Undecideds in Polling

In the past, the undecided voters heading into the election are generally split 50/50, 60/40 or some other number close to half barring some sort of very effective advertisement or tremendous gaffe.

This year, however, I think we have to assume when we look at general tracking numbers that the undecided voters are going to be split more extreme - something like 70/30 or 80/20 in favor of John McCain. The reason for this is, I believe, because one of the reasons that these undecided voters are "undecided" is because they generally want to vote for John McCain, but he is too terrible a candidate for them to make the commitment. While they claim they are weighing their options, they are probably not. Instead, they are simply embarrassed that they'd rather vote for McCain and are waiting for a good excuse. If they do not "make up their mind" before the election (probably related to whether or not McCain becomes a popular choice again) they will still likely vote for him on election day.

Why do I believe they will not vote for Obama?

For starters, Obama's strength is his ability to inspire pride in your beliefs. There is not a single voter that is "reluctantly" voting for Obama, not including previous Hillary Clinton supporters. Secondly, McCain is and has been an awful candidate thus far. So voters that are undecided are likely not committed to Obama because:

- They really believe that experience is somehow a big issue
- They are socially conservative
- They are gullible and believe propaganda
- They do not want to vote for a black man (not something I believe, but possible)

All of those are not terribly likely to change come election day, but they can change. If election day comes and they have not, however, McCain is going to be their likely choice, since his only flaw is that he sucks.


FiveThirtyEight.com has shown some great polling lately for Obama, including a 4% lead in the popular vote. But there are still 6-8% undecided voters, and in this case I think Obama needs to try to win 1 or 2% more undecideds at least before election day, because if they do not make up their mind they'll probably vote for McCain.