Voters in two swing-state groups assembled by NBC News were more interested in the vice president after seeing the debate. Yet they still had questions.
I’ve decided undecided voters have low critical thinking skills and/or are attention seekers
At this point the undecideds look 10X dumber than the average MAGA supporter. MAGAs either fell for the rage bait or they think they'll be rewarded somehow (also falling for that lie since Trump only ever rewards his own family). But to be fucking "undecided" between what I think is a somewhat moderate and capable candidate in Harris and a clearly authoritarian grifter in Trump, you need to be straight up committed to a hospital because you probably have a tumor.
They're too stupid to know where the polling place is, or to fill in a mail-in ballot. Couldn't find their ass with both hands, a map and a flashlight.
I can't imagine how anyone looks at Trump, and who he is as a person, then compares to Harris and still can't decide. The choice is so painfully clear, it's not even a choice. Trump isn't fit for office at any level, let alone the highest office in the land.
the people 'undecided' arent looking at anything. they just dont consume media in the same manner, if at all, as the rest of us. there are humans who actively avoid all politics, and in the united states this is actually very easy to do.
we have bred an entire class of humans who just do not give a shit, and its hard to get them to suddenly care 'this cycle'
Some of them are also "goldfish voters." These people only engage with whatever political message has been delivered to them most recently. They literally can go from D to R and back again bumper sticker to bumper sticker.
Then there are the obligate ego independents. Their only political belief is that they must vote for both parties some of the time. If they voted D last time then they will probably vote R this time. Because their identity is "independent" so they must manifest that, all reason be damned.
there are humans who actively avoid all politics, and in the united states this is actually very easy to do.
Man, I dont even live in the US, and US politics is inescapable. Of course Canada's political climate is directly affected by what's going on down there, so It's probably harder to avoid here than somewhere across an ocean.
They actually just don't believe the media that goes against what they believe, and at this point I can hardly blame them. There are enough lies, distortions, out of context quotes and mischaracterizations that it is pretty easy to simply disregard things that other people accept as truth. Political season in the United States has a huge cloud, a fog of war, and whoever says their "truth" the loudest and most persistently controls public perception, the narrative. It's discouraging and overwhelming to try to sort out the real truth because there is a rapid and continuous stream of propaganda that can't possibly be investigated and verified. So people go back to their instincts, which are mostly guided by their friends, social groups, and their self-curated media feed. Everything else is disregarded as fake news.
In court there's such a thing as a directed verdict, and also ruling on an issue as a matter of law. Basically where there's no reasonable jury that could decide otherwise, the judge directs the decision.
That's kind of how I feel - not removing the democratic process obviously, but this is a situation you can be for Trump or reasonable, not both.
I can't imagine how people could see the dip right after she took back all progressive stances and not understand the easy solution is moving to the left...
But here we are bro
It's 2024 and people constantly do irrational stuff.
She's not going to gain any trump voters, there's zero logical reason for Dems to move to the right. Except they think they can get away with being more to the right.
If they just wanted to win the election, Kamala would be out there for M4A, legal weed, affordable college plan that fixes the flawed system, and some good ole tax raises for the rich.
It's literally that easy.
Obama wasn't near that progressive, and he got a landslide and carried House and Senate.
She’s not going to gain any trump voters, there’s zero logical reason for Dems to move to the right. Except they think they can get away with being more to the right.
While I can't speak on the effectiveness of the strategy, I would point out that Harris et al. aren't really aiming to recruit Trump voters. They're more aiming for more traditional Reaganite Republicans, the "never Trump" people. Think of the type of Republicans like Dick Cheney. That's the type of Republican they're aiming for. They're not aiming to convince an active Trump supporter to flip to Harris. They're trying to get Republicans who don't want to vote for Trump, who would otherwise stay at home, to instead vote for Harris.
My own parents fit into this mold. They're in their sixties and voted for Republicans their entire adult lives, up until 2016. They voted third party in 2016, and in 2020 they switched over to supporting Biden, and now they support Harris and are voting for Democrats across the board.
Whether appealing to voters like my parents or trying to appeal to younger, more disaffected progressive voters is a better strategy, I can't say. But the perennial problem of appealing to hard-core progressive voters is that they are incredibly fickle and often engage in self-destructive purity testing. Look at the leftist voters refusing to vote for Harris over the Palestine issue. Far-left voters have a tendency to find any excuse not to vote for a candidate. It's Palestine this time around, but it could easily be something else. There's always some issue that the main Democratic candidate has that some leftists will cite as a reason not to vote for the mainline Democratic candidate. In 2024, it's Palestine. In 2020, it was Biden and the crime bill. In 2016, it was Hillary's treatment of Bernie. Etc. There's always a purity test violation a certain segment of far left voters will cite to vote against their own interests. They want a perfect candidate, and they will actively seek out any excuse not to vote for the mainline candidate. As no politician will share 100% of their views, there will always be some reason to not vote for them.
