Where We’re
Running
IVA candidates are on the ballot in 23 states — fighting for the same independent and veteran voters this map is about. Hover any race.
The Wall
Every dot on this map is 1,000 registered independent voters, in the county where they live. Thirty-six million Americans — and for millions of them, there’s a wall between their ballot and the elections that decide almost everything.
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72 Million by identity
Registration only counts independents in the 31 jurisdictions that record it. Ask Americans directly — the Cooperative Election Study does, in every state — and 72 million adults call themselves independent.
The whole map fills in. Texas. Georgia. The Midwest. Alaska and Hawaii. Independents are everywhere — most states just never write it down.
Census 2024 adult population × CES 2024 independent share by state (60,000 respondents). State-level estimates.
In 16 states, the door is closed
Connecticut. Delaware. Florida. Idaho. Kentucky. Maryland. Nevada. New Jersey. New York. Oklahoma. Oregon. Pennsylvania. South Dakota. Utah. Wyoming. And the District of Columbia. Closed primaries: register independent, and you have no say in who reaches the general election.
In amber states, unaffiliated voters can pick a party’s ballot — the door is open, but on the parties’ terms.
Open Primaries, state-by-state rules (openprimaries.org) · NCSL cross-reference · the same classification used across the IVA Data Lab.
15.9M locked out
Sort the country by primary access, and the wall appears. 15.9 million independents — registered where their state counts them, modeled by the Independent Voter Project where it doesn’t — live behind it.
They can vote in November. But by November, most races are already decided.
4.7 million veterans
The closed-primary states are home to 4.7 million veterans. People who served under the flag — and are barred from the primaries that increasingly decide who governs.
Veterans register independent at higher rates than almost any group in American life. The wall lands on them first.
VA VetPop2023 county-level projections, FY2026. Red-tinted dots: veterans in closed-primary states.
The numbers are on our side
One dot = 1,000 people, placed within their county (identity dots: within their state — survey estimates). Sources: official state voter-registration reports (Jun–Jul 2026 snapshots); Open Primaries classifications (openprimaries.org; NCSL cross-checked); Independent Voter Project (modeled counts where states don’t register by party); VA VetPop2023 FY2026; CES 2024 × Census 2024 adults. Alaska & Hawaii shown as insets where data covers them; Alaska publishes no county registration data.