Independents’ political views and policy preferences reflect the economic and social conditions they see and experience every day. Democrats and Republicans have different sources for their views.
President Joe Biden meets with campaign volunteers and their families at a community center in Racine, Wis.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Wisconsin voters elected conservative and liberal politicians in almost equal numbers from 2008 to 2022 − in this election, issues such as abortion, the economy and immigration are key for voters.
Bruce Springsteen performs in Providence, R.I., in January 1985 during the ‘Born in the U.S.A. Tour.’
Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Diane Winston, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
In 1984, the album was atop the charts, and Ronald Reagan, running for reelection, told a New Jersey audience that he and the Boss shared the same American dream. Springsteen vehemently disagreed.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks on March 30, 2024, in Los Angeles.
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The Democrats and Republicans try to keep them off the ballot. But third-party campaigns can inject new ideas and force major parties to incorporate a wider array of interests.
President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan greet Donald Trump during a reception in August 1983.
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum
Diane Winston, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Reagan and Trump − two of the most media-savvy Republican presidents − used religion to advance their political visions, but their messages and missions could not be more different.
The 118th Congress put in a lot of late nights, but it doesn’t have a lot to show for it.
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In taxpayer-funded email messages to constituents, Republicans prefer visual elements and strategic timing, and Democrats prefer more text-heavy missives.
The former president’s political obituary has been written many times over the past decade. Yet his support among Republicans has rarely dipped below 70%.
Campaign volunteers set up signs encouraging people to vote.
AP Photo/Vasha Hunt
It’s not just polarization that’s driving voters’ malaise − it’s something else, which carries a stark warning for the health of American democracy.
Signs proclaiming that the former president supposedly won the 2020 election are legion his rallies, as here in January 2022 in Arizona.
Mario Tama/AFP
Nearly a third of Americans say they believe that Donald Trump was the real winner of the last election, and the ratio is twice as high among Republican voters.
Texas National Guard troops try to untangle a migrant caught in razor wire along the Texas-Mexico border on Jan. 31, 2024.
John Moore/Getty Images
Texans’ belief in their state’s exceptionalism has helped fuel support for the Republican state government trying to take border security and immigration enforcement into its own hands.
How people vote isn’t always reflected in how elections are decided.
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There are many ways bad mathematics interferes with our democracy. Assigning delegates is just one example.
A person signs a bus wrapped with an image of former President Donald Trump during the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 22, 2024.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
A second Trump presidency may be a danger to democracy, but that’s more to do with the Republican Party than Trump himself, researchers of authoritarianism explain.
Wayne LaPierre led the NRA for more than three decades.
AP Photo/Darron Cummings
Under his watch, congressional action toward gun control ground to a near halt that lasted for many years.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley greets supporters on Jan. 3, 2024, at a bar in Londonderry, N.H.
Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Nikki Haley is the latest American female politician to shift her language, depending on whom she is talking to and where. But this tactic has a flip side, prompting criticism of her as inconsistent.
Iowa and New Hampshire have long cemented their status as the first-in-the-nation deciders in presidential nominating contests. This outsized influence has increasingly come under scrutiny.
The result confirms the vast majority of Republican voters are still infatuated with the former president, despite his legal troubles and how little campaigning he’s done thus far.
Professor of Economics and Finance. Director of the Betting Research Unit and the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University
Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations at the United States Studies Centre and in the Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney