It was a narrow sliver in the pie chart that caught my eye: In the governor’s race, the Minnesota Poll last week showed 5 percent undecided. In the U.S. Senate race, it was 6 percent.
What a tremendously powerful little group. With the governor’s race a dead heat, these likely voters could decide the election.
Who were they? Why couldn’t they make up their minds? Was there something more the newspaper could do to help them reach a decision?
Down in Florida, Philip Dalton had similar questions a few years ago as he watched a group of voters remain tenaciously undecided right up to Election Day in the presidential contest between George Bush and Al Gore.
The assistant professor of communication at Stetson University made voters who decide at the last minute the focus of his doctoral research. He recently published a book about his findings: “Swing Voting: Understanding Late Deciders in Late Modernity.”
What he found ran contrary to conventional wisdom about undecideds.
It’s easy to assume they aren’t interested in politics, aren’t tuned in … basically, politically lazy. Dalton found quite the opposite.
“They are an interested and engaged group. They genuinely try to get information from both sides,” he said. “These people tend to be more objective, less emotional, than partisans,” Dalton said. “If your choice isn’t driven by emotions, it’s hard to choose early. These people stand on the sidelines and observe like scientists.”
What does that mean for the kind of newspaper coverage that would serve these readers? Dalton warned that they distrust opinion and partisan information.
“Pay careful attention to how the coverage is done,” Dalton said. “So much coverage is framed in terms of a contest, and that doesn’t work for these voters. Don’t write in terms of chess moves by candidates. If it’s intended for undecideds, write about the genuine proposals of candidates and how they would work.”
In a market such as the Twin Cities, political coverage needs to serve readers at two levels. It’s become popular in journalism during the last decade to spurn horse-race coverage as something readers don’t want. That may be true in some markets, but it’s incomplete thinking in this market where voter participation tends to be high.
There are legions of partisan readers who made up their minds long ago, but still want to read about strategy and where the campaigns stand because their livelihoods depend on the industry of politics and government in the 11-county metro area. They are campaign workers, lobbyists, government workers at the local, county and state level, public school teachers, university professors and employees — and they number in the tens of thousands.
For them, politics isn’t just about voting, but about how involved they need to be to ensure the outcome they want. A sense of how the race is going can spur these readers to get out there pounding in lawn signs and staffing phone banks. In the end, their get-out-the-vote efforts could overshadow the impact of undecideds in determining who wins.
On the other hand, it’s important to remember that kind of coverage doesn’t engage all readers, particularly the undecideds who want facts free of analysis or commentary. They don’t seem to care about the latest dirt opposition researchers have dug up on the other candidate.
The newspaper needs to serve both groups. So I called a few undecided voters who had been interviewed for the Minnesota Poll to ask how the newspaper could help them reach a decision.
Ellwood Barsness, 60, is an undecided voter living in St. Paul. He used to manage a small business. “Get away from the personal junk,” he said about the coverage. “Get to the issues.” Key for him would be information about the management skills of candidates, most of whom have held public office before and have a track record that could be probed.
Roberta Pugsley, widowed two years ago when she was 59, dropped her health insurance when the cost hit $500 a month. “If I get a major illness, I’m sunk,” she said. Pugsley, who lives in Stillwater, wants blunt, straight answers about what candidates would do about health care. “No hemmin’ and hawin’,” she said.
Mylla Marwitz, 60, lives in St. Joseph and called me last week frustrated that the newspaper wasn’t printing comprehensive listings of candidate debates, public appearances and broadcasts. Marwitz, who leans DFL but listens to everyone as she searches for the best candidate, likes to hear the candidates directly.
John Lunseth, 78, is a retired surgeon living near Rush City. He would like the gubernatorial candidates pinned down on “their plan to provide adequate jobs in the state.” He’s also concerned about a health care system he views as intolerably expensive. “I don’t expect them to have all the answers, but I at least want to know the direction they would start to go,” he said.
With U.S. Senate candidates, Lunseth said, he wants to know what they would do about terrorism and “problems between religions.” Economic and health issues are also important on the federal level, he added. He likes debates and is turned off by attack ads.
Lunseth and other undecideds should brace themselves for the end of this campaign season. Dalton said political strategists know that historically, undecideds tend to break for the challenger and against incumbents. If the race is close and they’re looking for an edge, political strategists know undecideds are so disgusted by attack ads that they can keep them from going to vote at all if they flood the market with attacks right before Election Day.
A good role for a newspaper is letting readers know how campaigns are trying to manipulate them.
For candidates — and the journalists who cover them — who are more interested in serving undecided voters than manipulating them, stick to straight answers on the issues. Remember that when you take aim at your opponent instead of focusing on what you think, it makes you suspect in the eyes of these potentially pivotal voters who are trying to make up their minds.
