Voter Decision Making Quotes

There is interposed between the voter and hid final judgment the whole mechanism of modern publicity. The final judgment is not the result of direct acquaintance; it is the result of the news reports, the advertising, the oratory, the elusive rumors which are the modern substitute for direct acquaintance.

About forty percent of the people vote Democrat. About forty percent vote Republican. Of those eighty percent, most wouldn't change their votes if Adolf Hitler was running against Abe Lincoln - or against FDR. . . . That leaves twenty percent of the people who swing back one way or another . . . the true independents. . . . That twenty percent controls the destiny of the country.

Nobody would say, 'I'm voting for this guy because he's got the stronger chin,' but that, in fact, is partly what happens.

I think the American people are sophisticated enough and wise enough to make judgments about the candidates and wade through the charges and countercharges that come with the [election 2004] campaign.

Electoral choices are relatively invulnerable to direct argumentation and characterized more by faith than by conviction and by wishful expectation rather than careful prediction of consequences.

Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose measures have the best chance of success, but to those with the ability to 'sell' their propaganda. Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the error that the ruler makes.

Too many of us vote for our prejudices instead of our desires.

One of the enduring myths of campaign analysis is that you can actually count the number of 'undecided' voters by asking voters if they are undecided or not. Sometimes, significant numbers of voters actually change their minds.

Florida is not going to vote for a con artist like Donald Trump.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

Popularity is not the single determining factor, as we all know, in how people vote.

Every guy looks in his pocket and then votes.

I don't believe that people vote for President based on spouses. I don't even think they vote much based on vice presidents or any other factor. I think they choose between the two people who are running.

I trust voters. Voters decide on whatever basis they think is important to them. I just want them to have a full range of information to make that decision.

Whether or not the President is sleeping well won't be a factor in his re-election. That will depend on what he does while he is awake.