Generally you never win by taking the left or right voters. They already vote for/against you no matter what (or abstain from voting because they are so far left or right that they basically think you and your opponent is equally too far left/right).
You win by making the undecided middle vote for you. Every vote you gain from the center is also a vote your opponent loses.
Obama began his re-election year with the certainty that he knew the name of all 69,456,897 Americans whose votes had carried him to the White House. Of course, these votes had been cast secretly, but Narwhal’s data was so detailed that the analysts were able to identify the Obama supporters in every district. Each elector was given a probability rating between zero and a hundred. Zero meant they would vote for Romney. A hundred meant they were a guaranteed Obama supporter. The trick was to ignore those voters and focus all the campaign’s resources on voters in swing states with scores between forty-five and fifty-five.
Generally you never win by taking the left or right voters. They already vote for/against you no matter what (or abstain from voting because they are so far left or right that they basically think you and your opponent is equally too far left/right).
You win by making the undecided middle vote for you. Every vote you gain from the center is also a vote your opponent loses.
Well I really hope the Democrats do that in the 2026 midterms and 2028 election. Seriously!
A book I’m currently reading seems to agree: