Americans like saying they’re independent — while voting as partisans

The percentage of Americans identifying as independent in Gallup polling has, by one measure, remained steady over the past few years. In January and February 2021, Gallup’s measure had 50 percent of respondents saying that they were independent; in the organization’s most recent release, it’s at 49 percent.

In fairness, that January-February 2021 figure was an outlier. Earlier in January, the percentage was 45 percent; by mid-February, it was 41 percent. But despite such unsurprising fluctuations in the figures, the percentage did mark a well-established pattern: Americans are more likely than they used to be to call themselves independents.