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January 11th, 2010
Massachusetts Senate and the Undecided Rule

Posted by Sean Trende

There's been a lot of analysis lately of the various polls in the Massachusetts Senate race that are floating around the Internet. The polls are all over the place, but I think Scott Rasmussen hit the nail on the head with his analysis.

The bottom line is that almost all of these polls agree on one thing: Democrat Martha Coakley is hovering right around 50%.

Consider: PPP (D) has her at 47%. The Globe/UNH poll has her at 53%. Rasmussen has her at 50%. Even internal Democratic polling -- which usually represents the Democrat's best-case scenario -- has her leading state Senator Scott Brown 50%-36%. In other words, most of the variance comes from Brown's numbers -- which vary between 36% and 48% support -- not Coakley's. As I've noted before, when you see one candidate very stable and one candidate with a high degree of variance in their numbers, it means that the undecideds are trending toward the candidate with the higher variance. In other words, that candidate will tend to be toward the high end of their polling range.

This is where the "undecided rule" starts to come into play. It's a political science rule that predicts that undecided voters will break heavily for the challenger. It's come into a bit of disrepute of late, especially given Bush's strong showing among undecideds in the 2004 election. There were also some good examples in 2006 and 2008 of the rule failing to perform as expected, and a quick google of "undecided rule" links to various criticisms of it.

My take on it this that this is simply an example of people taking a political science "rule" and losing track of the reasons the rule existed in the first place, what might have changed to make it weaker, and what might still survive of it. The reasoning behind the undecided rule is that if voters haven't fallen in love with the incumbent by election day, they aren't going to vote for him (or her). The undecideds, therefore, can be expected to take a flier on the challenger.

But the undecided rule was formulated in the 1980s, in pre-internet America, when information moved much slower, and where expenses on television advertising were not nearly as high as they are today. And the dataset trickles down to state Attorneys General races, mayor races, and countywide contests. It even covered primaries. (If you want to read the original article giving the intellectual backdrop for the rule, click here). In other words, its dataset included an awful lot of races where people probably never heard a peep from the challenger. In those situations, it makes sense that voters who didn't like an incumbent would cast a default vote for the challenger. (Emphasis added)

Contrast that to POTUS, Senate, and even Congressional races today. Everyoneeverything about Bush and Kerry, and began focusing intently on the race early on. knew It was one of the longest, most intense races of my lifetime (at least until 2008). Similarly, Senate races, Governor's races, and even Congressional races receive a lot more scrutiny than they used to. In other words, the challenger today is probably much less likely to be a "default" option by the time election day rolls around, especially in high profile races that people tend to follow closely. (Emphasis added)

Indeed, take a look at the examples given in the original "undecided rule" article of cases where the undecideds broke against the challenger:

Last year in Minnesota, where Hubert Humphrey III challenged Sen. David Durenberger; and in Nebraska, where Bob Kerrey, the former governor, challenged David Karnes, who had been appointed to his Senate seat. In 1986 in Florida, when incumbent Sen. Paula Hawkins faced ex-Gov. Bob Graham. And in Chicago in 1979, where two-year incumbent Mayor Michael Bilandic split undecided voters with challenger Jane Byrne.

All of these examples included situations where a well-known challenger was involved, or where an incumbent without a full term under his belt was involved. You probably can't get a more well-known name in Minnesota than Hubert Humphrey, and Kerrey and Graham were popular Governors. It makes intuitive sense that these races would tend to break more evenly -- in the case of the well-known challenger, the people could potentially have equally negative feelings about the challenger, while in the case of the short-term incumbent, voters might be more willing to give the incumbent a chance. For a more recent example, look no further than Lisa Murkowski, who beat two-term Governor Tony Knowles despite trailing in almost every poll that cycle (this is the rare combination of short-term incumbent and well-known challenger).

So if we look for a principle that survives this new age of saturation advertising and internet-driven intensity, we might say that when you have two well-known candidates, the undecided rule is probably inapplicable as a predictive device. But if there's a disparity between the candidates, the undecideds will still tend to break toward the lesser-known candidate. There's probably caveats and exceptions here, but I think that's probably about right.  (Emphasis added)

So what does that tell us about the Massachusetts Senate race? We have a sitting Attorney General who came out of a contested primary, going up against a more-or-less completely unknown state Senator. She's struggling to get above 50%. All of this points toward a very close final race -- potentially much closer than a week ago when I guessed at a 54-46 spread. Again, this is also consistent with what we're seeing in the variance in the Coakley/Brown numbers. Coakley should be worried.

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I love to read Sean Trende's analysis. Hard to cut out anything. LOL.  Please be sure to visit the source link. Thanks.

Awesome analysis in this. The very fact that Coakley is within 1% margin (Public Policy Poll) in liberal Massachusetts is reason for Coakley to worry.  Now, add to that, she is the incumbent AG, who BTW is highly regarded in her AG role! 

Now what does that tell us about the state of affairs for Dems??  Yep!


Now, notice how Sean Trende does not include Obama in that statement about "everyone knew everything about"

So, in the Internet age, Sean Trende rewrites the rule on undecided voters.. that the votes will split in favor of the lesser known!!  That's quite interesting. Familiarity breeds contempt? LOL.  Rings true!!  Known any politician and liked them?  LOL


-- Edited by Sanders on Monday 11th of January 2010 07:17:53 PM