What lurks in the minds of undecided voters?
During a long career covering politics, it’s a question I’ve asked myself many times given that undecided voters are, more often than not, the deciding factor in many elections.
It’s also a question that a recent podcast on the New York Times website tried to answer. It was a podcast I could not pass up.
As part of The Run-Up, a podcast series about the U.S. presidential election, there was an episode titled “What undecided voters are thinking.” It featured interviews with undecided voters across the U.S. about whether this week’s dramatic debate between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris had influenced their final voting decision.
The verdict? Not many of the people interviewed were completely swayed by the debate in one direction or another. The value of these interviews was not in documenting the moment a voter goes from undecided to decided; it was exposing their profound lack of knowledge about the issues they identified as being most important.
For example, one deeply divided Ohio voter said the threat to abortion access was among her top issues. Even so, she seemed stunningly disconnected from the reality of what has happened in her country over the past two years since Roe v. Wade, the precedent that acknowledged a constitutional right to abortion, was overturned.
That decision was facilitated by a Trump-led re-imagining of the U.S. Supreme Court with the appointment of ultra-conservative judges. Since that happened, Trump made it clear that if any American wanted to thank anyone for abortion bans, it should be him.
“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone,” Trump posted to Truth Social in May 2023. “Without me the pro life movement would have just kept losing.”
Flash forward to the debate, and Trump has now adopted a completely different message. Following the death of Roe v. Wade, Republicans found themselves on the wrong side of public opinion, which strongly supports access to abortion, with limits. Using the issue as a springboard, Democrats surged and inflicted heavy losses on the Republicans in mid-term elections.
Starting this spring, Trump began to soften his opposition to abortion, and instead of taking credit for undermining abortion access, he said his intention was to give the states the opportunity to create their own laws and, in so doing, give citizens the chance to vote on the issue. Even though he claims now he is not anti-abortion, he has continued to repeat outrageous allegations that Democrats wanted to facilitate abortions after a baby was born.
Trump’s position is, objectively speaking, pretty transparent. When he thought killing Roe v. Wade was a policy win, he was Mr. Anti-Abortion. As soon as he saw the backlash against Republicans, he claimed he was only giving people the right to vote on abortion.
Whatever side of the debate you may inhabit, Trump’s flip-flop should be transparent to anyone for whom reproductive rights is a watershed issue. Instead, the undecided voter in the podcast ignored his role in killing Roe v. Wade and, even though she didn’t support abortion bans, accepted Trump’s new position as the new reality. “So, (Trump) did what he thought was right in the moment. I can’t fault him for that.”
This is the curse of the undecided voter: despite their better intentions, they struggle to find the facts necessary to make an informed decision. And that is a concern because the undecided vote — which has been estimated in Canadian and U.S. elections to be as high as 15 per cent of voters — often decides elections.
Widespread ignorance of political issues may seem counter-intuitive in an age where we are literally surrounded by information. The problem is that we are increasingly becoming reliant on social media news, and increasingly estranged from traditional, long-form news.
All over the world, citizens spend fewer minutes reading or watching traditional news. Instead, they rely mostly on social media, which is rife with information manipulators and built on hot takes unburdened by facts and context available in longer-form journalism.
As for people who claim they don’t read/watch traditional news because of bias, remember that social media — which is heavy on allegations and light on facts — is easily the most-biased source of news.
To wit, it would be fine for the uncommitted voter in Ohio to vote for Trump as long as they could rationalize his intellectual dishonesty. If they’re OK with the fact that Roe v. Wade was overturned by the judges appointed by Trump, and that he celebrated the subsequent abortion bans, so be it, but don’t pretend it was about returning the issue to state jurisidiction.
It’s essential, both in Canada and the U.S., that as many people as possible vote in upcoming elections. However, it is equally, if not more important, that we perform our voting duties with as much information as possible.
Voting without knowledge is like driving without a steering wheel. It’s a recipe for disaster.
dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com
Dan Lett
Columnist
Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986. Read more about Dan.
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