At a time when U.S. politics appears to be more deeply polarized than ever, you might think American voters would feel even more firmly attached to either the Republican or Democratic parties.
But new Gallup polling of more than 15,000 U.S. adults suggests something different.
The polling, conducted over the course of 2025, found a record proportion of Americans — 45 per cent — now identify as political independents not affiliated with either party.
It indicates a growing number of people are turned off by both major parties, a trend that could have significant implications for U.S. politics — including concentrating power among fewer loyal voters, which could fuel a vicious cycle of polarization that alienates would-be voters even further.
Chad Peace, a political consultant and legal counsel to the Independent Voter Project, a non-profit organization that encourages unaffiliated voters to participate in the electoral process, says the way the U.S. political system works creates incentives for polarization, and that appears to be turning off more voters.
“The parties are tending toward subjects and positions that feed the base, that are not reflective of the average person,” Peace said in an interview.
He points to gerrymandered districts where many people’s votes never have an impact, and primaries that, in most states, exclude all but committed partisans as key sources of the problem.
“That’s the world we live in, that’s the world [independent] voters are rejecting,” Peace said.
More political influence for ‘furthest extremes’
Jared McDonald, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., says voters who identify as an independent are less likely to be engaged in politics.
That leaves more political influence in the hands of “the most dissonant voices, the people who are on the furthest extremes of both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party,” McDonald said in an interview.
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Gallup has tracked party identification in the U.S. since 1988. The data shows an increase in independent voters beginning in 2008, after Barack Obama won his first presidential election, with an upward trend following Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.
The polling firm attributes the record high in part to a shift in political habits among voters born after the Baby Boom, who are less likely than previous generations to latch on to one of the parties with age.
“Younger generations of Americans — millennials and Generation X — [are] continuing to identify as independents at relatively high rates as they have gotten older,” the polling firm said in its analysis of the results.
In addition, Gallup reported, today’s young adults are more likely than young adults of past generations to identify as independents. The latest polling found 56 per cent of Gen Z adults calling themselves independent voters, up from 47 per cent of millennials in 2012 and 40 per cent of Gen Xers in 1992.
Younger voters ‘less willing to adopt a label’
McDonald says while many young people are interested in politics, they’re far less interested in what he calls the “status quo, polarized, calcified” forms of politics they see in the Democratic and Republican parties.
“They’re less willing to adopt a label,” McDonald said.
The polling results are based on telephone interviews throughout 2025, in which Gallup asked U.S. adults whether they identify politically as a Republican, a Democrat or an independent.
Alongside the 45 per cent identifying as independents, there was an even split between those identifying as Democrat or Republican, at 27 per cent each.
The polling firm also asked those who identified as independents whether they lean more toward either party. That 45 per cent of respondents broke down to 20 per cent leaning Democrat, 15 per cent leaning Republican, and 10 per cent saying they don’t lean either way.
In the 2024 presidential election, voters identifying as independent were split evenly between the two candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, at 48 per cent each, according to data from the non-partisan Pew Research Center.
The poll didn’t indicate how many of those surveyed actually voted, or their voting intentions.
McDonald says for many voters, their leanings are about opposition to a party rather than affiliation.
“Oftentimes what they say is, ‘Well I’m not going to identify as a Democrat or Republican, but I certainly know which side I dislike more,'” he said.
