It's so hard for me to understand how there can be voters who still haven't made up their minds that I keep coming back to it again and again. This election is a clear choice between a conservative and a liberal; whoever wins could appoint as many as four Supreme Court justices, as well as hundreds of political appointees who will run every government agency for the next four years. Rumsfeld and Ashcroft are just the tip of the iceberg. Appointees will run everything from the parks department to the department of defense, the EPA, the labor department, the education department, housing, health and human services, and on and on. In all departments, political appointees will set and enforce policy. Along with the departments are multitudes of agencies, which will also be run by political appointees.
This suggests that undecided voters have no opinions regarding any policy area, whether it be taxation, abortion, drilling for oil in Alaska, or the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone, that is more important to them than some quality they are looking for in a candidate.
Pundits say voters choose the candidate who they won't mind having in their livingroom for the next four years; the candidate with the personality they feel most comfortable with. Can voters really be willing to toss all considerations of policy aside in favor of the guy they'd most like to have a beer with?
I have a different theory. I think that for some undecided voters, what they want more than anything else is to vote for "a winner." They want to find themselves on the winning team on the morning after the election. To make the wrong choice is to become a loser by proxy. I think these voters enter the booth trying to guess who is going to win, and cast their vote for that candidate.
I suspect you're right about many of the undecideds wanting to go with a likely winner. I suspect there are many different reasons, though, for many different people. Some are fundamentally indifferent more than undecided, but don't want to tell the pollsters that. (Yeah, I don't get that attitude either, but I've seen it here among some library patrons.) Some just don't want to say -- pollsters are nosy people asking about a topic that's actually supposed to be quite private. (As in "polite people don't discuss sex, politics, or religion.")
Sadly enough, most *decided* voters probably don't care about the questions of judges, of appointees implementing policies, or any of these issues. That's too deep for most people to go, imho. They think they're voting for "their man" and figure he'll do whatever it is they think is right.
As for Bush's numbers: I'm an ostrich. I don't want to know; it makes me crazy. I know the numbers will go up and down between now and November. I only care about the bottom line: who sits his rump in the Oval Office next year. And which English-speaking country to which I'll emigrate if I don't like the results!
Yeah, I too don't want to hear the bad numbers. I feel like clapping my hands over my ears and going "LALALALALA". I think, though, that a couple of polls done in the last couple of days have been better news.