About 40 percent of the American population is unrepresented in the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government, and a group of non-partisan politicians is exploring ways to change that.

As many as 44 percent of Americans polled by the Gallup organization this year have classified themselves as political independents — not Republican and not Democrat.

The new book, “Fixing Post-Truth Politics,” points out that this large plurality is essentially unrepresented at the federal level.

Via political sorting … the Democrats are a more homogeneously liberal party and the Republicans a more homogeneously conservative party compared to the 1970s, for example.

Particular values receive defense from only one of the two sides, and specific kinds of people seem to get a sympathetic hearing by only one of the two parties. The consequence is that the actions considered by government bodies are more likely to present stark choices today than in some earlier, less polarized, more civil eras. Therefore, elections matter more. As the stakes rise, civility falls.

Jim Webb, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2015, dropped out of the race. In his announcement, he blasted the two parties and suggested that the real political force in America is independents.

“Our political candidates are being pulled to the extremes,” he said, at the National Press Club in Washington. “They are increasingly out of step with the people they are supposed to serve. Poll after poll shows that a strong plurality of Americans is neither Republican nor Democrat. Overwhelmingly they’re independents. Americans don’t like the extremes to which both parties have moved in recent years, and I don’t blame them.”

Because the politicians from both parties have largely leaned ultra-left or ultra-right, they are representing the minority groups of constituents who share their beliefs. The 40 percent or more of Americans who are independent politically have nobody representing their middle-ground positions in the federal government.

On Wednesday, a group of centrist politicians laid out their effort to create a way for the American political middle to gain representation during a National Press Club luncheon, according to press.org:

Nick Troiano, director of The Centrist Project, pointed out that a non-traditional party with a positive agenda produced President Emmanuel Macron of France and a near super-majority of parliamentary candidates. “If two to three [more] independents are elected to the [U.S.] Senate,” he said, “it would change American politics forever.” That would deny either party an outright majority, and the coalition could use its swing leverage to force both sides to compromise.

Like other panelists he cited structural and financial obstacles, but said the biggest barrier is psychological. People only invest time, money and votes, he said, if they believe candidates are electable. He sees hope for 2018 because the time is ripe, he said, for alternatives to both parties. Forty percent of the electorate, he noted, identify as independent voters.

The Centrist Project, which assembled the panel, is the brainchild of its founder, Charles Wheelan, who wrote “The Centrist Manifesto,” a call to action for Americans fed up with the current political system. Wheelan is a former correspondent for The Economist and senior lecturer at Dartmouth College’s Rockefeller Center. The project’s website says it “aims to strategically elect independent candidates to office who can break through political gridlock and serve as a voice for all those in the sensible center –– not as a traditional third party, but as America’s first Unparty.”

Similar to the Wheelan book, “Fixing Post-Truth Politics” is also a call to action for Americans fed up with the current political system, though the book’s focus is the problems facing American centrists who want a presidential candidate better than the unsuitable Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Like The Centrist Project, “Fixing Post-Truth Politics” reveals a strategy for the American political middle to identify a non-Democrat and non-Republican presidential candidate who can get on the ballot on all 50 states, and appear on stage for debates with the two legacy party candidates.