How large are the various groups of potential voters?

[Garrett78]

12. Here's my response from the last time you made the same claim regarding #5:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=531564

Read the article that I linked to in that post. What you're claiming simply isn't true.

As for #2, independents definitely exist. But lumping them in with #1 is reasonable, given that the vast majority always vote a straight-ticket.

It's really hard to know just how many are in group #3, since we're talking about people who will only vote if a certain candidate is the nominee. We don't really have a way to test that, but we know they exist.

2016 matched 2 historically unpopular candidates, so it was something of an outlier. 3rd party voting was higher than normal. And, as made clear by the 538 article I posted elsewhere in this thread, those who self-identify as undecided or moderate or independent or all of the above (what we might call swing voters) are all over the map ideologically-speaking. This means, as the author points out, those who claim to know what it is those voters are looking for is talking out of their ass. They're making false assumptions based on what they think a swing voter must be like.