Associated Press-GfK Poll: One Quarter of Voters Remain Uncommitted
Nate Beeler, The Columbus Dispatch
A new AP/GfK poll finds the 2012 Presidential race is more up in the air than ever — but a Pew Research Poll suggests Romney could benefit from higher GOP engagement.
They shrug at President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. They’re in no hurry to decide which one to support in the White House race. And they’ll have a big say in determining who wins the White House.
One-quarter of U.S. voters are persuadable, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll, and both Obama and Romney will spend the next four months trying to convince these fickle, hard-to-reach individuals that only he has what it takes to fix an ailing nation.
It’s a delicate task. These voters also hate pandering.
Hate pandering? Then what can both political parties DO?
This suggests that — more than ever — the kinds of political mantras repeated by partisans on each side are likely going to face a tough audience when it comes to independent voters or even some Democrats disappointed with President Barack Obama and Republicans not happy with the Tea Party/talk radio culture direction their party has taken. Independent voters, moderates and undecided voters are not monolithic. But the one constant in the AP story (go to the link and read it all) is the fact that many Americans are getting no longer believing political spin but seeing it for what it is: talking points.
No where is that more evident on the cable shows that set it up with someone on the left and right who vomit forth the talking points of their parties or ideologies, seemingly in a big rush to blurt forth as many charges and cherry picked facts and figures about the opposite party or opponent as they can. Networks love battles of spin regurgitators. Watch closely when you see one, and see how pleased the host often is — and how you’ll often hear after it gets ugly, obnoxiously loud, peppered with rude interruptions, the host will say at the end with a smug look on his or her face “We’ll have to have you back!”
This also suggests that although big bucks may play a role in this campaign, it may not be as much of a “given” that they will work as effectively as many political operatives hope if voters don’t feel a candidate is leveling with them. Another question: will there be a saturation point for negativity?
Clearly, other deciding factors will likely be the acceptance speeches (but swing voters may be wary since these are prepared addresses), the debates (even though candidates are coached voters an pick up things that trigger a voting preference or dislike such as Al Gore walking up to George W. Bush in what proved to be a politically toxic attempt to upstate and/or throw him off balance), and ongoing media narrative as reflected in headlines and top of the hour cable/broadcast soundbites.
Also to factor in: how much publicity comedians get when they start to ridicule a candidate. Which comedy lines start to pick up and reflect a common assumption about a given candidate? The imagery consolidated by comedian’s ridicule can be unhelpful to a candidate who is trying to woo voters not already in their camp.
But the state of the race is excruciatingly close, The Huffington Post notes, and points to a Pew poll showing Republicans are more likely be be out there voting that Democrats. (As I’ve often noted, some Democrats tend to decide to stay home when it looks as if prospects are weak or if they are mad at their party for not getting a certain piece of legislation through. Which is how the Democrats have help Republicans get more Republicans the judiciary and swing the Supreme Court):
Political junkies have been scratching their heads again this week as another batch of national surveys produced results ranging from a 13-percentage point lead for President Barack Obama to a 5-point advantage for his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
When rolled together into the HuffPost Pollster chart, the collective result from all the polls remains roughly where it has been for the past month and for much of the period before the contentious Republican primaries: Obama holds a narrow net advantage in the national polls, just under 1 percentage point.
That’s as much of a nail-biter as we’ve seen in recent years. Look at the graph:
AND:
Poll watchers are busily speculating about the cause of all the variation. But for those who care about where the race is headed, the most important results of the week might be those from an in-depth survey from the Pew Research Center, which measured voter interest and engagement in the presidential election.
The Pew Research survey found that voters are less engaged in the presidential campaign now than they were four years ago, just as the hard-fought Democratic primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was drawing to a close. “Voter engagement today generally equals or surpasses levels from the four campaigns prior to 2008,” the report concludes, “indicating that 2012 could be another relatively high turnout election.”
The most consequential finding from the Pew survey, however, might be this: “Republicans hold the edge on several turnout measures, in contrast to 2008 when Democrats had leads — some quite substantial — on nearly every indicator.” Most notably, Republicans are more likely to have given quite a lot of thought to the election (73 percent) than Democrats (66 percent). Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they were paying very close attention to election news (45 percent compared with 37 percent).
