2012 challenge: Corral undecided likely voters

In these August 2012 file pho­tos, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, right, cam­paign in swing states, Obama in Lees­burg, Va., and Rom­ney in Wauke­sha, Wis. The chal­lenge for Obama and Rom­ney is how to lay claim to the small but might­ily impor­tant swath of the elec­torate, the unde­cided likely voter. With six hard-fought weeks left in the cam­paign, just 7 per­cent of likely vot­ers have yet to pick a can­di­date, accord­ing to an Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll. (AP Photos)

JENNIFER AGIESTA, NANCY BENAC

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Loretta Mitchell is 100 per­cent sure she’s going to vote in the pres­i­den­tial race come Novem­ber. She doesn’t have a clue who’ll get that vote.

That makes her a rare and highly sought after com­mod­ity: an unde­cided likely voter.

The chal­lenge for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney is how to lay claim to this small but might­ily impor­tant swath of the elec­torate. These peo­ple are truly up for grabs, claim they’re intent on vot­ing and yet aren’t pay­ing that much attention.

With six hard-fought weeks left in the cam­paign, just 7 per­cent of likely vot­ers have yet to pick a can­di­date, accord­ing to an Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll. When com­bined with those who are lean­ing toward one can­di­date or the other but far from firm in their choice, about 17 per­cent of likely vot­ers are what poll­sters con­sider “persuadable.”

That includes 6 per­cent who give soft sup­port to Obama and 4 per­cent for Romney.

Mitchell, a 68-year-old inde­pen­dent from the small town of Lebanon, Ind., voted for Obama in 2008 but says both can­di­dates this year strike her as “true politi­cians, and I’m just really down with Wash­ing­ton and politicians.”

Like a lot of unde­cid­eds, she isn’t sure what’s going to deter­mine her bal­lot, and she’s in no rush to decide.

The trig­gers for how and when the unde­cid­eds will make up their minds are intensely personal.

So the cam­paigns have to hope to pick them off as they pur­sue swing groups in the most com­pet­i­tive states — seg­ments of vot­ers such as inde­pen­dents, seniors and white working-class voters.

Peo­ple such as Donna Olson, a 66-year-old semi-retired truck dri­ver from Oskaloosa, Iowa, who calls her­self a for­mer Democrat.

Olson expects to wait until Novem­ber to make up her mind, just as she did four years ago, when her vote ulti­mately went to Repub­li­can John McCain.

“I don’t like either one of them,” Olson says of Obama and Rom­ney. She specif­i­cally men­tions Obama’s sup­port for gay mar­riage and Romney’s pro­posed tax breaks for wealthy Americans.

So how will she make up her mind?

“I’m just try­ing to watch a lit­tle bit of every­thing,” says Olson. “It prob­a­bly will come down to Novem­ber, but I’m open to see what hap­pens between now and then.”

At least Olson’s tuned in to the race. One huge hur­dle for both sides in the next six weeks will be get­ting the atten­tion of the undecideds.

While 69 per­cent of likely vot­ers report they’re pay­ing a great deal of atten­tion to the race, the fig­ure drops to 59 per­cent for per­suad­able likely vot­ers. Among the larger group of all reg­is­tered vot­ers, just 31 per­cent of per­suad­ables show much inter­est in the campaign.

That’s one rea­son both cam­paigns are pour­ing so much money into adver­tis­ing in the most con­tested states, and why so many ads focus on the campaign’s cen­tral issue, the economy.

Per­suad­able vot­ers are deeply neg­a­tive about the cur­rent state of the econ­omy. Almost two-thirds call it poor, and only 28 per­cent expect the econ­omy to improve in the com­ing year.

That is far more pes­simistic than other vot­ers. Fifty per­cent of likely vot­ers who have set­tled on a can­di­date think the econ­omy will improve in the next year.

While the cam­paigns are try­ing lock down every vote they can — through early vot­ing when­ever pos­si­ble — there’s always a chunk of the elec­torate that’s late to make up its mind.

In 2008, 4 per­cent of vot­ers said they didn’t pick their can­di­date until the last day, and they favored Obama by 5 per­cent­age points. Another 3 per­cent decided in the last three days, and they skewed toward McCain. A fur­ther 3 per­cent decided some­time in the last week and they were about evenly divided.

In 2004, 9 per­cent of vot­ers reported decid­ing in the last three days, and they heav­ily favored Demo­c­rat John Kerry over Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, who nonethe­less won re-election.

In gen­eral, the per­suad­ables look a lot like other likely vot­ers, and they’re sim­i­larly dis­trib­uted around the coun­try, which makes it tricky for the cam­paigns to specif­i­cally tar­get them. About 52 per­cent are male and 48 per­cent female. They do skew slightly Democratic.

Thirty-nine per­cent say they are Democ­rats or lean that way, 34 per­cent are Repub­li­can or lean GOP, and 27 per­cent are inde­pen­dent. Among all likely vot­ers, by con­trast, just 8 per­cent are inde­pen­dent and don’t lean toward one party or the other.

The cam­paigns are intent on firm­ing up those per­suad­ables who already lean their way, and then hope to pick off unde­cided vot­ers in the swing voter groups they’re already mak­ing a priority.

The cam­paigns also are hop­ing their firm sup­port­ers can zero in on unde­cid­eds within their own spheres of influence.

As Obama fre­quently tells cam­paign crowds, “Don’t just talk to peo­ple who agree with you; reach out to folks who don’t fol­low pol­i­tics that closely. Talk to some­body who’s undecided.”

In the same secretly recorded speech in which Rom­ney said he had no hope of get­ting the sup­port of the 47 per­cent of Amer­i­cans who are depen­dent on gov­ern­ment and back Obama, he spoke wist­fully of those on the fence, say­ing, “What I have to do is con­vince the 5 to 10 per­cent in the cen­ter that are inde­pen­dents that are thought­ful, that look at vot­ing one way or the other depend­ing upon in some cases emo­tion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like.”

Demo­c­ra­tic poll­ster Stan Green­berg says truly unde­cided vot­ers are par­tic­u­larly hard to come by this fall, attribut­ing that to an increas­ingly polar­ized polit­i­cal cli­mate and a race that ramped up unusu­ally early, with big adver­tis­ing bud­gets on both sides.

“There’s still a fair amount of time left in this elec­tion, but the vot­ers don’t act like it,” he said. “They look pretty decided.”

Even inde­pen­dents are “more par­ti­san in their behav­ior” these days, Green­berg says.

Repub­li­can poll­ster John McLaugh­lin, how­ever, says there’s still plenty of room for volatil­ity in vot­ers’ choices, with the debates yet to come and the race espe­cially close in cer­tain states.

He said that to get on track after recent dis­trac­tions, Romney’s mes­sage to unde­cided vot­ers must be a forward-looking eco­nomic pitch — not just that peo­ple aren’t bet­ter off after the last four years, but that the econ­omy will be much bet­ter off after four years under Romney.

Over­all, the race is neck-and-neck in the AP-GfK poll, with 47 per­cent of likely vot­ers sup­port­ing Obama and 46 per­cent for Romney.

While 84 per­cent of likely vot­ers over­all think it’s been easy to make a deci­sion this year, the unde­cid­eds, unsur­pris­ingly, are hav­ing a far tougher time. Fifty-six per­cent of per­suad­ables report hav­ing dif­fi­culty choos­ing sides.

Michael McGee­han, a 22-year-old from Salem, Ore., thinks that’s the way it should be.

McGee­han is lean­ing toward Obama but says any­thing is pos­si­ble because “things can hap­pen.” He adds: “There’s a lot of peo­ple who have their minds made up too far in advance.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 23 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.