A third influential political party in the US may be on the horizon

It's been mentioned here on GLP a number of times in the past two weeks. What I haven't seen mentioned is the growing importance of the registered Independent voter. There are 31 states that require a voter to claim affiliation with either party or independent. In 2020, for the first time ever, there were more registered Independents than Republicans in these 31 states!

"New data from Ballot Access News, which tracks registrations in the 31 states that require voters to register by party, shows that independents account for 29.09 percent of voters in them, compared with 28.87 percent for Republicans. As recently as 2004, Republicans outpaced independents by nearly 10 percentage points.

There are still way more registered Democrats; 39.66 percent of voters are registered with that party.

This marks the first time since party registration began in the early 1900s that the number of registered independents in the United States has surpassed members of either major political party, according to Ballot Access News."
[link to www.washingtonpost.com (secure)]

Notice that there are still way more Republicans and Independents than Demonrats? Right now a majority of Republicans believe that the election was stolen, and that Trump needs to keep fighting. If the Republican party continues its failure to support election integrity, I can see many Republicans walking away from that party and affiliating with the Independent voters. Imagine an Independent party that had more votes than either the RINOs or Demonrats... It could happen.