re: The idea of Undecideds breaking for the Challenger

[cthulu2016]

There have been several things written about this the last few days—Nate Silver, Josh Marshall, and others.

The conventional political wisdom is that an incumbent under 50% is in trouble because undecideds break for the challenger. And there is a lot of truth to that... but not in Presidential elections.

In a congressional election the challenger is typically totally unknown except to political junkies so 90% of the campaign process is a referendum on the incumbent. Undecideds are already saying they are not for the incumbent, and they typically couldn't pick the challenger out of a line-up, so they are not for the challenger either.

One they don't like, one they don't know.

But on election day, when forced to chose, they chose against the incumbent even while having almost no idea who the other guy is.

In presidential election we do not go into the last week with undecideds having barely heard of the challenger. Undecideds in election 2012 know who Obama and Romney are, and have for a long time, and are still undecided.

Thus presidential races do not feature the "incumbents under 50% lose" dynamic that local races do.

Also, the length of Presidential races allow the undecideds time to break for the challenger and then break back. Kerry won the debates but lost the post-debate period. Romney won the first debate big and got a big break from independents and undecideds, but unfortunately for him there was a full month and two more debates to go. It appears that in 2012 some people signed onto Romney after the first debate, but provisionally. He was on probation. And he did not wear well.


The late break par excellence was Reagan in 1980 and that was because there was only one debate and it was right at the end of the campaign. That election was so striking that pundits who remember it always expect that dynamic to repeat, but it is actually not at all typical.



Here are the notable late breaks in Presidential elections I recall.

(I don't remember 1960, but if I have my history right, there was no late break. JFK and Nixon were very close throughout the whole campaign, and very close on election night. The debates actually had no dramatic effect on the polls. 1964, 1972 and 1984 were such blow-outs that it would be hard to identify a late break. Undecideds presumably went to the winner, which was the incumbent president each time. I don't recall a late break in 1992. If the race tightened at the end that would be another late break for the incumbent.)

1968 - late move for Humphrey.
1976 - late move for Ford
1980 - late move for Reagan
1988 - late-ish (post convention) move for Bush
1996 - We will never know whether Dole got a late surge. The polling in 1996 was very poor and Dole outperformed his polls, but we don't know exactly why or when or how. Maybe he surged, or maybe the polls had been off all year.
2000 - Gore surged, but that was due to the DWI story so it's a separate category.
2004 - Late break for Bush
2008 - late break for Obama, but he was already well ahead.

So the late movement is 50-50 challengers and incumbents. (5 out of 8 for the incumbent party—Bush in 1988.) Also, the candidate getting the late surge only got inaugurated 50% of the time. (I say inaugurated instead of won because of Bush v. Gore)


And if we count undecideds breaking for the three incumbents LBJ, Nixon and Reagan, which they must have since they were land-slides, the it would be 7-4 for incumbents.

This election is probably going to be quite similar to 2004, though with Obama winning by more EV than Bush.

[TDale313]

1. Good info. n/t

[patrice]

2. Some people are saying that undecideds are those who decide based on who they think will win.

They are people who don't want to have to say to themselves that they voted for a loser, so they wait until they think they know who is going to be the winner and that's who they vote for.

[cthulu2016]

4. In presidential races that may well be true.

Presidential races are like national movements, or American Idol, or some quasi-religious thing. And people do seem to like to be on the winning side.

[Drunken Irishman]

5. It's called the bandwagon effect and it is real.

A lot of people who've yet to make up their mind just very well could vote for the candidate they think will win because, you know, why not? I think if they're truly undecided, they're not terribly for, or against, either candidate. So, voting for the winner could give them some self satisfaction.

In the 1992 election, a survey took a collection of undecideds, broke them up into two groups and asked them who they were leaning toward. The first group was not informed on who was likely to win the election (how they didn't know this is beyond me ... but in '92, there was less access to instant news, so...) and most said they probably would vote for Bush (this also debunks the idea that the challengers pick up most undecideds). In the second group, they were all informed Clinton was likely to win ... and in that group, they overwhelmingly said they would probably vote Clinton.

It's why Romney was selling this idea of momentum the last few weeks because there needs to be the illusion a candidate is winning for that very reason.

[Drunken Irishman]

3. Yup. I don't know why people assume undecideds break for the challenger. '04 proved this wrong...

Bush won roughly 67% of undecided voters in '04 and Kerry only around 34% of the undecideds. If the idea that undecideds break for the challenger been true in '04, the popular vote would've been a true toss-up ... with Kerry receiving 49.2 of the vote to Bush's 49.8, instead of what we got - 50.7 for Bush and 47.4 for Kerry.

That probably would've been enough to win Ohio, Iowa and maybe New Mexico, giving Kerry a 283 vote electoral college victory ... even if he barely lost the popular vote.

[naviman]

6. Dick Morris has always said undecideds break for the challenger

So I've always known that they don't but I still wondered why. This explains it well and makes a lot of sense.

[Democratopia]

7. Unusual circumstances in this election that help Obama with undecideds:

1/ Obama already has a late surge triggered by his handling of the hurricane devastation.

2/ Disaster allowed Obama to show leadership, while challenger had to pause campaigning.

3/ Rapidly increasing economic optimism, buoyed by news of a strong job's report and other data.

4/ A challenger whose exceptional propensity to lie is finally reaching low-information voters.

5/ A number of gaffes/obvious lies in the past week that are being called out by the media.

6/ Endorsements and Chris Christie praise that fly in the face of assertions that Obama is too partisan.

It isn't really too relevant what has happened in the past. All of these factors provide unique reasons in this election why Obama is now seeing undecideds breaking to him, as well as voters switching to him from Republican.