Colorado Unaffiliated Voters Are the Main Character Now

Last week felt like somebody took a highlighter to a problem I’ve been muttering about for years.

Monday: lunch with a couple of “political insiders” (consultancy world, the folks who know who’s mad at who before Twitter does). Tuesday: lunch with a dear friend who is active in the Democratic Party, and is as committed to her party’s ideals as I am committed to mine as a Republican. Friday: coffee with another guy who lives and breathes politics, even if he rolls his eyes at the label “insider.”

Different rooms. Different people. Same conclusion.

The middle is disappearing, and the unaffiliated are rising like a tide.

Here in Colorado, “unaffiliated” isn’t some fringe category anymore. It’s the category. As of September 1, 2025, over half of Colorado’s registered voters were unaffiliated. Over half. That’s not a vibe, that’s a neon sign on the freeway. (Axios) And it tracks with what I hear in real life: the Great Suburban Normie is still out there, still paying taxes, still trying to keep a kid alive through middle school, but politically? They’ve backed away from the buffet like, “No thanks. I’ve seen how this ends.”

And I don’t blame them.

Because politics right now is a sensory assault. Loud. Performative. Emotionally expensive. Social media takes every disagreement and turns it into a holy war. The people who should be doing actual work spend half their lives auditioning for a clip that will go viral with their side.

So the Normie does what any sane adult does when the room is full of screaming toddlers. They leave.

Here’s where it gets ugly. When the middle checks out, the nomination process becomes a fight to impress the most intense people still paying attention. If you want to get through a primary, you start speaking in the dialect of the base. You lean into whatever gets applause at the activist meeting, whatever wins the outrage Olympics, whatever proves you’re “pure.” And then, once you’ve done that, you try to pivot back toward the center in the general election like nobody noticed. Everybody noticed.

And I’m not writing this like some armchair philosopher who never has to touch the system.

I’m running one last time as a Republican for Weld County Commissioner.

I’m going to proudly go through the caucus and assembly process because I believe in it. I believe in neighbors showing up, hashing it out in person, and choosing who carries the banner. There is something old-school and good about that, something that feels like actual citizenship instead of drive-by politics.

But I’m also not naive. Fewer and fewer people participate in caucus and assembly. That concentrates the power to decide who even makes the ballot into a smaller and smaller circle. It takes a process that is supposed to be grassroots and turns it into something that can be dominated by the most organized, the most ideological, or the most willing to play games. More broadly, caucus-style systems are known for producing far lower participation than primaries, which is exactly why they’re so easy to capture. (Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights) And if you want a case study in how “gamesmanship” can show up when only a thin slice of people are engaged, Weld County has literally had caucus-related controversy make headlines. (The Colorado Sun)

This is not just a Colorado thing. Nationally, Gallup reported that 45% of Americans identified as political independents in 2025, a new high in their trend. (The Colorado Sun) (That number is doing a lot of work in the American story right now.) Pew’s work captures the emotional reality underneath it: Americans commonly report frustration and anger toward both parties, with frustration especially widespread. (Pew) Translation: people don’t just disagree, they’re exhausted.

Now take that exhaustion and apply it to young people, who are swimming in algorithmic outrage like it’s the water supply.

Here’s the paradox that keeps punching me in the face: young people will show up for movements, but not for parties.

Youth turnout in the 2024 presidential election was estimated at about 47% for ages 18–29, which is relatively strong historically, though down from the 2020 high point. (Map Research) So no, the kids are not asleep. But they are skeptical, and they are selective about what they’ll attach their name to.

And that brings me to organizations like Turning Point USA and Turning Point Faith.

Whatever you think of them politically, they understand something the parties forgot: people don’t just vote, they belong. They want community. They want identity. They want a mission that feels real.

A party is supposed to be a coalition. A big tent. A place where you argue inside the family and then you lock arms and fight the other guys on Election Day. What it has become, too often, is a fundraising machine with a brand strategy and a set of talking points that sound like they were assembled by a committee of consultants who have never sat at a kitchen table with a normal person.

Young people can smell that from space.

Movements, on the other hand, do not pretend. They’re not shy about what they believe. They have a narrative, a tribe, and a purpose. They also offer something that’s incredibly attractive in a chaotic world: clarity. Clear heroes. Clear villains. Clear mission. That’s dopamine. That’s identity. That’s “I know who I am.”

Parties can’t do clarity without sliding into extremism, because the only people left inside the party apparatus are, by definition, the people most invested in party politics. When the middle leaves, the average temperature in the room goes up. Then candidates have to pander to the hottest part of their side to get nominated, because that’s who votes in primaries, that’s who donates, that’s who shows up at the meetings.

Colorado tried to adjust for the rise of unaffiliated voters by letting them participate in major party primaries without joining the party (thanks to Proposition 108 in 2016). (Ballotpedia) That’s one way of admitting what everyone already knows: the unaffiliated are not “outsiders” anymore. They’re the main character.

And here’s my hypothesis, stated plainly: the Great Suburban Normie thinks political parties are running a con.

Not every single person, not always, not on every issue. But broadly? They look at the behavior, the hypocrisy, the moving goalposts, the melodrama, and they conclude the parties are more interested in controlling the narrative than improving the neighborhood.

That’s why, in some of my conversations last week, we landed on a truth that makes party activists furious: sometimes the only way to move an issue is to avoid the party labels altogether. The second you say “Democrat” or “Republican,” a bunch of brains shut off. The Normie checks out, and the extremes dig trenches.

So, what now?

If you want the parties to move back toward the center, you have to re-engage the people who left. Not by yelling at them for being disengaged. Not by guilt-tripping them with doom posters. You win them back by being normal. By being honest. By doing the boring work and showing receipts.

Movements have momentum because they feel authentic. Parties are bleeding because they feel like marketing.

If the Great Suburban Normie is the ballast that keeps the ship upright, then right now we’re sailing without ballast, in a storm, with the loudest passengers arguing about who gets to hold the wheel. That’s not leadership. That’s Titanic cosplay.

Engage the Normies. Bring the conversation back to the center where most people actually live. Or we’re just going to keep feeding the extremes until the middle is gone, and then we’ll all act surprised when the whole thing tips over.