Saturday, July 30, 2016

Frank Luntz: The Myth of the Undecided Voter

Frank Luntz: The Myth of the Undecided Voter | TIME
"...But there are two types of undecided voters.
Image result for “low-information” voters
  • The first are useless. 
They simply don’t know or don’t care about the candidates and/or the political process.
They’re the “low-information” voters that conservative talk radio hosts love to hate.
They tell themselves that they’re fact-based arbiters.
But really, they’ve applied only haphazard thought to forming a cogent worldview.
And what they “know” is often wrong.
But their mistaken assumptions are held with such stubborn passion they refuse to hear an alternative viewpoint.
They’re every bit as angry as the more extreme elements on the Left or Right; they’re just hiding it, from themselves and from the world.
To even attempt to persuade them is a deeply futile endeavor.
They foment on the fly.


  • But the second? 

They will decide the election. 
They are the none-of-the-above voter. 
They know a lot about both candidates and don’t like either one. (Can’t blame them, really. 
Two fundamentally flawed candidates clamoring for votes in a fundamentally furious nation.) 
They cannot stomach the choice between “crude” and “corrupt” (their words, not mine). 
These voters are like children living through a bitter divorce; watching with a mixture of fear and disdain as their parents argue, knowing they will soon be forced to choose with whom to live—a decision with no good outcome.
...While I won’t predict the outcome of this election, I can pinpoint eight core characteristics of the people who will determine America’s future..."
Read on!

No comments: