McManus: Why voters are undecided

Harris “says all the right things, but I need to know a little bit more about who she is,” said Faith, who, like others in the focus groups I observed last week, participated on the condition that her last name not be disclosed. “She talked about an ‘opportunity economy.’ I want to know what that means.”

The precise number of voters still up for grabs is hard to pin down, because most polls don’t offer “undecided” as an option. But pollsters estimate it’s between 5 percent and 10 percent of the electorate.

That stubborn minority is more than enough voters to determine the outcome of an election that could be decided by razor-thin margins in seven swing states. Who are these indecisive people who find it hard to choose between vividly different candidates? They fall into several categories.

Some, but not all, are “low-information voters,” people who are only now tuning into the campaign.

“A lot of them are people who don’t follow politics closely, or at all,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “They only get around to thinking about politics when they have to make a decision on who they will vote for — if they vote at all.”

Others are so-called double haters — voters who dislike both candidates. As many as 15 percent of the electorate fell into this category in polls last month, although that number is probably shrinking.

“They are people who do pay attention to politics and don’t like what they see,” Ayres said.

Still others are independents, focused mostly on economic issues.

“They’re looking for the answer to their question: What are you going to do to get the country on a better track in terms of the economy?” said GOP pollster David Winston.

And a few, like Faith in Pennsylvania, are moderate Republicans who don’t like Trump but still hesitate to vote for a Democrat like Harris who has sometimes veered toward her party’s progressive wing.

“There’s a part of me that longs for Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, John McCain,” Faith said.

I sat in on three focus groups, all drawn from voters who had supported Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Two of the groups were assembled by Engagious, a public opinion consulting firm, for the media organization Axios. The third was put together by the GOP dissident group Republican Voters Against Trump; the participants were not members.

Most of the 20 swing voters weren’t entirely undecided, but almost all said they needed more information. Rich Thau of Engagious said he has noticed several patterns in the groups he has convened.

“Voters who are struggling in this economy often remember the Trump years fondly,” he said. “They think he can do the job on the economy better, but they can’t stand the guy.”

The lessons for the candidates, at least from these voters, are clear.

To appeal to undecideds, Trump needs to tone down his rhetoric, stop spreading myths about migrants eating dogs and cats, and reinforce his economic credentials. Instead, he appears to be leaning deeper into falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

And Harris needs to talk in more detail about her economic plans. The good news for her is that those undecided voters are listening — and many are looking for a reason to move in her direction.