How Clinton and Trump Can Win Undecided Voters
A few said without enthusiasm that they might consider an alternative party's candidate like Libertarian Gary Johnson or the Green Party's Jill Stein, although neither was catching fire with this group.
The group was shown an array of attack ads and feel-good ads for both candidates and asked to rate each one, moment-to-moment with hand-held dials. A pattern emerged. The dial results, reading out on a video screen, didn't move up very much
They liked an ad in which Clinton promised to work with Republicans. But they also liked an anti-Clinton ad that featured a retired naval officer's challenging question to Clinton about her emails and national security at NBC's recent "Commander in Chief Forum."
"It's on the spot," one focus-group participant said of the ad. "It's not staged. There's no performance."
At one point near the end, Luntz left the room briefly to talk to us journos in the observation room. "We have now reached the point," he said, "when even the standard sound bites do not work."
They've heard it all before, over and over again, Luntz said. The ad with the naval officer connected because it featured a real person earnestly asking a real question, not a professional announcer. As the late comedian George Burns used to say, the secret to success in life is sincerity -- "If you can fake that, you've got it made."
Judging by Luntz's group, undecided voters are turned off by the fakery, attack ads and attack sound bites. They're looking for solutions. Trump's ads offered more diagnoses than prescriptions. Clinton offered proposals but without a unifying or inspiring theme. For both, positive messages were welcomed more than negative ones -- but were also more rare.
For both candidates, Luntz suggested, the election may well come down to who Americans would rather wake up to as their next president on the morning after Election Day. If so, I think Clinton's best hope may be that undecided voters choose the flawed candidate whom they know over the flawed newcomer that they don't.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
