'Torn 20' voters, still on the fence, will decide if Trump or Harris prevails
BOSTON ― The late economist and U.S. ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote, “Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
I bet you know where most of your family, friends, and co-workers stand on the choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable this November. (I’ll let you decide who’s who.) But not everyone has taken a stand. People always ask me questions like:
“How could anyone still be undecided?”
“With RFK, Jr. out of the presidential race, why would people still vote for a third-party candidate?”
“Are there voters still 'torn' between Harris and Trump?”
In the August USA TODAY/Suffolk University national poll of likely voters, we dug for answers to these questions: We asked third-party and undecided voters what was holding them back from voting for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
We found a segment of the population (75 respondents, about 8%) that, with only 2 months until election day, is still either undecided or selecting third-party candidates as both their first and second choice. That’s nearly twice as large as the current margin separating Harris and Trump. (Harris currently leads Trump, 47.6% to 43.3%.)
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The overall reason? USA TODAY’s Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page summarized the data well: “Likely voters are holding back from Harris largely because they don’t know enough about her, and those same voters are holding back from Trump because they know too much about him.”
Of these 75 respondents, 55 live in solidly red or blue states where their decision won’t impact the election. That leaves us with 20 respondents in swing states, who I dub the “Torn Twenty.”
Every vote matters in these states, and each poll respondent represents hundreds ? perhaps thousands ? of other likely voters who may share their same views. In the table below, for each of the Torn Twenty, I list characteristics (home state, gender, party, age) and reasons (in their own words) for not voting for Harris or Trump.
Who might they eventually choose? You be the judge:
The table above is not a quantitative study. It is a qualitative examination into the minds of swing state voters who, up to this point in time, have told us they are not choosing Harris or Trump – but have told us they are going to vote. As pollsters, we can only record a respondent’s sentiments and analyze their voting characteristics, but we must also be careful not to generalize or unjustifiably draw conclusions beyond the actual words from likely voters.
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The outcome of the 2024 election could be determined by these folks who are trying to describe why they are holding back from both Harris and Trump. The campaign that figures out that winning recipe to move these voters to their corner over the next eight weeks will win. That’s what this election boils down to. It’s one part debate prep, one-part political strategy, two parts dialectical behavior psychology ? and one part luck.
Now you see what we see. This is the plight and challenge for pollsters (and candidates) in 2024: the measurement of the disastrous and the unpalatable.
David Paleologos is director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who are these undecided voters? How a 'Torn 20' may swing the election
