The charm of independent voters

Abstract

Independent voters play an increasingly decisive role in contemporary elections, yet their collective behavior remains poorly understood. This paper investigates how a minority of voters with greater flexibility in their political preferences influences opinion formation in polarized electorates. Using a modified Deffuant model, we show that even simple heterogeneity in agents' openness to vote switching can generate rich and unexpected collective outcomes: "open-minded" agents may (i) prevent full convergence into established party blocs, (ii) give rise to transient centrist clusters, or (iii) align with the positions of major parties. These dynamics resemble empirical patterns observed among real-world independent voters. Our results demonstrate that small shifts in openness parameters can substantially reshape the macroscopic structure of political competition, offering a simple explanation for oscillatory electoral outcomes and the emergence of unstable centrist or cross-cutting coalitions.