A very close presidential race
Meet the Undecided
By LARRY M. BARTELS and LYNN VAVRECK, NYT
Most American voters have already decided whether they will pull the lever for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney in November. Their decisions were largely predictable even before Romney emerged as the Republican standard-bearer. But there are still a few people out there who are truly undecided - and if the race remains as close as it is now, their votes will be crucial to the outcome. Who are these people, and why do they seem to be having such a hard time making up their minds?
The one fact everyone seems to agree on is that there aren't many of them. Using its latest polling data, The Wall Street Journal writes that "American voters are growing more polarized and locked in their views." The Washington Post describes the election as "a settled issue for nearly nine in 10 voters." The race is "tight and stable," according to the Post's Ezra Klein, who adds that "Romney and Obama are realistically fighting over three or four percent of the electorate." And Paul Begala says "there are about as many people in San Jose as there are swing voters who will decide this election" - 916,643 people in six swing states, to be much too precise.
Typical opinion surveys do not include nearly enough respondents to provide a statistically reliable portrait of this narrow undecided sliver of the electorate. However, the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project has been surveying 1,000 people each week since January, providing a much larger pool of respondents than any single survey can offer. By putting together the responses from 10 of these surveys conducted from May through July, we have assembled a mega-sample of 10,000 respondents interviewed after it became clear that Mitt Romney would be the Republican nominee.
This mega-sample mirrors other recent polls in indicating a very close presidential race: among respondents who supported or leaned toward either major-party candidate, 51 percent chose Obama and 49 percent chose Romney. But crucially for our purposes, 592 of the 10,000 respondents (5 percent of the weighted sample) said they were not sure which presidential candidate they would vote for, then declined to express even a tentative leaning toward Obama or Romney in response to a follow-up question. These people seem to be truly undecided - and there are enough of them to provide an unusually detailed and reliable picture of undecided voters in the country as a whole.
(More here.)
Most American voters have already decided whether they will pull the lever for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney in November. Their decisions were largely predictable even before Romney emerged as the Republican standard-bearer. But there are still a few people out there who are truly undecided - and if the race remains as close as it is now, their votes will be crucial to the outcome. Who are these people, and why do they seem to be having such a hard time making up their minds?
The one fact everyone seems to agree on is that there aren't many of them. Using its latest polling data, The Wall Street Journal writes that "American voters are growing more polarized and locked in their views." The Washington Post describes the election as "a settled issue for nearly nine in 10 voters." The race is "tight and stable," according to the Post's Ezra Klein, who adds that "Romney and Obama are realistically fighting over three or four percent of the electorate." And Paul Begala says "there are about as many people in San Jose as there are swing voters who will decide this election" - 916,643 people in six swing states, to be much too precise.
Typical opinion surveys do not include nearly enough respondents to provide a statistically reliable portrait of this narrow undecided sliver of the electorate. However, the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project has been surveying 1,000 people each week since January, providing a much larger pool of respondents than any single survey can offer. By putting together the responses from 10 of these surveys conducted from May through July, we have assembled a mega-sample of 10,000 respondents interviewed after it became clear that Mitt Romney would be the Republican nominee.
This mega-sample mirrors other recent polls in indicating a very close presidential race: among respondents who supported or leaned toward either major-party candidate, 51 percent chose Obama and 49 percent chose Romney. But crucially for our purposes, 592 of the 10,000 respondents (5 percent of the weighted sample) said they were not sure which presidential candidate they would vote for, then declined to express even a tentative leaning toward Obama or Romney in response to a follow-up question. These people seem to be truly undecided - and there are enough of them to provide an unusually detailed and reliable picture of undecided voters in the country as a whole.
(More here.)
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