A consensus opinion has emerged about President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election: Disengaged voters were critical.
With partisans deeply dug in, and views of the parties and politics notably and persistently negative, persuasion in political campaigns has begun to focus more on getting irregular voters to participate than on convincing people to change their minds. In 2024, those irregular voters were a central part of Trump’s winning coalition.
But neither party has any long-term guarantee of disengaged voter support, participation or attention as the 2026 midterms approach.
A new CNN poll highlights the unique political challenges posed by different types of independents for the campaigns trying to reach them. Those who are the most open to both parties are among the least engaged with politics, while many of the more tuned-in are either reliably partisan or deeply negative toward both Democrats and Republicans.
The different types of independents identified in the survey are defined almost as much by their engagement with politics as by their views about it.
How closely do independents follow politics?
Unlike partisans, most independents say they tend to hear about politics tangentially when they’re doing something else. Political independents overall are about 10 points less likely than self-identified partisans to say they frequently seek out political news (23% among independents, 33% among both Democrats and Republicans).
Within the pool of political independents, those who most closely resemble partisans are the most apt to stay on top of political news. About three-quarters of both Democratic and Republican Lookalikes say they frequently seek out the latest political news or, at minimum, follow major developments. On the flip side, the Checked Out are largely defined by how tuned out they are – 36% say they don’t follow politics at all and another 39% say they only follow as closely as they have to. This latter group also doesn’t participate much in politics: 99% of them either weren’t registered or didn’t vote in the 2024 election.
Those in the Disappointed Middle and the Upbeat Outsiders both land in the center of that spectrum of political attention. These two groups diverge, though, on how they find their political news and on the role that politics plays within their lives.
Most in the Disappointed Middle say they hear about politics when they are specifically looking for news (54%).
It’s largely the opposite for the Upbeat Outsiders, nearly two-thirds of whom say most of the news and information they get about politics comes while they’re doing something else, such as scrolling social media, watching or listening to something entertaining or talking with friends.
About 6 in 10 Upbeat Outsiders say that all or most of the people in their neighborhood have a different political view than they do, and in a follow-up interview, one independent lamented the effect that had on how people engage with politics.
“I think that people are avoiding political conversations simply for that reason, because they want to keep family members and friends,” said Abigail Burns-Paterson, an independent from New Jersey who took the survey. “And because of it, they’re not having the conversations they should be having, discussing the issues and the candidates.”
The Upbeat Outsiders are already less inclined to participate in politics. While a majority of independents in the Disappointed Middle says it’s extremely important that they vote in national elections (52% feel that way), that drops to 30% among the Upbeat Outsiders. And the Upbeat Outsiders are more likely to say not being interested in politics is part of why they are independent (most say it’s at least a minor reason they don’t affiliate with a party, compared with just about a third in the Disappointed Middle).
In 2024, most of the Upbeat Outsiders passed on participating in the election (64% say they weren’t registered or opted not to vote). Those who did split about evenly between Donald Trump (15%) and Kamala Harris (13%).
Those in the Disappointed Middle were more likely to cast a vote in 2024: 36% voted for Trump, 26% for Harris, 20% said they voted for someone else and the rest skipped it.
Who has America’s ear?
A sizable share of Americans, 60%, say that when it comes to politics, there isn’t anyone who speaks for people like them. That includes majorities of both Democrats and Republicans and rises to 68% among independents.
Trump has largely consolidated those who name any Republican or conservative-leaning figure as speaking for people like them. For those who feel represented by a Democrat or a liberal-leaning figure, there’s a broader range of names: 31 different people were named by at least two respondents, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all named by more than 1% of Americans.
Among political independents overall, no individual is named by more than 4% as speaking for them. The two who do reach that 4% mark are Trump and Sanders.
Asked where they saw or heard about news or current events in the last week, 48% of all Americans said they got that information from social media, and about the same share said they heard it from cable news. A slightly smaller share cited a local news source (44%), and 40% said they heard that kind of information from ABC News, CBS News or NBC News. About 3 in 10 turned to videos or podcasts via YouTube or other sites, and 26% said they leaned on national news websites or newspapers.
Independents’ news sources are broadly similar to the overall public, although they are less likely than partisans to tune into cable news (39%).
Podcasts as a source spiked to 39% among the Disappointed Middle, while the two news sources more commonly used among the Upbeat Outsiders than the Disappointed Middle were MSNBC and Fox News.