I was wondering if folk might be interested in sharing conversations we’ve had with voters who claim to be undecided as to the upcoming presidential election. I find it so hard to imagine how anyone could be undecided, that I’m interested in their mindset.
This morning at golf, I was playing with one guy whom I suspected might be undecided. He is a very good friend of mine, whom I’ve known for over 30 years. Sure enough, he said he was not decided, and tho he planned to vote, he didn’t know if he would vote for president. His first remark was that in our blue state (IL), it didn’t matter. Then he said something like he hadn’t researched the candidates policies, and that he did not think president was as important as Congress. He observed that he was not very interested in politics, and hadn’t watched a moment of either convention. I observed that, if nothing else, the president nomnates SCt justices. He said he hadn’t thought of that. I asked him if he supported Roe v Wade being overturned, and he strongly said, “No.” I asked him what would cause him to make up his mind, and he said, “I don’t know.”
As he observed, his vote is not terribly important in IL, so I don’ t know how similarly folk in battleground states would feel.
Background, my friend is 63 (same age as me), retired from driving a Frito Lay truck. His wife is a retired librarian. Has adult twins w/ Asperger’s living at home (both employed). He’s not stupid, but is not interested in many “intellectual” pursuits such as art, music, literature. His main interests are golf and watching sports. He’s catholic. Pretty sure he graduated from college. A REALLY nice guy - the kind who would literally give you the shirt of his back if you needed it.
Just wanted to give a snapshot of one undecided voter I’ve met and spoken with. Have you spotted any of these elusive creatures in the wild?
Every undecided voter i’ve ever met is an embarrassed republican - they’re going to vote for Trump they just don’t want to advertise the fact.
A friend I’ve known for years was a lifelong proud Republican. He left the party when it became the party of Trump. He was going to vote for RFK jr. I was going to try to convince him that RFK jr had no chance of winning (Did Teddy Roosevelt with his popularity and record win as a third party candidate? Did Ross Perot with all his wealth for ads and other kinds of campaigning win?). Theh, RF jr left the race and endorsed Trump. He is now considering holding his nose and voting Trump. He described Harris as a “communist”. I pointed out that she was actually a liberal Democrat like me. She wasn’t even socialist (though I admitted if you called Bernie Sanders a socialist, he would likely proudly admit it). I said one of my departed friends was a communist (Her late husband was sent to prison by HUAC). So I knew a communist when I saw one.
I am currently trying to appeal to both reason and emotion. His beloved wife (I have never, NOT ONCE, heard him call her by name. He always calls her Princess) is a Jewish trans woman. Trump referred to a white power rally/riot as “Good people on both sides.” While he didn’t necessaruly owe me an explanation, he definitely should explain to her how people who idolize Adolf Hitler and want a new Holocauts are “Good people”. I also pointed out that the first time Trump ran, he was endorsed by Caitlyn Jenner. A few years later, Jenner issued a public apology. She said that back then she thought she could be a voice for LGBTQ issues and sway Trump. She now realized Trump would always be strongly anti LGTBQ. I brought up Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law. I brought up other state’s laws requiring all public school students to use the name and sex on their birth certificate. I brought up laws requiring teachers to inform parents if a student begins using a new name or presenting as a different gender.
I hope it made a difference. I will keep presenting arguments until it does.
Yes. An “embarrassed” Trump supporter.
Or not “embarrassed” at all, and just knowing that after the election they won’t have to deal with Democrats any more. “Undecided” is the new “Bless your heart”.
Undecided is what people say who are going to vote for Trump but don’t want their kids to take away access to the grandkids.
Obligatory link. So true (and hilarious). From 2012, but could be any year.
Well, “embarrassed Republican” that definitely does not describe the person I spoke with this morning. My preference would be that people discuss actual conversations they have had with specific people, rather than just spouting generalities about people whose views they do not respect.
If that does not interest folk after a day or 2, I may ask that this thread be closed.
I’m not sure it’s really worth the effort to try to get through to undecided voters. The effort is probably best spent somewhere else, like ensuring that the people who are decided actually make the effort to cast a vote. I get the sense that it would take a lot of work to get an undecided voter to actually agree with your point of view, and then there’s the work to actually get them to cast a vote. And I wouldn’t trust that they’d actually stay with the candidate you worked to get them to agree with. They might change their mind a few times between now and the election. It seems like someone who is undecided during these kinds of elections is either totally detached from politics or has such a fleeting, unstable political base that they can vacillate between diametrically opposed candidates.
