Everyone called it a blue wave. But were the midterms more about independents?

The "blue wave" that decimated Republicans in the midterm elections is widely seen as the resurgence of the Democratic Party after its decisive defeat two years ago.

But there's more to the story than that.

"It wasn't just a blue wave. It was an independent voter tsunami," Jeremy Gruber, senior vice president at the nonprofit advocacy group Open Primaries, wrote in the aftermath of the vote.

Gruber believes the Democrats owe much of their victory to political independents, whose numbers eclipse those of registered Republicans and Democrats. "They are now America's kingmakers," he said in an interview.

Forty-five percent of Americans, a record high , identify as independents, up from 34% in 2002, and their muscle was seen in key races this week.

Per The Washington Post, "In Kansas, nearly 7 in 10 independents supported Democrat Adam Hamilton, while Texas Democrat James Talarico won nearly two-thirds of independent voters."

And NPR noted that Republicans fared poorly in part because GOP candidates didn't reach the threshold of the independent votes they needed to win. Early analysis shows that Republicans won 38% of independents; they needed 46% to do well, NPR said.

But the outcome of the midterms, which gives control of both the Senate and the House to Democrats, collides with Gallup research that shows just 43% of Americans have a favorable view of the Democratic Party. As PBS put it , "Swing voters don't really love Democrats, even if they voted for them."

Is it wrong, then, to consider what happened in the midterms a "blue wave"? And could those independent voters vote red again in another two years? The characteristics and motivations of independent voters provide a clue.

"A Democratic victory is not a Democratic mandate. Even after these results, roughly six in ten voters still have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. Independent voters did not suddenly become loyal Democrats," wrote Gruber, whose work at Open Primaries promotes primary elections that are open to everyone, regardless of party affiliation.

Findings from the AP Voter Poll of midterm voters were similar.

"Only about half of voters had a 'somewhat' or 'strongly' favorable view of the Democratic Party. That was higher than the approximately 4 in 10 who viewed the GOP positively, but not by much. About 2 in 10 voters who supported Democratic candidates had a negative view of the party as a whole," according to AP.

Many independents who voted for Democrats were actually voting against Republicans — and specifically, President Donald Trump who repeatedly said "pretend I'm on the ballot" throughout the campaign season — Gruber said in an interview.

"This was more than anything, a vote of rejection by independents, not a vote for the Democratic Party of its agenda," he said.

That said, when independents are asked whether they lean more to one political party than another, slightly more say they lean more to the Democratic Party.

And the two independents in the U.S. Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine — caucus with the Democratic Party. (The one independent in the House, California Rep. Kevin Kiley, caucuses with the Republican Party, which he left in March after his district's lines were redrawn.)

According to Gallup polling in 2025, of the 45% of voters who identified as independents, 20% said they leaned Democratic, 15% said they leaned Republican, and 10% said they had no leaning.

But there is a wide variety among independents with respect to ideology, and they are found all over the political spectrum. And independent is not synonymous with moderate; many are moderate, one recent study found, but some are progressive or extremely conservative.

What they have in common is the sense that neither party represents them, said Yanna Krupnikov, professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan and the author of "Partisan Hostility and American Democracy," among other books.

"I think a big part of it may be a dislike of partisanship and, potentially, a dissatisfaction with politicians. If someone is dissatisfied with their party's leadership that does not mean that they agree with the other party's policies. Identifying as independent would feel better," Krupnikov said in an email.

Gruber said that there is disgust among independents with the vitriolic, "red-meat" approach to politics by both parties.

"All voters, but independent voters in particular, are looking for problem solvers, and they're willing to move outside of the party system to find those problem solvers. Unfortunately, they haven't quite found them," he said. That's why independent voters have shown the capacity for moving back and forth among the parties within a few years, he said.

That's clear in independents' support for Donald Trump over the past two years. Forty-three percent supported him during the 2024 campaign; that had fallen to about 25% in June of this year.

The change was particularly striking among Latino voters, 53 percent of whom identify as independent. The Latino embrace of the GOP in 2024 turned out to be temporary.

According to the Washington Post , "NBC News's exit poll found that they favored Democratic House candidates by 62 percent to 35 percent. A separate voter survey published by the New York Times showed Latinos backing Democrats by 69 percent to 30 percent, a 28-percentage-point shift in the partisan margin toward Democrats compared with the 2024 presidential election."

Last month, the actor Matthew McConaughey made a video that celebrated political independents and pushed back against stereotypes. "A true independent takes the best of both (parties). And that's not indecision. That's judgment," he said. He argued that that independents can be the most powerful lawmakers in Congress because they are the "majority makers," the people who decide the outcome of close votes.

Many saw the video as more evidence that McConaughey is preparing for a campaign of his own, possibly as an independent. He has touted the work of former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who with his daughter Heather Manchin founded the Independent Leadership Council to promote independent candidates for Congress .

But while independents showed their muscle at the ballot box this year, they did not perform well as candidates. There were 173 independents running for the House this fall and 50 for the Senate, according to tracking website The Candidate. No independent won.

But their increasing numbers and visibility make it likely that this will change, Gruber said.

And there is some evidence that the number of people who consider themselves independent is even larger than what Gallup reports.

When Open Primaries surveyed registered Democrats in New York City, the group found that 40% identified as independent; they had registered as Democrat in order to be able to vote in the primary, or stayed with the party out of lethargy or simply the comfort of a long-term affiliation, Gruber said.

The past decade has given rise to another category of voter: the politically homeless . Like some independents, those who describe themselves as politically homeless feel they have been excluded from the major parties; some want other options . But many independents are perfectly happy without a party affiliation; in fact, they prefer it, even without the sense of community that being active in a party can confer.

This is especially true for young adults, who came of age in a time of heightened partisan rancor: 56% of Gen Z identifies as independent, Gallup found, and 50 million of them were eligible to vote this year, according to an analysis by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

"The two largest groups that voted Democrat in the midterms were people under 30, and Latinos. And those are the two largest contingencies of independent voters," Gruber said.

And the energy that these young voters and other independents brought to the midterms upended outdated stereotypes about independents, Gruber said: that "they're fence sitters, they're not involved, they don't care, they're disinterested."

"Independent voters showed up in huge numbers to say we absolutely do care, and we have something to say. In my opinion, this was the first real exhibition of the power of independent voters to decide a lot of races, and they did so."

Krupnikov, at the University of Michigan, noted that the outcome was an amalgamation of factors; it wasn't independents alone that gave Democrats the House and Senate.

"It is a combination of people's political choices, but it is also a question of turnout efforts.... And, Republicans are also important — both in the candidates they select and in their turnout decisions."

She added, "I am not sure we can put the responsibility on any particular group, rather so far the midterm seems like a collective moment where the preferences of many different groups happened to overlap in a really consequential way."

But as McConaughey said in his video, independents can sometimes be the deciding factor when votes are close, and Gruber said there is a clear message for both parties in the midterm results:

"You better start building bridges with independent voters because they are now America's kingmakers, and neither party has any type of long-term relationship with them."

Parties historically haven't liked independents because they can't control them, he said, and the parties' efforts to indoctrinate them or wish them away haven't worked. But they're going to have to forge a new relationship with independents going forward, he said, "because there are so many of them."