Voters Push for Independence

For more than 20 years, the number of California’s independent voters has grown slowly but inexorably.

In Los Angeles County, for instance, 1 in 7 registered voters is an independent, a dramatic increase from 1 in 50 in 1966.

That growth is reflected across the state. Independents now total nearly 2 million voters, or 14% of California’s nearly 14 million voters.

“What is surprising is that there has not been an even more dramatic increase,” said Claremont Graduate School political scientist Sherry Bebitch Jeffe. “Everything our polling indicates is that there is less and less loyalty to major parties.”

Independents, who “decline to state” a party as they register, make up 22% of the electorate in San Francisco, California’s most liberal county--the highest percentage in the state.

Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties have about 14% each.

They are the fastest growing group of voters in the state.

“The fascinating thing is that no one is out there” trying to sign up “decline to state” voters, said Mark Baldassare, of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. “The most successful voter registration effort in California today is one that doesn’t exist.”

These voters are saying they don’t want to be Democrats or Republicans, “but I want to register,” he said. “That says those voters who are most likely to register are saying, ‘I want to choose who I want to vote for.’ ”

Independents have become a critical wild card in statewide elections, and political experts are scrutinizing them ever more closely to determine the implications of their growing presence.

“We need to know more specifics,” Jeffe said. “Where are they? In cities? Suburbs? The research says independents tend to be outward, away from the cities.”

They also tend to be younger, better educated and a bit more affluent than voters as a whole, political observers say.

And a clearer picture of their impact on elections may also be emerging.

One theory holds that independents are really disguised Republicans or Democrats who simply choose not to register as such. But Baldassare said no such disguise is evident in California, where independents appear to be “truly independent.”

“The majority of independent voters went for Republican Pete Wilson in the 1994 California gubernatorial race,” he said. “In 1998, the majority went for Democrat Gray Davis.”

Shifting From Party to Party

In California in 1992, he said, independents were almost evenly divided between Democrat Bill Clinton and Reform candidate Ross Perot, 41% to 39%. Republican George Bush captured only 19% of that vote.

“Two years later, independents strongly favored Republican Pete Wilson over Democrat Kathleen Brown, 56% to 35%,” he said.

They may shift from one party to another between elections, and sometimes in the same election, he said.

“In 1998, Democrat Gray Davis beat Republican Dan Lungren 60% to 28% among independents,” Baldassare said. “In the U.S. Senate race that same year, Democrat Barbara Boxer won [the independent vote] by only 5 points over Republican Matt Fong, 48% to 43%.

“How dow you explain that in the same race?”

California independents tend to support candidates who reflect their own political views, regardless of party, political experts say.

Much like Las Vegas crapshooters who shy away from quiet tables, they prefer to go where the action is. And California’s open primary, adopted in 1996, lets them into the game.

“Through the years, new voters would want to register as [belonging to] no party,” said Republican campaign strategist Allan Hoffenblum. “Then they saw they couldn’t vote [in primary elections]. The open primary changed that.”

The 1996 law wound up “enfranchising 14% of voters in California who were never able to vote in primaries before,” said Beth Miller, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office.

Tuesday’s election will be California’s first open primary in a presidential election year. All voters, regardless of their political persuasions, will be able to vote for any candidates they choose.

Independent votes will be tallied in statewide totals, but they will not count toward allocating delegates to either the Democratic or Republican nominating conventions.

Republicans will count only Republican votes in the party’s winner-take-all primary. Democrats also will count only Democratic votes, but their delegates will be allocated by congressional district, based on a candidate’s proportion of votes in each district.

By counting only the votes of their own members, the parties hope to prevent what many suspect was mischief-making in Michigan by Democrats and independents who provided the margin of victory for Sen. John McCain in that state’s Republican presidential primary.

Distrust of Politicians

In exit polling, however, the Detroit Free Press found that many of the independents who had supported McCain said they would also support him in the general election if he were the nominee.

Such voters are just as independent in California, Baldassare said.

“California independents are more distrustful of government and politicians,” he said. “They are the kind of people who will get behind a populist initiative on the ballot. They may turn out as much to vote for an initiative as they will to go for one candidate or another.”

Independents do “an awful lot of ticket splitting,” he said, “and they tend to be less interested in politics than Democrats or Republicans. They are more tuned in to television as the primary source for their political news.”

The open primary expanded the pool of voters, but the increase in independent voters had begun long before the 1996 law was adopted.

Independents in Los Angeles County were just over 2% of the county’s voters in 1966. Over the next eight years, their numbers rose to about 5.8%. That pattern continued with each succeeding gubernatorial election, with few exceptions.

Every indication is that independents will continue to grow beyond their 14% of California’s electorate.

“Independents are a very important phenomenon in California,” Baldassare said. “Their growth probably reflects what our electorate will look like in the future.”

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Percentage of Independents Growing

The proportion of voters who register as “decline to state” in Los Angeles County has increased from 1 in 50 in 1966 to 1 in 7 today.

PARTY REGISTRATION: THEN AND NOW

In the 1966 California gubernatorial primary, Gov. Pat Brown defeated Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the Democratic race, and Ronald Reagan--on his way to the governorship--won the Republican primary over former San Francisco Mayor George Christopher. At that time, nearly all registered voters in the state listed themselves as Democrats or Republicans. In Los Angeles County, the two major parties accounted for 96% of all registered voters in 1966, according to statistics made available by the registrar’s office. Today, with the proliferation of minor parties and unaffiliated voters, those registered as Democrats or Republicans account for 81% of the total.

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Party 1966 Primary 2000 Primary Democratic 1,722,827 2,022,316 Republican 1,150,728 1,070,759 Amer. Independent -- 66,924 Green -- 20,767 Libertarian -- 19,038 Natural Law -- 25,775 Reform -- 18,871 Misc. 33,324 38,651 Decline to State 62,276 525,389 Total 2,969,155 3,808,488

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Registration by City

Registered Democratic voters outnumber registered Republicans in 64 of Los Angeles County’s 88 cities, and Republicans outnumber Democrats in the other 24. The figures below do not include voters registered with minor parties. Numbers in boldface indicate which party holds the voter registration edge in a city.

Source: Los Angeles County registrar/recorder