Independent voters have a bigger profile in U.S. midterms as trust in parties fades

In Texas, Alaska, Iowa and Ohio, they lean Democratic. In Maine, they’re up for grabs.

They’re America’s independent voters, the people who can’t decide between the two parties − but who could decide who wins the Senate contests in these states and perhaps others.

They’re the vital elements in elections that could reshape the remainder of the Trump years. In the last weeks of the campaign, they’re emerging as the critical battleground in the most-watched battleground states.

“A lot always depends on the parties getting their people to the polls, but how independents swing could make the difference in the most important races and in the composition of Congress,” said Melissa Kary Miller, a Bowling Green University political scientist. “This has always been true, but it’s more important now that people have less regard for the parties.”

Overall, the Democrats have a decided advantage. Nationwide, independent voters favour the Democratic campaign in congressional races by a 25-point margin, according to a YouGov poll. Only a quarter of independents indicate they’ll side with the Republican candidate this fall.

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The Democratic advantage is amplified by two other factors: Ninety per cent of Democratic voters intend to vote for the party’s candidate, while only 84 per cent of Republicans say they’ll do so. At the same time, voter approval of U.S. President Donald Trump (33 per cent) has reached a new low, according to the Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released this week.

The rise of Independent candidates is one of the signature elements of modern American politics − so much so that, in South Dakota, Idaho and Nebraska, the Republican is running against an Independent, not a Democrat. In Montana, where more than two-fifths of voters are independents, the Independent candidate, former University of Montana president Seth Bodnar, is running ahead of the Democratic candidate, Air Force officer Alani Bankhead, though he still trails U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme, the Republican.

Already a larger group of Americans than either Republicans or Democrats, independent voters now account for 45 per cent of American adults, according to the Gallup poll. They first reached the 40-percentage-point threshold 15 years ago. And their power in previous midterm elections was especially evident in 2010, when they voted for the Republican by a 15-point margin while Democrat Barack Obama was president (the GOP gained 63 seats in the House of Representatives), and in 2018, when they sided with the Democrats by a 12-point margin during Mr. Trump’s first term (the Democrats gained 41 House seats).

This characteristic of U.S. politics isn’t confined to midterms, where the party holding the White House is generally punished by the voters.

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Independent voters in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had an important effect in the 2020 election, boosting Joe Biden, and in 2024, boosting Mr. Trump, according to an analysis by David Brady, a Stanford University political scientist. He and political scientist Brett Parker argue in their book From Dominance to Parity: America’s Political Parties and the New Era of Electoral Instability, published last week, that independents have voted for the winning side in virtually all of the last 17 presidential elections.

A third of all voters in Maine, which since 1974 has elected two Independent governors and an Independent senator, are independents, which almost certainly is why GOP Senator Susan Collins, locked in a tight race with Democrat Troy Jackson, invited former senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to campaign with her this week. A one-time Democrat, he became an Independent in 2024 and this year founded the Independent Leadership Council.

This period may also be remembered for the emergence of “double-hater” voters, who dislike both parties.

Today 27 per cent of Americans say they dislike both parties, according to a Marquette Law School poll published earlier this month. Among them, the group most likely to say they dislike both parties is independent voters, 55 per cent of whom hold that view.

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The convergence of double-haters and independents as critical voting groups raises questions about the spike in 2026 negative campaigning. That’s because the strategies the parties are using to mobilize their adherents may be off-putting to independent voters, who are resistant to strong partisan attacks.

“Independents are more responsive to policy-based appeals and less responsive to overheated rhetoric,” said Julio Borquez, a political scientist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. “They are not moved by emotional claims that the Republicans are fascists or that Democrats are radical socialists. The whole idea of partisanship is alienating to them.”

Two examples: Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, running as a Republican in an open House seat in a district north of Detroit, is pledging to combat “radical socialism” − a line of argument that, Prof. Borquez argues, independent voters may find “a bit overdone.” In Ohio, supporters of GOP Senator Jon Husted have distributed handbills with a picture of his opponent, former senator Sherrod Brown, warning, “SOCIALISM THREATENS YOUR FREEDOM.”

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Mr. Trump’s campaign appearances also risk alienating independents. On Monday, he called Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor running a competitive Senate race in Kansas, “a pervert.”

Speaking in Nebraska earlier this month, where Independent Dan Osborn is challenging Republican Senator Pete Ricketts, Mr. Trump spoke of “communist, socialist, radicalized lunatics and villains.” At a Trump rally in San Antonio, Tex., Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton said his campaign was battling “communism, socialism, [and] the government controlling” American life.

There is no party registration in Texas, but a CBS News poll showed state Representative James Talarico with a 30-point advantage over Mr. Paxton among those who considered themselves independent voters.

Many experts believe a quarter of Texans have weak partisan attachment, and that among them, Latinos − many with little lengthy traditional family adherence to either party − are the most significant moving parts in the high-visibility Senate contest. Latinos sided with Mr. Trump at a 55-per-cent rate in 2024, but a poll by Equis Research, which focuses on Latino sentiment, gave Mr. Talarico a 25-point advantage among those voters. Texans began voting this week.