One reason why undecided voters remain undecided is that they are uncomfortable with newness. If forced to choose between the familiar and the strange, they tend to retreat to the familiar — if the two options are otherwise similar. But what if the familiar option is now damaged goods? The hesitant chooser then faces a dilemma, whether it’s best to stick with the flawed product you know, or to take a leap of faith and anoint an unfamiliar new product the status of best friends forever.
And thus they become paralyzed with indecision.
Decisive people never face this dilemma. If something fails, they have no problem discarding it and replacing it with a superior substitute. But hesitant, un-self-confident people have difficulty visualizing something that doesn’t already exist. And that makes it difficult for them to make changes in their lives.
This is especially true with momentous decisions. It might be possible, on a brave day, for a hesitant person to test out a new ice cream flavor. But to vote for a total stranger to be president? Whoa whoa whoa, slow down, that’s more than I can handle. It’s so much easier to vote for the existing president because, well, because he’s already called “President.”
Yeah, sure, everyone tells me he’s not a very good president, but I just can’t visualize someone else as president, because, well, because the other guy isn’t called “President.”
Those of you who vote according to your personal convictions or out of a political philosophy might find this kind of dithering hesitancy to be incomprehensible. But it lies at the root of why some voters, even this late in the game, remain “undecided.” It’s not really that they’re undecided, but rather that they haven’t quite yet come to terms with the notion of “President Romney.”
Such people need a little extra encouragement to internalize “President Romney” in their mental vocabulary. And once they become comfortable with the concept, they will feel freer to embrace something new and vote for Romney, because the notion of “President Romney” will no longer be strange and unfamiliar.
Furthermore, if you haven’t made up your mind at this stage, then you are completely resistant to words, arguments, logic, rationality, and information. Your mind must be approached at a subconscious level, perhaps through the pineal gland.
To that end, I have created a new video specifically aimed at undecided voters. It serves one purpose and one purpose only: To make viewers familiar with and comfortable with the phrase “President Romney.” To achieve this, I have carefully overlaid an ever-growing crescendo of voices repeating “President Romney” on a hypnotic visual background, in this case the “Hypnotoad” character from the TV series Futurama.
Behold HypnoRomney:
If you’re reading this analysis, you’ve almost certainly already decided whom to vote for; this video is not aimed at you. Instead, it is aimed at those people who are teetering on the edge of voting for Romney, but first need to become at ease with the concept “President Romney” before pulling that lever for him in the voting booth.
So, I encourage everyone reading this to repost this video wherever you can, especially in non-political Web environments, or in the kinds of places where undecided voters might congregate (presuming there are such places).
To make sharing easy, here is the URL of the YouTube page with the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwOVD7z-gqA
And here is the YouTube embed code, for those sites that require it:
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JwOVD7z-gqA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
And here is a link to the page itself:
We’ve tried reason. We’ve tried emotion. Now let’s seal the deal with hypnosis!
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