Democrats Had ‘Blue Tsunami’ Because Of Independents—Now How Do They Keep Those Voters?

0:03Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me once again is John Opdycke. He's the founder and president of Open Primaries. John, thanks so much for coming back on.

0:13John Opdycke: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. The midterms were this week and they have been described as everything from a blue tsunami to a Republican bloodbath. Democrats decisively flipped both chambers of Congress and they won races in places where a Democrat hasn't won in decades and in states where President Trump won by double digits in 2024. And you and I had a conversation last month and you said this, if the Democrats take the House and the Senate, it's because of independence, pure and simple. That did happen. So to start off the conversation, can you talk to us a little bit about the impact that independence had on the results?

0:49John Opdycke: Yeah, and my team is still pouring through the data, But our early analysis is that right now the Democrats flipped seven Senate seats. And there's two more that are outstanding. So it could go as high as nine. And if you look at the seven races that have already been called, independents broke almost two to one for the Democrat over the Republican. and in four of those seven races provided more than their margin of victory. So the other thing, too, and again, we don't have all the data, is that the number of independent voters, if early voting is an indicator, was much higher than in your typical midterm.

1:35John Opdycke: So independents broke for the Democrats, provided their margin of victory in four of the seven Senate districts and could be as high as six of the nine if the two remaining races in Alaska and Mississippi are called for the Democrat. And in dozens of congressional seats as well, independents were broke for the Democrats and provided their margin of victory. So I think that, you know, it was a blue wave. It was a red bloodbath. And it was also an independent surge. And I think that's something that hopefully the media is going to pay a lot of attention to. I think that independent surge is the part of the headline that's getting cut off from a lot of the stories.

2:20But that's why I'm having you on, because I want to break that down. The question I have when you're rattling off these statistics that independents are so decisively breaking for the Democrat, the obvious question is why? And is there one specific reason or is there a whole host of different reasons? Because when you were on last time, I really appreciated you breaking down the misconceptions about independence. You were saying everyone always thinks they're the moderate. They're in between Dems and Republicans. That's not the case. There's no ideological cohesion with independence. Why were they breaking for Democrats this time?

2:55Well, I think in general, big picture, I think people have this right.

3:02John Opdycke: It was a repudiation of President Trump. It was a repudiation of the ways in which the Republicans went back on all their promises to the voters. They didn't listen to the people that got them elected in 2024. And they paid a price for that. And I think that you can get more granular. I think the cruelty of ICE, people did not vote for that. I think the tariffs, the war in Iran, the rising cost of living, these are all issues that, you know, independents, like many Democrats and Republicans, are very, not just concerned about, but angry at the level of the lack of listening, how it seems like, you know, we elect these people, they tell us they're going to do this, and then they do the exact opposite.

3:56And I think that independents are particularly sensitive to, I don't know what you call

4:04John Opdycke: it, lying, deception, not doing what you say you're going to do. And I think that the results at the big picture really show a willingness of Americans to say, no, not on our watch. We want more accountability. We want more responsiveness to the things we're actually concerned about. Accountability was a big issue. Cost of living, a big issue. And I felt a little bit like I was just on replay from 2024 when I was talking to Republicans this time around and Democrats back in 2024, because it doesn't take rocket science, right, to figure out what matters to voters. It's the economy. And if you try to gaslight people and say, no, it's not that bad when they can't afford groceries, when they're making tough financial decisions.

4:59You know, that's not a message that flies with voters. And in an exit poll, this is what they found were the issues that were either a major or crucial factor to the majority of voters this election. Cost of living, immigration, AI and data centers, government corruption, and the war against Iran. And I know that independent voters certainly are not a monolith here. And you said before that you can't put them in a box, but what mattered most to them out of that list? Or was it a little bit of everything? Or it depends who the voter was and where they lived.

