I have been listening to the Republican primary coverage on CNN and one of the things I here a lot about is how the undecided voters and how they broke helped to decide the outcome in Iowa and New Hampshire, and how many in South Carolina are still undecided. Numbers I heard referenced were anywhere from 30 to 40 % as close as 24 hours before the vote. How can their be such a large number of people who don’t know who they want for POTUS? Is this the reason why Bachman, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and most recently Santorum all had a turn as a “not Romey”? I just don’t understand how such a large number of people can be undecided about something so important.
For much of the Republican base in certain parts of the country, none of the guys running is all that exciting. Huntsman and Romney aren’t seen as conservative enough (and they’re Mormon), Santorum is socially conservative, but he’s supported some big government programs (and he’s Catholic), Gingrich has a lot of baggage, Perry is stupid, and Paul is a crazy old coot.
What’s a good ol’ boy South Carolinian to do?
That and people, as a whole, just don’t follow this stuff. They’ve got more important things to do, like worry about their families or watch The Bachelor.
Sounds like a no brainer to me.
Iowa resident chiming in, prior to the caucus and even now I am undecided. The reason? They all suck as candidates, wont be able to beat O’bama and most, if not all of them pandered to the “religious right” here which almost automatically disqualifies them in my book.
I think there’s a few things involved. Romney has been the a front runner the whole time, but because he’s more moderate and a mormon, a lot of Republicans aren’t happy about him. They’re not so much excited about whomever they vote for as they’re trying to pick someone that isn’t him. In a general election, disliking a particular candidate would generally just mean voting for the candidate from the other major party, but in a situation like this where none of the alternatives have really coalesced are have at least as much working against them as Romney does, I’d guess people are sort of waiting out to see which not-Romney is the least unpalatable and then voting for them which, of course, could change pretty quickly.
Undecided voters are to be expected in a primary, since fundamentally, all of the candidates in a primary are going to have very similar views. You have to either pick based on the subtle differences in their policies (which might not even matter to you), or you have to decide which candidate will be best able to implement the policies you want, and neither of those is easy.
Now, undecided in the general election, that’s a bit odder. There, you’re pretty much restricted to those folks who support policies on both sides and are trying to decide what their priorities are, or people who just don’t care.
Except this primary isn’t like the Democratic primary of 2008 where you had a large pool of great candidates who were arguing subtle differences in policy posture.
This time around the Republicans are choosing between a libertarian, a wall streeter, a bible thumper and Newt Gingrich (whatever he is).
Really? They all look like Bible-thumping Wall Streeters to me.
It was:
Obama
Clinton
Edwards
Biden
Gravel
Kucinich
Dodd
Richardson
That’s maybe 2 1/2 “great” candidates.
And it was always going to be either Clinton or Obama. In fact, it was Clinton’s to lose, which she did with a sloppy campaign.
Vote for Stephen Colbert?