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Caltech

Ulric B. and Evelyn L. Bray Social Sciences Seminar

Tuesday, April 22, 2025
4:00pm to 5:00pm
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Baxter B125
The Declarations of Independents: Open-Ended Survey Responses and the Nature of Non-Identification
Paul Kellstedt, Professor, Department of Political Science, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University,

Abstract: While many Americans identify as politically "independent," conventional wisdom suggests most are covert partisans, especially so-called "leaners." However, we argue that independents exhibit distinct attitudes toward political parties. Analyzing ANES open-ended responses from 1984-2020, we employ Structural Topic Models and Support Vector Machines to explore differences in how independents and partisans express "dislikes" about the major parties. Our results show that leaning independents differ significantly from self-identified partisans in their language and align more closely with pure independents. Furthermore, we find that independents are more likely than partisans to mention issues related to "politics"--such as political cynicism, concern about special interests, or distaste for partisan conflict--when discussing their "dislikes." These findings suggest that independents have meaningful distinctions from partisans beyond voting behavior, cautioning against overlooking the nuances between these groups.

Coauthored with Maxwell B. Allamong, Benjamin Beutel, and Jongwoo Jeong

For more information, please contact Sabrina Hameister by phone at 626-395-4228 or by email at [email protected].