One of my clients has been challenging me and the other members of our team to do a deep dive on Independent voters to see what they will tolerate with Donald Trump. He can’t understand how any of them can support Trump and the things he does. This has led me to look into how much Independents have turned against him and the problems Republicans face this year as a result.
Pollsters define Independents two ways:
People who answer “Independent” to this question: “Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent?” In most national polls, somewhere between 30% and 40% identify this way.
People who answer “Neither” to this follow-up question asked of those who choose “Independent” in the first question: “Do you consider yourself closer to: the Democrats, the Republicans, or neither one?” This group is usually 10 to 15% of a poll sample. These voters largely are negative towards both parties, are much less motivated to vote, and decide most contests. I refer to them as “Pure Independents.”
In talking about Independents, I default to the second definition as Independents who consider themselves Democrats or Republicans are basically pure partisans. The 2024 Cooperative Election Study, one of the most comprehensive post-election surveys, confirms this:
The 2024 party breakdown in this study was 35% Democrat - 34% Republican - 31% Independent initially. Allocating Independent leaners, it was 45% Democrat - 45% Republican - 10% Pure Independent. Trump won the Pure Independents 53% to 38%. This is why we are where we are now.
Trump’s win with these Independents was not pre-ordained. It was a result of his steady, and unchecked, improvement with them during the summer of 2024 after lagging through much of 2021-2023. The following chart is from the company I work for, Change Research.1
This chart sends me into a rage every time I see it, but I am working through that in therapy to get to a place of acceptance.2 Taking a “that was then, what about now?” approach, we can see that these Independents largely disapprove of Trump the President as opposed to Candidate Trump. The following is from the Change Research monthly Compass Poll that we run to assess public opinion on a wide range of topics.
Pure Independents have never rated the President positively in his second term. He collapsed to the low 20s in the fall of 2025 and has largely stayed there since. However, while the share of these Independents approving of the President mirrors the share of those supporting Republicans, the inverse is not true. Democrats are lagging well behind Trump’s disapproval with these Pure Independents.
National numbers are all well and good, but elections are fought between real people3 in states and districts across the country. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) does more than send out membership mailers to people like me who are WAY WAY too young to join. They also do polling in US Senate races with the pollsters for President Trump (Fabrizio-Ward) and for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (Impact Research). Self-described polling snobs4 look to these polls to make sweeping judgments about the political environment. In the six polls AARP has done so far this year, Trump’s disapproval is significantly higher with Independents5 than it is overall.
In 2024, voters overall, and Independents, were much more positive in assessing Trump’s first term.6
Looking at the individual races for Governor and US Senate, Democrats have a substantial advantage among Independents in every state surveyed so far.
Democrats did not have these types of leads in the AARP polling done in 2024. The candidates who won in 2024 did not lead among Independents like Democratic candidates are doing this year.
It is abundantly clear that the 2024 election was not a “realignment” or a “massive cultural win.” Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris, and he has squandered the advantage he had with Independent voters during his 20 months in office.7 They have largely soured on him and are supporting Democrats by wide margins in many of the most competitive races. We shall see if emptying the bank accounts of some of the richest men in the country will reverse the potential Republican defeats in six weeks. Even if they do, it’s far too late to rehabilitate the President with Independents.
Since the start of the company, we ask voters to rate Donald Trump on a 1 to 10 scale. We collected millions of responses to this question. This dataset is unwieldy given the different places we survey at different times, so I smoothed this out by creating an unweighted 45-day rolling average by party ID.
Jury is out on whether that it working or not.
For now. It’s going to be a few cycles before AI generated candidates replace humans and square off.
To be clear, I am not a polling snob, but I don’t share polling that other people paid for.
My assumption is that the “Independents” reported is the larger group with those who lean towards a party, but I can’t tell that from what they release.
Despite the pandemic that killed over a million Americans. Was Donald Trump the President in 2020? Who’s to say.
Feels like 200 months, but no. Just 20.
These so called independent voters are perplexing. It’s not clear what they value or why they support who they do. Perhaps contrarian would better describe them. No matter who is in office, eventually they prefer the other side. I’m pleased my side will benefit this cycle. How long will it last?