I'd like to ask more about this. It seems to me that there is a genuine difference between Romney and Obama in terms of policy, temperament, etc. There is also a vast difference between the two parties. So I can't conceive how someone could be undecided. Even the LIVs must have some sense of their vote.
So, Halfcentaur, I'd like to hear a little bit about the undecided you know because I don't know any. Are they purely apolitical? Apathetic? Hostile to government no matter what? And so on. Just give a sense of some of them. Thanks.
Most of them are high school drop outs who feel impotent in their lives and like to blame their circumstances on anyone but their own self, trapped in dead end jobs that barely get them a few dollars over minimum wage.
A lot of them are flakey people who have a propensity for intelligence but never developed it outside of their teen years, thinking they intuitively understand the world better than most people, while entertaining thoughts like "science doesn't know everything" and "why are atheists so arrogant about what they can't know for sure." They are mostly liberal, but have no grasp whatsoever of actual issues and seem to think everyone they hear talk about the nuance of the issues is just biased.
They falsely equivocate both sides as if they are the same thing to the point of being cartoonish. In fact, it's mostly a matter of false equivocation all owed to a number of different personal philosophies.
As I'm in OKlahoma, outside of these undecideds a great deal of the people I know are just conservatives because their parents are. Which is odd, Oklahoma used to generally be okay with democrats as a governor, but never a president.
But the exceptions to those conservatives are mostly as I've described above.
I was surprised to learn last night a family friend who is a folk singer from Yonkers, NY is among the undecided. She seems to not know if Obama is good or not, but she won't trust any information as unbiased and again seems intent on falsely equivocating both candidates.
Her primary stance on the issue was not liking Romney's tone of voice, while not knowing who to trust.
Most of these people are amusingly liberal, stereotypically liberal in fact, but they lack an understanding of the issues and pitifully attempt to maintain a facade of neutrality, because they are "tired of the fighting."
Out of the majority of the people I know locally, maybe 4 or 5 of them are educated and have a reasonable enough grasp of the issues to argue with each other by exchanging actual points.