Over the past half century, the American political parties have – by most measures – been moving further and further away from each other. Democratic politicians have become more liberal and Republicans have become more conservative (Abramowitz 2010; Layman et al. 2006; Levendusky 2009). It is this growing contrast between our major parties that makes the ever-expanding percent of independent voters just so baffling to American political spectators, such as Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman. Independent voters, he concludes in the pages of The New York Times, must be nothing more than a set of “confused, clueless” people.

Linda Killian falls on the other side of the spectrum. In 2012 Killian, a Washington journalist and political commentator, published a book with the following dedication: “For all the Independent and Swing voters who love this country and want to make it better.” The book is called The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents and it stands as a love letter to people who call themselves politically independent. Killian presents a series of extended conversations with independents across America. Incensed by the extreme levels of disagreement between the two parties, these people express serious misgivings about the American partisan system.

“I don't get why they can't work with each other,” Scott Clinger, a forty-seven-year-old policeman from Ohio tells Killian (p. 11). The frustration is palpable: “ridiculous and embarrassing are two words frequently used by independent voters to describe many of our political leaders and their antics,” writes Killian (p. 45).

The key word is embarrassing. The very conditions that Krugman believes should have increased people's urgency to pick a side have instead pushed Killian's interviewees to distance themselves from parties. Clinger, the forty-seven-year-old policeman, calls the parties “crazy” (p. 11). A fifty-two-year-old small business owner tells Killian she thinks the types of partisan debates that lead to gridlock are “stupid” (p. 17). A thirty-one-year-old father of three describes partisan politics as a “big dog and pony show” (p. 12). Another independent tells Killian Americans are “tired” of partisan politics (p. 12).