The Unknowability of the Undecided Voter

There's a conception of the undecided voter as someone who sits squarely in the middle of today ’s polarized politics and weighs both sides’ policy options in a rational way.

But if these focus groups and interviews prove anything, they show that the undecideds generally do not conform to this centrist fantasy and are, in fact, all over the place.

The past two Presidential elections have come down to a relatively small number of voters in swing states.

We know the undecided voter will decide our destiny, but we cannot conjure up their face.

The job of defining the undecideds is thankless and yields mostly noise, but it also carries the promise of uncovering critical information about the outcomes of our elections.

A poll from early August found that forty-two per cent of voters in three battleground states think Harris is “too liberal” Do we really know the magic combination of words and ads that will change their minds without alienating other voters with other concerns? Or will they conclude that regardless of how much they might find Trump personally distasteful, they just can’t trust a Democratic President?.