Andrea Prat

Voters who declare themselves undecided during a campaign can play a decisive role in elections. We propose a dynamic model of how people select and report voting intentions. Voters differ in ideological preferences, initial information, voting costs, and willingness to report voting intentions. We estimate the model using a panel of 4,855 Americans during the 2024 presidential campaign, combining voting intentions, news quizzes, and language model representations of voters’ concerns. Our estimates indicate that undecided voters are primarily reluctant to declare a preference, torn between candidates, or unlikely to vote, with a more limited role for the cost of obtaining information.