As U.S. presidential campaign candidates are reportedly spending millions trying to woo that most elusive of political consort -- the undecided voter -- the following article written for Monsters and Critics sister publication The Tech Herald suggests it's really all a waste of time and money.

 Do undecided voters already 'know' their preference?

A recent Canadian study has found that, unconsciously, people already know who they are going to vote for based on deep-seated conceptions, its as though they haven't got round to telling themselves yet!

Many millions of dollars are currently being spent by the campaign teams of presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain in an effort to sway undecided voters, yet a new study shows this may be money wasted.

Moreover, people who claim to be undecided may in fact have unconsciously already made up their minds based on deep-seated attitudes, according to Canadian research.

Undecided voters are believed to number around 10 per cent of the U.S. electorate and are expected to play a major role in this year's presidential election, which analysts say will be a cliffhanger.

In a study published in the journal Science, psychologist Bertram Gawronski and his colleagues at Canada's University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, said that mental associations made quickly by individuals usually predicted how they formed an opinion on the issue in the future.

"One could say that people sometimes have already made up their minds, even though they do not know it yet," Gawronski said.

Gawronski's team interviewed 129 residents of Vicenza, Italy during a fierce political debate over the proposed enlargement of a U.S. military base in the city and found from initial interviewing that 32 residents approved the idea while 64 were in opposition. A key 33 participants remained undecided.

A series of negative-positive mental association tests conducted by the research team found they were able to predict with a high degree of accuracy what the interviewee's eventual response on the issue would be. They found there was a discernible difference when participants were asked to press a key that was the opposite of the position they eventually chose.

"The difference [in reaction time] was typically very small -- usually about 100 to 200 milliseconds," added Gawronski. "But these millisecond differences were informative enough for us to predict their future decisions."

University of Virginia psychology professor Timothy D. Wilson, Ph. D, told WebMD the research had important implications for election campaign managers.

"The lore in politics is that campaigns need to target undecided voters," he said. "But this research suggests that it may be much more effective to focus on your base by registering as many people as you can and getting them to vote on Election Day." [source]

Image above: Voting during the French presidential election in 2007.

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