What Is Causing The Rise Of Those Registered As Independent

A voter marks a ballot for the New Hampshire principal February. 9 inside a voting booth at a polling identify in Manchester, N.H. David Goldman/AP hide caption

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David Goldman/AP

A voter marks a election for the New Hampshire primary Feb. 9 within a voting booth at a polling identify in Manchester, N.H.

David Goldman/AP

Independent Voters In Colorado, Florida And Arizona

The biggest grouping of voters politicians will have to woo this November are the ones who frequently don't get a say in which candidates get in to the general ballot ballot.

Turned off by the partisan wars in Washington, 39 percent of voters at present identify themselves as contained rather than affiliated with one of the two major political parties, according to a 2014 assay by the Pew Research Center. Self-identified Democrats deemed for 32 percent of the electorate, Republicans 23 percent.

That'south a big shift from as recently every bit 2004, when the electorate was nigh evenly divided into thirds past the three groups.

But many states require voters to affiliate with a party in order to take part in presidential primaries and caucuses.

NPR checked in with several member station reporters to see what the rise of independent voters means in unlike parts of the land.

Colorado: Young Voters Flex Political Muscles

Colorado'due south more than one 1000000 officially unaffiliated voters now outnumber Republicans and Democrats in the country. Both parties have about 900,000 registered voters.

Many are nether the age of 35, the millennial generation. Colorado has the second-fastest-growing millennial population in the land, and, by far, the near as a proportion of the population of any swing state.

To get a sense of their political ability, consider the fact that more than Republicans voted in the 2012 elections than Democrats. Republican Manus Romney should accept been the favorite, "but as information technology was, the unaffiliated probably washed out that difference and so created the winning margin for Obama," said Judd Choate, who runs the elections division for the Colorado secretary of land's function.

That winning margin was thank you in part to voters similar Sara Heisdorffer. The 24-year-old lives in the Denver suburb of Westminster. Similar many of her friends, neither the Democratic nor the Republican party interests her.

"People my age will hate me for proverb this," said Heisdorffer. "But it'southward kind of that special snowflake thing that millennials get crap for all the time I think."

Neither party aligns with Heisdorffer's views, which she describes equally socially liberal and fiscally moderate. Similar many unaffiliated voters, however, she's not necessarily independent and generally votes for Democrats.

It's a long-running blueprint to run into younger voters of any generation non place with political parties.

"Younger people tend to exist less likely to affiliate with parties than older people," said Jocelyn Kiley, a researcher with the Pew Research Center. Only "this is as pronounced as it'due south ever been."

Millennials are shunning political parties at an fifty-fifty greater rate than previous generations did, in function due to political dysfunction.

"People give some of the most negative ratings of either party that nosotros've seen in the last 20 years," said Kiley.

But these trends may be changing this election. Since September, 30,535 voters take registered with the Colorado Democratic party.

That includes voters such as Curtis Haverkamp, who attended a Bernie Sanders rally a few months dorsum. At the rally, he learned unaffiliated voters like him couldn't participate in the caucus.

"Upon hearing that, I registered Democrat," recalled the 30-year-quondam Haverkamp, who lives in Denver.

Both the Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns take been on voter registration drives hither, then it's not articulate even so who this fasten in Democratic registration volition favor. Simply Haverkamp says either style, the mean solar day after the caucus, he'll switch back to being unaffiliated.

- Ben Markus, Colorado Public Radio

Florida: Puerto Ricans Opt Out Of Party System

In the packed parking lot of a supermarket in the central Florida city of Kissimmee, Jeamy Ramirez and her staff stride toward customers with clipboards in hand, trying to register new voters. Half the population of this growing surface area are Latino and native Spanish speakers.

"We got a lot of people from Colombia, Venezuela — just most are Puerto Rican correct now," said Ramirez, a canvasser with Mi Familia Vota, a voting advocacy grouping.

In the past year, thousands of Puerto Ricans take left the struggling island for primal Florida, and they're the fastest-growing group of independent voters in this crucial swing country, according to an assay of voter registration data from the Florida secretarial assistant of state's office.

New Puerto Rican arrivals find that moving to Florida means being able to vote for president, something that'south not possible on the island, and adjusting to a completely unlike political system.

