The NCS poll conducted by SSRS was designed to supply a deep-dive have a look at the various kinds of independents that make up this essential group in American politics.
The survey was conducted each on-line and by phone from August 21 by way of September 1. The 2,077 adults who took the ballot have been chosen from two pattern sources – the SSRS Opinion Panel and an inventory of registered voters, together with some who had beforehand taken a NCS survey conducted in April. The survey included 1,006 political independents, outlined as individuals who mentioned they have been independents or didn’t determine with both main political celebration. The pattern was designed to incorporate a bigger than standard variety of political independents so as to get a extra dependable image of their views. It was then weighted to partisan benchmarks obtained from NCS’s May 2025 nationwide survey so that every celebration represents its correct share throughout the full grownup outcomes. The full pattern was additionally weighted to demographic and different benchmarks to make sure that it’s consultant of the grownup inhabitants.
Independents’ solutions to the survey questions have been mixed to create 5 totally different scales assessing the depth of respondents’ connections to the Democratic and Republican events, their degree of political engagement, their confidence within the political system, the extent to which they really feel represented by the political system and their diploma of openness to each Democrats and Republicans. Those scales have been used as a part of a statistical approach known as Ok-means cluster evaluation – which teams collectively respondents with comparable solutions throughout all 5 scales into separate teams – to create the 5 ensuing subgroups of independents.
The challenge took inspiration from a 2007 Washington Post/KFF/Harvard School of Public Health challenge which additionally segmented political independents utilizing comparable methods. Several questions from the 2007 survey have been repeated within the new ballot. Three of the ensuing teams within the new challenge are much like these present in 2007. The different two are fairly totally different, seemingly reflecting the numerous adjustments within the American political local weather over that point.
Results for the complete pattern have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 proportion factors. Among the pattern of 1,006 independents, the error margin is +/-4.2 factors. The margin of sampling error for outcomes among the many 5 subgroups of independents ranges from +/-7.9 proportion factors to +/-10.7 factors.