We love to label things.

No matter if it’s objects, concepts or people, assigning clean-cut names and descriptors to everything is how we are able to understand the vast and mysterious world around us.

The same thing goes for politics. Despite the wide range of political beliefs that a singular person could have, we organize ourselves into tidy political parties for our own convenience.

In the U.S., the prevalence of the two-party system led to three labels being used to describe a person’s political leaning: democrat, republican or independent.

While the first two labels have clear ties to established political parties, the third is much harder to pin down.

According to research from The Forum, the typical questions presented to poll respondents ask first if the respondent identifies as a Democrat, Republican or independent. If the respondent replies that they are an independent, they are then asked if they feel like they lean toward a party.

While around a third of the country identified as independent in 2024, a vast majority of these so-called independents also expressed a lean toward one party or another.

Paul Goren, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota who specializes in political psychology, said many self-identified independents are “closet partisans.” 

“The number of independents is not as big when we count the closet partisans as independents, and it’s not as small as when we count them as all closet partisans,” Goren said. “But we don’t know what that number is, so there’s kind of no way other than splitting it right down the middle.”

Why are so many people shrugging off membership of a party if they recognize that they prefer one party over the other?

Goren said the main reason why these independent leaners decline to use partisan labels is because of the political polarization in the U.S.

“A lot of these people who say ‘I’m independent’ and closer to, say, the Democratic party, they really are Democrats,” Goren said. “But, in our polarized political environment, saying you’re a partisan or a member of one party or another party is not as desirable or as flattering to yourself as saying you’re an independent and vote with the person, not the party.”

It’s absolutely true that political labels are being stained by the divisive and polarized political language that we are exposed to every day.

The Pew Research Center found in 2022 that Americans of one party increasingly associated members of the opposing party with descriptors like “close-minded,” “dishonest,” “immoral” and other negative characteristics.

This represents the sad fact that what were once generic political terms have become something far more sinister — insults.

Outside of this partisan hatred, discontent with the political system as a whole also plays a role in pushing people away from identifying with a party.

Goren said public opinion polls showed that much of the stigma around party labels comes from a large dislike of both major political parties, in part due to the arguments and rhetoric used by major political figures.

“To be a partisan, that’s not a very good thing in an environment where no problems can be solved collectively through politics and where partisan just means a lot of back-and-forth fighting that almost seems kind of petty,” Goren said.

Adding fuel to the political fire is the fact that, while both the Democratic and Republican parties historically had a wide variety of internal factions with their own ideologies, the parties themselves have grown distant from each other.

Goren said that, outside of a party suffering a major electoral defeat, the growing political distance between the Democratic and Republican parties will likely keep ideological labels a controversial item in the future.

“Political elites in both parties have been moving farther away from one another over time,” Goren said. “Democrats have shifted to the left ideologically, Republicans have really shifted to the right ideologically.”

So, where does that leave us? 

While understandable that political division may make people hesitant to identify with one side or another, we have to realize that saying you are a member of one party does not mean that you live and die with that party. People change, beliefs change and politics certainly change. There is no reason why your party identification cannot change with them.

Furthermore, when discussing politics with someone with a differing perspective, try to discover what actually matters to them. Their overall label is just a starting point for understanding what motivates them in politics.

After all, the two-party system leaves many reasons why a person might lean one way or the other. A person’s overall label is just a starting point to understanding what motivates them in politics.

We all are far more nuanced than we give each other credit for. In the face of this political complexity, we are left with only one option: to take back party labels as broad descriptors of how you vote, not as charged insults or gestures of hate.

So if you have issues you truly care about or a political party that you prefer, don’t shy away from labeling yourself. After all, stigma around political language will not improve if we are too scared to reclaim our political descriptors. 

If you find a party label that fits more than another, take it up with pride. Don’t be afraid to tell people what matters to you and how you may differ from others with the same label.

Let’s redefine what it means to be defined.