Democratic to Independent: The Key to Winning?

(POLITICO, 2017)

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Due to Donald Trump’s recent win in the 2024 presidential election, losing to a convicted felon has left Democrats questioning if their party’s brand is so toxic that they should shed the title completely. We can see an early example of this through Mike Duggan; a long-time Democratic Mayor of Detroit, he is now pursuing an independent campaign after Trump's election. Duggan stated in a recent interview, “I reached the conclusion that if you call yourself a Democrat, all the Republicans automatically line up against it. You call yourself a Republican, all the Democrats automatically line up against it”. Both parties have become so against each other that politicians are looking to become independent in hopes of getting votes from both sides rather than being reprimanded for their respective parties. However, by being independent, the candidates lack a party to financially support them, so by running independently to improve their votes, some voters may have concerns that they are wasting their ballot since they are not voting for a party but moreover for the candidate themselves. Osborn, the candidate in Nebraska shows us that independent candidates that embrace economic populism can bring back voters. Osborn said that he wouldn’t caucus with any party but his victory would help the Democrats by unseating the Republican incumbent, Deb Fischer. In recent years, 2 democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, switched their parties to independent but continued to caucus with the Democrats. Overall this appears to be a new strategy for the Democratic candidates to win back their voters without facing backlash from opposing parties and even their own.