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Independents vital to Biden win, boon to a good-governance cause

Joe Biden

Independents favored Joe Biden by 13 points nationally and in many battleground states he carried narrowly

Demetrius Freeman/Getty Images

Americans not aligned with either major party favored Joe Biden for president by 13 percentage points, exit polls show.

It's the biggest margin among independents in more than three decades. That's welcome evidence to those who perceive American democracy's problems as largely rooted in the major-party duopoly, and who say the system will work better if independents are awarded more political influence.


The population of voters who don't identify with either major party has trended upwards in the past two decades and accounted for 36 percent of the potential electorate this fall, according to Gallup. They nonetheless cast only 26 percent of the ballots last week, according to the more widely used of the two national exit polls, by Edison Research.

The Democratic former vice president got 54 percent of their votes, to 41 percent for President Trump.

It was the most lopsided independent vote since George H.W. Bush won it by 14 points on his way to defeating Michael Dukakis in 1988. Trump won the White House with a 4-point edge among unaffiliated voters four years ago and Barack Obama won in 2008 with the help of an 8-point margin of independents.

Unaffiliated voters also played a decisive role in tipping several battleground states narrowly in favor of Biden, who has become president-elect with at last 290 electoral votes as of Friday and a popular vote margin of more than 5 million.

Statewide exit polls by Edison found independents preferred him by 14 points in Wisconsin, 11 points in Arizona and 8 points in both Michigan and Pennsylvania.

While independent voters' impact is huge, it should not be interpreted as allegiance to either of the major parties, said Jacqueline Salit, president of Independent Voting, a national organization advocating against the political binary. "If anything, it's a vote that says, 'Get us out of this partisan sinkhole,'" she said.

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Xavier Becerra Steps Back Into California Politics

Xavier Becerra

Xavier Becerra Steps Back Into California Politics

Xavier Becerra is once again stepping onto familiar ground. After serving in Congress, leading California’s Department of Justice, and joining President Joe Biden’s Cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he is now seeking the governorship of his home state. His campaign marks both a return to local politics and a renewed confrontation with Donald Trump, now back in the White House.

Becerra’s message combines pragmatism and resistance. “We’ll continue to be a leader, a fighter, and a vision of what can be in the United States,” he said in his recent interview with Latino News Network. He recalled his years as California’s attorney general, when he “had to take him on” to defend the state’s laws and families. Between 2017 and 2021, Becerra filed or joined more than 120 lawsuits against the Trump administration, covering immigration, environmental protection, civil rights, and healthcare. “We were able to defend California, its values and its people,” he said.

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American political leaders have forgotten how to be gracious to their opponents when people on the other side do something for which they deserve credit. Our antagonisms have become so deep and bitter that we are reluctant to give an inch to our political adversaries.

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