In fewer than 100 hours, polls open across the country. In battleground Senate states, there is still a sizable percentage of the voting population that hasn’t yet decided for whom it plans to vote.
Given that a number of these races are extremely close (Iowa, North Carolina) or the polling is all over the place (New Hampshire, Alaska), it’s worth considering what these undecided voters mean. Do they break one way or the other? Do they vote at all? Are they an inscrutable black hole from which no predictive light can escape?
In conversations with Scott Clement, polling analyst for the Post, and Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll, we got some answers to those questions. In order: Sometimes/maybe, not always, and yes. CONT.
Philip Bump, Washington Post