The Undecided Voter
Kevin Wang
It’s September 26th, 2016, and Ray Liang sits on his couch in disgust at what he’s seeing in the first 2016 Presidential Debate on his 48-inch Vizio television. A cool breeze fills the room on a windy night. Liang takes the final sip of his Corona as he listens to Republican nominee Donald Trump speak about his immigration policies. Liang throws his remote in anger at the floor, breaking the remote into two pieces.
“To have to choose between one of these candidates right now, we might as well blindfold ourselves at the voting booth and hope for the best,” says Liang.
Liang, a 27-year old graduate student at Mount Sinai and the eldest child of two immigrant parents, never found a need to tune into an election before. In Liang’s pursuit for a PhD in biomedical research, politics were rarely in any of his studies. Although Liang registered to vote when he was 18, he never made it a goal to go to the voting booths and select a candidate. He’s never truly agreed with the ideals of the Republicans but has never been satisfied with the accomplishments of the Democrats to give them his vote. Liang is an undecided voter.
Undecided voters have the attention of political candidates because of the ability to sway the election results. In American history, two political parties were created to promote democracy. Over time, third political parties would emerge but retain only a small percentage of support. In recent years, undecided voters impacted the election to boost one specific presidential candidate to presidency.
The impact of undecided voters changed from 2012 to 2016. As opposed to the 2012 election, Nate Silver, an American statistician, reported the amount of undecided voters in a FiveThirtyEight election update. “Both candidates, in other words, are slowly gaining votes from undecided voters and from third-party candidates. Emphasis on “slowly,” because there are still a lot of these voters up for grabs. About 15 percent of the electorate isn’t yet committed to Clinton or Trump, as compared to just 5 percent who weren’t committed to President Obama or Mitt Romney at this point in 2012.”
Recently, the FiveThirtyEight election projects the forecast shifted to Hilary Clinton retaining 49.5%, Donald Trump as 43.5% while 7.1% remain undecided or for a third party candidate.
Liang indicates he feels the pressure to vote now more than ever. The impact of his vote will determine the presidential candidate in the end.
“Voting has always been a luxury to us and yet I always stood on the sidelines. The qualification of the candidates can’t be seen through the debates. They don’t justify a damn thing. Their rhetoric is just to avoid the question at hand. What’s going to happen when one is president and a crucial life or death question is asked, then what? We flip a coin?” says Liang.
In an interview with CNN, Cook Political Report national editor Amy Walter answered the mystery of undecided voters: “Walter said for the first time that she can remember, she’s having trouble trusting the data that’s coming from the campaign trail, and that undecided voters are struggling to choose between the lesser of two evils.”
“What I hear from these groups, is just this idea of like ‘You know, I don’t know if I trust Hillary Clinton,'” she said. “One woman said, ‘I don’t trust Hillary Clinton on terrorism’ — to sort of get to your point of instability in the world — ‘but Donald Trump is going to get us into World War III.’ So, that’s why people are like ‘I’d rather cut my arm off than have this election, because that’s what you’re making me choose from.”
Liang’s uncertainty in voting for Clinton, the Democratic Party Nomination or Trump reflects a growing population of undecided voters since the Presidential Debates.
Silver commentated election projections after the Presidential debate by saying: “If undecided and marginal voters were willing to shrug off Trump’s performance, then perhaps they really are in the mood for the sort of change that Trump represents, his faults be damned. Clinton doesn’t seem to have as much of an edge on her opponents in the daily free-for-all of the campaign. So if Trump and his advisors don’t like the post-debate storylines, they may try to create a distraction or two — something they’re uniquely skilled at doing.”
In a Times article published from a focus group consisting of undecided voters watching the debate, the surveyors were convinced Clinton was the victor. The focus group gathered and raised their hand in an angry response when they were asked if they were disappointed with this year’s election.
“I have voted in every election since I was 18 years old. This is the first one I’m going to sit out,” said a Republican in the front row. He was one of ten in the group who initially said if nothing major changed their mind, they would not vote for president in November.
During the debate between two candidates that one voter framed as the choice between “a heart attack and a stroke,” the voters largely agreed that they were hoping to see substance from both candidates, especially from Trump, who they felt had more to prove.
With the conclusion of the third and final Presidential Debate, FiveThirtyEight’s poll suggest Clinton has the advantage of winning the election at 85% while Trump is projected to receive 14.9% of the votes. November 8th, 2016 is the date slated for voting.
“At one side, Trump will give us the next Hunger Games, says Liang when asked about who he’d vote for. “Clinton isn’t trustworthy so I might as well start planning my move to Canada.”
