Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A new Siena poll finds nearly 1-in-8 voters are undecided between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump ahead of this November's Presidential election. How likely could these voters affect the election?
Don Levy of Siena says a persuadable is a voter he polled who didn't initially and immediately say they're going to vote for either Trump or Harris.
"We continue to ask them, 'If the election were held today and you had to choose, and if you're leaning for one or the other,' then slowly they start to say, 'Well, I'm leaning a little bit more for one or the other, or they continue to say, 'I simply don't know,'" said Levy in an interview with WBEN.
The latest poll finds 12% fall into that category.
Levy says the persuadable voters see pluses and minuses in both Trump and Harris. He also asked those voters about character traits.
"Do they have the right temperament to be President of the United States? Which one do you think is a stronger leader? Who's going to bring about the type of change that you want? And who cares about people like you, as well as able to unify the country? What we find is that these persuadable voters are split," Levy noted.
Levy says persuadables find Trump a stronger leader than Harris.
"He has a large 27-point advantage over Harris, in terms of being a strong leader," he said.
When it comes to the question of intelligence, Levy says the advantage goes to Harris.
"74% of persuadable say, 'I see Kamala Harris as intelligent.' A majority 59% see Donald Trump is intelligent," he noted.
Going under the hood, persuadable voters see the intelligence in different ways.
"They see Kamala Harris as intelligent, in terms of her accomplishments as a lawyer, as a prosecutor, some terms and almost as book smarts. And Donald Trump, the intelligence that they aligned with him is more business smarts, street savvy," Levy added.
Levy says there's a greater tendency to lean towards Trump than there is towards Harris. However, 35% of the persuadable won't even lean. It's something that's been seen in previous polling too.
"We've seen that they're torn on issues, they tend to be extremely worried about the economy, but also they lean towards being in support of abortion rights," Levy noted. "I think in many cases, these persuadable will be weighing the two candidates right up until the moment that they cast their vote."