5:30John Opdycke: Well, I think it's a little bit of everything. I think all those issues obviously resonate differently with different voters. But beyond just the specific issues, take the data centers, for example. I think that what voters are most unhappy about is that they have this sense and again I think independents are particularly sensitive to this but I think many Democrats and Republicans also have this sense of we elected you to represent us and it seems like you don't represent us you represent some big tech company that wants to come to town to build something you represent some foreign government that wants it like people are confused by the people that are supposed to be looking out for them are not looking out for them so i think that all of the issues that you just described i think a common theme in them is the sense of betrayal a sense of uh you're not looking out for us you're not representing us we live in a representative democracy and that's what's supposed to happen and that's not happening and we're very angry about that we want people who are going to represent us and our interests and i i think that that's again that's a common thread in all of these issues that the pollsters you know whether it's the war in iran whether it's the data centers whether it's the tariffs whether it's, you know, the Epstein files, you name it.

7:05John Opdycke: How come people aren't, how come people don't feel represented? That's an issue I hear a lot from voters, and especially from where I'm from, because originally I grew up, raised, lived my whole life until I was an adult in the first district in Pennsylvania, Bucks County, which is one of the most purple districts in this country. And people, when you're talking to them about politics one-on-one, it's not even left or right, it's not Democrat or Republican. It's just about the issues. And why is this person not working for me? And you told me last time that the mistake a lot of Democrats make time and time again is that when they win an election, thanks to independents, they say, oh, now these people are Democrats.

7:47And you said that could not be further from the truth. So I'm curious, how long do independents typically give these candidates that they voted for runway to make progress on the things and the issues that they cared about that they voted them in office for before they say, you know what, you no longer have my vote?

8:06John Opdycke: Well, I think two years, although it's somewhere between two minutes and two years. You know, the Democratic Party is still as unpopular as Donald Trump. I mean, that's one of the funny things about the polls is that you know, leading up to the election, Donald Trump's approval rating was the lowest of any president. Everyone talks about that. The only entity lower than him was the Democratic Party. And so I think the Democrats, and there are, to their credit, there are a number of Democrats who are ringing the warning bells to their fellow Democrats and saying, guys, if we don't take these independents seriously, they're gone.

8:51John Opdycke: They're going to flip right back. So we have our work cut out for us. And I certainly hope that they do that. One of the things that we're going to be looking very closely at, and we're going to be pushing this is, hey, there's a huge presidential primary coming up. Voting starts in about a year. And both the Democrats and the Republicans are going to have big open primaries to determine who their presidential nominee is. Independents want to vote in those primaries. They want to have a say in who the Democrats are going to nominate and the Republicans are going to nominate. They don't just want to wait until November of 2028 to weigh in like they just did in the midterms.

9:34John Opdycke: And it's still the case that a third of the country locks those independents out of voting in those presidential primaries. So we're going to be putting a lot of pressure on both parties to open up their systems so that independents can really fully participate in the next important election, which obviously is the presidential. I know that people that are Democrats or lean left, they're celebrating the past couple of days, right, based on these results. But you bring up a really interesting point that the Democratic brand is in the trash still, right? Their approval rating is still underwater, just like President Trump's, just like the Republican Party's.

10:15Now it's a little bit higher, but it's still underwater. And I just had a congressman from California, a Democrat on, and he was discussing that. And he said, I hear voters. I know that Democrats still aren't very popular and we need to regain their trust again. And I'm curious, what do you make of that? Because I'm hearing that. But then you see on social media some other Democrats talking about this millennial hope that we're now re harnessing for to keep going on to 2028. I mean, what do you think that's losing the plot a little bit?

10:52John Opdycke: Yeah, I again, I I really think the Democrats struggle with this because they just did. They did. They had a big victory. They got a lot of votes. And I think there are voices in their party who are going to want to be arrogant and say those votes are now part of our coalition. But you have to you have to build that. You have to respond to the people that voted for you. Otherwise, and this is true across the board, but it's very true with independence. If you don't deliver, and I think here's what I would say about what the American people mean by delivering. I think more and more Americans are saying in different ways, they're saying, you know, if we're going to solve our economic challenges, our border immigration challenges, We need to find ways to bring together conservative and liberal, libertarian and socialist ideas from across the spectrum, put them together in new combinations, new innovations so that we can actually deal with these problems.

