More Americans than ever identify themselves as political independents, polls show
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At a time when US politics seems more divided than ever, you might think that American voters would feel more attached to the Republican or Democratic parties.
But a new Gallup poll of more than 15,000 US adults suggests something different.
The poll, conducted through 2025, found the number of Americans – 45 percent – now identify as political.independents not affiliated with any party.
It shows a growing number of people being turned off by both major parties, a trend that could have major implications for US politics — including concentrating power among a few loyal voters, which could fuel a vicious cycle of partisanship that further divides potential voters.
Chad Peace, a political consultant and legal advisor for the Independent Voter Project, a non-profit organization that encourages unaffiliated voters to participate in the election process, says the way the US political system works creates incentives for segregation, and that seems to turn many voters off.
“Groups that focus on studies and positions that eat the base, that do not reflect the common man,” said Peace in an interview.
He points to the victimized districts where the popular vote has never had an impact, and the primaries that, in many states, have turned out all but dedicated members as important sources of the problem.
“That’s the world we live in, it’s the world [independent] the voters refuse,” said Peace.
The additional political impact of ‘excessiveness’
Jared McDonald, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., says voters who identify as independent are less likely to get involved in politics.
That leaves more political influence in the hands of “the most divisive voices, the people at the extreme ends of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party,” McDonald said in an interview.
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Gallup has tracked party identification in the US since 1988 data displays the increase in independent voters since 2008, after Barack Obama won his first presidential election, and the increase following Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.
The polling firm attributes the high record in part to changing political habits among voters born after the Baby Boom, who are more likely than previous generations to stick with one of the age groups.
“The younger generations of Americans — millennials and Generation X — [are] continue to identify as independent at higher rates as they get older,” the polling firm said in its analysis of the results.
In addition, Gallup reported that, today’s youth are more likely to be seen as independent than the youth of a previous generation. A recent poll found 56 percent of Gen Z adults calling themselves independent voters, up from 47 percent of millennials in 2012 and 40 percent of Gen Xers in 1992.
Younger voters ‘less willing to accept label’
McDonald says that although many young people are interested in politics, they are not interested in what he calls the “status quo, polarized, calcified” types of politics they see in the Democratic and Republican parties.
“They’re less willing to take on the label,” McDonald said.
The poll results are based on telephone interviews in 2025, in which Gallup asked US adults whether they identify politically as Republican, Democrat or independent.
Alongside the 45 percent who identify as independents, there is a split between those who identify as Democrats or Republicans, at 27 percent each.
The polling company also asked those who identified as independents whether they leaned more towards any party. That 45 percent of respondents fall into the 20 percent who lean Democrat, 15 percent who lean Republican, and 10 percent who say they don’t lean either way.
In the 2024 presidential election, voters who identify as independents are evenly split between the two candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, at 48 percent each, according to data from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
The survey did not show how many of these actually voted, or their voting intentions.
McDonald says that for many voters, their inclinations are more about opposing the party than joining each other.
“Often what they say is, ‘I won’t identify as a Democrat or a Republican, but I know which side I don’t like the most,'” she said.
