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army1987 comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong
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I'd interpret “affiliated” as ‘card-carrying’. If anything, it surprises me as high, but ISTR that in the US you need to be a registered member of a party to vote for their primaries, which would explain that.
It's probably meant to be interpreted as "registered". In the US, registering for a political party has significance beyond signaling affiliation, so it's fairly common: it allows you, in most states, to vote in your party's primary election (which determines the candidates sent by that party to the general election, which everyone can vote in). A few states choose their candidates with party caucuses, though, and California at one point allowed open primaries, though there were some questions about the constitutionality of that move and I don't remember how they were resolved.
Roughly two-thirds of Americans are registered with one of the two major parties.
Do you have a source for that, or is this the same statistic you quoted from wikipedia about "identification"?
I think only half of eligible voters are even registered to vote, but I'd expect almost all registered voters to register in a party. Young people, like LW users, are less likely to be registered.
I honestly don't remember, but I was probably trying to point toward the Wikipedia stats, in which case I shouldn't have used "registered". A quick search for registration percentages turns up this, which cites slightly under 60% registration in the most recent election (it's been going slowly down over time; was apparently just over 70% in the late Sixties). I haven't been able to turn up party-specific registration figures; I suspect but cannot prove that you're underestimating the number of Americans registered as independent.