Do voters even think when voting for a Senator?

[edhopper]

If you look at States like Florida, Virginia, Missouri, ect...the Dem Senate candidates have good leads, yet these States are polling for Romney.
WTH do these voters think will happen if Romney gets in? If they want their Senator to do the things he says he will. If they reject the Repub's message, why would they vote for Romney, who wants to do exactly the same thing as the guy the are voting against?
Do they even think about actual policies and outcomes. If they hate gridlock, as the polls suggest, why do they vote for it?

[Ninga]

1. Don't cha know? It's the "other Senators that are the problem" syndrome. N/t

[1-Old-Man]

2. I dread the thought of voting for 1 of my "Democratic" Senators

Just because he calls himself a Democrat doesn't mean that he is in any meaningful way. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is not getting my vote no matter if he calls himself a Democrat or not because to my mind he is no Democrat at all.

[edhopper]

4. Your State is so Red

he is probably the best you can expect.
His voting record is decent.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/26/1113885/-Party-Matters-Joe-Manchin-is-closer-to-Bernie-Sanders-than-he-is-to-any-Republican
And that, in the end, is what's important.

[southernyankeebelle]

3. I always vote straight party lines. However, I voted yesterday in TN and

we had sen Corker and the dem was a wacky guy who passed himself off as a dem. I didn't vote for either. I wrote in Mickey Mouse. In the last election I just couldn't vote for the dem because it would have been voting for a DINO. Again wrote in Mickey Mouse.

[edhopper]

5. Don't you think having a Dem majority

even with a few Dinos, is better than a Rep majority?

[southernyankeebelle]

10. No especially this guy that is running against Corker. I don't think he was a dem at all. I also

think he's a racisit. He doesn't stand for any of the dem issues. I think he was a plant.

[porphyrian]

6. Florida is where criminals from all the states hide their money from the IRS.

There is a law in Florida that prevents the IRS from seizing your house, so criminals from your states move there and build multimillion dollar mansions to protect their ill-gotten gains. Then, they vote for the people that allow them to keep the most of their money - the republicans.

Both houses of the Florida Congress have republican majorities and have for years. The Democrats that get elected tend to be blue dogs, with a few happy exceptions, and tend to run unopposed in the primaries. Since you can only vote in your party's primaries in Florida, registered Democrats have little say in who will be running. National Congress-critters largely follow this same pattern to get elected.

Democratic voters in Florida are fucking guerilla warriors, survivors under seige. Don't paint them all with the stupid brush.

That said, I can't tell you what's wrong with the average republican in Florida. They may be pod people.

[edhopper]

7. I wasn't talking about Florida Dems, I am talking about the swing voters.

Nelson has a 7 point lead, at the same time Romney is ahead in the State by 3%.
So why are all those people voting for Nelson, also voting for Romney? Do they not realize that whatever Nelson says he wants to do will be prevented by Romney?

[porphyrian]

9. Because of the right-leaning electorate, Nelson pulls center-right.

His support is just as likely against Connie Mack as it is for him. Most of Florida pulls right, so the numbers support Romney as well. However, all of this is changing, mostly with an increase in left-leaning Hispanic population (old school Cuban/Hispanics tend to pull right, but more people are coming in from other parts of the Caribbean).

[karynnj]

8. That they are splitting their ticket shows they are thinking

The argument you make is one that people used effectively to argue against voting for Brown i n Massachusetts when he had highly personal favorability numbers.

In some red states, it may be that the personal popularity and/or respect for an incumbent Senator might explain the state going for Romney and the Democratic Senator.

Your examples are swing states. There are likely people who see neither Romney or Obama as negatively as partisans on either side. For partisans it is often hard to see both as reasonable alternatives - and that polarity has increased since the 1990s. This has been compared by many as how people see only one image in the designs that can be viewed two different ways. I personally find it hard to see why people can't understand that Romney's math absolutely does not add up AND credit him with the mathematical ability to know that - meaning he is not telling the truth.