Biden and Trump go on the hunt for the independent voter, the most precious loot

The withdrawal last Wednesday of the Republican candidate Nikki Haley, after the poor results of Super Tuesday, marked the beginning of the hunting season for the independent voter, which will be fiercer than ever in the US elections next November.

Although she refused to support him, Haley also cleared the way for Donald Trump to be nominated by his party in the race for the White House, and confirmed the repetition of the 2020 duel with President Joe Biden.

When the resignation became known, both politicians launched themselves into the courtship of Haley's supporters, a precious loot.

It is a heterogeneous group, a mix of independents, old-style Republicans and

Never Trumpers,

the former president's most intimate enemies.

There are also moderate and college-educated voters, as well as suburbanites, which in this country are, more than a geographical place, a state of mind.

Trump invited everyone to “join the greatest movement in the history of this nation” – his own, of course – while Biden reminded them that there was room for them in his campaign.

Nikki Haley, on Wednesday, after announcing her retirement in Charleston (South Carolina).

Anna Moneymaker (Getty Images)

For Haley, her supporters helped her win two primaries.

As could be seen a couple of weeks ago, in interviews with a dozen of them in South Carolina, they were united by the fear of a second round of Trump and by the desire for American conservatism to once and for all turn the page. of the magnate, who this Friday secured total control of the Republican National Committee (CNR), the governing body of the formation, by placing Michael Whatley, a man he trusted, at the helm (the operation was completed with the appointment of his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-president).

Now that he is the party's candidate, the CNR will be able to contribute to the financing of his campaign.

When asked what they planned to do without Haley, most of them in South Carolina were undecided, and one of them, Tom Arnold, who votes in Maryland, confessed that he would support Biden “with a stuffy nose.”

Before Super Tuesday, the candidate achieved her best results in that southern state (40%) and in New Hampshire (42%), which share the status of systems with open primaries: you do not have to be a registered voter to participate in them, although you have to decide which of the two, Republican or Democratic, you want to compete in.

That is why they were two ideal laboratories to analyze the intentions of the always elusive independents.

And what came out of those experiments was not good news for Trump, who has galvanized his base, but they do not add up to enough to give him the White House.

Trump supporters at the doors of one of the real estate magnate's golf clubs, on March 3, in the Californian town of Rancho Palos Verdes. Aude Guerrucci (REUTERS)

The problems are also accumulating on Biden's side, whom polls show as a loser eight months before the election.

Those problems stem from his support for Israel in the Gaza war, which angered young people and the Arab population and earned him a penalty vote in the primaries;

from the feeling among citizens that the economy is not going as well as he says, and from the disappointment of black voters, who expected more from his promises.

After passing the test of the State of the Union speech - which made the Democratic bases breathe a sigh of relief and at times seemed more like a rally -, the president has embarked since Friday on a week of electoral events in six decisive states, Pennsylvania to Michigan, and from Georgia to Wisconsin.

His campaign, better financed at this point than that of his Republican opponent, is thus stepping on the accelerator: he plans to open more than a hundred offices throughout the country in March and hire some 350 employees.

It is urgent to reverse data such as that found in the Times/Siena survey, which not only declared Trump the winner last week, but also concluded that 83% of Biden's voters in 2020 plan to support the president again. , compared to 97%, in the case of the tycoon.

The polarization effect

“In a time as polarized as this, we know that Republicans vote Republican;

and the Democrats, Democrats,” explains University of Arizona professor Thom Reilly in a telephone interview.

“For this reason, attention must be paid to those who define themselves as independent.

If I were asked for my opinion, I would tell the parties to focus on finding out what issues would mobilize those voters.

In Trump's case, it seems that a guilty plea in one of the four court cases he has pending could be decisive in scaring them away.

Of course, it is the million dollar question,” adds Reilly, who founded a couple of years ago the “only center dedicated to the study of independent voters in the United States” ―Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy―, and in 2023 co-wrote

The Independent Voter,

the most comprehensive essay on the topic to date.

It seems like a field of study with a future.

Since the late 1980s, Gallup has calculated the evolution of the percentage of these undecided voters in the American system;

Last year he concluded that a historical record had been reached, with 43%.

If they united their wills, they would form the majority party in the United States.

“That's what they usually say, but, be careful, one of the most common errors is to consider them as a homogeneous bloc, located in one part of the political spectrum, the center, for example,” warns Reilly.

“The truth is that it is never completely like that;

They are everywhere.

Many are centrists, but there are also some on the extremes.”

In these elections, several projects seek to resurrect the old dream of creating a third party.

On the one hand, there are the candidacies of the anti-vaccine politician Robert Kennedy Jr., and the possible drag of his illustrious surname, and the black thinker Cornel West.

And there is a centrist coalition called No Labels, which on Friday confirmed that it was continuing with its plans to present a “unity ballot,” with a Republican candidate for president, and a Democrat as a candidate for vice president.