The reason Democrats often tilt to the right is that voters on the far left side of things are often short-sighted and incredibly fickle. They're not reliable voters.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. At least some of these undecided voters seem like they'd otherwise be left leaning but they have the one issue (bad experience with abortion that they want to impose on everyone, or really don't wanna give up their gun, etc) which is holding them back.
Of course it's not like it's the same one issue holding them all back - each one is different from the rest. Hence going more left and liberal - it feels right to us, but likely risk is that doing so could very well push some of these folks away.
That's all and well in a normal election but - well, i think it's obvious most of us regulars here that this election year is not that.
Trump is an unusually badly performed (even for them) WWE heel. He looks like one of the whorehouse punters in a George Grosz painting, only even more exaggerated. He looks like something my dog sniffed at but refused to eat.
I guarantee that woman has been registered R her entire life, sees why he is problematic on a very superficial level, and is still going to AT BEST abstain from voting but more likely vote for him anyhow.
Lynne Kelleher, a registered Republican who voted for Trump in 2016 and for the libertarian candidate in 2020, believes this election comes down to a choice: “Do you vote your pocketbook or do you vote your morals?”
The biggest miss at the debate was Harris not reminding everyone how Trump was bullying the fed chair on Twitter when everyone said it was time to start raising interest rates.
In general, the distinction between populism and technocracy needs to be front and center. This is a very easy example.
If you saw that debate and came out with, "Hmm, but which one should I vote for?", just say you're voting for Trump. Say that shit with your chest, loud and proud. I wanna know what places to avoid.
He said immigrants are eating people's pets for fucks sake.
If you are openly struggling to decide between Trump and Harris, I'd personally assume you are a closet racist at the least. But maybe these people have just been exposed to Trump and his campaign or got in the wrong crowd a bit, maybe they are now struggling to leave that camp but want to. Maybe they want to vote Trump for whatever fucking reason, but they know he is vile really, so won't publicly admit it. Who knows.
I cannot understand these wishy-washy, fencing idiots. Do they live in caves? Not just any caves either, But the one Plato talks about? Seriously WTF is wrong with these people. If you don't know what Trump stands for after all of these years, and can't understand what Harris is about, then you seriously should just smack yourself in the face with a cast iron skillet - repeatedly - until either you smash the stupid out of yourself or fall into a coma. I honestly don't care which.
That's essentially what I told my wife last night. If you're undecided and watched the debate and still are undecided, just admit you're a Trump voter.
For what it's worth, there's been talk that they're really having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find true undecided voters willing to go on TV and be part of these panels. That's unfortunate in the sense that it suggests there aren't many actually-persuadable voters out there, but these clowns aren't especially representative of the general electorate, either.
I just can't make up my mind on this one... should I eat a salad, or light my testicles on fire? I mean, it's not that I want my testicles on fire, it's just that I'm really not in the mood for salad.
I swear, you could have Hitler reincarnate with Himmler as vice president looking exactly the same as how they looked like in WW2 and use the exact same rhetoric, and the current undecided voters would still be equally clueless on who to vote for, assuming they're actually undecided and not "closeted conservative voter who doesn't want to look bad".
I've never understood how some 70 million Americans watched Trump speak and said "aaah, THIS is my president". You have to have some mental disability to actually choose this dude. Or you're just an evil asshole who wants personal gains.
Considering I was seriously interested in how the debate would go and had to turn it off only half way through, I think it’s highly likely that 70 million Americans waited for Fox to feed them the Cliff’s Notes version.
I know that there are a number of people who simply don't pay attention and suddenly realize that they have no idea what's going on when election time comes around. THEY are the undecided voters.
What you see in the media, however, does not convince me that they are genuinely undecided. I believe that a lot of people claim it for the attention they get. Then we have examples of people pretending even though they are actually part of someone's campaign.
I find it hard to believe in these circumstances there are truly undecided. trump was president for four years and there was so much crazy. If someone saw and agree if it was crazy I can't see them voting for him and if someone did not see or did not agree it was crazy then I think its likely they will vote for him.