Sarah Longwell

And I'm like, kind of because there's two things about independence.

One is most of them identify as leaners.

Right.

So they either lean Republican or they lean Democrat.

But part of the other thing, though, is to know that they are not reaching moderates, the independents.

I think I have been in a lot of democracy spaces and even political spaces where people are like, see, this is why you need an independent third party.

And I'm like, oh, no, guys, those independents do not all look the same.

And in fact, one of the hallmarks of Trumpism that is going to have...

Influence for many, many years to come in multiple political cycles is that he has taught a lot of his voters to hate the Republican Party.

They are Trump only or Trump first voters.

The number of people that he brought into the political sphere that didn't used to vote and didn't used to care, they're just there.

for Trump and they see Trump as transcending the political parties.

They understand the Republican Party is a vehicle for him, but not his party.

They see him as like they have scorn.

When I listen to MAGA voters, they have scorn for the Republican Party.

That's exactly right.

And so I just I thought that the two really interesting takeaways are the fact that you still have a lot of independents and that that people should just stop thinking that that means you can run an independent candidate, number one, because a lot of it is like sort of Trump's influence as the party leader.

Parties influence wane and you get these sort of outside figures.

Then the other one is how many of those people are young.

And so I do think we have a a increase in young people just refusing to identify with either of these parties as they come up.