The Dead Persuadable Voter Theory

You’ve probably heard of the Dead Internet Theory, which is the idea that most content online is now generated by bots. Here’s my twist: the Dead Persuadable Voter Theory. Undecided voters aren’t offline. They’re disappearing.  

This mass extinction event came along gradually then all at once … the consequence, at least partly, of a frozen FEC, incumbent-friendly redistricting, and deeply personalized media.

We need to rethink what persuasion really means and how to execute on that. We certainly have. The swing blocs of the past – Reagan Democrats, Soccer Moms, NASCAR Dads — are gone. In their place are more hardened tribes whose minds are made up before your candidate even files.

The percent of voters who are undecided two months before a presidential election has dropped from 20% to about 3% since 1980. Other studies will show different numbers, but all generally conclude that increased polarization makes people less receptive to certain forms of persuasion.

Cycle after cycle, the persuadable voter has been tracked, polled and persuaded to turnout with record spend. We microtargeted big audiences into small. We built message architectures around each unique identity. We refined narratives until every audience saw exactly what they wanted and only that. We scaled until there was nothing left to scale. This has effectively undercut our collective willingness to debate policy and ability to agree on facts.

But here’s the twist: this isn’t a eulogy. It’s an invitation. Fewer persuadable voters doesn’t mean less public affairs business, just different tactics. Political communication has shifted to hitting the fight or flight button. We’re all pulling the fire alarm in people’s heads with increasing precision.

What moves people now is emotional survival — threat, identity, fear, and belonging. Campaigns are appealing to the frontal lobe with less success. With all due credit to Andrew Yang, this is Archie Bunker’s time to shine.

If you’re still writing centrist rational policy arguments for undecideds in your banners and video spots, you might be doing it wrong. This doesn’t mean persuasion is gone. It means it needs to evolve. Today’s persuasion is tribal reinforcement, not ideological conversion. It’s emotional activation within your base. Loyalty over logic. Rhythm over reason. Digital is built for this less neighborly world.

You don’t need to broadcast a message across the open internet hoping to change minds. You need to build sustained frequency among voters already inclined to agree. That’s high-frequency programmatic display, CTV and pre-roll that triggers fight or flight. Podcasts and audio placements are identity affirmation. All together, it’s a strategy we know how to execute.

In the next campaign cycle, more than 50% of political digital ad spend will be addressable, up from 1/3 a decade ago. That’s an important distinction because you can say a whole lot more polarizing things in an OTT spot versus whatever live sports remain on broadcast television. With better targeting, we’re no longer generically persuading the middle. The middle has left the building. 

The idea of a voter sitting on the fence, maybe scrolling through X, waiting to be won over with logic two weeks before Election Day? Those are the unicorns. What we call persuasion today looks more like emotional activation … getting your soft supporters off the sidelines. Targeted digital was made for this.

Equally important, it’s about not getting lazy with leveraging basic party registration data. This doesn’t change our media mix outright, as we already recommend short form video first. It tells us to move up the timeline on any persuasion work. Google search will take a hit as eyeballs are moving to LLMs and it’s got less persuasion power. As for display, don’t overcrowd the rectangle.

Pew has well documented this polarization, which coincides not just with the decline of traditional media but also the rise of addressable everything. So stop aiming for the fence. Start aiming for the gut. Your voters learn more from a 15-second spot than we ever learned in school.

Jordan Lieberman is the CEO of Powers Interactive, an SPO-driven digital company.