Convincing the undecided voter
Politicos pay a lot of attention to the folks they call swing voters, those that they can’t beforehand predict will vote in a certain way. During election season, they scale up that indecisiveness and identify a handful of states as swing states. These are the states that are fairly evenly balanced in their allegiance to one or the other of our two dominant political parties in the U.S.
During national elections, these are the states that get the majority of candidate attention by way of advertising spending and campaign visits. Merchants in swing states love election time. The true blue and true red states get bupkis, nada. But it’s some of these true color states that put up a large bulk of the money to fund those ads and visits to swing states. If you’re unfortunate enough to live in a poor, true color state, like West Virginia (red) or Vermont (blue), you can basically forget about influencing a national election. You don’t have swing voters and you don’t have billionaires, so nobody comes to see you.
So assuming that this sad fact about American elections persists into the future, as it probably will because of our (let me say it) stupid electoral college system that so often ignores the popular vote, what is the prudent strategy to convince those swing voters in swing states to see things in your way?
There are two tacks to take on this issue. The first is to get these folks to simply pay attention. A lot of them, I don’t know how many exactly, will be lazy about the news. Their conception of news is more oriented to the weather, sports, and local events, like the coronation of Miss Podunk at the state fair. Politics is a turnoff for many of these people. The only time that they begin to pay attention is when their local TV stations and press are saturated with highly biased ads for one party or the other. This is the absolute worst time to get informed or clear about the facts.
So it seems that the best approach to set their wavering minds in a particular direction is to get to them earlier than the few weeks preceding the November vote. There already are efforts in many states to register people early, but the registration process typically doesn’t include any meaningful policy overview of the party the person is registering for. If a person decides to forgo acquiring that knowledge until forced to — that being in those few weeks before the election — the ‘strategy’ is to register as an independent. It is this group that mainly comprises swing voters.
Now to the second tack, how do you get to these swing voters earlier than the final lap of the election campaign? How do you get them to see your party’s point of view and reject the opposition’s?
The first problem a would-be organizer has to do is overcome the fatigue and inertia that sets in immediately after an election is won or lost. If an election went in your party’s favor, you’re busy congratulating and whoop-dee-dooing, lulled into the complacency that your job is done and your victory will endure. If, instead, the election went sideways for your party, you’re busy pissing and moaning, popping anti-depressants and staying angry at all the shitty things the party in power is going to do to you and your country.
But whether you won or lost, you can now attend to all that you’ve put off until now. You can do some healing: binge watch all the shows you’ve neglected, replace all those political books with some escapist chick lit or sci fi, spend more proverbial time with your family, take up your hobby again, or just generally indulge or pamper yourself some.
It varies how long this period of wound licking or partying will last, but let’s say it’s not more than a couple of months, specifically no more than the first hundred days of the new administration, a period when it shows its true colors. It’s at this time that you as an activist should start engaging seriously, starting the information prep for the next election with the goal of equipping yourself to inform all those independent, future swing voters with facts about how they are being impacted by what your team is doing right and what the other team is doing wrong.
The emphasis here has to be, must be, focused on how the life of your targeted independent is being impacted by the policies of the current administration. This requires you to obviously know what they’re doing. But as important, you also have to know your target environment and the people living in it. That environment can be as local as your neighborhood or as large as your state. Unless you are a celebrity, though, you should avoid getting directly involved in sorting out the issues of the entire country, especially one as large as the United States. You’re not Joe Rogan or Rachel Maddow. If you are, and you’re reading this, accept my apologies and go for it!
The key to building an effective argument is to tie what the administration is doing to its direct impact on the people in your target area. If the president is proposing to restructure how education is delivered, find out if and how it will impact the schools in the district you or your neighbors send their kids to.
This strategy is obviously two-pronged. You first have to get the true facts about what the administration’s proposal will do, unspin the glowing words of the proposal from the hype that it almost always contains, and come to understand the unstated, unintended or detrimental effects it will have. This second part of the discovery procedure will necessitate you going deep into the pros and cons as expressed by both camps. You put your case in jeopardy if you don’t know both sides of the argument. This fact-finding, truth telling effort lends critical weight to your message. It is crucial.
The second prong is to engage independent voters, who pretty much for certain won’t care much. So carrying out this part might involve you directly talking with them or indirectly using media they rely on to present your arguments. Talking has the advantage that you have often more time to make your point, while using media just as likely means that you’ve got to be more concise. The typical unsolicited news or opinion piece in a local paper will cap out at between 500 to 800 words. That’s about a 3 to 5 minute read. If you had roped your target into an actual meeting, say at your local Panera or coffee shop, you could easily extend that to an hour. (You may have to foot the bill though. I acknowledge that.)
If you do have a message that resonates, then there could be a third prong (Poseidon’s trident). This, as the image implies, involves something of a full throated campaign to employ multiple approaches to getting the message out. Use direct contact again, but not just with individuals, extend your contacts to groups you’ve got access to; use multiple social media accounts to broadcast the message; restructure the message for multiple print media publications; produce and post flyers at venues where the independents gather,; set up your own web page to promote this and similar messages; and persuade other organizations to tie into what would now have become a sustained campaign. This third prong is obviously better implemented with a group of like minded people, rather than an individual. It also needs funding, so have deep pockets or rich friends.
Now for full disclosure. I am someone weaning myself off of the 2024 election. I am a blue bird in a red nest (West Virginia) and know from the promises and threats the winning administrations — local, state, and Federal, Oh, my! — have made during the campaign that I’m unlikely to be happy for four years. I also know that I will not be complacent. But the truth of my personal reality is that I’ll have to go easy. (My heart, my heart!) So what I do will be heavy on the fact-finding and media distribution side and less on the back slapping and cajoling side. We do what we can, but within the scope of our talent, time, and commitment. It’s the least we can do, and the most we can do.