Picture an independent voter.

You might be imagining someone who takes their time considering the candidates and their positions on the issues, who generally has faith in the political system, who sometimes votes for Republicans and sometimes for Democrats.

But a new CNN poll taking a deeper look into who political independents are finds the notion of a classic swing voter is a thing of the past.

The poll results identify five distinct types of independents, with big implications for American politics. As party loyalty fades and the definition of that elusive swing voter shifts, elections are increasingly decided by who among these groups shows up to vote.

The CNN poll of political independents was conducted by SSRS from August 21 through September 1 online and by phone. It includes 2,077 adults nationwide and 1,006 political independents, defined as those who identified as independent or did not identify with either major party. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, it is 4.2 points among all independents and ranges from 7.9 to 10.7 points for the five subgroups of independents. In the charts above on racial and ethnic background, Hispanic adults are treated as a separate category, other racial groups do not include those who are Hispanic.