Independent voter

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An independent voter, often also called an unaffiliated voter or non-affiliated voter in the United States, is a voter who does not align themselves with a political party. An independent is variously defined as a voter who votes for candidates on issues rather than on the basis of a political ideology or partisanship;^[1] a voter who does not have long-standing loyalty to, or identification with, a political party;^[2][3] a voter who does not usually vote for the same political party from election to election;^[4][5] or a voter who self-describes as an independent.^[6]

Many voting systems outside of the United States, including the British parliamentary system, do not utilize a party affiliation system as part of their voter registration process; rather, participation in party affairs is based on enrolling as a member within the party itself, and the number of party members is much smaller than the party's total electorate (for example, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which received 12 million votes in the 2021 German federal election, only has 400,000 members). The closest equivalent is the so-called "floater voters" or swing votes, who do not consistently vote for a particular party.^[7]