For those biting their nails as the presidential election comes up, or for those who have a hard time understanding what in the world that 5-10% of "likely voters" in every state are still undecided about, this article may help. It's old, but presumably still relevant.
Thanks to my friend Sean Farber for pointing it out.
Posted by Alan Hogue at October 21, 2004 11:50 AMInteresting. Perhaps part of the explanation is that the undecideds have already decided to vote against the incumbent but for some reason aren't ready to fully acknowledge that, perhaps even to themselves (hence the claim that they're 'still keeping their options open')?
Posted by: Alan Allport at October 21, 2004 12:50 PMLooks like Kos may agree with you.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at October 26, 2004 12:25 PMI think it may also have to do with the general tendency in people to have preference for the incumbent. We usually assume that people (being rational beings, as we all know) begin at some Platonic exact middle and are swayed one way or another from there. But if people, in this case, already start off closer to Bush by default, they will already have travelled some distance toward Kerry in order to become even "undecided".
In other words, I suspect "undecided" often really means "not as fond of the incumbent as we expected to be".
Posted by: Alan Hogue at October 26, 2004 03:17 PM