Who will decide this election — does it even matter?

Some groups want to be the difference makers in this election. Others want to avoid that label at all costs. The game they’re playing makes for an almost laughably incoherent set of tall tales. 

On a single day last week, one national news outlet featured stories suggesting each of the following could decide November’s outcome: white working-class voters, labor union members, progressives, Latinos and Polish Americans. On other days, its African Americans, college graduates, Arab Americans and Jews. 

Truth is, given the close race this is likely to be, they are probably all right, but not in the way we think. And if every group is decisive, really no one is.  

Saying this or that segment of the population made the decisive difference in this or that election sounds like a profoundly meaningful conclusion. You’ll hear pundits make the claim dozens of times on election night and in the ensuing days. 

But what does it mean? 

Ask one of those pundits to provide a coherent definition that aligns with their conclusion, and I’d bet they can’t.  

Here’s the wholly uninteresting case where it’s true and sensible. 

Imagine an electorate comprised of 80 moose and 20 bears who must choose between two candidates: Bullwinkle Moose and Yogi Bear. 

If 75 percent of the moose chose Bullwinkle, yielding 60 votes, moose clearly decided the election. Even if 100 percent of the bears voted Yogi, the outcome would have been the same. Only a different result among moose could have altered the result.  

Clear perhaps, but our elections almost never approach facts like those, so being able to single handily determine the outcome is not what anyone really means when they crown a group “decisive.”  

So let us envision a scenario, also oversimple to be sure, but one more closely approximating our reality.  

Say Yogi Bear got 45 percent of the moose votes (36 votes) and 75 percent of the bears (15 votes) for a 51 to 49 Yogi victory. 

Who decided the election then?  

Was it Yogi’s loyal base among bears or the minority of moose who crossed over to Yogi, providing a majority of his votes (36 votes from moose vs. 15 from bears)? 

There is no objective answer in part because there is no clear definition of being decisive. 

One pundit may anoint bears as the difference makers because Yogi did so well among them. If the bears had voted like everyone else (i.e., the moose), Yogi would have lost. 

Another could argue that the moose provided the margin of victory.  

For me, though, the important fact here is that if any two voters — two bears, two moose or one of each — flipped their vote from Yogi to Bullwinkle, the latter would be the winner not the former.  

So, neither group decided the election; the interaction of all the individuals in both groups did.  

Another way to think about who decided the election is to focus on who moved between elections. Say Yogi Bear only got 40 percent of the moose last cycle and lost.  

You might attribute this year’s victory to his 5-point gain among moose and conclude they decided the election. 

He certainly would not have won without the gains among moose, but had more defections appeared among bears, Yogi would have lost, so bears continued solidarity was also critical.  

Bears could have moved but didn’t and the fact they didn’t was crucial to the outcome. 

It is still the case that any two voters switching would have cost him this race as well. 

Changes in turnout add another layer of complexity. 

Go back to our earlier partisan division when Yogi Bear won by garnering 45 percent of the moose and 75 percent of the bears.  

Say in the next election, Yogi got a lower proportion of bears, perhaps 70 percent, but rather than making up 20 percent of the total vote, new freedom-restricting National Park rules resulted in a surge in bear turnout. Instead of 20 bear voters, 40 turned out. 

Now we have 120 voters (80 moose and 40 bears), and the minimum win number becomes 61. Yogi garners a more comfortable 64 votes.  

Changing the composition of the electorate can more than make up for declining levels of support.  

In short, while when properly intoned they sound profound, declarations that one group or another decided the election are usually close to meaningless.  

Mark Mellman is a pollster and president of The Mellman Group, a political consultancy. He is also president of Democratic Majority for Israel.