… I don’t really trust voters to tell pollsters when they have made a decision. Much of our decision-making is essentially subconscious. Instead, I am going to assume that undecided voters will gravitate to the choice that their preexisting opinions would predict. This assumption is actually a well-known finding in research on campaigns, dating back to the earliest studies. …
I will assume that undecided voters will make a decision that reflects three things: their party identification, their approval of Obama (as a “referendum” model would suggest), and how favorably they feel toward Obama and Romney (the difference between how they feel about each candidate, as a “choice” model would suggest). [cont.]
John Sides, George Washington U. (The Monkey Cage)