Few people who leave a Party go directly to the other Party — instead, they go independent first. Since MA is full of democrats, and the shift is from left to right in the nation, we have to guess that almost all of these folks used to be Dems.
I suspect a big reason for the increase of independent voters across the US is much the same: because of political spin, the two parties have had their core values rather homogenized, making it much harder to distinguish them.
Some good advice to political parties on how to win elections is rather easy. That is, to summarize their political platform into about 100 “core value” bullet points, prioritized from most popular to least popular by party members.
*Then* offer that list, somewhat randomized, up to voters in general, and ask them to “re-prioritize” the list as to what *they* most and least want.
Now compare the two lists. Take the top five that voters in general want, and the top five that party members want.
And these 10 will be your campaign platform issues. Simple, clear, and easy to understand.
Importantly, the ‘10 of 100’ are all *part* of your parties’ “core values”, so you are not compromising anything at all, just saying that these “top 10” are what you are going to deal with *first*. The other 90 come in later, so aren’t forgotten, but they are not what you campaign on.
So what does this accomplish?
First of all, the top 5 of your “core values” selected by party members insures that your party base will strongly support you. Second, the top five “core values” of the public will mean that you get strong, popular voter support as well.
And the two together wins elections, *without* compromising your core values. It is clear, precise, and easy to understand, which voters like. It does not equivocate, that “maybe we’ll do this”, or “we’ll vote for this after voting against this”, and other irritating things like that.
And if one party becomes crystal clear, it makes the other party look even more obscure and evasive.