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Opinion: Undecided over John McCain or Barack Obama? Maybe not

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Our colleague Denise Gellene has an interesting story today on the minds of undecided voters, and a project by scientific researchers that suggests most undecideds really have made up their minds.

Researchers from Canada and Italy focused on a local political issue in Italy about the possible expansion of a U.S. military base, and discovered that 30 of the 33 self-described undecideds had already decided unconsciously one way or the other. The research (details are in Gellene’s story) focused in the subjects’ response time to questions that linked the proposal to a series of negative and positive words. They say they were able to predict the ultimate choice by the undecided with 70% accuracy.

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And you think political polling calls are already annoying -- wait till they start playing the word association games over the phone at dinner.

-- Scott Martelle

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