‘ Undecideds’ torn as US presidential election nears

Four years ago, this segment’s late decisions to support Trump helped him to victory

Amanda Jaronowski is torn. The lifelong Republican from suburban Cleveland supports President Donald Trump’s policies and fears her business could be gutted if Democrat Joe Biden is elected.

But she abhors Trump personally, leaving her on the fence about who will get her vote.

It’s a “moral dilemma,” Jaronowski said as she paced her home one recent evening. “It would be so easy for him to win my vote if he could just be a decent human being,” she had said earlier during a focus group session.

Jaronowski is part of a small but potentially significant group of voters who say they remain truly undecided less than three weeks before the November 3 election. They have been derided as uninformed or lying by those who cannot fathom still being undecided, but conversations with a sampling of these voters reveal a complicated tug ofwar.

Four years ago, undecided voters’ late decisions to support Trump helped him to victory. Many, like Jaronowski, are longtime Republicans wrestling with what they see as a choice between two lousy candidates: a Democrat whose policies they cannot stomach and a Republican incumbent whose personality revolts them. Some voted for third- party candidates in 2016 because they were so repelled by their choices— Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton— andmay do so again.

Numbers thatmatter

While polls show there are far fewer on- the- fence voters this year than the unusually high number in 2016, the Trump and Biden campaigns each believes it still can win over numbers thatmatter.

Cathy Badalamenti, 69, an independent from Lombard, Illinois, is also struggling with her vote once again. In 2016, she voted for a third- party candidate after twice supporting Democrat Barack Obama.

“I’m not happy with anybody,” she said of her choices this time. That’s especially hard in a family of ardent Trump supporters who have balked at her indecision.

“Believe me, my son, my kids are looking at me and thinking, ‘ Howcan you not like Trump?!’” she said, describing difficult Sunday night dinners where she tries to redirect the conversation from politics to the Cubs. Biden worries her, too: “I think he’s trying to make a good effort but at the same time he doesn’t know what’s — he’s only being told what’s going on.”

“They’re judging on two completely different attributes and they can’t decide which is more important to them,” longtime Republican pollster Frank Luntz said. “They don’t like Trump as a person, but they don’t feel badly about his administration or his policies. They really like Joe Biden as a person, but they are so nervous about what he’ s going to do if he were elected. And so they can’t figure out which ismore important to them.”

Believeme, my son, my kids are looking at me and thinking, ‘ How can you not like Trump?”

Cathy Badalamenti | Undecided voter