On the surface it’s contradictory, but bellow that it’s not. The amount of people who identify as independent is increasing, but the amount of voters who do so isn’t. In a recent poll, 42 percent of people describe themselves as independent, 29 percent say they are Democrats, and 26 percent say they are Republicans. But what's surprising is that when you break down those independents, a lot of them lean toward one party; and in 2012, most of those independents voted for their preferred party's candidate (Nate Cohn 2012). People regularly vote with one party, but would rather call themselves independent because they like being considered an outsider to politics. Independent voters aren’t really independent, but are closet partisans who are