Seeing only percentages without also relative sizes of each groups makes it hard for me to infer that. If someone identified as independent due to not feeling like there were differences between the parties in the past, maybe the growing divide in worldview of each side caused them to start to see a difference. Put another way, maybe the independents who trust the media found it harder to not pick a side.

> I would expect that the independents are, on average, seeing more clearly.

I don't know why this should be assumed. Is there any evidence that independents are more informed than other groups?

A lot of political independents pay very little if any attention to politics, except perhaps right before an election.

I was thinking along the axis of less/more personally biased, not along the axis of less/more informed. While I don't have evidence, I find it very difficult to see how the independents would be more biased.

> I find it very difficult to see how the independents would be more biased.

What do you mean by biased?

You can probably say that on average, independents are less biased than Democrats in favor of Democrats and against Republicans, and correspondingly less biased than Republicans in favor of Republicans and against Democrats, although this may not apply to some individual independents.

However, I don't view politics as a line. The terms "left" and "right" were based on seating charts in a legislature. The realm of politics and political views is vastly broader than encompassed by relatively narrow range of the American Democratic and Republican parties, and moreover, there are vehement, nasty disputes even within those parties. So in the broader sense, I would say that every individual person has there own idiosyncratic views, which may or may not overlap well with some political party, and the whole notion of being "unbiased" is somewhat questionable.

Let me put it another way: if scientists say the Earth is over 4 billion years old, and creationists say the Earth is less than 10 thousand years old, should we expect the truth to the somewhere in the middle? Should we ask the agnostics?

What do you think would happen if you asked the agnostics? Do you think they would agree with the creationists?

I don't know.

More to the point, though, I don't know that it matters. I wouldn't expect them to have a particular useful view on the matter or take them as an authority because they're supposedly "unbiased".

> Could be telling us that the most of the (non-Fox) media leans left, and the independents see it but the Democrats don't.

Well, yeah. That big jump when Trump got elected isn't because the media suddenly became much more trustworthy and only the Democrats figured it out.

Sure, but you could make a similar observation about the sudden Republican drop. Did the media suddenly become less trustworthy and only Republicans figured it out?

That supports my point, not rebuts it. My thesis is that the media shifted to the left, causing Democrats to see them more favorably and Republicans to see them less favorably, and the drop and the gain both indicate that.

I wasn't disagreeing with your thesis so much as pointing out that for both Republicans and Democrats, "trust" is more of a proxy for "does this coverage agree with my politics" (you might be making the same argument). I don't know if you can say it shows a media shift one way or the other though, since one could make a pretty strong argument that Trump was fairly terrible among Republican politicians and the media didn't have to move at all for his coverage to be worse and delight Democrats while angering Republicans.

Totally agree on the meaning of "trust" here, and that's a fair point regarding it not really being conclusive that the media moved left. My own take is that they did, but your explanation is plausible. Strange times.

Yet independents are closer to the Republicans in this case.

>I would expect that the Democrats and Republicans are seeing the world (and the media) through blue- and red-tinted glasses. I would expect that the independents are, on average, seeing more clearly.

I am a registered member of the Democratic Party.

That said, I am not a fan of either the US Democratic or Republican parties. I find both parties less interested in governing and more interested in maintaining/increasing their power.

But still, I'm a registered Democrat. Why is that? Where I live (NYC), the electorate is ~5:1 D/R. As such, a win in local (city council, Comptroller, etc.) and state (assembly, senate, etc.) Democratic primaries generally assures victory in the general election.

As such, I made the choice a bunch of years ago to change my party registration to the Democratic party.

Does that mean I see issues through "blue-tinted glasses"? I think not.

I'd also point out that I tend to be much more libertarian (small 'l') WRT social issues (equality of opportunity, stay the hell out of peoples' bedrooms and doctors' offices, personal freedom of expression, privacy, etc.), but also a strong advocate of living wages and a very strong government supported safety net.

I have some ideas about why all that is for the good, and have even discussed (especially free expression and a strong safety net) here on HN.

As should be obvious, neither party really supports positive change in most of the issues I find important. One more so than the other, but still woefully inadequate.

Regardless, I choose who I vote for based on my perception/understanding of the candidates' themselves, not which party's line on which these folks are running.

Perhaps I'm an outlier, and folks just vote whatever their family/peer group votes.

I'd say that I'd tend toward a strong belief in the idea that a "well educated electorate is essential to democratic self-rule." (usually, and incorrectly, attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but it's not who said it that matters, but that it's true).

We're falling down on that point (lots of others too, but who's counting?) and need to make sure that by the time an American citizen reaches the age of 18, they understand the US system of government in a reasonable amount of detail, both from conceptual and practical standpoints. You'd think that would be a no-brainer, but apparently (and unfortunately) not.

And that applies to many members of both the major, center right (Democratic) and further right (Republican) parties in the US.

It's a sad state of affairs, but one that's easily fixable, at least for future generations. I'm not holding my breath.