The friend I spoke of seems to have been somewhat swayed by my arguments. He has said that both sides are corupt, have betrayed the people of the United States, and betrayed the Constitution. I responded that the Republican party is now the party of Trump. Republican elected officials who spoke out against the change and tried to reclaim the party were verbally attacked, punished, and ultimately removed from office. More, the Republicn party not only accepted Trump s one of their own, they named him their official candidate for President. On the other hand, while some Democrats might be scum, could he explain what arguments he based his claim that the party as a whole was corrupt? What cites and examples did he have? Plus, if Harris and Walz are corrupt, have betrayed the people and abandoned the Constitution, why hasn’t this been mentioned in any attack ads?
I think this is the line pushed by some who want to keep people from voting who will vote against their candidate if they vote at all. People who are smart enough to see that Trump is corrupt and a liar, so there’s no sense trying to tell them otherwise – but who can be convinced that all politicians are corrupt and liars, so they can be persuaded at least to stay home and not vote for his opposition.
I may be trying to talk a neighbor out of that one, a little later in the election season; or maybe sooner if the topic comes up in the right way. He has considerable brains and compassion, but I’m pretty sure has been getting crappy info. It won’t, here, make any difference on the presidential level; but I haven’t entirely given up on the congressional level.
In my experience, this is often just a baby step away from the dark side. They can no longer deal with the cognitive dissonance created by their tribe’s descent into depravity, but can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that the other side is basically sane, decent and centrist.
Sometimes they regress back into the dark side, sometimes they come fully into the light.
Anyway, my advice: if you encounter such an undecided, don’t give up on them. They may be timidly starting their redemption, even if it doesn’t sound like it.
Yeah. They still believe the crap they’re being fed; but they’ve noticed that the people putting out that crap are themselves full of crap up to their ears.
– I will say, though, that I’ve been running into that reaction to politics as far back as I can remember (and I’m 73.). There’s been a significant streak of it in the electorate for many years; maybe all along. But I do also think that the claim that all politicians are corrupt liars is a weapon used by some of the most corrupt liars, in the hope of at least keeping people who are on to them from voting for their opponents.
When I canvassed for the Dems over this past week, I talked to about twenty people (about half of them supposedly undecided), and about seven of them said “the border” was their biggest issue – and four of these were convinced that their personal safety was somehow magically threatened by illegal immigration. I wanted to cry. There is no such threat (native-born Americans are more likely to commit crimes); and immigration of all types has benefited the economy here. Not to mention we are a billion miles away from “the border.” It would have made more sense had these idiots told me “Darth Vader” was their number one issue.
They’re not “undecided”. They’re just embarrased to tell a canvaser that they’re voting for trump.
Yes, I got that vibe from all but one person whom I’m convinced was truly undecided (but who knows).
That’s my take too, with some people who aren’t going to vote, but are embarrassed to admit it thrown in.
Backing up what you and mozchron said: I have a lot of trouble distinguishing between an “undecided voter” and a Trumpist. If you can’t throw both arms around a Harris presidency with less than four weeks to go … just go sit over at the Trump table this cycle.
It’s similar to when, among others, @PhillyGuy sometimes speaks about items that scare away “independent voters”. If liberal-oriented statements make you less likely to support a given candidate … consider that you might be an actual conservative and not an “independent”?
I’ve shared this on a different thread, but Sarah Longwell does focus groups with mostly undecided voters. Here’s a link to them on Youtbube. So not a conversation I’ve had, but definitely conversations and insights into undecided voters.
I will say, there are lots of real undecided voters. I’ve listened to dozens of hours of those focus groups and you can get a sense of it. Or just, they’re claim to be undecided is as valid as my claim to be decided. Most undecided voters are regular people who do not follow politics but do vote. Some people call them low information voters, but really they’re just normal people. I think it should be more: High Information Voters and Normal Voters - it’s more reflective of their mindset. Or rather, they are low information because they are really busy and politics is generally boring, and you just pay attention to it all right before you go vote.
I mean, I’m literally going to go vote for dozens of people I will know nothing about, because, in my subjective view, I don’t consider it all that important to learn that much about them. I’ll probably spend 20mins before walking in to vote to do my “research”. Undecided voters do the same thing but just with the President.
The only undecided voters I’ve known of were those who were determined to go 3rd party and were trying to decide which third-party candidate.
