What I see is the legacy of the 1980 Carter-Reagan presidential election, when a publicly conservative Reagan overwhelmingly defeated a publicly Liberal incumbent. That election moved a large proportion of Democrats, union members, blue collar workers and Catholics, into the Independent category where they have stayed ever since. The Independent voters, who are about equal in number to either Republicans or Democrats, are generally less interested in elections than major party members....Independents are decidedly conservative in fiscal and moral matters.
The Independents have been voting predominantly Republican since 1980 with two exceptional occasions. One was the 1992 Affair Perot, which allowed the minority Clinton party to win and the other was the 2008 where Independents responded to the July-October financial meltdown and voted against John McCain.
Independents voted against the incumbents in 2008 out of distress. A year later we may have returned to the norm of conservatism for Independents. Independents voted against Obama who actively made the NJ and VA gubernatorial campaigns about himself. Independents are doing what they did in 2008, voting against the status quo.