Still No Such Thing as Independent Voters

In 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency and Democrats won both houses of Congress because Democratic voters were inspired and enthused about voting for Democratic candidates.

In 2010, repugs took back the House and several Senate seats because Democratic voters were discouraged and sat home instead of voting.

Non-existent "independents" had nothing to do with either outcome. Any pundit, pollster, politician, consultant or idiot brother-in-law who tries to tell you otherwise is a liar and a moron.

David Atkins, thereisnospoon at Hullabaloo:

Pollsters looking to see how to "win back" so-called "independent" voters will often do focus groups with people who crossed party lines from one election to another--say, those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but then voted for Republicans in 2010. They then analyze the data they get from those people to tell Dem politicians like President Obama what they must do to "win back" those independents.

But this is the wrong way of going about it. Sure, those "switcher" voters are out there. But they're dwarfed in number by the people who hold an allegiance to the Democratic Party and progressive principles in general, and may have voted in the big presidential election of 2008, but failed to turn out to vote in 2010. That's a much bigger cohort--and not only is it bigger in size, it's more winnable and courting it doesn't create resentment and anger within the Party base.

Sure, pollsters want to go after the switchers, because winning a switcher is like winning two votes as opposed to the one apathetic vote. A switcher who votes consistently is also easier to get, theoretically, than the inconsistent voter who has to be brought to the polls through labor-intensive field operations.

But the "switcher" is likely to be a Fox News "Democrat," or simply a dramatically underinformed voter who may have had a good connection to Obama the candidate in 2008, but gets much their information from right-wing radio, from their pastor, or from Aunt Martha's crazy email blasts--or worse, a natural conservative Republican who had only "switched" to Obama out of distaste for Bush in the first place. A bias toward pleasing these "switchers" thereby leads to unnecessarily conservative policies that increase the likelihood of the truly tethered independents to stay home, as well as increase the likelihood of anger from the Party base.

Smart Democratic consultants would do well to do focus groups with Dem voters from 2008 who stayed home in the midterms, and aren't sure whether they're likely to come out in 2012. See what is driving their anger and apathy, and what they want in terms of policy and message. And then insofar as decisions are made based on focus groups and polls, tailor the message to those people. My suspicion? You'll find a lot of those very sorts of people at Occupy protests around the country.

Turnout matters. It's the only thing that matters.