Let’s look at these undecided voters:
Brady, 30, Wisconsin, leaning Trump - I don’t want to go through another four years of a Trump presidency.” "But his vote is largely contingent on his personal financial situation, and he noted, “Things have gotten more expensive.” He cites inflation, but he is completely unaware of the relation between the pandemic and the supply chain disruptions that caused that inflation. He doesn’t understand that this inflation was caused by the pandemic, and what Trump did to exacerbate that pandemic. He just blindly maps economy to president in office and puts zero thought into whose policies actually do what.
Lee, 59, Wisconsin, leaning Trump - “Lee did not like how ABC handled the debate, specifically the fact-checking. He felt the moderators “teamed up on Trump.””
"He felt Harris did almost too well, saying it was “almost like rehearsed.” But he said he “never got any message from Harris” and said she “skirted issues,” including the Biden administration’s “inability to stop the flow of migrants” and the economy.
“Trump stuck his foot in his mouth multiple times,” Lee said, though." “He voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive independent from Vermont, in the 2016 primary and is now leaning toward Trump, independent Cornel West or the Green Party’s Jill Stein (not from an environmental standpoint, however, because he thinks the Green New Deal “went too far”).”
This man has no idea what he wants in a leader and is just voting on vibes.
Woman, declined to give name, 68, Oregon, undecided “Trump, on the other hand, she said, it was like “something was in his water,” and he wasn’t his usual self.”
“>She said this of her ideal ticket: “If RFK [Jr.] was on the ticket with [former Rep.] Tulsi Gabbard [of Hawaii], it would have been a slam dunk for me.””
This woman has not been paying attention. Trump was his usual self. This is simply how he always is when the media isn’t sane-washing him.
These are not serious people. They are low-information voters who do not have any consistent policy positions and vote based entirely on vibes. They don’t take serious looks at the capabilities, policies, and worldviews of the candidates. Their political compass is a random number generator.
This election will not be decided by “undecided voters.” Anyone who is still undecided at this point is simply unreachable. You had four years to actually live in a country governed by Trump, and four where Harris was the VP. You saw what kind of policies each would enact. You don’t need to take their word for it, you can assess each candidate’s actual record.
I’m sorry, but in short, the only people undecided at this point are complete morons. You could try to convince them to vote for your candidate, but they’re just as likely to change their mind completely on the way to the voting booth because of the shape of a cloud they saw in the sky on the way there. They’re random number generators. They don’t have any capability to actually assess issues or candidate capacity. They’re the kind of people who are only allowed to vote because trying to screen out the true morons from the voter rolls would cause more problems than it’s worth.
No. This election will not be decided by the 1-2% of people who are actually undecided at this point. First, most of the 5-6% who claim to be undecided actually aren’t. They’ve already made up their minds deep down, but they just want to pretend to themselves that they’re enlightened centrists who are withholding judgment until the very last minute. Those who are truly undecided at this point are simply morons. They cannot be reached in any meaningful way, as their vote is effectively a coin flip. The real world doesn’t affect their judgment process, and they will just flip a coin on the way to the voting booth.
This election will instead be driven by turnout. Everyone except the true morons already knows how they are going to vote. The real battle for candidates isn’t to persuade people to support them. Instead, the real battle is to persuade people who support them, but maybe don’t support them enough to bother getting off their ass and going to the polls to vote. The real battle is for the lazy voter, not the stupid voter.
You are committing a mortal sin of personal finance - equating vehicle cost with gas cost. It is this precise mistake that results in countless American families literally driving themselves into poverty. The cost of gas is only a small fraction of the per-mile cost to operate a vehicle. This is one of the single biggest mistakes people mistake when assessing their personal finances, deciding on how far to live from work, deciding whether to drive or fly for a trip, etc.
All of the costs of vehicle ownership scale with mileage. Cars depreciate faster the more you drive them. The more you drive, the greater the chance of an accident and a resultingly higher insurance premium. Every mile you drive means more maintenance and burns through ever-more of your car’s finite lifespan. Gas is the only one of these you feel so directly, but ALL of the costs of operating a vehicle scale with mileage.
It is difficult to calculate the true total cost of vehicle ownership, but a good approximation is the IRS mileage rate, which is 67 cents per mile. This is the IRS’s best figuring of the average cost to operate a vehicle, averaged across the US vehicle fleet. Obviously it will be higher or lower depending on the precise vehicle you drive, how reckless a driver you are, etc.
But let’s be generous and assume an average mpg efficiency of 35 mpg. If gas costs $3.50/gallon, then gas costs you about 10 cents per mile. Averaged across the US vehicle fleet, gas costs less 20% of the actual cost of operating a vehicle. A car is a big expensive asset that you burn through just like you burn through gas. Every mile you drive a vehicle gets it one mile closer to the junkyard.
This is what creates the illusion of driving being cheaper than it actually is. I mean, just think about it from first principles. A bigger vehicle like a train or bus is obviously going to be a hell of a lot cheaper to move a person the same distance. It’s simple economies of scale. When you buy a transit pass, you are paying for your share of the full cost of operating a bus or train, not just the fuel cost.
If you want to calculate the true cost of operating a vehicle, a rough method is to take what you spend on gas and multiply by 5. That’s a lot closer to your true cost per mile of owning and operating a vehicle.