Swing Vote

Robert just read Michael Tomasky's review of The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents, by Linda Killian, which appeared in the June 21 New York Review of Books.

Interestingly, Tomasky reasons, obviously, that the number of presidential election swing voters is far far smaller than the number of people who register as independents. "Independents" and "swing voter"are not the same thing. Most independents do not vacillate in their party aligned voting over time. Only about 6 or 7 percent of the electorate are truly undecided. Tomasky cites a 2008 study by the Democratic Leadership Council that concluded that the group whose vacillations from one party to the other that have the most impact are white voters with at least a high school education, maybe some college, but no college degree.

This makes intuitive sense to Robert. These are folks who get battered about my the economy and have most reason to vote based on the economy. Yet they are not highly educated enough to care, even fleetingly, about the principles of policy. Hence, the small (perhaps negative) effect that Obama's declaration of support for gay marriage probably had on the polls.

Anyway, these are the folks Obama will speak to with every breath until November. Especially those in swing states and swing districts.