Catching up with independents: the voters who keep fleeing the two major parties are giving libertarianism a try.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: From the Top

IT'S HARD TO imagine a more favorable climate for an opposition party to gain voters than an election year with an unpopular White House incumbent under whose watch the economy has been and likely will continue to be awful. Yet a mere nine days before the beginning of 2012, a USA Today study found that Republican registration in the 28 states where party affiliation is recorded was down 800,000 since 2008, including 350,000 in eight swing states.

Who's gaining? Not the governing Democrats, who deservedly lost twice as much. It's the ranks of the unaffiliated that have grown by 400,000, including 325,000 in those eight swing states. Even amid the clarifying up-or-down, Team Blue or Team Red exercise of high-profile politics, Americans are increasingly choosing to jump off the political pendulum, reject tribalism, and declare themselves swing voters. And if the first week of 2012 is any guide, these are the people most likely to support practical libertarian politics.

This issue of reason went to the printer as New Hampshire primary voters were heading for the polls; by the time you read this South Carolina and maybe even Florida will be in the rearview mirror. But even after the initial Iowa caucuses, exit polls showed something extraordinary: Independents are making up for the enthusiasm gap created by the declining rolls of Republicans, and they are breaking hard for the only libertarian in the race, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

The Iowa Republican caucuses had virtually the same voter turnout this year (122,000) as in 2008 (119,000), leading to many headlines like "Why the GOP Still Has an Enthusiasm Problem" (as Talking Points Memo put it). If anything, the problem for Republicans is worse than those numbers suggest.

In 2008 exit polls showed that 86 percent of Iowa caucusers self-identified as Republicans. In 2012 that share was down to 75 percent. The difference? Again, independents, whose ranks grew from 13 percent to 23 percent. And who did they favor? By more than 2 to 1, Ron Paul.

Paul received 43 percent of the independent vote, compared to 19 percent for runner-up Mitt Romney. He also led the field among those who had never previously voted in an Iowa Republican caucus (33 percent, compared to Rick Santorum's 23 percent) and dominated among voters under 30 (48 percent to Santorum's 23 percent).

Predictably, this non-Republican support for Paul has led to a lot of sneering among the declining ranks of Republican true believers...