Barring a major shift in the political winds, the 2024 election will be decided by a subset of voters in a handful of swing states whose behavior is hard to predict.
Odds are, you aren’t one of them. But you may be surprised by what you do — and don’t — have in common with this group.
About ‘The Deciders’ poll and series
This is part of a series examining the views of “Deciders” — sporadic or uncommitted voters in key swing states who are likely to play a pivotal role in deciding the presidential contest.
The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University surveyed 3,513 registered voters in six key states in this year’s presidential election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The poll aimed to identify the voters most likely to decide the 2024 presidential election and ask what they think about the candidates and issues facing the country.
The poll finds 61 percent of registered voters in these key states were classified as Deciders, either by being sporadic voters (33 percent) or uncommitted toward Biden or Trump (44 percent). Seventeen percent fit both categories.
The survey sought to address several common challenges facing election polls, using multiple contact methods and cash incentives to boost the response rate and representativeness of the sample.
On average, the poll’s response rate was 9.5 percent among Republicans, 8.6 percent among Democrats and 7.7 percent among voters unaffiliated with a party. After data collection was finished, the poll was weighted to accurately reflect the partisan makeup of each state.
These Americans hail from six key battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and they either vote sporadically or haven’t fully committed to supporting President Biden or former president Donald Trump. Their votes, if they turn out, are likely to tip the scales in places where both campaigns are pouring resources in hopes of eking out a victory.
The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School polled this small but influential slice of the electorate to better understand their priorities and to get an idea of how many votes are truly up for grabs in November.
Want to know how your views on the election compare with those of the “Deciders?” Take our quiz below to find out. Your answers are confidential and won’t be collected.
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A substantial majority of Deciders — 72 percent — are dissatisfied with the choice of candidates this year, compared with 42 percent of other voters in the six swing states.
Americans overall aren’t interested in a Biden-Trump rematch, poll after poll shows, but Deciders are especially dispirited. About 4 in 10 say none of the candidates represent their views well, compared to roughly 1 in 10 among other voters.
Make no mistake: Deciders are not all undecided voters. About three-quarters of them say they’re at least “probably” voting for Biden or Trump,while 3 in 10 say they will “definitely” vote for one of them.
But these voters can’t necessarily be counted on to cast a ballot this fall because they vote sporadically — meaning they skipped a recent election, were too young to vote in 2016, or are newly registered. Others may have shifted party allegiances between 2016 and 2020. Both campaigns will be fighting to get these voters to the polls on (or before)Election Day.
The economy is the most important issue in this election for deciders, with about 6 in 10 saying it is “extremely important” to their vote this fall.
More than half of themsay Trump would do a better job handling the economy, while about 1 in 5 trust Biden. Twenty percent say they trust neither candidate.
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Trump is under indictment in Georgia and Washington, D.C., for his attempts to subvert Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, and he’s laying the groundwork to reject the results this year if he loses again.
And yet, by a nine-point margin, Deciders trust Trump over Biden to handle threats to democracy.
Nearly 4 in 10 voters favor Trump on this issue, while about 1 in 3 say they trust Biden, who has campaigned on protecting American democracy against a rising tide of authoritarianism at home and abroad. About a quarter of Deciders say they trust neither candidate, and 1 in 10 say they trust both.
Twenty-eight percent of Deciders are “double haters,” orvoters who don’t like either major party candidate. By contrast, just 1 percent of locked-in Trump and Biden voters fall into this category.
Kennedy, a lawyer, anti-vaccine activist and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, is running as an independent after unsuccessfully challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination. Thirty-nine percent of Deciders say they’d probably or definitely support him if he were on the ballot. That’s higher than the share among non-Deciders, 14 percent of whom say they’d at least probably cast a ballot for Kennedy.
Whether Kennedy actually makes it onto state ballots is a different story. Getting on the ballot is an expensive and time-consuming process for third-party candidates, who must either collect enough signatures to petition as an independent candidate or convince a minority party with ballot access to adopt them as their party’s candidate. So far, Kennedy is on the ballot in at least three states.
Local television and network news programsare the top sources of political news for Deciders and non-Deciders alike. But beyond that, Deciders diverge in a few distinct ways.
They’re almost twice as likely as non-Deciders to get political news from TikTok, with 17 percent listing the app as one of their main sources. Twenty-one percent of Deciders say they get political news from YouTube, compared with 16 percent of non-Deciders. And 24 percent of Deciders say they get political news from friends and family, compared with 18 percent of non-Deciders.
With Election Day less than five months away, 63 percent of Deciders say they will “definitely” vote this fall. But this number may be a bit inflated. In pre-election polls, voters have a history of overstating their chances of turning out.
Right now, they may really mean it when they say they plan to vote, but if past trends hold, at least some of them will sit this one out when the time comes. And that compares to 93 percent of those who are not Deciders who say they are certain to vote.
Are you on the same page as Deciders?
Question topic
Where Deciders stand
Presidential candidate satisfaction
Who can better handle the economy
Who can better handle threats to democracy
Dissatisfication with a Trump or Biden victory
Would support Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Main source for political news
Definitely voting in November
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About this story
The Deciders poll was conducted by The Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government from April 15 to May 30, 2024, among a stratified random sample of 3,513 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The sample was drawn from the L2 database of registered voters in each state, with voters contacted by mail, phone (including calling and texting) and email to complete the survey online or by phone. Results for the overall sample of voters in key states have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus two percentage points. Read more about how the survey was conducted.
Figures in illustrations are not an exact representation of demographic percentages. Character drawings from Open Peeps by Pablo Stanley.
