When Peter Gallagher first registered to vote ahead of the 2002 midterm elections, he opted to not identify with any political party.
Over two decades on, the 40-year-old Fairport man has remained an unaffiliated voter.
His reasons range from not wanting to receive constant campaign literature and phone calls from political candidates to an unwillingness to be beholden to any political party which might shift in its beliefs and platforms over time.
“The way that the parties align right now is different from the way they sort of identified themselves in terms of policies and what candidates they trumpeted from my parents’ generation,” Gallagher said. “That can change again the next eight to 12 years, and I don’t want to be pigeonholed as a Republican or a Democrat when the definition of that identity can change from under my feet.”
Those shifts have been most pronounced in the hyper-partisan presidential campaigns, of late. And Gallagher is not alone in spurning both major parties.
In Monroe County, unaffiliated, or “blank,” voters became the second most common type of registered voter, after Democrats, in 2022.
Unaffiliated voters since have emerged as the second largest voting bloc in all of the county’s towns and the city of Rochester save for two: in Webster, blank voters outnumber both Democrats and Republicans, and in Chili, Democrats and Republicans are the two largest voting blocs, with Republicans outranking blanks by exactly five voters, according to an October report from the Monroe County Board of Elections.
The results can have disparate effects. When centrist voters abandon a party and forfeit the ability to vote in the party primary, it elevates more partisan voices in those all-important elections. Yet a growing field of unaffiliated voters would seemingly stretch general election campaigns to appeal more broadly, while shifting how candidates court a voting bloc that lacks a shared ideology.
“People will call me old-fashioned, but I still think there is nothing like showing up at the door. Nothing,” said Christine Christopher, a longtime strategist and campaign manager for Democratic candidates. “You have to make those relationships; you have to talk to people.”
Blanks overtook Republicans after the Independence Party, the most popular third party in the county, lost its ballot status — meaning it was no longer an option for party registration or for candidates to run on that line. That change orphaned some 18,000 voters, leading to a spike in blank voters.
While that event created a surge in numbers, blank voters had been on a steady rise since 2012. In all, the number of unaffiliated voters has risen about 59% in the past 25 years. Comparably, Democrats have increased enrollment by about 43%, and Republicans have dropped by about 14%.
A similar trend can be seen at the state level.
In the past 25 years, the number of no-party voters has increased by 37% and Democrats by 22%, while Republicans have dropped by 8%, according to data from the New York State Board of Elections. Blanks first overtook Republicans statewide in 2020.
In total, registered voters have increased by 16% statewide in that timeframe.
Patrick Reilly, chairman of Monroe County Republican Committee, said the shift in enrollment has pushed the party to rely less on voter registration rolls. Campaigns instead are turning to market research and surveys to identify potential voters.
“They’re unaffiliated voters, but that doesn’t mean they’re independents,” Reilly said. “In fact, I’ve read and seen quite a bit that they really aren’t, and that they either lean right or they lean left.”
Reilly also pointed to a change in third party rules in 2019 under Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a contributor to party-less voters. That year, the Public Campaign Finance Commission voted to increase the threshold for a party to stay on the ballot to 2% of the vote in a gubernatorial election or 130,000 votes, whichever was higher. The previous threshold was 50,000 votes.
Along with the Independence Party, the Green, Libertarian, Serving American Movement, and Reform parties lost their ballot status under those rules. The two remaining third parties are the Working Families Party and the Conservative Party, which typically are ran as dual-party lines by Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively.
“I think that was bad, I think we were better off when there were more options for people to enroll in,” Reilly said. “
Laura Keeney is another unaffiliated voter. She pointed to the increasing partisanship on the national stage, and the theatrical nature of the upcoming presidential election, for example, as a motivation to stay away from party allegiance.
“It’s just chaos, it’s a circus,” Keeney said. “And it doesn’t really accomplish anything as opposed to looking at the issues and looking where candidates stand on the issue...I just never really wanted to be part of that party politics.”
The rising number of unaffiliated voters presents a unique challenge to political campaigns — even in heavily Democratic areas like Monroe County.
Gerrit Mora is founder of Tuesday Digital, a campaign advertising firm which works largely with Democratic candidates. Campaigns are having to do broader outreach as more voters decide they don’t identify with any political party.
“It’s just become more of a hurdle over time, as people become more disillusioned with things,” Mora said.
Christopher has managed campaigns dating back to the successful 1990 Assembly run of the late Susan John. She, too, said the trends in enrollment data mark alienation of voters from the two major parties.
“Quite frankly, what I think it speaks to, particularly in traditionally Republican-leaning areas, is that people are no longer following the party lines,” Christopher said. “But they’re not yet ready to say they’re Democrats.”
But that also can exacerbate voter dissatisfaction. In Rochester, for example, Democratic primary races tend to predict who will be elected to office, given Republicans are outnumbered by about six to one.
“If you don’t register with the dominant party in your area, then you’re never going to have a voice when it comes to a primary,” Christopher said.
That fact isn’t lost on Gallagher, who said it’s a choice between enrolling in a party he may not have long-term allegiance to or losing out on his vote in critical elections.
“There’s a lot of things decided at the primaries that it would be useful to do that,” he said. “But I still don’t want to put my name down for a party.”
