Re: Invective

[Michael Hoover <hooverm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx 06/10/05 4:21 PM >>>
IAren't the independents the biggest
party nowadays, especially if you count those who don't vote?
Jim Devine
<<<<<>>>>>

pulp musing re. above question...

about 200 million citizens in u.s. of voting age (another 15 million immigrants ineligible to vote, immigrants voted in u.s. prior to registration laws during not-so-progressive era, two-thirds of country's factory workers in early 20th were first-generation, mostly european immigrants, effective disenfranchisement of significant portion of working class)... 

about 140 million who are eligible are registered (about 70%, which is up from about 60% prior to so-called 'motor voter' registration, which now includes mail-in, telephone, on-line, cell phone registration, all brought to you by those wonderful folks at rock the vote, lesson of national voter registration act is that people need motivation to actually vote beyond that of being registered, 'motor voter' addresses registration, not voting)...

nationally, about 40% are registered dem, about 35% rep, about 25% ind, rep percentage has been constant for decades, positive correlation exists between declining dem percentage and increasing ind percentage, first-time and young folks most likely to 
register ind...

more registered reps actually vote than do registered dems, rep voters also more likely to vote rep than are dem voters to vote dem, registered ind least likely to vote among those registered, about 40% of non-voters consider themselves independent...

re. partisan identification based on survey research, which obviously differs from voter registration, about 40% are 'strong' or 'weak' dem (gotta love semantic differentials, no matter that aristotle said more than fifteen years ago that one can't quantify qualities), about 25% are 'strong' or 'weak' rep, leaves about 35% as ind, of which only about 1/3rd are 'pure' ind, 1/3rd are ind 'leaning' dem, 1/3rd are ind 'leaning' rep...

of course, 'party' of independents is amorphous, don warren called what he considered most potentially significant bloc of independents a 'radical middle' (which some identified as core of ross perot voters)... 

couple of my ex-teachers, stuart lilie and late bill maddox, concluded that about 25% in u.s. is 'populist' (which they define as liberal on economic issues and conservative on social issues), about 25% is liberal (defined as liberal on both economic and social issues), almost 20% is libertarian (defined as conservative on economic and liberal on social issues), about 20% is conservative (defined as conservative on both economic and social issues), about 10% was what they called 'unclassifiable'...

according to lilie and maddox, populists and liberals are less likely to vote than conservatives and libertarians, moreover, they found considerable turnover from one election to next among voting populists, so-called unclassifiables are both least likely to vote among all groups and to have least patterned vote choice...     
michael hoover

  
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