So I actually used to be in exactly your position. Policies used to be much more subjective. Urban planning? Financial stuff? Foreign policy? These are complicated questions with varying answers from not just different parties but different politicians. But things have changed recently. I feel like that’s actually a major part of the issues here that people are overlooking. People on the left jump on change faster overall so they’ve realized what’s happened to the right before the people who usually vote for the right have.

I don’t like blaming an entire group either but I’ve been pushed to believe it’s currently necessary. Being an independent isn’t about always choosing a compromise between the two extreme positions, it’s about deciding for yourself what policies are the most reasonable. Assuming your own views don’t change, this means that if one party moves further away from the middle, their views won’t align with your own as much. This can happen to both parties, but in my case I feel that the right has moved much further away from my views than the left has in the same period of time, so while I agree that the best position is somewhere in the middle of extreme right and left, that’s currently closer to the left for me and the right has begun to take positions that I find indefensible. If they swung back to where they were a decade ago things might be different.