Independents represent a major unknown in the N.H. primary

Washington Post ^ | 01/05/2012 | Sandhya Somashekhar

[NFHale]

“...The GOP needs to stop fighting each other and start effectively educating these independents how incompetent this president is. ...”

Could you, like, re-post this phrase in all bold, caps, underlined, and italicized a thousand times....

That is the single most important statement made, Jim O...

[neverdem]

Independents shouldn’t be voting in a REPUBLICAN primary....

Good luck with that. This story says only 28 states register voters by party, and plenty of them have open primaries. What grabbed me about the WaPo story was the 45 % of voters being independents in New Hampshire. There are a number of states with very large percentages of indies, e.g. MA, CT, NJ, etc.

Independents Give Republicans Big Edge: Pew Survey

In four years, the percentage of independents who call themselves conservative grew to 36 percent from 29 percent. Kohut indicated that was a significant increase.

While Pew's sampling is usually skewed to the left, it's not very reassuring. Too many indies voted for Obama, when anybody who cared could have learned that Obama had the most liberal voting record in the Senate.