Part of what has bothered me about the “swing voter” (or “undecided”) concept is that nobody (it seemed) could easily find or identify who these supposed voters were. A lot of the articles have sounded just plain silly. Add that to a highly polarized electorate with highly polarizing issues/candidates, and it’s hard to imagine that the key to success is swing voters instead of turnout.

Thanks for the insightful comments! I’m not sure what I wrote disagrees with what you’ve said (I haven’t read the New Yorker article yet) - at least if you grant that what people say is not always what they believe. For example, I know some people who normally vote Republican that consider themselves independents - and would say that to people that asked. They are disgusted with the Iraq war, recognize the economy is not going as well as it had been for many people (even though they are not hit by it yet), and at times despair of Bush. That said, they are consistently more charitable towards Bush’s mistakes than Kerry’s. They suspect Kerry’s war medals, consider his position on Iraq convoluted, etc. While they consider Bush’s invasion of Iraq as comparable to the Vietnam War disaster-wise, Kerry is the one that seems to suffer the most heartfelt criticism. Why is this? It’s because they really are Republicans, and their sympathy lies there. How else can you explain their harsher criticism of Kerry’s medals (he unquestionably served in battle) vs. Bush’s limited National Guard attendance? How else can you explain their greater antagonism towards Kerry’s Iraq plans than their more respectful, if tremendously disappointed, view of Bush’s Vietnam that has killed over 1,000 in the U.S. military. How will they vote? I’m not sure, and they likely would consider themselves “undecided” if asked - but my guess, and it is that, is that they are decided - decided in a way a good salesperson would know what they were going to buy or not buy despite all the hemming and hawing.

Something akin to their thought process, I argue, is likely the thought process of many who are less politically aware - they likely know who they will vote for, even if they don’t know the candidate’s names. It may be they’re looking for machismo, or a charitable appearance, or the best looking candidate, or the one that speaks like them, or the one who is most conventional/unconventional, but they likely know if you were to really prod them about it (in a way polls never have the time to do). That is why I argue shoring up the base is the best way to win - I’m saying getting your people to the polls will yield more for the effort (and bring along ‘your undecideds’) than specific efforts to “change people’s minds” when they are likely made up.

Hard hitting press coverage, a major gaff, a major success, or something else of tremendous note may change the dynamics, but barring that I think it’s about voter turnout - and likely not the relatively little-watched debates.

Converse claimed that only around ten per cent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system. He named these people “ideologues,” by which he meant not that they are fanatics but that they have a reasonable grasp of “what goes with what”—of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy. Non-ideologues may use terms like “liberal” and “conservative,” but Converse thought that they basically don’t know what they’re talking about, and that their beliefs are characterized by what he termed a lack of “constraint”: they can’t see how one opinion (that taxes should be lower, for example) logically ought to rule out other opinions (such as the belief that there should be more government programs). About forty-two per cent of voters, according to Converse’s interpretation of surveys of the 1956 electorate, vote on the basis not of ideology but of perceived self-interest. The rest form political preferences either from their sense of whether times are good or bad (about twenty-five per cent) or from factors that have no discernible “issue content” whatever. Converse put twenty-two per cent of the electorate in this last category. In other words, about twice as many people have no political views as have a coherent political belief system.

I particularly enjoyed (!) this paragraph:

Findings about the influence of the weather on voter behavior are among the many surveys and studies that confirm Converse’s sense of the inattention of the American electorate. In election years from 1952 to 2000, when people were asked whether they cared who won the Presidential election, between twenty-two and forty-four per cent answered “don’t care” or “don’t know.” In 2000, eighteen per cent said that they decided which Presidential candidate to vote for only in the last two weeks of the campaign; five per cent, enough to swing most elections, decided the day they voted.

So, however much I like your analysis, I expect we’ll find that there ARE folks out there who haven’t yet made up their minds, but they’ll come out and decide this election for us in the end. What will they base their decisions on? Almost makes on want to despair of rational argumentation…