Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was playing to a growing crowd of voters, in California and across the nation, when he used his inaugural address last month to urge people to "move past partisanship'' to a new home in the political center...

It's a sentiment that appeals to the burgeoning number of voters who don't want to be identified with the Republican or Democratic parties and to the many people unwilling to be tied to their party's candidates or policies...

Nearly a fifth of California voters are registered as "decline to state" ...[which] includes voters who are ultraconservative and others on the extreme left, but polls done by the policy institute show that most of them fall in the broad political center...

Decline-to-state voters are younger, with 27 percent under the age of 34, compared with 16 percent for the Democrats and 14 percent for Republicans. More than half of those voters are college graduates, a higher percentage than in either of the major parties.

And considering that they have an average income well over the state average, California's independent voters "are like a young professional group compared to the other parties,'' said David Lesher, director of the "post-partisan" New America Foundation's California project...

Despite the growth of centrist voters, the country's political choices -- and the candidates who will make them -- continue to be dictated by Democrats and Republicans. And a [poll] by the policy institute in October indicated 71 percent of California independents thought Republicans and Democrats were doing such a poor job of representing the American people that a third party was needed.

However, those results could be as much anger at a system where centrist voters are locked out as a longing for sweeping changes in the country's political system, said Lesher of the New America Foundation.

"Are we seeing the birth of a third party or are these people independent because they don't want to be a member of any party?'' he asked. "Many of these voters enjoy the freedom to look at candidates across the spectrum.''

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