Monday, September 11, 2000
Undecided voters hold the key to presidency
Campaigns playing to their issues
By Patrick Crowley and Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The last nine weeks of this presidential campaign will be played out for the benefit of people like Bob Nienaber of Fort Thomas. People who have yet to make up their minds. There aren't that many of them, if you believe pollsters.
National polls that show Al Gore and George W. Bush running within a hair of each other also say that a relative handful of voters — from 8 percent to 10 percent of the electorate — are truly undecided.
While some of these voters say they just haven't been paying attention to the race, others, like Mr. Nienaber, a 36-year-old pest-control worker, say they haven't heard what they want to hear from candidates.
“I don't know who I'm going to vote for yet,” he said recently while watching his 7-year-old son, Robby, at football practice.
“I'll vote for the guy who can prove to me and my family that I'm going to be better off in the next four years, and that I'm going to do as well or as close to as well as I have the last eight years,” Mr. Nienaber said.
While both campaigns will work hard to generate votes from their partisan, traditional bases, undecided Americans could likely be the group that decides the race.
“They are definitely in play this year,” said Larry Sabato, a political science professor from the University of Virginia. “The undecideds are going to be targeted.”
It is a particularly important factor in a state like Ohio, with its large bloc of
21 electoral votes and one of a string of large Great Lakes states strategists on both sides say could decide the election.
That's why Mr. Bush, Mr. Gore and their running mates continue to crisscross Ohio. On Tuesday, the vice president and running mate Joseph Lieberman are scheduled to appear at a 2 p.m. rally at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College.
If the race in Ohio is, as expected, one that will be decided by a razor-thin margin, it will be a relative handful of now-undecided voters — perhaps 300,000 to 400,000 out of 6 million registered voters — who will make the difference.
In Kentucky, with eight electoral votes, the number of undecided voters is about 160,000.
Politicians and their handlers use sophisticated polling and research to define just who the undecided voters are, Mr. Sabato said.
“The problem for the campaigns is that undecided voters fall into so many categories,” he said. “There is no one answer.”
Kerry Schrand of Villa Hills, who spent Thursday morning at a Crescent Springs park, admits she is conflicted about which candidate to support this year.
The 26-year-old mother of two, a registered nurse, said she is opposed to abortion and wants a candidate committed to education.
“I'm a mother and the future of the country is important to me because of my kids,” she said.
Her 4-month-old son, Nolan, was bundled into a stroller nearby while his 2-year-old brother, Leighton, played on the park's playground.
“So far all I've been hearing are some negative ads, which I absolutely hate,” she said. “I need to start reading the paper and watching the news so I know where the candidates stand on the issues.”
Bob Doyle, a Democratic political consultant in Washington, D.C., said there are some traits emerging about this year's crop of undecideds.
“Typically they are very independent,” said Mr. Doyle, who runs a firm called Sutter's Mill and who has worked for U.S. Rep. Ken Lucas of Northern Kentucky. “They are ticket splitters and often are younger women who tend to be among the most late deciders in a campaign.”
That describes Niki Fey, 26, of Fort Wright, a college student studying criminal justice and a Fifth Third Bank employee.
As she studied, and nursed a large coffee, at Awakenings coffee shop in Fort Mitchell, Ms. Fey said she is leaning toward Mr. Gore.
“I'm a Democrat, and I like to consider education issues and the environment when I vote,” she said. “I received some tax credits on my college tuition because of a program Bill Clinton started.”
But like a lot of Americans, Ms. Fey is only beginning to follow the race.
“I'm going to listen to what they have to say about the issues before I make my final decision,” she said. “Right now I just don't know enough to make my decision.”
Most polling data shows that more than half of the people who are undecided consider themselves independents, not affiliated with one political party or the other.
Most are members of middle-class working families, the kind of voters who would be most interested in the kind of issues that the Gore and Bush campaigns have debated — continuing economic growth, health care, education, taxes.
But some of those undecided or wavering voters have definite partisan affiliations — they are just not entirely happy about the choices the parties have offered them.
One of those is 88-year-old Robert McMahon of Westwood, who has been voting for Republicans since Herbert Hoover. However, he is not happy about his choice this year.
“Al Gore is out of the question; I just disagree with him on things like gun control and abortion,” said Mr. McMahon, a retired pro fessor of mechanical engineering. “He's a "clean Gene,' a morally straight guy, but I just don't agree with him.
“Bush and Cheney are both oil people; and I'm not sure they could do the right thing when it comes to energy issues,” Mr. McMahon said.
“What I'd like,” he said, “is a candidate who was a straight-talker. A Harry Truman. I don't see him out there.”
Karen Kelly, an Indian Hill artist who is a Republican but supported Ross Perot eight years ago, said she is tempted to vote for one of the third-party candidates.
“Any but (Pat) Buchanan, that is,” Mrs. Kelly said.
She, too, would like to hear a candidate “lay it out straight,” and she can't support any candidate who engages in negative, personal attacks.
“I want to hear about the issues,” Mrs. Kelly said. “No whining attacks. I don't want to hear it.”
Both campaigns are desperately trying to find the issue “buttons” to push that will motivate the undecideds.
Mr. Sabato said both campaigns use their plans for a prescription drug benefit to target senior citizens who may have not yet made a choice on which candidate to support.
Likewise, he sees Mr. Gore's plan for a college tuition savings plan a plea for voters with young children while Mr. Bush's tax cut is a move to go after Americans who think their taxes are too high.
“Undecided voters can be convinced by a single issue,” said Dr. Penny Miller, a University of Kentucky political science professor.
She has been following state and national politics for 30 years. “So you see both campaigns pushing a few hot issues that might appeal to those voters — health care, Social Security, education.”
But many in the Bush camp think that because those undecided voters are not partisans, they will be swayed more by issues of character, integrity and honesty — hence the major TV ad campaign by the Republican Party that tries to paint Mr. Gore as a politician who can not be believed.
“The folks in the middle tend to focus on character,” said U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, a Terrace Park Republican who has close ties to the Bush campaign.
“They tend to be less ideological and spend more time looking for somebody they like and can trust.”
But Mr. Gore, speaking to Ohio political reporters in Columbus on Tuesday, said the reason he is laying out detailed plans for keeping the good economy going, education, and prescription drugs is to reach undecided voters.
“I want them to know exactly what I will do as their president, in detail,” Mr. Gore said. “That's what people want.”
Undecided voters will get the details, but they will also get the negative attacks from both campaigns.
Negative advertising works in swaying undecideds, Mr. Doyle said.
“Undecided voters tend to linger and make their decisions about voting far later than other voters,” said Mr. Doyle, the Democratic consultant. “And they are also more responsive to negative advertising and are more motivated to vote against somebody as they are to vote for somebody.
“That's not a great testament about our republic, but it's a tried-and-true technique.”
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