Reddit mentions of The Myth of the Independent Voter

> Is that because voters are already polarised

Yes. I think a lot of people have this ideal of like, voters carefully evaluating each candidate in every election which is in practice totally insane. The two parties in the US are pretty distinct and party affiliation is a very strong predictor of voting behavior. Unless you have a very particular and unusual set of issues you care about it (only stuff where there's major divisions inside both parties) ticket splitting is totally irrational. Most voters know this, which is why the number of true "independents" is so low (most self described "independents" are reliable partisans who just don't self-identify with the parties for various reasons). Winning elections is mostly about turning out your base and demoralizing the opponent's base and TV ads aren't actually any good at this, since they're targetted towards extremely uninformed voters who probably won't turn out no matter what.

From Party Politics in America

In Ch 6 on pg 113:
>But they (independents) are less informed than party identifiers are, less concerned about specific elections, and less likely to vote... the pure independents typically have the most dismal record; they are less involved and less informed, on average, than are other American citizens.

Their sources for the above quote are:

1)The Myth of the Independent voter

2)Change and Continuity (no year in the cite though)

3) "Courting the Independents" CQ Weekly June 16 2008, David Nather

Various polls are done on this from time to time with the predictable result. This is one of those things that is generally regarded as "true" among political scientists. From time to time a new style of study will come along that attempts to challenge this idea, claiming that the underlying process for determining independents is suspect and pointing out that this is more art than science. The authors of Party Politics in America do differentiate between "types" of independents - the basic argument being that people who say they are independent actually are not, and in fact have the same voting characteristics as some partisans - they just like to call themselves independents. Nevertheless, the poor result for independents comes through again and again(Pg 27).

Keep in mind these are generalities. They are not saying all independents are uninformed, just that they tend to be less informed than partisans.

The answer to your question is yes- there is a clear difference. The distinction comes from many people's false equivalence of "independent" with "moderate" in American politics. This is not the case, as a majority of independents are as liberal/conservative or even more so than Democratic or Republican party members. It is these super liberals/conservatives that more frequently vote in primaries.

Here is a good book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Independent-Voter-Bruce-Keith/dp/0520077202

Here is a free article from a respected source: http://cookpolitical.com/story/6608