So is it fair to say that Americans seem to be becoming less attached to the traditional two-party system, or does the data require more careful interpretation than that?

Oh, such a good question.

I mean, when it comes to data like this, the answer usually is like, it requires some careful interpretation.

So a lot of what I looked at was really the ratio of voters who were registered either with one of the two main parties or with either a minority party or no party at all.

And so ratios can shift for any number of reasons.

It could be that there's a movement of people away from those two major parties, people who maybe used to be registered with one of the major parties no longer registering in that way.

It also could have changed the ratio if a bunch of new voters who didn't used to be registered with any party are now registering in minority party or just are registered in general.

Who are these voters as far as the data allows you to tell? And is independent even a reliable word here? In some states, independent actually refers to a political party.