> People lie in anonymous polls about their voting intent. Political scientists have had to develop a separate category, along with methods to identify its mem

> People lie in anonymous polls about their voting intent. Political scientists have had to develop a separate category, along with methods to identify its members, in order to capture actual "swing voters", for related reasons. Lots of folks like to classify themselves as "centrist" or "independent" or "on the fence" or what have you, while in fact voting party line every single time just as reliably as someone who self-identifies as being highly partisan. Actual swing voters are a tiny minority of the people who identify as such (which is why "get out the vote" is, not-so-secretly, far more important than courting those voters—lots of seemingly odd behavior by politicians makes way more sense when this is factored in) Bad political reporting (which is lots of political reporting) won't bother to make the distinction, which results in misleading coverage, graphs, et c.