PPIC Examines California's Independent Voters

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

The PPIC's newly released study on California's decline-to-state voters was released today, and it reveals an electorate increasingly less reliant on political parties. Explains the PPIC:

"The report, California's Post-Partisan Future, shows that as the partisan divide has deepened, the trend toward independent, or decline-to-state, voter registration has grown. Since October 2000, the number of independents in California has increased from 2.3 million to 3 million, while the combined number of Democratic and Republican voters has shrunk from 12.6 million to 11.8 million. If current registration trends continue, there will be more independents than either Republicans or Democrats by 2025."

At an event held today at the Sterling Hotel in Sacramento, panelists Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO, Dan Weintraub, Sacramento Bee columnist, Art Torres, California Democratic Party chair, and Duf Sundheim, former California Republican Party chair, all agreed that the electorate's growing reliance on the Internet is a major reason for this shift. Weintraub speculated that the decline of the parties and the decline of the traditional media might share a common cause. While the mainstream media has weakened due to the proliferation of net-based news sources providing instant coverage, so to has voters' reliance on political parties to make voting choices. Baldassarre added that while individuals are less likely to coalesce around party slates, they are more likely to embrace the initiative system.

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