That only matters of you actually do make different choices. But of course in turn even trying to control for that depends on their being meaningful changes in party platforms between elections.
So I'm pretty content calling it a meaningless measure.
Identifying as independent is the first step toward not voting at all (which itself is a type of vote, especially in a rigged system).
So definitely not meaningless. It demonstrates increasing amounts of people are tired of pretending our democracy isn't mostly illusory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniparty