Ready to be wooed
Undecided voters wait ’til first debate
As many as 11 percent of voters who will watch Tuesday’s first debate between President Trump and Joe Biden have yet to make up their minds, polling suggests.
Undecided voters in New York City and in swing states told The Post the debates will be the key to help them make a final decision before the Nov. 3 election.
Many voters said they’d be looking for key signs on TV, among them, President Trump scaling back sometimes less-than-presidential behavior and Biden’s displaying mental sharpness.
“If it’s very close and undecideds break one way or another, that could make the difference,” Florida Atlantic University political scientist Kevin Wagner told The Post.
Gal Ozana, 30, a real-estate broker on Staten Island, voted for Obama in 2012 but skipped out on 2016 because he didn’t like either candidate. He is struggling with the decision again this year.
“On the one side, everybody knows Trump has a mouth and . . . sometimes acts like a child,” Ozana said.
He added that while he likes Biden on social issues, “I have some serious concern about his cognitive abilities . . . If he became president for four years, is he going to be able to withstand the pressures of the office?”
Ozana said he’ll look for tells during the debate.
“Trump needs to get out of his own way to win me over . . . He needs to just . . . focus on his job,” he said. “And with Biden . . . He needs to get it together.”
Ozana, who immigrated to the US from Israel and became a citizen at 16, credited Trump’s business experience for the economy and praised his Middle East peace deals. He said recent unrest in New York and around the country had pushed him further from Biden.
Patrick Quinn, 34, a former actor and registered nurse in Pennsylvania, said he leans more conservative generally, with past votes for John McCain and Mitt Romney. In 2016 he cast votes for every race except president over worries about both candidates.
Quinn lauded Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. “But I am pro-life for the whole life, so I also care about maternity care for women after they have babies and helping low income women and men fix themselves. That attracts me more to Joe Biden,” he said.
He gives the ex-veep higher marks on personality.
“I would want Joe Biden to be my grandfather,” he said.
To help win him over, Quinn said Trump must sound less like a “douche” during the debate and scale back his volcanic outbursts.
Quinn said Biden could win his vote if he stays sharp during the discussion and conveys his moderate credentials.
William Thomas, 39, a management consultant in Collier County, Fla., and “lifelong Democrat,” said he will be looking for a reason to support Biden.
“If Joe Biden gets up there in the debates and shows the American people that he’s still got it and he can fire back on Trump when he needs to . . . if he can get through the questions not seeming confused, those are the big things for me,” he said.
David Silverman, 54, lives just outside of Seattle. A lifelong liberal but with a law-and-order philosophy, he has voted for every Democratic presidential candidate since Walter Mondale in 1984. He’s looking for “permission” to cast his vote for Biden during the debate.
“Tell me you support the cops, tell me you support freedom of speech, tell me you don’t support looters and rioters,” he said.