I’ve seen a significant number of postmortems of the 2022 midterm elections, all very premature to my eye since the counting continues and we won’t know definitively what happened for a month.
One thing all of these analyses miss is that both of our political parties continue their transition to ideological uniformity. What used to be “catch-all†parties are now programmatic parties.
It’s not surprising that there are more independents than either Republicans or Democrats. If the trend continues, there may be more independents that Republicans and Democrats combined. When you consider that progressives in the Democratic Party and conservatives in the Republican Party make up about 20% of the electorate it’s a bit hard to stomach talks of how democratic either of them are.
As long as there are only two parties, “independents” will have to choose between the two. As the parties get less and less overlap, the ability to straddle them as an independent becomes more difficult.
And that’s what the ideological vanguard of both parties want – to force as many people into their camp with a stark choice – vote for the party you agree with 50% of the time or the party you agree with 30% of the time. Just note the derision most partisans have for ticket splitters or self-described independents. It’s not a good trend.
A large minority of people (45% ?) eligible to vote never do. Why? I don’t have a clue, so I won’t speculate. But that pool of nonvoters is larger than the independents.
The shenanigans of the last two elections were a bit too obvious, and unless they can be stopped, I expect many more Americans will stop voting.
Of course, legend has it that Mayor Daley withheld the Chicago vote until he knew how many he needed to give Illinois and the Presidency to JFK. Evidently, the Ruling Caste changed its mind when JFK proved disobedient.
Looks like Fem candidate won in Nevada so my prediction was wrong.
Steve