I’ve decided undecided voters have low critical thinking skills and/or are attention seekers

    • Poayjay@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      35
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      3 months ago

      Literally every election is decided by the “undecided”. Democrats vote democrat and republicans vote republican. It rare that anyone changes party. What determines elections is if democrats can get people who wouldn’t otherwise vote to vote. Every time people turn out, democrats win. When people are uninterested they lose. Those ~50k people in suburbs of swing states are not unimportant, they are the only thing that matters.

      • niucllos@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        This premise gets thrown around a lot but I actually disagree. “Every time people turn out” is always also thrown in there like some arbitrary thing–when I think the past several election cycles have shown that when there are younger, more progress candidates who make it past the primaries turnout shoots up. Courting the 3% uninformed flip-floppers by moving right is a losing strategy when you could be motivating your own party to turn out by moving left and driving turnout up. There’s no money in that though, so dumb centrists get wooed

        • whereisk@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          It’s also a mistruth that people don’t change their minds. Look at the rise and fall of any brand, religion or cult - some people had to change their minds.

        • MsPenguinette@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          When/if democrats can Energize the base, they don’t need to give a shit about undecideds. but until then, we are stuck pandering to the people we know will actually show up to and wait at the voting booth

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        No, every election is decided by the majority of those who did decide.

      • Marthirial@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        Literally every election is decided by the “undecided

        That and voter suppression. If everybody could vote easily, the GOP would never win an election.

        • triptrapper@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 months ago

          It’s absolutely voter suppression. Every election we have 1/3 of the electorate that doesn’t cast a vote. We could court these couple million undecideds or we could fix the system and have automatic registration and even compulsory voting. And then, you’re absolutely right, Republicans would never win again.

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        in a world where the winner is decided by < 5%

        It’s a false analysis to claim that. Using that same reasoning, you could as credibly claim that any election is decided by a single vote, the one that gives the winner the majority (or plurality). But that’s not actionable information in any way, it’s just tautologically true, as is any salami-slicing analysis.