Our presidential election features two candidates viewed with great disapproval by a majority of the electorate, and that it will likely be decided by a small number of "undecided" voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania is slightly less loathsome.

It is probable, again, that the undecided pool is exceedingly small this year, given that we've never had an election in which voters were more familiar with the candidates and their records.

To be "undecided" regarding that which so many are firmly decided could, of course, suggest a special punctiliousness when making assessments, a certain fluctuation in thinking as a consequence of microscopic examination of particulars.

The few undecided folks I have encountered don't seem to fit that description of painstaking deliberators; to the contrary, they seem undecided because they haven't been paying much attention, this year or any other. They are the classic "low information" folks for whom deciding whether to vote will be a tougher decision than who to vote for if they bother to.

In a race this close, when so many already know all they need to know to make up their minds, those who have made it a point to know little and will make up their minds late will exert disproportionate influence on the outcome.

Historically, late deciders break for the challenger rather than the incumbent, but the challenger-incumbent distinction looms significantly less large when the challenger is a former president who has dominated American politics for nearly a decade now.

Trump's conviction in New York might be the kind of thing that decides the mind of some of the undecided; they will note he is a convicted felon, even if they will have insufficient knowledge of the details to determine whether the charges and conviction were warranted.

More likely, again for those who are generally disengaged, and for the broader pool of self-identified "independents" within which the undecideds are usually found, the state of the economy, in particular how they perceive it affecting their personal circumstances, could prove decisive. In such assessments, it is likely that statistics on job creation, unemployment, etc., will likely matter less than the belief that everything, including housing and transportation, has gotten so much more expensive.

If such perceptions are what sways undecided and independent decision-making, the edge goes to Trump, as data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve noted that inflation-adjusted average family income went up 16 percent in Trump's first three years in office and only 0.7 percent in Biden's first three.

Adding to uncertainties as to how currently undecided voters might vote, and the kinds of factors that will influence them, will be the under-rated impact of third-party candidates.

Such parties tend to receive little attention in media campaign coverage because they have little chance of winning and because their standing in the polls tends to deteriorate the closer we draw to Election Day (as their initial supporters realize their votes might be wasted)

Still, and as with the undecided pool, the significance of third-party performance, however modest, becomes much more important the closer the election, when victory is likely to be determined by so few votes in a few swing states (again, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and maybe, this year, Virginia).

We all remember how Ralph Nadar voters threw the state of Florida and therefore the election to George W. Bush in 2000, but people are probably less aware that the top two third-party candidates collected over 550,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2016, when Trump won the presidency by winning those three states by a cumulative 80,000 or so votes. And that the top two third-party candidates collected over 155,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia in 2020, when Biden won the presidency by winning those three states by a cumulative 40,000 or so votes.

The third-party impact should be even greater this year, with the top three such candidates (independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West and Green Party nominee Jill Stein) combining for nearly 12 percent in the latest RealClearPolitics poll average. It is therefore likely that the cumulative third-party vote will exceed the margin of victory in many of the swing states to an even greater extent than in 2016 and 2020.

Stein and West will, as leftists, pull from Biden, but the more viable Kennedy (currently polling at 8 percent) could, as another oddball with a famous name, pull more from Trump (although, to be sure, Trump's poll lead in the five-way matchups has been slightly greater thus far than in head-to-head).

There is much more to consider, including that dog-and-pony show mislabeled as a debate coming up in just a few days, in which Biden will be under the mental/physical health microscope.

A final point: If Trump is, roughly speaking, within two points or so in the polls in a given state the day before the election, that state will likely go his way.

Why?

Because he tends to consistently "over-perform" in election returns compared to pre-election polls, with some people apparently supporting and voting for him without telling pollsters or others they intend to do so (the "social desirability" factor at play, even more significant due to "convicted felon").

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.