Wooing the 'persuadables'
WASHINGTON
In today's politics of polarization, of blue states and red, it's presumably not chic to be relatively uninterested in the presidential campaign, to be not certain about how to vote, or even whether to vote, to be perfectly content to let the decisive phases of a general election kick in later on before making a judgment. In traditional shorthand, the word "undecided" has most often been used to categorize them, but today's experts in public opinion prefer a more expansive term -- persuadable. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, says that persuadable means not just those who don't have a choice for the moment; it also means those who may have an inclination now but say there's a "good chance" they will change their minds. Nationally, they are coming through the center's massive polling operation as representing 11 percent of the public, double the percentage typically reported in horse-race polling of supposedly polarized "likely" or simply registered voters that is too small a sample to be analyzed. That is what makes Jamieson's a go-to source of information in presidential politics. Every day, the Annenberg survey polls 250 to 300 people (it talked to more than 8,300 adults nationally last month), producing a usable sample of 832 "persuadables" in the 20 states that are considered battleground locales this year. The campaign year's polling, begun last October, will match the unprecedented operation four years ago that conducted 100,000 interviews. Summarizing the distinctive characteristics of the people who have the potential of deciding this election -- more likely later than sooner -- Jamieson describes them as more critical of the situation in Iraq and the economy, but also less impressed with President Bush and Senator Kerry. They are, she said, half as likely as the rest of the public to be following the campaign very closely and twice as likely not to be following it at all. That would seem to make them less likely to vote at all, except that there is a variety of information -- anecdotal and polling -- that suggests this might be a year when voter turnout ends up higher. That only makes them more important to understand and more important as targets for the contestants' messages. Jamieson said a persuadable potential voter is somewhat more likely to be white, somewhat less likely to be high-income, and somewhat less likely to be very religious. As a group, the persuadable potential voters show less of a gender gap than the public overall, because the men in the sample are more likely to be critical of the status quo. These folks are less likely to believe things are generally going in the right direction than the rest of the public (25 versus 34 percent). They hold less favorable opinions of Bush (39 versus 47 percent) and of Kerry (27 versus 39 percent) and are much more likely to call themselves neutral toward each (22 versus 13 percent toward Bush, and 38 versus 22 percent toward Kerry). Compared to the rest of the country they are less conservative (29 versus 37 percent) and more moderate (44 versus 37 percent) and thus more politically independent by a 10-point margin. The two campaigns have been attempting to influence the persuadables with television advertising for some time (Kerry via self-introduction, Bush via bombardment of Kerry). It may have had some influence on initial perceptions, though probably not nearly as much as the impact of current events; the Annenberg data from 2000 strongly suggests that the most important periods are all ahead -- the party conventions, the debates and the campaign's final week. According to Jamieson, the party conventions are better thought of as convention "periods" -- commencing with the selection of a running mate, which she said is when attention spikes. Traditionally, political advisers say they like to extend the useful life of their conventions to extend the polling "bounce" that always comes from them. The best example was the famous bus trip to St. Louis that Bill Clinton and Al Gore took after their New York nominations 12 years ago. In Kerry's case this year, a post-convention extravaganza is also an important idea, but it would also seem clear that he can extend the convention period by choosing a running mate soon in order not only to generate more interest but also to begin making a contrast with the damaged incumbent. In the Annenberg survey of persuadable in the battleground states, Dick Cheney's profile resembles Ralph Nader's.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
|
