But in 2024 there was a refreshing shift away from the straight-ticket voting that has long characterized support for the two major parties. A larger number of voters became more discerning, choosing candidates based on policy, pragmatism or some other less tangible bond than party affiliation alone. This was evident in the noticeable rise in the independent vote, challenging the entrenched dominance of party allegiance cultivated by the Democratic and Republican establishments.
It’s not news that the number of American voters identifying as politically independent continues to outpace both of the major political parties. However, their behavior can be hard to predict and is often shaped by the candidates, the political climate and events leading up to a particular election. That unpredictability is one reason election outcomes can sometimes defy expectations and why campaigns increasingly look to court this important, and often elusive, group of voters, even if they don’t completely understand them.
To get a better sense of these voters’ impact, we analyzed Edison Research/National Election Pool (NEP) exit polling from the 2024 election cycle. The Edison data is from a national survey of 22,900 respondents that is representative of the national electorate in terms of gender, age, race and geography. Specifically, we compared the independent vote nationally to that vote in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
It is important to note that the survey data relies on political self-identification, so its numbers may be different from analyses that used respondents’ official party affiliation and may also differ from analyses of how people have voted in the past. But the Edison/NEP numbers do seem to offer important insights into some of last November’s more intriguing election results.
Nationally, self-identified independents accounted for 34 percent of voters in 2024, more than the 31 percent of voters who said they were Democrats and just below the 35 percent who said they were Republicans.
Independents were more likely to identify themselves as political moderates than self-identified members of the two major parties were. Moderate independents represented 18 percent of the total electorate, making up the second largest group behind self-described conservative Republicans, who accounted for 23 percent, and outnumbering liberal Democrats. The independents showed a preference for Democrats, with 49 percent of moderate independents voting a straight Democratic ticket and 34 percent straight Republican.
Meanwhile, party-aligned voters did what you’d expect: Democrats and Republicans voted overwhelmingly for their parties’ nominees, with 95 percent of Democrats going for Kamala Harris and 94 percent of Republicans voting for Donald Trump.
Independents, on the other hand, broke 49 percent for Harris and 46 percent for Trump, with 5 percent voting for one of the other presidential candidates. In many battleground states, however, it was a different picture. Trump won independents in Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. Independents broke evenly in Nevada, while Harris won independent voters in Michigan by 4 percentage points and in Wisconsin by 1 point. This outcome differed from 2020, when Joe Biden won independents nationally by 13 points.
The pattern of voters splitting their ticket in 2024 — choosing candidates from different parties for different races on the same ballot — has surprised many political analysts and campaign strategists. The conventional wisdom was that in our highly polarized environment voters would fall in line with their party for all races. While president-Senate split-ticket voting used to be fairly common, since 2012 91 percent of Senate contests have been won by candidates from the party that won that state’s most recent presidential race.
So who were the ticket splitters in 2024? Independents were twice as likely to split their tickets between their presidential and Senate votes than Democrats or Republicans, with 10 percent doing so nationwide. In the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, Trump carried the presidential vote while voters elected Democratic senators. In these states, ticket splitting among independent voters ranged from 7 percent in Wisconsin to 14 percent in Nevada, but in all states independents were considerably more likely to split their tickets than were either Democrats or Republicans.
Split-ticket voting was also evident in other statewide races. Eleven states held gubernatorial elections last year and in three of them, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Vermont, voters chose a president of one party and a governor from the other — a repetition of the pattern seen in all three of those states in 2020 and 2016.
In North Carolina, ticket splitting occurred in three top races for statewide office — governor, attorney general and secretary of state — and independents were largely responsible for this phenomenon. While Trump carried the state with 51 percent of the vote, Democrats won all three of those statewide races. Similar to the national vote, 96 percent of North Carolina Democratic voters went for Harris, while 96 percent of Republicans voted for Trump. But independents split their presidential vote by supporting Trump 51 percent to 47 percent.
This pattern of split-ticket voting has mystified some partisans, who wonder how a voter could cast a mixed ballot that defies traditional ideological categories or leanings. That defiance, however, is the very point. Voters, particularly among the younger generations, are increasingly interested in pragmatic solutions rather than ideological purity, signaling a desire for governance that transcends the old partisan divides.
The result is a more dynamic and fluid political landscape, where a growing desire for compromise and collaboration — rather than obstruction and rhetoric — may be driving voter preferences, especially as the cohort of independents continues to grow. There’s cause for optimism that the 2024 election could mark a turning point, the first in decades, in how Americans engage with their democracy.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
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