Amid this tight presidential race, tempers are high and name-calling reigns: “Clueless” and “stupid” are popular epithets — especially when partisans of either side are talking about undecided voters.
Many a newspaper cartoon, Saturday Night Live sketch or Facebook graphic mocks these folks who still can’t decide who will get their vote for president. But who’s really being stupid here?
In fact, your typical undecided voter isn’t someone who ate their car keys, as one Internet meme suggested — and yes, SNL, they’ve heard of oil.
Part of it is that a voter can feel badly pulled between different issues, and unsure which is most important. She (by the polls I’ve seen, the undecided voter is more likely to be a woman) might be pro-choice, which would make her lean toward President Obama — but unemployed, which may lean her toward Mitt Romney.
Her abortion position, usually a reliable indicator of her vote, has been overtaken by more pressing economic concerns. And thus an undecided voter is born.
Another truth: Many undecided voters weren’t actually undecided all along. For example, a September Quinnipiac University/CBS News poll had Obama leading Romney in Ohio by 10 points; now a new Quinnipiac University/CBS News poll has that lead down to five. Yet both polls had 3 percent undecided. Do you really think they’re the same people — still dithering, while 5 percent have switched sides? Or were some of Romney’s new 5 percent undecided last month — while some of the 5 percent who left Obama are now the new undecided?
Then there’s the “bandwagon effect”: Lots of people, no matter their affiliation, go with the candidate they think will ultimately win. Even folks whose minds seem firmly made up are susceptible to it.
This is one reason for anger over the leaking of “confidential” exit polls during Election Day. It’s not just that those early reports are always faulty — it’s that if people see “news” that their candidate is getting trounced in exit polls, they’re more likely to stay home. Who wants to go out to vote for a sure loser?
The “bandwagon” is also one reason a great debate performance, like Romney’s in his first faceoff with Obama, can lead to such a major swing in voter opinion.
It wasn’t just declared “undecideds” who saw the positive press and general reaction to Romney’s performance and decided he’d get their vote. For the numbers to move as they have, plenty of Obama leaners had to do the same.
Undecided voters aren’t the enemy; they’re just honest. For all the derision they’ve gotten, it’s easy to forget that we’re all guilty of groupthink from time to time — including some of the most “decided” voters in this or any election.
Karol Markowicz blogs at alarmingnews.com.
Twitter: @karolnyc