Partisan preferences remain stable as decisive voters remain persuadable: evidence from five years of political turmoil

Abstract

In the post-COVID era, the United States has experienced a dizzying array of political shocks, including the events surrounding 6 January, the Supreme Court decision overturning the right to abortion in Dobbs , and a presidential transition to a previous incumbent. Standard theories of midterms-as-referendum and issue-salience imply that voters' party preferences on the generic congressional ballot should shift with shocks of such significant scale. We use six nationally representative YouGov surveys of U.S. registered voters spanning November 2020 to December 2025 ( N = 16, 060) to test our expectations. We find that aggregate analyses mask that persuadable voters vote based on issue agendas that differer substantially from those of committed partisans. In a period of increasingly partisan elections, we find an increasingly smaller group of persuadable voters who determine consequential electoral outcomes on a knife-edge. Given that smaller and smaller legislative majorities can now enact sweeping legislative and policy changes with more cohesive partisan coalitions, understanding these pivotal voters' political preferences is crucial for understanding the very voters who determine control of the U.S. Congress.