Editor's Note: This commentary piece originally published on the author's substack, The Independent Mind, and has been republished on IVN by request of and with permission from the author.
My initial thoughts on this midterm election? It wasn’t just a blue wave. It was an independent voter tsunami.
Democrats may have handily won the midterms, but independent voters delivered many of the victories. They showed up in extraordinary numbers, broke decisively against Republicans, and made the difference in races across the country. From Texas to Ohio, Iowa to South Carolina, independent voters were central to a political upheaval that few anticipated. They helped flip Senate seats, congressional districts and governorships that Republicans had long considered safe.
And they did something else. They blew up some of the most persistent myths in American politics about who independent voters are, what motivates them, and whether they can be counted on to participate in our democracy.
For years, we have heard that independents are apathetic, checked out, noncommittal or apolitical. That they don’t care enough to vote. That they are somehow less engaged in the political process than Democrats and Republicans. The results of this election should put those assumptions to rest.
Independent voters turned out in force. Texas saw record-breaking early voting, with more than 7.7 million people casting ballots before Election Day. Early turnout analysis also showed independent voters participating at rates exceeding Democrats and Republicans. And when the votes were counted, independents broke decisively for Democratic candidates in some of the most consequential races in the country.
They went 63% for James Talarico in Texas, 62% for Sherrod Brown in Ohio, 64% for Annie Andrews in South Carolina and 64% for Adam Hamilton in Kansas. In statewide contests, they supported Sand in Iowa by 65% and Gina Hinojosa in Texas by 59%.
These weren’t marginal differences. These were the votes that changed the map.
Look at Texas. A state Republicans have long treated as the foundation of their national political power elected James Talarico to the U.S. Senate and Gina Hinojosa as governor. Democrats hadn’t won a Texas Senate election since 1988 or a gubernatorial election since Ann Richards in 1990. Independent voters helped make both victories possible.
In South Carolina, Annie Andrews defeated Republican Darline Graham, ending a 28-year drought in which Republicans had won every Senate election in the state. In North Carolina, Roy Cooper flipped a Republican-held Senate seat. These victories weren’t simply about Democratic turnout. They reflected a much broader rejection of the Republican brand among voters who don’t identify with either party.
And the story goes well beyond the Senate.
Consider Florida’s 22nd Congressional District. Republicans redrew the district in an effort to improve their chances of winning it. Yet Democrat Pia Dandiya won the newly configured seat. Or look at deep-red Kentucky, where Zach Dembo flipped the Sixth Congressional District by reaching beyond traditional Democratic constituencies. The year of partisan redistricting was supposed to eliminate November surprises. Independent voters and the coalitions they helped build had other ideas.
But perhaps the biggest story is the overlap between independent voters, young voters and Latino voters. These are too often treated as three separate demographic stories. They are increasingly part of the same story.
Seventy percent of voters under 30 supported Democrats. That is a remarkable showing by a generation that is increasingly rejecting traditional party labels. Fifty-seven percent of Gen Z voters identify as independent. They are not disengaged from politics. They are disengaged from the political identities that the two parties keep trying to impose on them.
The same is true of Latino voters. The Republican Party spent years celebrating its gains among Latino voters, particularly in states like Texas and Florida. This election should force a serious reassessment. Those gains were reversed in key contests. In two heavily Latino counties in western Kansas, the political balance shifted by an extraordinary 50 percentage points between the parties. And 52% of Latino voters identify as independent. The assumption that Latino voters are a natural constituency for either party is just as misguided as the assumption that young voters belong to one party or the other.
The states and races where Democrats performed best tell the same story. Roy Cooper’s victory in North Carolina, Talarico’s Senate win in Texas and Andrews’ historic victory in South Carolina all depended on building coalitions that reached beyond traditional Democratic constituencies. Independent voters were central to those coalitions.
So, what were independents voting for?
The answer is just as important as the results themselves. Independent voters weren’t necessarily voting for Democrats. They were voting against Republicans and, more specifically, against the politics of Donald Trump: the divisiveness, the constant partisan warfare, the chaos and the failure to address the problems Americans actually face.
Three-quarters of voters said they were unhappy with the direction of the country. Independents were at the forefront of that dissatisfaction. They want practical solutions to the issues that affect their lives: affordability, health care costs, jobs and economic security. They are tired of a political system that seems more interested in protecting its own power than delivering results.
This is a distinction Democrats would be wise to understand.
A Democratic victory is not a Democratic mandate. Even after these results, roughly six in ten voters still have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. Independent voters did not suddenly become loyal Democrats. They made a decision about the direction of the country and the party they believed was most responsible for taking it in the wrong direction. That decision can change just as quickly if Democrats fail to listen.
But there is an even bigger question coming out of these elections, and it is one neither party can afford to ignore.
If independent voters have this much power, when are they going to get a chance to actually exercise it?
For all the talk about the historic movement of voters this November, we cannot overlook an inconvenient reality: most elections were effectively decided before November ever arrived. They were decided in party primaries, where millions of independent voters were excluded from participating. In district after district, the November general election was little more than a formality because the real contest had already taken place in a closed party primary.
Think about that contradiction. Independent voters helped determine who would control the United States Senate. They helped flip states, congressional districts and governorships. They were the decisive constituency in races that Republicans thought they had locked down. Yet in many of those same places, those voters were denied a voice in choosing the candidates who appeared on the November ballot.
The political parties have spent years telling independents that they don’t belong in their primaries. They have treated primary elections as private party affairs, even when those elections are taxpayer-funded, administered by government officials and determine who will ultimately hold public office.
But independents are no longer a constituency that can be dismissed or ignored. They have demonstrated their power at the ballot box. They are going to be asking a very simple question: If we have the power to change the outcome of general elections, why don’t we have the right to participate in the elections that determine our choices in the first place?
That question is going to get louder.
The next two years will be a test for Democrats as well. If they respond to this election by assuming they have been handed a blank check, returning to the same partisan playbook and treating independent voters as temporary additions to their coalition, they will squander this opportunity. Independents are demanding something different. They want representatives who will work on their behalf, not simply fight for their party.
And they want a political system that recognizes their right to participate throughout the entire electoral process, not just when their votes are useful to one party or the other.
There is a larger lesson here about the state of American democracy. We spent a year watching both parties engage in aggressive redistricting, drawing lines designed to protect incumbents and predetermine outcomes. The conventional wisdom was that November’s elections had already been decided before voters ever got to the polls. Yet independent voters disrupted those calculations in district after district. They demonstrated that voters still have the power to surprise the political establishment when they are engaged and given a reason to participate.
That is why the old assumptions about independent voters are so damaging. When political leaders dismiss independents as apathetic or assume they don’t have strong convictions, they fail to recognize one of the most important forces in American politics. Independents are not sitting on the sidelines. They are not waiting for permission to participate. They are making their voices heard, often in the very elections where the parties have worked hardest to shut them out.
The message of these midterms is not that America has become Democratic. It is that independent voters are becoming impossible to ignore. They showed up. They made the difference. And now they are going to expect something in return.
The question facing both parties is no longer whether independent voters matter. The question is whether our political system is finally going to catch up with the voters themselves.
This wasn’t simply a blue wave. It was an independent voter tsunami. And the demand for change that produced it isn’t going away.