America has two big political party choices, Democratic or Republican, and beyond those massive establishment parties there is a multitude of minor political parties that any registered voter can affiliate themselves with. However, voters are also given the option when registering to vote to choose the "non-enrolled" box or "no party affiliation" although there are some voters who get confused and select the American independent Party, believing that represents the non-existent Independent Party, when in fact, the American Independent Party, is in actuality a paleo-conservative party and most definitely is its own political party. This means that when we hear the term, "Independents", on newscast and similar media outlets, we need to understand that what the pundits are referring to are people who are registered to vote without any particular party affiliation, hence Independent, and/or referring to people that claim that in principle they don't relate to either the Democratic or Republican parties and "self-identify" themselves as Independents.
If we look at the Congressional makeup, there are two Senators and no members of the House of Representatives that claim to be "Independents", and when they ran for election they did so without direct affiliation with the Democratic or Republican parties, but in fact, if we look at the two Independents in the Senate, we have Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who when he ran for the Senate was endorsed by the Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and at the present time, is running for the nomination of the Democratic party for the Presidency of the United States, so clearly Sanders is a Democrat, despite his self-professed Independent designation. The other Senator, who is also an Independent, is Angus King of Maine, who basically made a deal with the Democrats during his election run, and has consistently caucused with the Democrats since he was elected.
While the forgoing might imply that the Independent designation appears to be in reality a proxy for the Democratic Party, that isn't necessarily true, or even the point. The point is that those that run without party affiliation, sell the illusion that they are truly independent, whereas they aren't independent at all, they will, in essence, break bread with one of the major parties in order to be effective in their elected role, and therefore independents as a political choice, is really just a shell game, in which, those elected under such a label, aren't independent at all.
This means that those voters that self-identify themselves as Independents, are really showing their distaste or disgust or disagreement with both of the major parties, but their so-called independent stance, resolves actually none of their disagreements, because in one form or another, the person being elected will almost for a certainty be either a Democrat or a Republican or someone that will be one of those in all but name.
So the bottom line for Independents is that you don't actually have an Independent party in America, and your non-affiliation with any party major or not, simply means you haven't taken the time to figure out what it is that you want from your government representatives or perhaps you don't really care.