My MSNBC colleague Steve Kornacki told me, “I think they exist, but I prefer the term ‘swing voters.’ Their views are simply mushy and tend to vacillate. Whether they like Obama or dislike him, it’s a soft like or dislike.”
Pollster Nate Cohn got even more surgical: “We can infer from the polls that most undecided voters neither approve nor disapprove of Obama’s performance, but they have serious reservations about the direction of the country. The people undecided about whether to vote are the real undecided voters.”
Colin Powell’s famous 40/70 rule says that the best decisions are made when we have no less than 40% of the available information but no more than 70%. Waiting for 100% almost always renders the decision too late.
Whatever the undecided voters are waiting for (or whether they are waiting at all), we may never know if they ever truly existed, or if they had any real power. Unfortunately, undecided voters don’t have tracking devices on them — so even with exit polling data on late deciders, we’re still just taking them at their word.
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