The 2024 U.S. election features a former and current president running against each other, something that has not happened since 1892. Given the familiarity that comes with being or having been president, it is not surprising that most voters—about 80 percent—have already made up their minds about their 2024 vote.
Yet it is Americans who have not yet made up their minds between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump who may very well decide the election in 2024. Though they are small in number, they will command the lion's share of attention from both campaigns in the coming months.
So who are these persuadable voters?
Utilizing the 2024 Stanford, Arizona State and Yale (SAY) survey panel, we define persuadable voters as those who say they are undecided about their presidential vote, plus those who indicated a preference for a candidate in our survey but also said they would still consider voting for the rival. Over the last 10 weeks of our panel polling, the number of "persuadable" voters defined this way has ranged from 11 percent to 15 percent.
Here are three things we know about them, and why they matter.
1. Persuadable voters lean more toward the moderate, liberal and Democratic end of the spectrum than those who have made up their minds already.
Persuadable voters identify with the Democrats more than the Republicans, by a margin of 35 percent to 17 percent, and they are more moderate and liberal than the national average—30 percent identify as liberal and 38 percent as moderate.
Table 1 shows that persuadable voters favored Biden over Trump in 2020, by 43 to 28 percent, and favored Democratic candidates over Republicans running for Congress in 2022, by 42 to 28.
You might conclude from these numbers that these voters could be moved toward Biden. But it's important to note that these uncommitted voters are also more likely to stay home, as 29 percent did in the 2020 presidential election.
The data to date suggests that more of Biden's previous supporters are still uncertain about whether to vote for him again in 2024 than are Trump's supporters.
The good news for Joe Biden is that more persuadable voters lean into his direction on policy in terms of ideology and party. The bad news for him is that Donald Trump has a firmer hand over his base support than Biden.
To win reelection, Joe Biden must continue to address his supporters' concerns about his age and record on such matters as inflation, Gaza, and immigration.
2. The persuadable voters need both more persuasion and more mobilization than the already decided voters.
Another characteristic of the persuadable demographic profile is that they pose both a mobilization and a persuasion challenge to the rival campaigns. This is especially true of younger voters, who generally lag older voters in their turnout rate in all elections.
The turnout problem, however, is heightened when voters also need to be persuaded.
Turnout rates among the already decided voters are higher overall even as they decline considerably with age. Ninety-four percent of committed voters over 65 stated that they intended to vote in the 2024 election—as compared to 61 percent of the over 65 "persuadables." At the other end of the age spectrum, 71 percent of the committed voters under 30 indicated that they would definitely vote—as compared to only 41 percent of under 30 persuadable voters.
The Biden campaign is attempting to mobilize its infrequent voters with a vast, organized, and expensive GOTV effort in the swing states. Trump will no doubt attempt to mobilize his leaners through social and free media to a greater degree.
3. The persuadable voters are not paying as much attention to the campaign, even though they need more information.
The last complicating implication concerns how much attention the persuadable voters are paying to the campaign to date versus voters who have already decided. In theory, one might think that people who have already made up their minds would be less incentivized to pay close attention to the campaign. The reality, however, is exactly the opposite: The voters who should want more information to make up their minds are much less likely to seek it out.
Once again, there is a large gap across the categories between the persuadable and the already decided voters across age categories as well. Sixty-seven percent of committed voters over 65 claim that they are paying a lot of attention to the 2024 election campaign for president—versus only 20 percent of seniors who have yet to make up their minds. Meanwhile, 44 percent of voters under 30 who are committed to one candidate or the other are paying attention—as opposed to a scant 11 percent of uncommitted voters under 30.
This highlights the importance of campaign efforts to reach people who need persuasion and motivation to vote but who are passive with respect to paying attention what is going on politically.
The normal formula for winning a presidential election is to mobilize and persuade the undecideds. Donald Trump has a natural advantage with his base but may have more trouble with the persuadable voters. Biden's campaign may have to work harder to do both.
David Brady is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and emeritus professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Political Science. Bruce Cain is director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford and professor of Political Science.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
