"the percentage of people who can swing an election is teeny-tiny"

[phantom power]

But what I really want to highlight from all this is the reminder that the percentage of people who can swing an election is teeny-tiny. Most people's votes are set in stone before the candidate is even selected. People forget this, because lots of voters call themselves "moderates" or "independents", but those designations usually mean "partisan but have absorbed the toxic notion that there's something wrong about being partisan, so I'm going to pretend that my vote is up for grab, even though it's not, because I like deluding myself that I'm open-minded". That's a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. In fact, social science demonstrates that Americans are generally quicker to paint a rosier picture of themselves according to certain social standards than people in many other countries, for reasons that are still a little hazy.

And to make it worse, the very small number of people whose votes are up for grabs are pretty much the polar opposite of the thoughtful citizen who has an open mind and spends the weeks before the election somberly reading up on the candidates before making a well-informed, well-considered opinion. Swing voters tend to be the most ignorant ones, which is probably why they manage to keep voting for Republicans, in between voting for Democrats, even though they basically never like the results of voting Republican. The truth of the matter is that someone who actually pays a lot of attention to politics is going to become a partisan, and there's no shame in that. It'd be like following sports or music intently without ever developing opinions about any teams or bands.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/a_reminder_that_politics_should_be_a_long_range_game