Matthew McConaughey asked Americans on Sunday to stop treating a vote for an independent candidate as a wasted one. In a state where unaffiliated voters outnumber Democrats and Republicans combined, the argument deserves a hearing, and Colorado’s independents can begin with a ballot they already receive.
Matthew McConaughey’s video runs six minutes and makes one request: that voters stop treating a vote for an independent as a vote thrown away. He opens by asking how the “unwasted vote” has been working out, and he is careful to say that he endorses no candidate, party or organization. By Monday morning the clip had been viewed more than 1.8 million times on Facebook.
His case rests on a fact that holds up, and in Colorado it needs no poll. On Oct. 1, according to the Colorado Secretary of State, 50.9 percent of the state’s active voters were registered as unaffiliated, against 24.7 percent who were Democrats and 22 percent who were Republicans. In El Paso County the unaffiliated share was 53.2 percent. Colorado’s largest party is no party, and it is bigger than the other two put together. We think McConaughey is right that a candidate without a party label should be judged as a candidate rather than written off as a spoiler.
We made a version of this argument in June, when a survey commissioned by the Town of Monument showed that half of the town’s registered voters belonged to no party. That was the case for a newspaper without a party. McConaughey’s is the case for candidates without one.
Two doors
His reasoning runs as follows. Most congressional seats are safe for one party, so the real contest is the primary, where few people vote. By the count of Unite America, a group that campaigns for open primaries, 87 percent of House seats in 2024 were effectively decided in primaries by 7 percent of eligible voters. The group published that estimate a month before the general election. Meanwhile the House is narrowly held. On Monday the House Clerk listed 218 Republicans, 214 Democrats, one independent and two vacant seats. That 218 is exactly the number a bill needs when all 435 seats are filled. In a chamber that close, McConaughey argues, three to five members who answered to neither party would decide what passes.
The math holds, within limits. If four of today’s Republican seats were held by members of no caucus, each party would have 214 votes and neither could pass a bill on its own. On votes where the parties split, a small bloc would decide. On votes where they agree, it would not matter. This summer Joe Manchin, the former senator from West Virginia, and his daughter Heather started the Independent Leadership Council to back “a handful” of independent candidates for Congress, NPR reported. McConaughey cites the group by name.
Admittedly, independents are less independent than the label suggests. Gallup found that 45 percent of American adults called themselves independents in 2025, a record, against 27 percent for each party. But 35 points of that 45 lean toward one party or the other, and only one adult in ten leans toward neither. McConaughey concedes that most independents still vote with a party. Registration is not identity either, and some of Colorado’s unaffiliated voters are partisans in all but paperwork. Those independents who reach Congress tend to choose a side as well. Kevin Kiley of California left the Republican Party in March and became the House’s only independent. He still caucuses with Republicans, to keep his committee assignments.
Is a vote for an independent wasted, then? Only if enough voters decide in advance that it is. Nebraska tested the idea in 2024. Dan Osborn ran for the Senate by petition and said he would not caucus with either party. He won 436,493 votes, or 46.5 percent, according to the state’s official canvass. He lost, and nobody looking at that number would call his voters a rounding error. A vote is wasted when it goes against the voter’s own judgment: cast for a candidate the voter does not want, out of fear of one the voter wants even less.
What Colorado has already done
Colorado has done part of what reformers elsewhere ask for. Since voters approved Proposition 108 in 2016, unaffiliated voters have been able to vote in a major party’s primary without joining it. This year they were mailed both the Democratic and the Republican ballot and could vote only one. When the system began in 2018, the state warned that if both came back marked, neither would count. It is a fair picture of the choice McConaughey describes: two doors, and no third. In 2024 Coloradans were offered a different arrangement, a single primary open to every candidate followed by ranked-choice voting in November. Proposition 131 failed, 53.5 percent to 46.5, and El Paso County rejected it by a slightly wider margin.
That leaves the primary as the place where the unaffiliated majority has the most say, especially where one party dominates. Around Monument and Palmer Lake, every precinct voted Republican for president in 2016, 2020 and 2024, as we reported in September. In places like that, the choice that matters is often made in June.
What to do
None of the three things we would ask needs a new law.
Unaffiliated voters should use the primary ballot they already get. It is the one reform on offer that is already in force, and it puts them in the room where safe seats are decided.
Voters of every stripe should judge a candidate without a party the way they judge the others: by what the candidate promises, and whether they believe it. A candidate’s odds of winning are a forecast, not a qualification.
Anyone who runs for Congress as an independent should say before the election whether they would caucus with a party, and which one. The label describes a line on the ballot, but the caucus decides the committee seats, as Kiley’s case shows. Voters who choose an independent are entitled to know which door the candidate means to use.
McConaughey asked how the unwasted vote has been working out. Half of Colorado’s voters have already given one answer, on their registration forms.
We live here too.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Why an Independent Paper, in a Town That Left the Parties, June 20, on the town survey that found half of Monument’s voters unaffiliated · The Changing Politics of Northern El Paso County, Sept. 10, the presidential vote around Monument and Palmer Lake, precinct by precinct
The video: “Independent counts.”, Matthew McConaughey, Facebook, Oct. 18, 2026
National figures: New High of 45% in U.S. Identify as Political Independents, Gallup, Jan. 12, 2026 · 87% of U.S. House Elections Already Determined in Primaries by Just 7% of Americans, Unite America, Oct. 8, 2024 · Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, party breakdown · Inside Joe Manchin’s new quest to elect more independents to Congress, NPR, July 27, 2026 · GOP lawmaker says he’s leaving the Republican Party and will serve as an independent, Associated Press, March 9, 2026
Nebraska, 2024: Official Report of the Board of State Canvassers, General Election, Nov. 5, 2024, Nebraska Secretary of State, p. 16 · This independent candidate is worrying Republicans in deep-red Nebraska’s Senate race, Associated Press, Oct. 25, 2024
Colorado: Voter registration statistics, Colorado Secretary of State, September 2026 file · Unaffiliated voters: This one’s for U, Colorado Secretary of State, March 23, 2018 · Secretary of State Jena Griswold Certifies June 30 Primary Election Ballot, Colorado Secretary of State, May 1, 2026 · 2023–2024 Biennial Abstract of Votes, Colorado Secretary of State, Proposition 131
Methodology
Registration shares are the Independent’s calculation from the Colorado Secretary of State’s September 2026 statistics, which count voters as of 12:30 a.m. on Oct. 1, 2026. They use active voters only. Counting inactive and preregistered voters as well raises the unaffiliated share to 52.8 percent statewide and 55.7 percent in El Paso County. “Unaffiliated” is a registration status. Gallup’s figures describe how adults nationally describe themselves, and the two measures are not interchangeable.
Osborn’s share is of all 938,336 votes recorded in the race, including write-ins. The House count is the figure shown on the Clerk’s website on Oct. 19, 2026, which gives no as-of date. Unite America’s 87 percent is the group’s own estimate, made before the 2024 general election; its release does not define a seat “effectively decided” in a primary.
McConaughey’s words are taken from a transcript the Independent made of the video with automatic speech recognition. Machine transcription can misrender words, so the quoted phrase and the points paraphrased here were checked against the video.
Using this reporting? Credit The Monument Independent and link to this article: https://monumentindependent.com/opinion/half-of-colorado-voters-belong-to-no-party/. Our guidelines are at Using Our Reporting.
