Vote-Hunters' Elusive Prey

Pollsters Stalk a Rare Chameleon, The Undecided Central Floridian

ORLANDO -- Orlando Man rests a head of premature white on a calloused hand. His sleeves are frayed. He looks tired. Shhh. Listen. He is about to tell us something important.

He hasn't had a raise in three years, he says. All the jobs go to "China," or get "taken by the Mexicans," and his is probably next. He feels "sold out" by Bush, he says. An observer can almost imagine John Kerry nodding gravely, cameras recording the moment for a future commercial.

Then CUT! CUT! Suddenly Orlando Man is veering wildly off script. Bush "is a strong leader," he says. Yeah, the war's going badly but "nobody could have predicted that." Kerry is "a waffler. Says one thing one day and then flips it two months later."

Huh?

Who is Orlando Man? And which side is he on?

This is a mystery now being pondered by the man on the other side of the one-way mirror -- Jim Gerstein, of the Democratic polling group Democracy Corps. Gerstein has assembled nine men for this focus group in an office building in a strip mall because they fit a certain profile: None of them has a college degree. Their household incomes are under $50,000. All live in the Orlando suburbs, a critical strip of Central Florida where history shows elections are won and lost. All of them define themselves as "undecided" or "weak partisan."

The aim is "to find out what's important to him," says Gerstein. The hope is that swaying them might avoid the last election's long, drawn-out chad nightmare, might confirm who is the rightful heir to Florida and the White House.

That's the ideal. And if Orlando Man were seated next to you at a party the conversation might be fun, unpredictable, a way to pass a couple of hours. But as a voter he's more what an anthropologist might call an example of aberrant behavior, a panda who won't eat bamboo, a gene located off the DNA map.

"They never found those weapons," says one, in what any observer would swear was mock-irony. Then not five minutes later he adds gently: "I'm sure it's not [Bush's] fault. I'm sure they're out there somewhere, buried in the friggin' desert."

Any pundit will tell you that these days America splits into two neat primary color boxes: Red America with its Chevy trucks, personal savior, NASCAR; Blue with its lattes, urban gardening, weakness for Charlie Rose. All manner of hand-wringing follows from there -- we are a nation painfully divided, hardening in our zealotry. We eat with and talk to and live near people just like ourselves. This is the death of robust political dialogue, etc.

At least, though, most of us know who we are. Compare that to the tiny sliver in the middle, the 1 percent of Americans who can't make up their minds. Before the focus group, the men fill out forms about their preferences. One says he listens to NPR and regularly reads the Drudge Report. Another sings in a church choir and loves Howard Stern. One listed his favorite TV show as "Seinfeld" and his favorite news source as Rush Limbaugh.

The mysterious, maddening Homo Orlandus: He not only lives in a swing state but until the moment he punches the ballot, he himself is perpetually in a state of swing. Each year there's a cutely named version of him -- NASCAR Dad, Soccer Mom -- but each year he confounds the pollsters' attempts to categorize him.

The female of the species won't get you clarity, either. In a focus group of women run by Democracy Corps, one woman with ex-husbands and stepchildren worries that in the movies, "every other word is the F word," and school kids don't learn how to read anymore. Another home-schools her children and complains that every other word out of Bush's mouth is "God." (They and the men participated in the focus groups on the understanding that they would remain anonymous.)

Seen from one angle, Orlando Man is part of a Democratic interest group -- suffering economically, afraid to switch jobs. He worries about health care, schools, the environment. Bush's tax cuts were helpful, but gone almost before he could cash the check. He acutely resents the rich.