Significant Number of Voters Unsure of Position
Stephen Colbert makes an excellent point here. There are 14% of American voters, one out of every seven, on the fence in the coming election. You lived in the United States these last 3.5 years and you’re not sure if you want a continuation or a change?
Who are you? Please tell us about your thoughts and experiences.
Craig,
I’ve worked my share of campaigns… usually just as a volunteer, but I’ve been as high ranking as “State Volunteer Coordinator” in one case – 2004, when I was passionate enough to quit my real job for a while and try to save the country from what I knew would be a crushing economic downturn (obviously, we lost… and I failed).
My experience with campaigning, and armchair political analysis, has given me one very solid generalization when it comes to watching polls:
Generally speaking, if someone says that they openly support a candidate, that person is going to be very difficult to shake free. It requires the person to declare that they were wrong… and it requires that they ignore the information feed they had been relying upon and instead choose a different information feed through which they can be propagandized to – in an effort to get them to formally admit that they are wrong.
That’s hard.
In polling, most of the contested races are those in which neither side has 50% or more declared support. It’s not all about the spread, it’s about the majority. I’d much rather be in a campaign that was down by ten points: 37% to 47%, then one that was down by 4 points: 50% to 46%… because the one where the opponent is down by 4 points is going to have to capture ALL of the “undecided” vote (which usually consists of a large number of already decided voters who don’t want to be categorized as such), and some of the voters who brazenly declare FOR the other candidate. That’s a lot of work.
In the poll that you cite – which is only one singular poll, and the results have a >3% margin of error – Biden makes it to the magic 50%. That’s pretty awesome.
Among those who claim “they don’t know”, will be some republicans and “libertarians” who know that Trump is criminally corrupt and inept and racist and sexist and just fucking stupid… but are pathetic mind slaves to their partisanship, so they will probably just bend the knee to their party anyway, but don’t want to admit that… and there will be some progressives who understand that Trump is a terrible corrupt obnoxious fascist racist sexist dystopian comic book villain, and hate him with visceral passion.. but they also see Biden as a dottering old Methuselah long into his slide into obsolescence.. who should never have been the democratic nominee.. and they will probably be forced to vote for him but they can’t stand admitting that out loud…
But 50% have put themselves forward as “I support and will vote for Biden”.
We know that the Trump team is going to cheat, and cheat horribly, but polls like that show a very tough uphill battle, even with the inevitable cheating. Once people are in, then they are usually in.
Here’s hoping and praying.