Tonight's
All Things Considered had a story about the swing state of Missouri. Reporter John McChesney talked with six undecided voters about their views of the candidates and their views of political ads. The piece tries to be humorous, serious, and informative all at the same time, just the way NPR likes it. It ends up delivering several messages: the race is very close; neither the president nor Kerry has put forward a convincing message; people know better than to pay attention to political advertisements; but those foolish politicians are still spending hundreds of millions of dollars on those ads.
I won't dwell on the fact that the whole piece is a misleading tautology: of course these people haven't found either candidate convincing; the reporter has specifically chosen to speak with undecided voters!
More interesting than this, though, is the fallacy of the race being close. Of the six undecided voters interviewed, we are told that four of them voted for Bush in 2000. Another one almost certainly voted for Bush (he is strongly anti-choice). And one of the six probably voted for Gore (he's African American).
So here we have eight minutes of "the race is very close and will be decided by these swing voters" and yet 80% of the undecideds were people who voted for Bush 4 years ago. Granted, this is not a poll. But still, I wonder how many Gore voters in Missouri and around the country are still undecided at this point.
You can listen to the story here.