I’ve heard and seen one too many false references to how this country is not really as progressive as so many issue-based polls consistently show. I’ve heard one too many lazy inferences that Democrats have to be careful of the "independent voter that is becoming more and more conservative" – as if this is some indicator of where the electorate is moving or thinking.
In fact, this is something that the smallest bit of analysis smashes to bits in terms of being full of false assumptions and arguments that fall away as each layer is peeled back.
The simple reality is that more former republican Party voters have been shifting their party allegiance to "independent" or something else that isn’t affiliated with the republican Party – but they haven’t changed their ideology and still aren’t going to be voting for Democrats. There isn’t really a shifting of the independent voter to the right – there are just more of them who are too embarrassed to be affiliated with the losers who ruined this country.
A Gallup Poll from May, 2009 highlighted the shrinking number of people who self-identify with the republican Party from 2001 – 2009, and in nearly every single breakdown, the affiliation is down across the board. And even more interestingly, a more recent Gallup Poll which has a misleading slant about how there is such a close gap between Democratic and republican Party voters misses the obvious. From 2005 – 2009, the number of "self indentified Democratic voters" has been consistently between 31% and 36% (and has been consistently between 35% - 36% since the beginning of 2008), while "Democratic leaning independents" is the same 13% now as it was in the beginning of 2005 (it did reach 20% when Democratic Party identification hit the low of 31% though).
On the flip side, the obvious fleeing of republican Party voters as "independents" has risen from 11% to 15% (in fact, the most recent number of 15% is the only period that it exceeds 13% since 2005), while self-identified republican Party voters declined from 35% in 2005 to the current 27%, which matches a five year low.
Looking at it another way, an August Gallup Poll showed that only six states had a republican Party edge in party identification (one being by a single point), while two were even and all of the rest had a Democratic Party identification advantage. But this doesn’t make for good gossip or narrative for the talking meatsticks. There is one article that has some good information on this non-phenomenon, and puts it bluntly:
"More often than not, we (include leaners in the independent category), although we know many of them are likely to consistently vote for one party or the other," said Keeter. "The fact they're unwilling to affiliate with a party is of some value, at least in telling you how popular the party's brand is.
"The declining number of Republicans, at the same time we don't see a rising number of Democrats, is valuable information. It tells us there is a departure from the Republican Party, or at least the willingness to publicly affiliate with it. But there is no comparable movement over to the Democratic side, which suggests the pull of their brand is not all that great."
[...snip...]
So to sum up: Most "independents," as pollsters and pundits commonly define the term, are in fact committed to one party or the other. Those that are truly unaffiliated tend to be less politically engaged, and are thus less likely to vote.
Sounds like nothing that wasn’t already obvious. Many unaffiliated voters already are partisan – they just aren’t really thrilled with being affiliated with one party or the other. Some unaffiliated voters just don’t care all that much anyway. And simple math shows that as the number of republican Party affiliated voters decreases and "republican Party leaning voters" who are now "independent" won’t likely make them any less partisan.
The most basic fact that this doesn’t make "independent voters more conservative" is one that is lost on those who certainly should know better – and likely because it doesn’t fit into a prepackaged agenda. But that doesn’t mean it should be overlooked.