It is clear that the label, political Independents, is at times a catch-all category for various political dispositions. Dennis offers four types of such people based on attitudinal antecedents. Weisberg shows that at least some people who identify themselves as political Independents lie in a separate dimension from partisans. This paper (1) parses out a category that will be called strong Independents, (2) presumes that their political understanding may be significantly different from Democrats or Republicans, and (3) examines that presumption in terms of one's negative versus positive political orientation, comparing strong partisans to strong Independents.
     The category of strong Independents identified is less general than that used by Weisberg and Dennis. The 1980 ANES offers unique data drawn from a battery of questions on the meanings of partisan affiliation. From that data, expectations regarding the positive versus negative motivation of strong Independents, strong Republicans, and strong Democrats are assessed using logistic regression.
      The results reveal a positively-dominated orientation for strong Republicans and strong Democrats. Strong Independents are explained by both positive and negative dispositions. The findings carry implications for potential third party efforts as well as for Democratic or Republican co-optation efforts. That is, an Independent who values autonomy may be durably disposed away from all parties. An Independent who dislikes a party, on the other hand, may be simply lacking a good citizen-party match. Parties may be able to change in order to attract the latter type, while it is less clear that any change would attract the former.