For those of us engaged in politics, regardless of one’s ideology, perhaps the most puzzling elements of the campaign is the existence of undecided voters. When the candidates are clearly different, and offer competing ideas for the future of the country, what’s so difficult about making a decision?
This is why I so thoroughly enjoyed an article from Christopher Hayes in The New Republic yesterday. Hayes worked on League of Conservation Voters’ Environmental Victory Project this year, approaching people one at a time in areas known for high concentrations of undecided or persuadable voters. He was stationed in Dane County, Wisconsin, where he knocked on more than 1,000 doors.
Hayes was able to point to some fascinating anecdotal conclusions (and tell some hilarious stories) about his experience, and offered insights that political professionals should heed when planning elections in the future. The whole piece is worth reading, but a couple of observations stood out for me.
For example, Hayes noticed that undecided voters are even less rational than most of us would imagine.
Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We’re giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man’s house, she still couldn’t make sense of his decision. Then there was the woman who called our office a few weeks before the election to tell us that though she had signed up to volunteer for Kerry she had now decided to back Bush. Why? Because the president supported stem cell research. The office became quiet as we all stopped what we were doing to listen to one of our fellow organizers try, nobly, to disabuse her of this notion. Despite having the facts on her side, the organizer didn’t have much luck.
I know the feeling. I have a relative who was skeptical about Kerry because she was afraid he’d bring back the draft. (Yes, you read that right.)
But Hayes’ most important point addressed something I hadn’t considered before: Undecided voters don’t care about (or even understand) the notion of campaign issues.
Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the “issues.” That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured — a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example — but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I’d just asked them to name their favorite prime number.
The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn’t name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. Think about it: The “issue” is the basic unit of political analysis for campaigns, candidates, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes. It’s what makes up the subheadings on a candidate’s website, it’s what sober, serious people wish election outcomes hinged on, it’s what every candidate pledges to run his campaign on, and it’s what we always complain we don’t see enough coverage of.
But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to. (This was also true of a number of committed voters in both camps–though I’ll risk being partisan here and say that Kerry voters, in my experience, were more likely to name specific issues they cared about than Bush supporters.) At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics — maybe, I thought, “issue” is a term of art that sounds wonky and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they’re being quizzed on a topic they haven’t studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question: “Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what’s been happening in the country in the last four years?”
These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn’t the word “issue”; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the “political.” The undecideds I spoke to didn’t seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief — not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.
The problem here is not just with voter sophistication. It’s not that they don’t know about candidates’ positions on issues; it’s that they don’t understand issues themselves. How, exactly, does a campaign deal with this dilemma? If these voters don’t want, or even expect, candidates to talk about issues, what should the campaign be about?
Hayes noted the inherent advantage Bush has under these circumstances. Bush could emphasize his “worldview” and sidestep a failed record that undecided voters weren’t aware of anyway. Kerry, meanwhile, identified issues and offered solutions to problems. This, of course, didn’t work. As Hayes noted, “[H]ow can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don’t even grasp what issues are?
The even more complicated problem is figuring out how to communicate with these undecideds while also connecting with more engaged and informed voters. If Dems abandoned an emphasis on issues and a meaningful public policy agenda for a more ambiguous message about character and values, undecided voters may be impressed. But, conversely, voters who actually care about solutions to problems will grow frustrated and expect meaningful ideas.
I don’t know how to reconcile these competing problems, but Digby suggests a “better show” might win voters over. Maybe so. I wonder if Tom Hanks would be willing to join the ticket in ’08.