Making Sense of Undecided Voters


“You just saw 90 minutes. How can you still be undecided? Please explain that to me.”

 
 
I’ve long been confounded by the ‘genuinely undecided’ voter. Not, to be clear, by people looking outside the two major parties (because hey, we’ve all been there), or by those who are aloof to politics and who pride themselves on their civic disengagement. I’m referring rather to those people who consistently participate in elections, regularly vote for a red or blue ticket, but are still on the fence about the two on this particular ballot. Indeed, “do you know who you’ll vote for this year” seems as absurd a question as “do you like ice cream?” For what it’s worth, the 2016 election met with similar incredulity on my part.

Fast forward four years, and we’re faced with two candidates who, apart from their age and race, could not be more different. With respect to policy agenda, experience and qualifications, character and competence, tone and temperament, and overall leadership style, the two may as well hail from different solar systems. And yet, there’s apparently a segment of prospective voters out there still hampered by indecision. We can’t totally write them off as ignorant screwballs or victims of misinformation, as Trump already has those folks well in hand. Their seemingly improbable existence cries out for explanation.

To help demystify this phenomenon, pollster Frank Luntz led a virtual focus group after Tuesday’s debate with 15 such voters from key battleground states in an attempt to gauge their reactions to the first debate. The discussion runs a little over an hour in length, and while it’s certainly not as illuminating as I’d hoped, it helped me understand the mindset of these voters a bit better. We get some insight into their media habits, how closely they follow politics, and how they fact-check different claims, although many of their responses aren’t exactly encouraging. If you’re short on time and would rather read about what went down than watch in full, Politico has a good recap.

 

 

I think many people’s running assumption to this point (myself included) has been that if you’re a living, breathing human with access to the internet, you doubtlessly have an opinion on Donald Trump in 2020. How could you not? But for those of us in major cities like New York and DC, it’s worth keeping in mind that we live in a bubble and that not everyone is keyed into politics the way we are. After all, we’re part of one of the least civically engaged democracies in the world, and that hasn’t changed. Even in 2016, which had the highest number of raw votes cast in any election in US history, some 40 percent of eligible voters never made it to the polls.

That percentage, of course, isn’t comprised primarily of undecideds, but of people who are unable to vote due to their life circumstances or voter suppression efforts, of people unwilling to vote on account of their generally apathetic approach to politics, and so forth. It’s important to understand, as well, the above assumption that everyone should be armed to the teeth with information just like we are stems, at least in part, from privilege; a good portion of the country works long hours, lives paycheck to paycheck, and barely has the time and energy to feed their families, much less stay plugged into politics and candidates.

No, the count of undecided voters is a much smaller figure. Historically, it hovers between 2 and 4 percent. Recent polls from Quinnipiac and Monmouth both found that 3 percent of likely voters are uncommitted to either of the two candidates, a reportedly smaller share of the overall population compared to to the 2016 election. This may seem marginal, and it is, but in close elections even small sub-groups can have an outsize impact on the result. In a 2 to 4 point race, this bloc of voters in swing states — see the Rust Belt last election for exhibit A — could make all the difference.

As the election nears, the nine men and six women Luntz assembled for his focus group might well serve as a decent proxy for an ultimately decisive set of voters. They represent a number of the swing-iest states in the country, including Arizona, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Luntz puts questions to the group ranging from, ‘how are you still undecided’ to ‘how would you describe each candidate’s performance in the debate’, hoping to gain insight into their presumably idiosyncratic approach to politics.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given how disastrous the first debate was — my wife and I shut it off after five minutes, and judging from the post-debate reactions here and elsewhere, the American people deserve another stimulus check for suffering through that blight on human discourse, but I digress — most of the participants were not swayed by either candidate’s performance enough to move them off the fence.

Some of them, however, were so turned off by Trump’s antics that they seem to have made up their minds on the spot. (Whether this was their first time observing the sitting president’s behavior firsthand is unclear.) Luntz pushed back on this, skeptical that someone with so trenchant an opinion could actually have been undecided, in particular Ruthie from Pennsylvania, who described Trump’s performance as trying to “win an argument with a crackhead.” That said, more than half of the participants genuinely seemed stumped.

The group was in almost universal agreement that Biden came away the clear winner in terms of poise and demeanor, though even here they noted the constant bickering was akin to “two old white men in a retirement home arguing over who gets the pudding.” Which, like, yup. A familiar theme was that Biden didn’t represent a clear enough contrast to Trump in terms of his plans to remedy longstanding social tensions or to unify the country in this time of heightened unrest and ideological polarization. Nothing they heard from Biden on Tuesday, in fact, was enough to secure their vote.

Lastly, I want to draw attention to Kimberly from Ohio. Unfortunate from a representation perspective, she was the only Black participant on the panel. I do not know how Luntz and his team selected the participants, but it pains me that more non-white voices were not included. How can you expect to conduct a serious conversation about race relations in America or the consequences of elections on different racial groups with a crowd of white faces who tend to bear highly disproportionate effects from the outcomes of said elections? The absence of racial diversity grew more pronounced when the topic of Trump’s reluctance to denounce white supremacy came up.

At any rate, I found Kimberly’s responses to be the most insightful of the bunch. She gives a pretty impassioned defense of her undecided stance starting at the 37:22 marker. I found her answer sincerely given and compelling, and it rearticulates some very common themes you hear from the Black community around politics in this country. It’s worth taking seriously, as I’ve seen very few candidates on either the right or the left who seem to truly grok the moral injury of systemic racism and the enormous challenge of Black liberation and restitution.

 

Further reading and resources:

Feature image credit: CBS NEWS

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