Voters in two swing-state groups assembled by NBC News were more interested in the vice president after seeing the debate. Yet they still had questions.
I’ve decided undecided voters have low critical thinking skills and/or are attention seekers
Literally every election is decided by the “undecided”. Democrats vote democrat and republicans vote republican. It rare that anyone changes party. What determines elections is if democrats can get people who wouldn’t otherwise vote to vote. Every time people turn out, democrats win. When people are uninterested they lose. Those ~50k people in suburbs of swing states are not unimportant, they are the only thing that matters.
This premise gets thrown around a lot but I actually disagree. “Every time people turn out” is always also thrown in there like some arbitrary thing–when I think the past several election cycles have shown that when there are younger, more progress candidates who make it past the primaries turnout shoots up. Courting the 3% uninformed flip-floppers by moving right is a losing strategy when you could be motivating your own party to turn out by moving left and driving turnout up. There’s no money in that though, so dumb centrists get wooed
It’s also a mistruth that people don’t change their minds. Look at the rise and fall of any brand, religion or cult - some people had to change their minds.
When/if democrats can Energize the base, they don’t need to give a shit about undecideds. but until then, we are stuck pandering to the people we know will actually show up to and wait at the voting booth
It’s absolutely voter suppression. Every election we have 1/3 of the electorate that doesn’t cast a vote. We could court these couple million undecideds or we could fix the system and have automatic registration and even compulsory voting. And then, you’re absolutely right, Republicans would never win again.
Literally every election is decided by the “undecided”. Democrats vote democrat and republicans vote republican. It rare that anyone changes party. What determines elections is if democrats can get people who wouldn’t otherwise vote to vote. Every time people turn out, democrats win. When people are uninterested they lose. Those ~50k people in suburbs of swing states are not unimportant, they are the only thing that matters.
This premise gets thrown around a lot but I actually disagree. “Every time people turn out” is always also thrown in there like some arbitrary thing–when I think the past several election cycles have shown that when there are younger, more progress candidates who make it past the primaries turnout shoots up. Courting the 3% uninformed flip-floppers by moving right is a losing strategy when you could be motivating your own party to turn out by moving left and driving turnout up. There’s no money in that though, so dumb centrists get wooed
It’s also a mistruth that people don’t change their minds. Look at the rise and fall of any brand, religion or cult - some people had to change their minds.
Or some people died off, and new suckers fell for new, different marketing.
Advertising wouldn’t work if there was need to wait for generations to pass.
When/if democrats can Energize the base, they don’t need to give a shit about undecideds. but until then, we are stuck pandering to the people we know will actually show up to and wait at the voting booth
No, every election is decided by the majority of those who did decide.
That and voter suppression. If everybody could vote easily, the GOP would never win an election.
It’s absolutely voter suppression. Every election we have 1/3 of the electorate that doesn’t cast a vote. We could court these couple million undecideds or we could fix the system and have automatic registration and even compulsory voting. And then, you’re absolutely right, Republicans would never win again.