Everyone is talking about Independent voters. Everyone.

They’re the largest and fastest-growing segment of the electorate across the country. Every pundit and DC prognosticator will tell you independents will determine who wins in 2024. Yet those same pundits are having a spiritual and methodological crisis! On Monday they report that independents don’t actually exist (we’re looking at you, New York Times!) and by Friday they concede that independents will be kingmakers. Huh? What gives? Who are independent voters? Are they figments of our imagination, kingmakers, both…or something altogether new?

On Tuesday May 7th at 3pm ET, Open Primaries President John Opdycke will sat down with longtime Independent movement leader Jackie Salit to explore these and other questions. Salit has been organizing independent voters and political challenges to the binary status quo for 40 years. She is a highly respected political innovator and advocate for the rights of independent voters. She is the President of IndependentVoting.org, author of Independents Rising and co-author of the Independent Voter; she ran Mike Bloomberg’s mayoral campaigns on the Independence Line and most recently, co-founded the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University.

She is the expert in all things Independent and we’re ready to dig into this topic with her, shake loose old narratives and explore why precisely do independents cause so much heartburn among the DC crowd.