12:04John Opdycke: And I think that the lesson for the Democrats is people want you to reach across the aisle. They want you to be open-minded. They don't want you just to say, hey, because we got elected, only our solutions and ideas are legitimate. That's not true. That's not what the American people are looking for. They're looking for solutions, not Democratic solutions or Republican solutions. They're looking for actual solutions. And I think the Democrats are going to have to really push themselves to be more open-minded and inclusive of ideas that are coming from lots of different places on the political spectrum.

12:47As we know, Democrats, with the help of independents, won the House and the Senate. So they'll have majorities there. But President Trump is still in the White House and he still has veto power, which he made known on social media and in interviews. He posted a photo of a MAGA hat that said veto. He's also in an interview said, I'm open to working with Democrats on certain things, but I ultimately have the veto power. Does that come into play for independents? Will they say, hey, I didn't, these members of Congress, these lawmakers, their hands were tied. They couldn't deliver on all those promises because President Trump ultimately has that veto power.

13:31Or will that not be a factor in 2028?

13:35John Opdycke: Yeah, I think it's a factor. I mean, we have a system of government with checks and balances, and people respect that and appreciate that. And there's a long history of the parties playing off each other, where, for example, the Democrats will pass a bill in the Congress knowing that it will be vetoed just simply to help their fundraising, saying, hey, we did this, but he vetoed it. And that's kind of people are wise to that game. So obviously, the president can veto things. That's his job. And Congress is not, it's not like they completely control things, but I think the challenge for them is not just to do symbolic change where they can say, hey, we did our job.

14:30John Opdycke: It was the president that didn't pass these bills, but to really recognize that the American people are not going to fall for that game. They're not going to buy it. And I think that's true both for President Trump. He can't just veto everything or he'll pay a price. And it's true for Congress where they can't just pass things knowing that they'll get vetoed. There has to be some way that these sides work together to deliver for the American people. Otherwise, people are not going to be happy. There is a historic amount of people in this country now who identify as independent. So I'm curious, what specifically are you looking out for between now and 2028 when it comes to independence?

15:15John Opdycke: A number of things. One is this issue of being able to vote in primaries. It's a big concern for independence. They want in. I mean, you see it. And again, we don't have all the data, but independents are not this myth that independents are fence sitters they're not that political they're not that they're not as involved gone that myth is over independents have said we want in we making our voices heard we saw that in november i think the a cutting edge question is are we going to have full access not just to the november election but to round one to the primary at the state and the federal and the presidential level.

15:58John Opdycke: That's one thing I'm looking at. I just want to interrupt you really quickly because I want to ask, I mean, could the argument be made that they're perhaps more political because they're not just someone who's going to not research each candidate and say, oh, I'm just going to vote down ballot. All Democrats, all Republicans. I don't know who this person is. They're doing their homework. Absolutely. They're actually more concerned about the country than the partisans. The partisans are just, hey, I'll vote team blue or team red no matter what they do. Independents take self-government. They take the role of the citizenry, I think, more seriously than anybody else.

16:34John Opdycke: So you're right. But there's been this myth that independents are less involved, and I think we've shattered that. Beyond just the primaries, though, I think that the issue of the gerrymandering of the country is going to be something that's got to be talked about in 2027 and 2028. Obviously, the mid-decade gerrymander didn't work for the Republicans. They made some blunders, but that doesn't cover over the fact that gerrymandering is still practiced by both parties at a very high level. And people do not like that. They don't like the idea of politicians choosing the voters instead of voters choosing the politicians.

17:16John Opdycke: The other thing is that a number of independent candidates out west in particular did very well. They broke through the 30 % mark. Some of them got 35, 40, 45 % of the vote. And I think there's going to be a lot of, which those are big numbers. Those are impressive numbers. Usually independent candidates get 2%, 3%. They're seen as very marginal fringe participants. And I think we made some progress. We have to consolidate that and think, what's the next steps? But I think primaries, gerrymandering, and independent candidacies are all going to be on the table and things that independents are working on, talking about going into 27 and 28.

18:05There are so many things to look out for between now and 2028. I can't believe in 2026 we're already looking that far ahead, but we always do. John Opdyke, thank you so much for providing your insight today. I hope to have many more conversations soon.

18:19John Opdycke: Sounds great. Talk to you soon.