Understanding Middle Voters: Stratification of Independent and Moderate Voters to Uncover Patterns of Election Decisions and Sentiments

Abstract

This thesis focuses on independent and moderate voters, since these voters are known to be those that swing elections, yet so little is known about the mechanisms that create variation in how these middle voters vote from election to election. Studies of independent leaners are very prominent in modern American political science, so this paper levaragues how unique leaners are to also prove the significance of centrist independents as well, and to also prove that there are different types of voters that all categorize as moderate voters. In this paper, independent voters are bucketed into three subgroups, independent leaners, attentive centrist independents, and inattentive independents, and moderate voters are bucketed into the three subgroups of partisan moderates, independent moderates, and inattentive moderates. When tested, the subgroups of independents and moderates show significant differences between one another on the average number of days before the election voters make their presidential election decision, and for the percentage of the group that reports preference (as opposed to no preference) for the candidate they ended up voting for. The study proves that since independents and moderates can be stratified into unique subgroups that show clear trends in election engagement, where the whole group of independents or moderates show very little trends, these groups are best understood as combinations of smaller subgroups than as homogenous voting blocs. By using the subgroupings to study independents and moderates, we learn more about who voters are, how they engage with the election, and how the electorate shifts in identification from election-to-election, giving us a better understanding of the swing voters that so often determine our elections.