Party ties mean less as voters shift their allegiance

The middle is back.

Political independents are the hot commodity in the 2008 presidential campaign after all but disappearing into the void left when the nation cleaved into a 50/50, red/blue, Bush/Gore, Us/Them, pick-your-side battleground.

Around the country more people are identifying themselves as independents than they have since 1999.

Pollsters nationally and in Washington state say that as voters have become disenchanted with the Republican Party, many stopped short of calling themselves Democrats and have ended up in the amorphous middle.

Independents helped push Democrat Barack Obama to victory in the Iowa caucuses. And they rescued Republican John McCain's struggling campaign in the New Hampshire primary last week.

With so many independents in play in the Granite State, there was a palpable unease at McCain's primary-morning campaign meeting in Manchester. McCain was worried about competition from a Democrat rather than any of his fellow Republicans on the ballot.

"We were very nervous that those independents would go over to Obama and lower our numbers," said former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro, who was in New Hampshire campaigning for McCain. "We were really worried."

In the end, exit polls showed those voters broke McCain's way.

The crossover factor

"It's like the revenge of the independents," UW communications professor David Domke said. "People are tired of the appeal to the base of the party that ignores moderates. And Obama and McCain recognize that."

Those candidates have the most appeal for independents. Obama has based his campaign on the claim that he's best equipped to bring partisan factions together, and McCain has a reputation of being a maverick who doesn't always toe his party's line.

Even more powerfully, they can attract voters from the other party.

"I was always a good old Southern Republican," said Verna Trivett, 63, a medical clerk. She moved from South Carolina a few years ago and now lives in Auburn.

She left behind her Republican leanings. Trivett is now an Obama supporter and is an active volunteer in the Illinois senator's campaign in South King and Pierce counties.

"That's my man," she said this week. "I just think he can do more for this country and pulling it together than anyone else."

But she's an independent now, not a Democrat, and no candidate can count on her vote if Obama isn't on the ballot come November.

"If it came down to a race between Hillary and a Republican, I'd stay home," she said.

But Clinton, not often thought of as attracting independent voters, has her fans among those newly liberated from the 50-50 nation.

Cheryl Studebaker, 56, of Issaquah, thought President Clinton's personal scandals were an embarrassment and voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. But since then she went from supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq to opposing the continuing U.S. presence there. She thinks she was naive to twice support Bush.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is her choice for president.

"She's just smart," Studebaker said, "and we need someone in there who will be smart for a change. Between her and her husband, they will know what they're doing."

It remains to be seen whether independents will influence today's Republican primary in South Carolina or both parties' caucuses in Nevada. Independents weren't much of a factor in Michigan's primary on Tuesday.

There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg question about whether independent voters emerge in response to a candidate or the other way around.

"It's a symbiotic sort of relationship," Seattle pollster Stuart Elway said. "There has been a latent hunger, if that's not too strong a word, for that kind of leader, and then along comes a candidate who catalyzes that desire. So they feed on each other and it can grow."

For example, the number of independents spiked in 1992 when Texas billionaire Ross Perot ran for president.

If more traditional candidates are nominated by their parties — for example, Clinton and Republican Mitt Romney, who won the Michigan primary — the fall campaign could be a replay of the red/blue years. Independents could be overshadowed again by the base.

Response to Bush years

Elway says the growth of independents is a response to the Bush years. His statewide polls have shown a dramatic drop in the number of voters who call themselves Republicans with a steady gain for those in the Democratic column. But his most recent poll shows the number of independents has been growing again just in the past couple of years.

A report this week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press says the number of people who identify themselves as independents is higher than it has been since 1999.

Soon after 1999, Democrats and Republicans began growing further apart "and the red/blue language became part of lexicon," said Michael Dimock, associate director of research at the Pew center.

"That didn't mean that the middle was disappearing," he said. "That was a part of the story that really got lost in our focus, and a lot of people's focus, on the growing partisan divide."

He said there has a been a "real crushing shift" in partisan identification from Republican to Democratic, and that has meant increased support for government social programs and a decrease in religious intensity in politics.

The nation's new independent streak has shaken loose some religious conservatives' allegiance to the Republican Party. That's a trend that has been growing in recent years, said Domke, the UW professor and co-author of "The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America."

A recent Harvard poll showed that college students are fairly religious, but, Domke said, "They really reject a partisan model." Some religious voters are conservative when it comes to abortion, but not the environment or poverty programs — positions shared by Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, a former pastor.

"They reject lining up party ideology with religious faith. ... Young people aren't saying religion doesn't matter, but, 'I'm not going to let that define my voting preferences,' " Domke said.

Religion has defined Kim Geiger's voting preference since the time of Ronald Regan. "I've embraced the Republican Party in general because of the pro-life stand, because of the family values," she said. "It's the Reagan thing."

That made it easy to pick candidates, said Geiger, 49. For her it was as simple as figuring being Christian equaled being Republican.

Now she says that her ideal candidate would be a conservative Christian, either Republican or Democrat. But over the course of a conversation, Geiger changed her mind a bit more, saying that a candidate's religious beliefs may not be the determining factor for her this year:

"What makes a person be able to live a godly life in their personal life is not necessarily the skill set they need to be the president of the country, you know?"

The University of Washington political reporting class provided reporting assistance for this story. David Postman: 360-236-8267

or dpostman@seattletimes.com