Just got back from doing NPR's "Talk of the Nation," where we fielded some calls from undecided voters. Interesting experience. The listeners we spoke to followed a strikingly similar pattern: Five minutes of explaining how there was no good information and no real way to develop a preference, then a final sentence that telegraphed exactly how they'd vote. "Bonnie," for instance, was agonizing over the absence of any neutral information, and then, at the call's end, noted she was a supporter of Clinton in the primary. I'd bet money she goes Obama. "James," meanwhile, doesn't know who can fix the economy and wants someone to run government like a business. But his final comment revealed that his real concern is figuring out which candidate would be willing to use nuclear weapons decapitate a hostile nation's strike capabilities. I'd guess he's going for McCain. Which backs up some research I pointed to in my op-ed this weekend. In their paper, "Swing Voters? Hah!" political scientists Adam Clymer and Ken Winneg amassed substantial data suggesting that very few undecided voters are truly indecisive. Examining the 2004 election, Clymer and Winneg asked the 4% of their sample that claimed to be undecided to rate the two candidates in early October. When they went back to the same people after the election, more than 80% had in fact voted for whichever candidate they'd rated most highly a month earlier. They weren't undecided so much as reluctant to express a preference. Similar, I'd argue, to the voters I talked with today.