"They don't know a lot of the candidates. They starting time seeing the debates and all that stuff. That'due south why they put no party affiliation," said Ramirez.

Simply many newcomers keep their focus on politics in Puerto Rico.

"They pay attention to politics on the news. It is an ever-present topic of conversation. It is a cultural event of sorts," said Carlos Vargas Ramos, a researcher at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at the Urban center University of New York Hunter College.

Here in the U.South., Puerto Ricans detect there are more than frequent elections that are often less competitive. Ramos says other barriers to voting are language, voter registration requirements and a general feeling of distance from the political procedure.

Only even Puerto Ricans who have been here a long fourth dimension choose to stay out of the party system. Luz Maria Sanchez, who is 69, hasn't been registered with a political party for 25 years, even though the country'southward closed master keeps independents from deciding who'll get in on the Nov ballot. But Sanchez said she's not missing out.

"They say things only to win the candidate. Republicans, they say they're going to fix the country; and Democrats, they follow almost the same, but they go the other fashion around," said Sanchez.

Back in the parking lot, Jeamy Ramirez hopes that even if Puerto Ricans don't vote in side by side month's master, they'll plough out in November when Florida is likely to be a key swing state.

"We tin can determine right now the presidential election," said Ramirez.

- Renata Sago, WMFE, Orlando, Fla.

Arizona: Independent Voters Attempt To Organize

Information technology may sound similar an oxymoron, but Arizona's unaffiliated, independent voters are organizing themselves and banding together.

Independents are now the largest voting group in the state, and that trend is only growing. For the past 3 years, the number of voters registering or re-registering every bit independent has outpaced new Republican and Democratic registrations combined.

But the final voter registration catamenia that ended Feb. 22 was unlike. The number of independents in Arizona dropped slightly. That's probable because unaffiliated voters tin can't participate in Arizona's upcoming presidential primary, and some independents chose a political party for that reason.

The dominion that excludes independents from the presidential primary is just one example of what independents here detect to exist unfair about the state'due south voting system.

Now this growing group of voters wants more than rights at the polls, and they are trying to change that through grass-roots pressure.

Patrick McWhortor of the group Open Primaries organized a phone "town hall" last calendar month for contained voters that nearly 13,000 people called into to talk over these efforts.

"Contained voters, now 37 percent of all Arizona registered voters, are treated like 2nd-course citizens," said McWhortor at the start of the coming together.

He discussed his group's efforts to get ii ballot reform initiatives on the November ballot. One would make a single primary election with every candidate on the aforementioned ballot. The top 2 candidates would advance regardless of political party amalgamation. The initiative would also reduce current barriers for independents running for role.

Deb Gain-Braley, a 57-year-sometime retired accountant in Tempe, became interested in independent voting rights problems afterwards she realized that she would not be able to vote in Arizona's March 22 presidential master unless she re-registered again with a party. She had previously been registered equally a Republican.

"I remember that no i should have to choose a political party to vote in America," Gain-Braley said. "And then I went looking to see if there were any other organizations arguing against what's going on."

In addition to the Open up Primaries group, Proceeds-Braley also discovered Independent Voters for Arizona, a entrada focused on opening the presidential principal to independents that she now volunteers for. The group got more than 30,000 people to sign a letter of the alphabet to party leaders asking them to open the primary. So far those calls have not been heeded, and the primaries volition remain closed this year.

Timothy Castro, who runs Contained Voters for Arizona, argues information technology's not fair to exclude Arizona'due south 1.2 million voters from a presidential master paid for with taxpayer dollars.

"If nosotros are paying for something nosotros aren't allowed to vote in, then let us vote in information technology, or don't brand me pay for information technology," Castro said.

In fact, independents may accept more luck getting out of paying for the primary in future years rather than actually voting in it.

A bill making its mode through the Arizona Legislature would make political parties — not taxpayers — pick upwards the tab for presidential primaries starting in 2020. The bill is backed by the secretarial assistant of state's role.

If the bill succeeds, information technology will still leave independent voters to observe a way into future presidential primaries here.

- Jude Joffe-Block, KJZZ, Phoenix

What Is Causing The Rise Of Those Registered As Independent,

Source: https://www.npr.org/2016/02/28/467961962/sick-of-political-parties-unaffiliated-voters-are-changing-politics

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