海角大神

鈥�Saturday Night Live鈥� has a out that lampoons undecided voters, and it鈥檚 pretty harsh.

Done in the style of a public service announcement from a good-government group, the skit starts with 鈥淭his election will determine the future of our country, and this election will be determined by the Undecided Voter鈥� on-screen.

Then 鈥淐atherine鈥� appears in an office setting, saying 鈥渟ome of us are just a little harder to please. We鈥檙e not impressed by political spin or 30-second sound bites. Before you get our vote, you鈥檙e going to have to answer some questions.鈥�

Cue the questions.

鈥淒ave,鈥� from his kitchen: 鈥淲hen is the election? When do we have to decide?鈥�

鈥淎ndrea,鈥� on an outdoor path: 鈥淲hat are the names of the two people running? And be specific.鈥�

鈥淛onathan,鈥� a hipster in front of a stoop: 鈥淲ho is the president right now? Is he or she running?鈥�

And so forth. You can see where 鈥淪NL鈥� is going here. The questions get more outlandish, ending with a student working on his computer asking the camera, 鈥渨here is my power cord鈥�?

OK, we鈥檒l bite. Are undecided voters really this clueless?

Well, not THAT clueless. It is unlikely that many of them wonder what oil is used for, as one character does in the skit. But the fact is that another term political pros use for determinedly undecided voters is 鈥渓ow-information voters鈥�. (SNL gets to that too.) Most of them do not follow politics at all closely and have little to go on to make their electoral decision, as hard as that may be for news junkies to understand.

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist took a deeper look at the undecided voters in three battleground states, for instance, and concluded that 鈥渢hese are voters who simply aren鈥檛 paying attention.鈥� One third did not feel they knew enough to give President Obama a job rating, for instance.

Sixty percent of self-described undecided voters could not identify Speaker John Boehner as a member of the House of Representatives, according to a done for the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project.

Undecided voters are less partisan, less engaged, and only now starting to make up their minds for the 2012 vote, GOP pollster Whit Ayers said on CNN鈥檚 鈥淪tate of the Union鈥� on Sunday. Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg told CNN鈥檚 Candy Crowley these voters may not even make it to the polls as they focus on other parts of their lives.

鈥淭hey鈥檙e taking care of their kids, they鈥檙e working,鈥� said Greenberg.

Right now the undecided share of the national vote is running at between five and seven percent, depending on the poll. Interestingly, that share may remain fairly constant.

Last December, the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project found that six percent of the electorate was undecided in a contest between Mr. Obama and (then potential) GOP nominee Mitt Romney. That鈥檚 about the same percentage that鈥檚 unsure of voting preference today.

But the six percent from recent polls and the six percent from last December are in fact different people 鈥� or at least, voters move in and out of the undecided category more often than many pollsters might assume, according to Lynn Vavreck, an associate professor of political science at UCLA and a co-principal investigator of the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project.

By the beginning of September, about half of the voters who last December had proclaimed themselves undecided had moved to choose a candidate, wrote Vavreck in on the New York Times Campaign Stop blog. Of these, slightly more chose Obama than Romney.

Their choices seem to have been driven by their own party identification. 鈥淓ven though undecided voters tend to be weaker partisans than those who make up their minds very early, party is still a potent force for them,鈥� wrote Vavreck.

At the same time, about three to four percent of voters who said they鈥檇 made their choice abandoned it over the months, and moved into the undecided camp, according to interviews conducted by the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project. That has kept the undecided category constant at six percent of total voters.