Tag: undecided voters

(This is the second in a series of articles about undecided voters)

Who are all of these Undecided Voters? I’ve so far come up with four types. I’m open to expanding or narrowing the list.

I’m not an undecided voter, but I play one on television / Attention Whores

Once ever four years, the world turns to these undecided deciders. These self-styled last true men (and women) enjoy the sense of power and the possibility that the candidates for the Most Powerful Job in the World are vying for their personal vote. In the end, they’ll probably write in Mickey Mouse or Homer Simpson and think themselves witty or clever with their little act of civic protest.

 

Fish or Cut Bait? / Indecisive people make indecisive voters

These voters can’t decide what to cook for dinner, or even if they’re hungry. What chance do they have of picking a President?

 

Just Fooling Themselves / Republicans and Democrats in Denial

If you looked at these voters’ record, they consistently pick one party or the other. They’ll tell you they are Independent and they look down on partisans as they believe party membership is for the sheeple. They’ll often misquote George Washington as saying the US shouldn’t have political parties.

 

Too Busy, but know they should Care

They can barely find time to sleep, let alone think about the election. (The ones who show up in focus groups are actually Attention Whores.) They know they should be engaged, and they really want to be good citizens, but they just don’t have the time. So they rely on mass media to inform them. On that basis, can you really blame this group for being undecided?

(This is the first in a series of articles about undecided voters)

I’ve been thinking about undecided voters a lot this week. I really want to know what makes them tick.

I think Thomas Frank got close to the problem in What’s the Matter with Kansas? Frank describes a disconnect between what people identified as their concerns and their own interests. For instance, a voter who is concerned about their job and the economy will not vote for the candidate that would best help on that issue because they don’t see the issue as being a political issue. In other words, they lack the vocabulary to talk about their needs and concerns in a productive way.

I believe undecided voters, on the whole, are in a similar situation. They lack the ability to ask the questions they really want answered, and instead get bogged down in minutia. Take, for example, today’s story about Katherine Fenton, the woman who asked about gender equality in the workplace at the Presidential debate the other night. In an interview with Salon.com’s Irin Carmon, she said she wasn’t satisfied with either candidate’s answer. She wanted specifics, you see; not what they’ve done before. If you accept, however, that past acts reveal priorities, then you know Mitt Romney will probably have women in his cabinet, and that President Obama will probably champion and sign legislation leading to mor equal pay between men and women. Both candidates were admittedly short on policy specifics, but you can get those from a position paper. Debates are where candidates tell you who they are as people.

The kicker for Ms. Fenton, however, was that $16 trillion dollars is “a huge figure” and that made her inclined to fire President Obama. Here we see the disconnect. This is what the candidates are running against.