Are We All Unaffiliated?

Hello friends,

January's poll asked readers (all 6 of you!) to mark the party with which they are officially aligned.  The results were as follows:

1 Republican
1 Libertarian
6 Unaffiliated

Granted, I had no expectation of seeing many (or any) readers affiliated with the Democratic party; that's not the typical bent of my audience, though I believe the parties are more closely aligned than they seem.  I was surprised to see so many "unaffiliated" voters, though.

This prompted me to do a quick search of the voter registration websites.  23% of North Carolina's registered voters are unaffiliated.  The total breakdown is as follows:

23%  Unaffiliated
45%  Democratic
32%  Republican
.1%   Libertarian (6K voters out of 6M)

I found it fascinating that nearly a quarter of my fellow Carolinians were not connected officially to any party.  I then searched at the national level, wondering if this was high or low for our country as a whole.  Much to my surprise, the Federal Election Commission does not have, to the best of my web-searching abilities, reports on the breakdown of voters; I found that information on the Census Bureau's site.  Unfortunately, I have yet to find a national tally of registered voters by party.  Even worse, it appears some states may not maintain that information on their sites, either.

I am now on a mission.  I want to know if there are enough of us out there who don't identify with either of the major parties well enough to commit to one.  If there are enough of us out there, we stand a good chance of calling for an over-haul of the electoral process.

To whet your appetites, I'll now give you a random smattering of states:

California:    20%
Maryland:    14%
New Jersey: 46%

Given the scattered and sparse information available, it may take a little time to compile the numbers.  I'll be sure to post the results as soon as I have them.  I suspect there are many more of us out there than we realize since we're not an organized group.

Check out the new poll for February.

Until tomorrow,
MK