- More Americans identify as independents, with Gallup reporting a record 45% last year.
- Young Utah voters trend independent; both parties face unfavorable views nationally.
SALT LAKE CITY — More Americans are identifying themselves as political independents than at any point in the last four decades, according to a recent Gallup poll.
That poll, released in January, shows a steep increase in the number of political independents in the past 15 years, which reached a record of 45% in the most recent data. That's higher than the number of Americans who identify with either of the major political parties — both of which sit around 27%.
Even as the number of Americans who identify as independents has risen, Utah voters have increasingly moved to one of the two major parties over the past 12 years — although comparing voter registration data to the Gallup data on how Americans identify is imperfect because voters may identify as independent and still register with one party.
The share of unaffiliated active voters has fallen from 42% in the first week of 2014 to less than 28% in early January of this year, while the number of Republicans and Democrats has ticked up.
But those increases are likely based on changes to the primary election landscape in Utah, according to Leah Murray, the director of Weber State University's Olene S. Walker Institute of Politics and Public Service.
Republicans and Democrats used to hold open party primaries in Utah, but the GOP closed its primaries to non-Republicans in 2002. Prior to that, Murray said many voters — even those who consistently voted for Republican candidates — maintained their status as unaffiliated voters.
"People in Utah didn't want to join a party," she told KSL. "They would be like, I'm unaffiliated, but then I would vote Republican 100% of the time."
Gallup's poll has found that young voters are more likely to identify as independents than older voters, and that's the case in at least Utah County, according to voter registration data compiled by Brigham Young University sociologist Jacob Rugh.
More than 70% of Utah County voters over the age of 65 are registered as Republicans, compared to just 48% of those between the ages of 18 and 25, according to his data. Unaffiliated voters make up less than 20% of older voters, but just over a third of the youngest voters.
It's long been a trend for younger voters to skew more independent, according to University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank.
"When you're 18 years old and you go off to register and they ask did you want to register for a party ... you pick unaffiliated, because that's the easiest thing to do, right?" he said. "If you vote the next couple of elections and find yourself voting for Republicans, then at some point you may say, 'I really want to vote in the Republican primary, so I'm going to change my affiliation.'"
Young voters can trend more in one direction during certain moments in political history — like during the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan drew more young voters to Republicans, or when President Barack Obama did the same for Democrats — but they have typically been less aligned with either party.
What makes the current moment distinct is that both parties are not viewed favorably by most Americans. Just 28% of Americans view Democrats favorable, and Republicans are only slightly better at 32%, according to a recent CNN poll.
"Both political parties have a bit of a branding problem," Burbank said. "This is particularly true in Utah. The Trump Republican Party just is not necessarily the preferred version of the Republican Party for many Utah Republicans. ... I think some of what you may be seeing is exactly that, because I think among newly registered voters there may be an inclination of, 'OK, I don't want to register as Republican because I don't really want to be kind of supporting Donald Trump.'"
Democrats' poor favorability is driven in large part by traditional Democratic voters who aren't satisfied with the party, he added.
"That gets magnified when you're in Utah and particularly when you're in a place like Utah County, because it just doesn't give a huge number of reasons to say I'm not happy with the Republicans, so I'm going to go to the Democrats," Burbank said.
Murray argued that Democrats in the state are "not capitalizing" on general dislike of both political parties, but suggested national politics could be ripe for a major realignment if either side could come up with a winning message.
"Both of them have to look at what they are selling, what their brand is, what candidates they're running, what issues they're talking about," she said. "I think it's a signal to both parties that they're failing."
