Undecided voters give Harris a look — but not a commitment — after the debate

Right, they gray area is so small, it's practically just a blend line for the huge expanse of black and white on the table for this election.

I meant it more as an aside. Like, "He's said something truly ridiculous, how could you vote for him?"

They are, they'll vote for Trump, they just don't want to admit it publicly.

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.

No it doesn't. If the decided voters turn out, then it GG and Republicans never win another election.

He could never exist in a setting where there wasn't a staff dedicated to him at all times

If he weren't so obese, he could be paved over and used as a speed bump.

In other words, morons.

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.

I don’t understand why anyone cares about the “undecideds”. These people sound like morons who wouldn’t listen to reason anyway.

Stop begging for scraps. These people make up about three percent of potential voters, and I doubt most of them even bother to go to the polls.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/poll-three-percent-voters-still-035900135.html

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.

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.

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?”

Pretty much.

You're right.

Edit: I'm agreeing with Thunder, not Lynne.

I highly doubt most voters even know what the fed does, let alone that theyre supposed to be independent.

Be careful to identify the antecedent to your pronouns.

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.

This sounded weirdly accurate in my head. You fucking nailed it

Yes, but surely he wouldn’t kick ME in the nuts… just those people I don’t like, right? Why would I want someone to high five THEM?