One-Quarter of U.S. Voters Uncommitted in Presidential Race

A new poll suggests that Romney and Obama will compete for centrist independents as November approaches.

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks during a town hall meeting at the Doubletree Miami Airport hotel as he campaigns in South Florida

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

One-in-four U.S. voters are uncommitted in the 2012 presidential race, according to a new poll from the AP/GfK.

So who are the uncommitted voters? They tend to be independents, or party members in the ideological middle (though the AP notes that seventeen percent of persuadable voters support the Tea Party). They're slightly more likely to have a low household income, and just over 70 percent of them don't have a college degree. Age-wise, they trend towards Generation X.

They're also not that optimistic about either candidate: uncommitted voters are much more likely than the general voting population to think that the November election results won't make a huge change in the U.S. economy, deficit, health care policy, or unemployment. And, as the AP puts it, "These voters also hate pandering."

The "uncommitted" category includes voters with no preference between the two candidates, as well as "soft," persuadable, supporters of either Obama or Romney.

Read more on the poll results here.

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