Independents of America Unite!

Forty-five percent of American adults identify as a political independent. I am among them. There are now more of us independents than there are adults who identify as Republican or Democrat: Just 27 percent each choose one of those affiliations. The share of independents has grown steadily for the past three decades, and is now larger than at any time in the years that Gallup polls have tracked the political group. Yet despite our swelling numbers, independent candidates have zero chance of winning big in the 2026 midterms and no expectation of a viable independent bid for the presidency.

To me, being an independent means that I want the best versions of both the Republican and Democratic Parties, and I am open to a candidate from either in a given election, but neither coalition, even at its best, is a good-enough fit to satisfy me on all of the issues that I care about. Other self-proclaimed independents vary in what they mean by the term, though in certain elections, such as the 2008 general election and the 2010 midterms, many coalesce around punishing the party in power.

The cohort does not agree on any champion, or even a short list of potential champions, for 2028, and even if it did, third-party bids are fraught (they risk throwing the election to a worse major-party candidate) and hard to organize. The combination of closed primaries in many jurisdictions and the “pox on both your houses” comportment of many independents also means that we sit out primary elections at higher rates than Republicans and Democrats do; this yields general-election candidates from those parties who are less acceptable to us than would be the case if we had participated.

These circumstances seem to demand a change in strategy—except that independents have never had a unified strategy. To be a Republican or a Democrat is to opt into a structure with mechanisms for making collective decisions. To be an independent is to survey the results, feel revulsion, and prefer “none of the above,” even if some of us later hold our nose and vote for the least bad option in general elections.

Obviously, coordinating a group of people distinguished by their aversion to affiliation is hard. But independents’ passive, uncoordinated approach is self-defeating. And with younger cohorts identifying as independent at much higher rates than older cohorts do—more than half of Gen Z identify as independent—the problem is going to only get worse with time. Indeed, a CNN poll from September suggests that the variability in views among people who self-describe as independent is increasing rather than decreasing.

So what is it that this group has in common, whether we lean liberal, conservative, progressive, or libertarian? We share a desire for a politics less dominated by a binary choice between Republicans and Democrats. Independents can adopt several strategies to try to alter that system.

First, independents are most structurally disadvantaged when Republicans and Democrats each carve up congressional districts for their own benefit. Independents can mitigate this by pushing for nonpartisan redistricting commissions that aim to encourage competitive general elections.

Second, independents should push for open primaries. Starting this year, New Mexico will allow voters with no party affiliation to vote in primary elections. But in 2024, voters rejected ballot measures in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and South Dakota (a combination of red, blue, and purple states) that would have enabled ranked-choice voting, open primaries, or a combination of both.

Still, the push for such reforms at least indicates growing scrutiny of closed primaries. Independents should educate themselves about the issue and keep pushing for open primaries in all states. (Meanwhile, given the reality of closed primaries, we should hold our nose, register as Republican or Democrat, and vote for whomever we think is the least bad option.)

[Read: The Republican Party continues eating its own]

Third, independents should champion a Congress where all members are empowered to represent their constituents. When voting for elected leaders, we should recall the critique of former Representative Justin Amash, who has pointed out that the speaker of the House was not meant to function like the leader of only the majority party, manipulating House rules to advantage the partisan agenda of leadership. Speakers as conservative as the Republican Paul Ryan and as progressive as the Democrat Nancy Pelosi have done the job that way, but the role should be that of an official working on behalf of the entire House to ensure smooth, equitable procedures. One measure of whether Congress is functioning as it should––and one matter that independents as a group should track––is whether all House members, regardless of seniority or party affiliation, are empowered to bring bills or amendments to the House floor for an up or down vote.

Of course, most independents have frustrations about the status quo that aren’t addressed by the three-prong agenda that I just proposed. Those frustrations can curdle into a self-defeating withdrawal from politics. And no agenda for independents is likely to gain wide purchase until many are aired and debated. The trick is to understand that more strategic political engagement can yield less frustrating results.

In the meantime, independents would do well to avoid the temptation to isolate themselves based on polarizing issues such as inflation, health care, and immigration and to instead focus on what unites most independents: frustration with the two-party system’s long-standing failure to deliver results that are good for the country, and a desire to end the duopoly on power that persists because Republicans and Democrats have skewed the rules of the game.