The term “undecided” describes potential voters who express an intention to vote in a public opinion poll prior to Election Day but have not yet settled on a candidate choice. Journalists and political pundits often view such voters as up for grabs (or “swing voters”). Between 1972 and 1988, undecided voters constituted, on average, one in every five potential voters (with a range of 13% to 26%, depending on the specific election year). Political scientists have found few stable sociodemographic traits that characterize such voters; undecideds appear in all income and education levels. They are often more likely to be younger, however. Politically, these individuals tend to be less partisan than other voters, less interested in politics, and less likely to be concerned about the outcome of the election. This is especially true of chronic undecideds (also called “late deciders”), as opposed to occasional undecideds. In more recent years, political scientists have found the number of undecideds to be on the decline.
A more useful distinction may be between soft and firm voters. Soft voters, according to Kenski, Hardy, and Jamieson, are voters who are completely undecided, or who have made a tentative choice but are open to persuasion. Firm voters have a clear voting preference and express little willingness to change their mind prior to Election Day. In the Campaign of 2008, the National Annenberg Election Study found that 25.6 percent of voters were in the soft category in August, just prior to the Democratic National Convention. By mid-October, more than 85 percent of most of the sociodemographic groups in the electorate were in the firmly decided category (with slightly lower percentages for voters in the 18–29 age range and for individuals with a high school education or less). Sides and Vavreck’s study of the Campaign of 2012 found that many voters who claim to be undecided are partisans who, for some reason, are displeased with their party’s candidate. Their unique analysis of the same voters at several points in time determined that almost half of the citizens who claimed to be undecided in December 2011 did not vote. Of the remainder, votes were divided fairly evenly among the candidates. To put it differently, they found that 88 percent of self-identified Republicans who voted ended up voting for Romney and 89 percent of self-identified Democrats who voted ended up voting for Obama. Fewer than 10 percent defected to vote for the opposite party, and some portion voted for someone other than a major party candidate. In short, disgruntled partisans end up either staying home or getting brought into the party fold. While the media often highlight the rule of undecided voters at election time, political scientists have long maintained that people who lack a candidate preference by the time that fall rolls around are less attentive to politics than other citizens, have lower levels of political information, and are substantially less likely to vote.
See also Microtargeting
Faucheux, Ron. “Hitting the Bull’s Eye: Winning Elections by Targeting Voters.” Campaigns and Elections 20 (July 1999): 20–25.
Kelly, Tina. “Watching, Listening, Hoping for a President: Undecided Voters Weigh Options.” New York Times, August 5, 2000, p. A1.
Kenski, Kate, Bruce W. Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
New York Times. “The Power of the Undecideds.” Editorial, November 5, 2000, Section 4, p. 14.
Sides, John, and Lynn Vavreck. The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.