Walter: 2016’s undecided voters would rather cut off their arms ‘than have this election’

Editor’s Note: Party People is a new podcast from CNN where a pair of conservative CNN contributors talk to influential voices about the future of conservatism and the Republican party.

Cook Political Report national editor Amy Walter said undecided voters are different this election cycle because they’re “absolutely clued in” with who the candidates of both major parties are – and they still don’t like what they see.

“Normally what you see in those groups, people who are undecided, they’re undecided because they really haven’t been paid much attention,” Walter told CNN’s Party People podcast hosts Kevin Madden and Mary Katherine Ham in a recent conversation.

Walter, who also worked for former Democratic Rep. Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky, said undecided voters sounded like children trying to avoid hopping into a cold pool.

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“Here, these undecided voters are absolutely clued-in and they’re like that feeling we all had in school when you had to jump into the cold pool in first hour P.E., and you’re like, ‘I don’t want to get in there, I don’t want to jump in there! I know I’m going to have to get in.’ So, they are undecided because they don’t want to make a choice, not because they don’t know about their choices,” she said.

Walter said for the first time that she can remember, she’s having trouble trusting the data that’s coming from the campaign trail, and that undecided voters are struggling to choose between the lesser of two evils.

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“What I hear from these groups, is just this idea of like ‘You know, I don’t know if I trust Hillary Clinton,’” she said. “One woman said, ‘I don’t trust Hillary Clinton on terrorism’ – to sort of get to your point of instability in the world – ‘but Donald Trump is going to get us into World War III.’ So, that’s why people are like ‘I’d rather cut my arm off than have this election, because that’s what you’re making me choose from.’”

Walter, who also previously worked for CNN, described how the political polarization between different demographic groups, in particular white voters and whether they have a college degree, can’t be blamed entirely on Donald Trump.

“It has been a dramatic shift,” Walter said. “You can’t blame that all on one candidate who had a great rally. This has been a steady movement that way.”

To hear how Walter got her start in politics and more, listen to CNN’s “Party People,” a new podcast where a pair of conservative CNN contributors talk to influential voices about the future of conservative politics and the Republican party.

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