Meet the Purples! Decoding the DNA of the Swing Voter

Marty Kaplan
Huffington Post

Both Obama and McCain will make huge efforts on Election Day to turn out their bases -- the revved-up Reds and Blues. But it's still likely that the outcome will depend on the Purples, the swing voters in the middle.

Who are they? Working with Zogby International, the Norman Lear Center has now been in the field twice to find out. Our most recent survey of more than 3,000 people was conducted August 19-21. To figure out what color people were, we didn't rely on party identification or candidate preference; instead, we asked 42 questions about political values. Those answers reliably clumped into three groups -- Reds, Blues and Purples.

But we didn't just ask them about politics. We asked about what kind of entertainment they liked, how they spent their leisure time, where they got their news, and dozens of other questions about their appetites. What makes this poll cool -- and unique -- are the ways we can correlate political values to their lifestyles and cultural preferences.

So if you're a candidate and you want to reach Purples, where do you reach them, and what do they want to hear?

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