The most positive news from the survey for Democrats is that Democrats are more satisfied with their choices than Republicans (68 percent versus 60 percent). Similarly, more voters say they support Obama strongly (30 percent) than support Romney strongly (17 percent).
The Republican edge on interest in the campaign, however, is potentially troubling for Democrats, given the strong though imperfect relationship between engagement and turnout. If that gap persists, it suggests Republicans will enjoy a turnout advantage in November that would improve Romney’s standing.
Which means one of the candidates has to really turn on or turn off swing voters to win the election.
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Who cares what the national polls indicate? Does it matter if Obama carries CA and NY by 3 million votes each or 1000 votes each? He still receives the electorial votes.
It all comes down to a few undecided voters in a handful of states. And in those states the negative ads are running almost non-stop. In fact, you can become immunized to them all given the number attacking multiple candidates. The ones making the best impact on non-decided voters seems to be the ones using the candidates own words.
And in some cases, it is good that we have 25% of the population undecided. They are the ones that are going to be paying attention to the facts (not negative ads) and not just walking lockstep off a cliff with the conservatives or liberals that would not vote anyway under most any circumstance other than liberal or conservative. They do not believe in compromise and moderation.
Well, I guess the good news is that 25% of the population is not mind-numbingly voting for the same party they’ve voted for their entire lives.
But RP has it right. It only comes down to the swing voters in the states in play. The rest of the country is basically irrelevant.
Thats why its easier to steer the election and smaller amounts of money will have larger impacts. Could you imagine if politicians had to cater to everyone? Actually speak to the issues of people in OH and CA or TX instead of being able to buy out the markets in the half dozen swing states. The idea that its acceptable for 10% of the population to decide the election for the rest of us really needs to go by the wayside. I live in CA, and maybe I want to vote GOP one day and feel like my votes counts. Electoral college is a joke.
I could have sworn after the fiasco of an election that happened in 2000 for sure we were going to reform things, as that would have NEVER happened in a general election where we just count up the votes. Oh well.
OK, now I’m getting worried. The 25% need to know this:
[President Obama has proposed keeping the Pentagon budget essentially flat for the next 10 years. Mitt Romney, by contrast, wants to increase defense spending massively — by more than 50% over current levels, according to one estimate. That could mean almost $2 trillion in additional military spending over 10 years.
Romney hasn't actually proposed a defense budget or offered any specific numbers for his military strategy. But he says he wants core defense spending to reach at least 4% of the nation's gross domestic product — a big increase over the current level of about 3.2%. And he says the country needs about 100,000 more active-duty military personnel than the current 1.4 million, even though U.S. forces have left Iraq and have begun to withdraw from Afghanistan.]
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-column-romney-defense-spending-20120624,0,6596765.column
Unbelievable! And the Tea Party thinks this guy will cut spending? Well, he may and they will find out that having grandma and grandpa living in the basement (or the attic) ain’t much fun. Of course they won’t live as long as now, so I guess it won’t be so bad.
As RP and SL said, hurray for the 25% and I wish I was among them.
I also wish Romney would seize the opportunity and put out some “positive” ads focusing on actions, hopefully well thought out and “moderate”, showing plans and details on the economy, energy, immigration, health care, tax reform, etc. Then at least we would have debates instead of finger pointing. (Too much BS and not enough substantive thought.)
Unfortunately, I admit that the current Reps don’t act reasonably and any candidate, including Obama, are too beholden to various interests (read money and votes) to “do the right thing”, FOR US, as Obama’s new favorite mantra tells us.
Negative ads serve the purposes of both parties, since they leave no one responsible to solve any problems and anything that does not succeed can be blamed on the other party. Independent voters will have to re-establish free and open elections before we will see anything except the blame game in government. Until there are independent voters running against independent voters and being elected, it will just be more of the same, only worse. What it will take to break the deadlock is for independent voters to start telling the truth. The rights guaranteed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 apply to independent voters the same as to all other Americans, regardless of what corrupt party-controlled federal courts may have said in the past, and when political parties get a nation to the point of failure to which they have taken the United States, it is time for independent voters to say, Enough is enough. You are going to have to let independent voters participate in the government because you have proven the inability of political parties to provide good government. When independent voters are running against independent voters and being elected, we will have the means to solve the problems of this nation.
Looks to me like one quarter of the voters have no idea what’s going on. Maybe we’d all be better off if they stayed home on election day.