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# Independent Voters, In One Word
- URL: https://ivn.us/independent-voters-in-one-word/
- Published: 2012-09-26T19:42:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-22T19:32:14.000Z
- Author: Jane Susskind
- Tags: News

Last week, the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation took a deep examination of the political parties and their constituents, the results of which were [published](http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/08/21/National-Politics/Polling/release%5F120.xml?ref=ivn.us) on August 20\. In this in-dept look at the independent voter, the Washington Post found that 7 out of 10 independent voters favor compromise to confrontation, suggesting that partisan politicians should cross party lines more often than not. When asked *"Have you always thought of yourself as an independent, or have you thought of yourself as a Democrat or a Republican in the past?",* the majority of participants (56%) maintained that they had always thought of themselves as independents, compared to the 22% who thought of themselves as Democrats in the past, and 16% past Republicans.

In the graphic below, the Washington Post asked participants to describe Democrats, Independents, and Republicans in one word. Here are the results:

[![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/dc/be/dcbe1ac4-146f-43be-92a6-ea84728d86a6/content/images/2026/02/w-independentsWords211-600x711.jpg "w-independentsWords21")](https://ivn.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/w-independentsWords211.jpeg)

**If you had to describe independent voters in just one word, what would it be?**