There have already been a lot of people doing that. For example, just last Sunday, Andy Rooney, a TV commentator and veteran of the Hundred Years War, more or less came out and said that the people who haven't decided how to vote in the presidential election coming up are stupid.
That was very insensitive of Mr. Rooney, and we, of course, would never choose to emulate his politically incorrect example, however tempted we were.
Still, you've got to wonder, don't you? I mean, Bush and Kerry have each been around a while. They've been arguing with each other since Friends went off the air. The third party candidates have all declared their positions in detail. Some of them have run for president before. There's been nothing on TV but reruns and that Vanuatu junk, so there've been no distractions there. So what's it going to take to get the undecided to make up their minds? Do we have to buy them all beers and salted nuts?
Did you all notice how the audience at the Town Hall debate between Bush and Kerry included undecided would-be voters selected by the Gallup organization? I bet some of you imagined that to pick undecided voters you should just get a bunch of folks into a room, ask who all is decided, and then tell the ones who didn't raise their hands to get in the van. But if you think that's how it is done, that just shows how unscientific you are when it comes to undecidedness.
Actually spotting someone who is undecided about the 2004 presidential election requires great ingenuity, talent and professional experience. If you or I did it, we'd probably be still looking. But the Gallup guys got the job done right on time, and they probably only charged more than all the money I've ever seen in my life put together.
Just how do you find the undecided? Well, like finding the homeless, the gay, the vegetarian, the Scrabble enthusiast, the ambidextrous, or the Irish, it takes a keen eye and a deep familiarity with the culture of the target.
First, you must weed out unlikely subjects. You rule out anyone wearing a hat for instance. Anyone who can pick out a hat and commit to it for even a day can decide among this year's presidential candidates. It is no accident that there were so few hats in the audience of the Town Hall debate. The one guy with the beret just wandered in to bum cigarettes.
Do the socks match? Here's a dead give-away: right sock red, left sock blue. But other mismatches can also tell a woeful tale of indecision.
Pollsters regularly make use of vast archives of data from past surveys, which they share among themselves freely. So the Gallup people knew to contact the Pepsi people and obtain their extensive listings of people who couldn't complete the Pepsi Challenge. Gallup itself has amassed long lists of people who don't know if O.J. did it, or if Nixon should resign or not, or whether the Vietnam War was a good idea or not.
You know you might have someone who is undecided if they aren't sure whether we've been to the moon. Maybe we have, maybe it was a hoax, who knows? You might have an undecided person if they're waiting to choose between creationism and evolution for the final definitive study on the subject. Or they think there may be an answer nobody's thought of, perhaps dealing with can-openers.
When, looking for the undecided, you see someone who has a Pro-Life or Pro-Choice bumper sticker on their car, let them pass. You don't want to talk to the people who've made up their minds about stem-cell research, any of them would have no trouble deciding who to vote for. The people you want are folks who think maybe we shouldn't rush into this women's suffrage thing until we've looked at all sides of the issue.
They say there are still 5 million undecided voters for president in this country. Yikes.
No comments:
Post a Comment