Is Everything We're Told About Independent Voters Wrong? Jackie Salit and John Opdycke

Let's Find Common Ground

USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

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5 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Independent voters make up well over 40 percent of the voting public. But you wouldn’t know that from media coverage, which focuses almost exclusively on red versus blue. Independents are often overlooked or seen as wishy-washy, bending in the wind. Our guests on this episode say that’s a big misconception. In this show, we look at a huge group of voters, including many young people, who make up a growing slice of the US population. Significantly, the number of American voters identifying as independent is at a record high. Our guests are both political experts. Jackie Salit is the author of Independents Rising and president of Independent Voting, an organization dedicated to bringing respect, recognition, and reform to independent voters. John Opdycke is president of Open Primaries, which campaigns for primary elections in which every American can participate, not just registered Republicans or Democrats.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Record numbers of Americans say they're politically independent.
0:04.0	Independence are the largest voting group in the country, 43%,
0:10.0	according to a Gallup poll released last month.
0:13.0	Independence outnumber those who identify as Republican or Democrat.
0:19.0	But you wouldn't know it from the media coverage.
0:21.0	No, you wouldn't. Political reporting is all about
0:25.9	Red versus Blue. Independence tend to get overlooked and mischaracterized. We're going to
0:31.8	find out why the assumptions about them are often wrong.
0:35.8	The parties are vehicles of division right now.
0:39.7	That's just how they operate.
0:42.0	It's not a mystery. That's what they do. They don't want to
0:46.1	come to a deal. They want to keep this thing a mess because it allows them to raise
0:50.1	money and demonize the other side as the bad guys. This is let's find common ground. I'm Richard Davies and I'm Ashley Miltite. In this show we find out why so many people
1:16.9	especially young Americans are disillusioned with the two main parties. Our guests
1:22.0	are Jackie Salit and John Updyke.
1:25.0	Jackie is the author of Independence Rising and President of Independent Voting,
1:31.0	an organization dedicated to bringing respect, recognition, and reform to independent
1:36.2	voters.
1:37.2	John Op-Dike is president of the group Open Primaries, which campaigns for primary elections that every American can vote in, not just
1:47.0	registered Republicans or Democrats.
1:50.1	We spoke with both of them early last year.
1:53.0	Jackie, if there's one thing that a lot of people misunderstand about independent voters,
	...

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