The number of people that define themselves as unaffiliated to a party or as “politically independent” is growing in the United States, raising the question of whether the highly polarizing two-party system is still working.
According to a series of Gallup surveys taken throughout 2022, on average, 42 percent of respondents said they would define themselves as politically independent this year, versus 27 percent as Republicans and 28 percent as Democrats.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, partisanship often peaks in the year of an election, as shown in both 2016 and 2020.
The year following an election characteristically sees a slight shift back towards more people defining themselves as independent.
<img alt=”Infographic: Are Polarized Politics Pushing More People Independent?