This op-ed by SPN Executive Vice President Tony Woodlief first published in The Washington Post

The decennial battle over shaping 7,194 congressional and state legislative districts across the United States is drawing to a close. I hope the politicians involved in this ritual enjoyed it, because 10 years from now, if present trends continue, they’re going to have a much harder time using map-drawing software to pick their voters instead of just letting voters pick their politicians. Here in North Carolina, a clue to the future may already be emerging.

The assumption that most voters are faithful adherents of Team Red or Team Blue drives redistricting, just as it fuels the media’s constant refrain that the nation is bitterly divided. But subscribing to that view requires ignoring or soft-pedaling the reality that Americans are steadily shifting away from partisan affiliations.

In recent years, Gallup has found in poll after poll that, by big margins, more Americans consider themselves independents than Republicans or Democrats. Last month, 40 percent of Americans identified as independents; 28 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as Democrats. After Gallup began asking the question in 2004, independents regularly tallied in the 20s and 30s.

In North Carolina, the number of registered voters opting out of a party label has more than doubled since 2008. Unaffiliateds will almost certainly be the largest bloc of voters in the spring primaries.

Many analysts say that independents are closet partisans, citing nationwide election-year surveys showing that most independents say they “lean” toward one major party or the other — but that’s true in part because pollsters insist that they choose a side.

Read the full article here.