{"id":421781,"date":"2026-08-02T14:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T14:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/421781\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T14:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T14:54:10","slug":"influence-of-californias-independent-voters-in-the-2026-election-growing-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/421781\/","title":{"rendered":"Influence of California\u2019s independent voters in the 2026 election growing \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Untethered from either of the two major political parties, independents are one of California\u2019s fastest-growing voting blocs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And while they are far from a monolith, independents are also not synonymous with moderates, election experts and polling data show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That makes figuring out just who these voters are who have bucked a party label \u2014 what drives them to cast a ballot, if they vote at all \u2014 both a puzzle and a prize for campaigns heading into the midterm elections this fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, that means figuring out why Californians chose either a third party or no party at all when registering to vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that might come down to trust, said Jorge Flores, a Los Angeles-based public affairs consultant and veteran campaign strategist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is actually going to look out for the issues I care about and be there when I need them, as opposed to an affiliate of a particular party who follows the party line and party leadership,\u201d Flores said. \u201cThere\u2019s an element of: Who can I trust to look after me and my family?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Independent voters are diverse by their very definition, said Chad Peace, chief legal strategist for the Independent Voter Project, a group that aims to engage nonpartisan voters and backed California\u2019s move to the jungle primary system<\/a>, where the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general in the fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them are independents because the Democrats are not far left enough for them, or the Republicans are not far right enough \u2026 or because they are conservative on this social issue, but liberal on this economic issue, or vice versa,\u201d said Peace, who is based in San Diego.<\/p>\n

Still, most voters in California do register with one of the two major political parties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of May, nearly 10.4 million people were registered with the Democratic Party \u2014 that\u2019s nearly 45% of the state\u2019s 23.2 million registered voters. Another 5.8 million people chose the Republican Party, nearly 25% of the state\u2019s registered voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 5.3 million voters who identified as no party preference \u2014 the largest contingent of independent voters \u2014 accounted for nearly 23%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that voting bloc has risen over the years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two decades ago, in October 2006, about 3 million voters identified as no party preference. Then, that was about 18.7% of the state\u2019s registered voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By October 2012, a presidential election year, more than 3.8 million people, or nearly 21% of California\u2019s registered voters, picked no party preference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The percentage of no party preference voters peaked in 2018, at 27.5%, before dropping a bit over the next three election cycles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the most recent voter registration statistics from the California secretary of state show a bit of a rise again: In October 2024, only 22% of registered voters were no party preference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nationally, too, independent voters are on the rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Gallup survey conducted last year<\/a> found 45% of U.S. adults identified as independents, while 27% each picked Democrat or Republican. That finding was a record high for independents, Gallup said in its report.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s younger voters who are largely contributing to this trend of independent voters, studies have shown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That national Gallup survey found majorities of Gen Z (born between 1997-2007) and millennial (born between 1981-1996) voters were independents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Comparatively, fewer than one-third of the Silent Generation (born before 1946) voters identified as independent, and about one-third of baby boomers (born between 1946-1964) identified as such.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Locally, there have been similar findings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A recent survey conducted by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology<\/a> found nearly half of Gen Z residents in Orange County identified as independents, as did 42% of millennials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Overall, though, 34% of respondents said they were independents, on par with another 34% who said they identify as Democrats. Republicans weren\u2019t far behind, with 32% of the poll\u2019s respondents picking the GOP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Voter registration statistics show a little more distance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of the nearly 2 million registered voters in Orange County, 36.4% (or nearly 695,000 people) are Democrats, and 33.8% of the county\u2019s voters (about 644,00 people) are Republicans.<\/p>\n

That leaves 23.4% (446,500 people) of the county\u2019s voters registered as no party preference, with the rest of the electorate picking the American Independent, Green, Libertarian or Peace and Freedom parties, or \u201cother\u201d or \u201cunknown\u201d for party registration, according to the secretary of state\u2019s figures.<\/p>\n

The UCI polling found \u201cthis huge generational difference in terms of how people identify themselves, how they see the world and whether they are going to vote,\u201d said Jon Gould, poll director and dean of the School of Social Ecology.<\/p>\n

\u201cNationally, when we do polling, we have found that young people generally identify with the Democratic Party. And here, our youngest voters, Gen Z and millennials, are much more likely to identify as an independent than anything else,\u201d Gould said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean they are moderates,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Voters, Gould said, are upset with political leadership, whether that\u2019s Republican President Donald Trump at the national level or Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom as the state\u2019s chief executive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These voters are moving to no party preference or independent, rather than a political party, \u201cbecause there\u2019s kind of a sense of a pox on both parties\u2019 houses,\u201d Gould said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Flores expressed a similar sentiment from his experience talking to voters this primary election in California\u2019s 40th Congressional District, which spans Orange and Riverside counties. There, he was advising independent candidate Nina Linh<\/a>, who lost in the primary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe voters we talked to that were independents were distressed in the institutions,\u201d Flores said. \u201cNeither party was able to deliver for them, provide basic services or look out for the common needs that voters are looking for.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey felt that no one had their interests, in terms of housing affordability, in terms of maintaining and improving infrastructure and roads and such. They didn\u2019t have any trust that anyone had any interest for their kitchen table issues because they were so bogged down on the extremes, both parties.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The test, then, is getting independent voters to cast ballots in the fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

UCI\u2019s study found only 45% of Gen Z residents in Orange County are certain to vote, while 87% of boomers are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not surprising, said Gould, if they are feeling particularly let down by their political leaders or the two major parties in general.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really have a disillusioned group of younger residents here, and that\u2019s tinder for potential proverbial fires in a community, and that\u2019s tinder for political fires across the country,\u201d Gould said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is a candidate or party that can tap into that, they\u2019re going to have young people coming out for them,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the 2024 election, nearly 600,000 no party preference voters \u2014 57% of that voting bloc \u2013 participated. In comparison, 73.2% of registered Democrats cast a ballot in that election, as did 79% of Republicans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2018, when there was a spike of registered no party preference voters, 58.6% of this contingent turned out in the general election. That was along with 74.5% of registered Republicans and 73.4% of Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(The California secretary of state does not yet have these turnout figures from the June primary. That data is expected to be released in December, according to the office.)<\/p>\n

Still, Peace said independent voters want to \u2014 and should \u2014 participate in elections and effectuate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question that we ask is: Where does my fundamental right to vote derive?\u201d he said. \u201cDoes it derive as being a citizen or does it derive at the moment I join a political party?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Untethered from either of the two major political parties, independents are one of California\u2019s fastest-growing voting blocs.\u00a0 And…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1400,7,9,8,400,204,100,13,136,6392],"class_list":["post-421781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-2026-elections","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-politics","tag-election","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-voters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}