats think and vote just like regular Democrats.
Just how strong is this relationship? In 2008, according to the University of Michigan’s National Election Study (NES), 90 percent of independents who leaned Democratic voted for Obama, actually a higher level of support than among weak Democratic partisans (those who said they were “not very strong” Democrats), 84 percent of whom voted for Obama. Among Republican-leaning independents, a still-high 78 percent voted for McCain, compared to 88 percent support among weak Republican identifiers.
(More here.)
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