Similar efforts have failed in the past.

At most, they managed to harm one of the sides, and accepted a famous statement by the American historian Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970): “Third parties are like bees.

Once they have bitten, they die.”

The growth of independents cannot be understood without taking into account the weakening of traditional political formations, whose pollsters, Reilly clarifies, usually err on the side of considering the undecided as won forever if they decided to vote for them in a certain election.

“They don't want to realize that it is an unpredictable group.

And that people are abandoning the parties in a quite dramatic way,” the expert clarifies.

“If we look at young people, generation Z, the trend is even more pronounced.

Between 60 and 65% identify as independent.

What's more, they have never been part of a party, which they see as hyperpolarized, and many are disillusioned.

They consider that they are deprived of their rights in the name of a binary system.”

Polls for the November elections have identified another group that can be decisive: they add up to 20% and are known as the “

double haters

”, because they hate Trump and Biden twice, equally.

On the Democratic side, these polls certify the lack of enthusiasm among young people with the president and his military support for Israel.

One of the big unknowns on election night will be to see how much they abstain.

“Although that,” says Reilly, “doesn't necessarily make them politically disengaged, which is another of the erroneous stereotypes about independents.”

It is simply another way of getting involved, different from that of the

boomer generation,

whose political history ran naturally in this country through their partisan identification.

The historian Michael Kazin belongs to that old school: he has been associated since the sixties, with his comings and goings, with the Democratic Party, to which he dedicated

What it took to win

(What it took to win)

,

a kind of biography of a bicentennial political formation, which in reality is an amalgamation of interests that are not always well agreed upon, as is now being proven.

The authentic and the inclined

Kazin considers, with other analysts, that only a minority of independents “really are.”

“Most vote fairly consistently for candidates of one party or another, but they don't want to identify with them at a time when so many Americans dislike what they see as an unprincipled struggle for power between Democrats and Republicans.” , he explains in an email.

This

authentic

minority is usually between 10% and 13% of the electorate, but Reilly finds this figure “disdainful” because he considers that it is distorted by another category of voters, the “leaners

.

”

They are independents who, after declaring themselves as such, answer the pollsters' question about which party they feel closest to, opting for one of the two.

“If you look at the data over time, you will see that in the last presidential elections, Biden won by 13 points over Trump among independents.

In 2016, the tycoon got four points ahead of Hilary Clinton.

And in the previous ones, Obama won them by eight points.

“This shows that they are not

leaners

, but rather unpredictable,” he adds.

When asked if Kazin observes this detachment of young people among his students at Georgetown, in Washington, the historian answers that it is his policy not to ask them who they vote for.

“This is a liberal campus in a liberal city (and area), so few students identify as conservative.

I'm pretty sure a large majority will vote Democrat, if they vote at all.

It is also true that both parties have few members at the university, and one would expect that at least the Democratic chapter would be larger, given that we are in a city where politics floods everything.”

This Saturday, on a rainy morning, it was not possible to find any students on campus who were registered voters, and a few who were unmotivated to go to the polls in November.

Colin Seeberger, senior advisor at the progressive analysis laboratory Center for American Progress Action Fund, based in Washington, believes that this also has to do with the discrediting of institutions, “not just policies.”

“Young people don't want to be pigeonholed into any particular group, where they feel they wouldn't have an easy time forming their own opinions and expressing them,” he says.

And which side does Seeberger think the independents will fall on during the campaign?

“It's too early to tell, but Trump has made it very clear that he is not interested in having the support of anyone who disagrees with him.

Everything has to be 100% MAGA [as in his motto

Make America Great Again

],” he responds, before citing four recent polls that give Biden an advantage among independents (the largest of all is the one given by the Fox News poll). : nine points).

In his opinion, this is because, as seen in the 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 elections, “ Trump's

extreme extremism

ends up being unpopular.”

For his part, César Martínez, a strategist specialized in the Latino vote who worked in four presidential elections with Republican candidates and who in 2020 did so against Trump, agrees with Seeberger that the magnate “is setting up his tent every time.” smaller, exclusive”, and that it will be interesting to see how the Hispanic electorate behaves, which is “the minority that most tends to oscillate between both parties.”

“That is what gives them their strength,” considers Martínez.

To predict what lies ahead until November, the strategist resorts to a cinematic simile.

“Do you remember that movie,

Grumpy

Old Men

[1993]?

In it, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon spent their time competing for Ann-Margret's attention.

Well, this campaign will be like a sequel to that story, with two 80-year-old white men fighting for the United States.

Neither of us can sell the future,” he says.

Within that analogy, the independents would be that part of the public that attends the film “quietly,” “watching and analyzing,” and who will decide who they vote for when they leave the cinema on November 5, election day.

The only thing that is certain is that whatever they decide, it will give the presidency to one grumpy old man or another.

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