News
Undecided Voters Tell Us About Their Biggest Worries
We asked voters who have not yet made up their minds — 830 of them across five battleground states and Ohio — to name their biggest worries with both candidates.
Here is what they said.
Concern about Trump
“He’s made people comfortable with being racist and set the country back 50 years with racism.”
Concern about Harris “She’s a liar and it feels like she hasn’t done anything she said she was going to do.”
Black woman, 50s, Arizona
Concern about Trump
“Don’t like his rhetoric, how he speaks to people.”
Concern about Harris
“Incompetent, no experience in foreign policy or running the government; also has no opinions except on abortion.” White woman, 70s, Wisconsin
Concern about Trump
“Too extreme.”
Concern about Harris
“I don’t know much about her, but I’m unsure about how prepared she is to be president.”
Hispanic man, 30s, Arizona Concern about Trump
“Having the right to control my own body.”
Concern about Harris
“Immigration and inflation.”
Black woman, 20s, Georgia
Concern about Trump
“Arrogance.” Concern about Harris
“She’s a woman and not sure if a woman should be running.”
White woman, 50s, Arizona
Concern about Trump
“Has felonies on his record.”
Concern about Harris “Don’t know much about her policy.”
Black man, 50s, Georgia
Concern about Trump
“I don’t trust him.”
Concern about Harris
“I don’t trust her.” Black woman, 60s, Georgia
Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris are starkly different presidential candidates. So why are so many voters — roughly 1 in 6 — still unsure of their choice?
Until President Joe Biden dropped his bid for re-election, a large share of voters were unhappy with their choices for president.
Today, the electorate as a whole is happier, but the uncommitted voters are still not, according to recent polling by The New York Times and Siena College in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.
They trust neither former President Donald J. Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris. They question the candidates’ honesty and ethics.
Based on New York Times/Siena College polls of 4,132 likely voters conducted in September, including 830 undecided or not fully decided voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Respondents who said they didn’t know or who declined to say are not included.
These voters are younger than the electorate overall, less educated and have a lower income. They are much more likely than voters overall to be Black or Latino, and a little more likely to be men.
Some of these voters may just stay home, but a meaningful portion of them will probably vote. And in a close election, they could be the deciding factor.
In trying to understand what is holding them back from committing, we asked voters to tell us in their own words about their worries. Their phrases were telling: “being a bully,” “she’s an idiot.”
In many ways, their words suggest that voters know, and perhaps have become inured to, Donald Trump’s slash-and-burn campaign style and personality.
But with Kamala Harris, who was plunged into the race only in July, their fears are wider ranging — encompassing both character and the issues, like the economy. And for some voters, the historic nature of her candidacy presents not progress but a drawback.
Voters are concerned about one thing when it comes to Trump: his character.
They said he is arrogant or erratic and talks too much. They talked about his age or criminal trials. The words boiled down to concerns about the former president’s personality and honesty.
Even voters who said they were leaning toward Trump mentioned concerns about chaos and dysfunction.
A small but notable share were also concerned, specifically, about his ability to carry out and complete the tasks of president, mentioning his age and mental capacity.
Concern about Trump
“Angered easily.”
White man, 40s, Michigan Concern about Trump
“Being a bully towards other nations.”
White man, 60s, Georgia
Concern about Trump
“He is erratic, not very well-spoken and lies.”
White man, 40s, North Carolina
Concern about Trump
“Him staying off the internet.”
White man, 30s, Arizona
Concern about Trump
“Being presidential, sense of decorum, way he communicates.” Man, 60s, Michigan
Concern about Trump
“Does not know when to shut up.”
White man, 20s, North Carolina Concern about Trump
“His age.”
White woman, 20s, Wisconsin
At the same time, even though Trump has crossed all kinds of red lines during his campaign, voters used comparatively mild language in describing their doubts about him. Words like “a bit” and “a little” crept in frequently.
Concern about Trump
“Little power hungry.” White woman, 30s, Arizona
Concern about Trump
“His authoritative tendencies.”
White man, 30s, North Carolina Concern about Trump
“Probably his rhetoric, maybe, and how he presents himself. And the debate was kind of rough.”
Woman, 40s, Michigan
Concern about Trump
“Bit decisive at times. He doesn’t always say the right things.”
White man, 20s, Georgia
Concern about Trump
“I wish he could be a little more presidential.”
White woman, 70s, Arizona
Concern about Trump
“He might become too emotional when making decisions.” Nonwhite man, 30s, North Carolina
Concerns about Harris are more varied.
For Kamala Harris, voters’ anxieties were broader and more complicated. Although qualms about her personality came up less often than with Trump, trustworthiness and honesty were still big question marks for many voters.
So was her ability to handle the economy. Voters specifically mentioned costs and inflation, a persistent concern among undecided and not fully decided voters over the last few months.
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Concern about Harris
“She will make the economy worse than it is.”
Black man, 20s, Georgia
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Concern about Harris
“That she’s like every other politician, that she is not going to actually do anything to help us.”
Black woman, 30s, Ohio
-
Concern about Harris
“Bring down the price of groceries and housing.”
Black woman, 60s, Georgia
-
Concern about Harris
“How she would handle the economy.”
Hispanic woman, 20s, Georgia
-
Concern about Harris
“Too liberal.”
Black woman, 50s, Michigan
-
Concern about Harris
“Not following through.”
White woman, 30s, Wisconsin
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Concern about Harris
“The people didn’t vote for her; she was appointed. That is not democracy.”
White man, 60s, Wisconsin
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Concern about Harris
“Democrats take the African American vote for granted. Not sure her policies are going to benefit African Americans.”
Black man, 30s, North Carolina
They also questioned her abilities and wondered if she was ready for the job. Some voters described her with caustic language, which echoes Trump’s, who called her “mentally disabled” and “mentally impaired.”
Harris has not leaned into the historical nature of her candidacy — she would be the first woman of color to be president. For some of these voters, her background may be a challenge. Some voters used language that was outright sexist.
Concern about Harris
“That she’s not intelligent enough to be president. I think she is an idiot.”
White man, 70s, Arizona Concern about Harris
“I don’t think she’s got it all together.”
White woman, 70s, Arizona
Concern about Harris
“Overall untrustworthy.”
Black man, 40s, North Carolina
Concern about Harris
“I don’t know much about her, but I’m unsure about how prepared she is to be president.” Hispanic man, 30s, Arizona
Concern about Harris
“She’s a woman. I’m not sure she can get the job done. People probably won’t listen to her.”
White woman, 50s, Ohio
Concern about Harris
“She’s a lady.”
Black woman, 60s, Wisconsin Sources and methodology
Selected responses from New York Times/Siena College polls of 4,132 likely voters conducted in September, including 830 undecided or not fully decided voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Undecided and persuadable voters were voters in the survey who either did not pick a presidential candidate after being asked multiple questions about their vote choice or voters who ultimately did pick a candidate but said they were only “probably” but not “definitely” going to support that candidate.
Open-ended responses to the “biggest concern” question were coded into categories using a trained coder and validated with a second reviewer. The primary coder reviewed a sampling of responses and then created an initial coding schema. Categories were adjusted based on size and coherence throughout the process. Where there was disagreement between coders, proposed codes were reviewed, discussed and compared with similar examples in other surveys. To help ensure consistency, responses that exactly matched previous responses in prior surveys were automatically coded to the same category, but were still reviewed for accuracy.
Cartoonist Scott Adams poses with his a life-size cutout of his creation, Dilbert, in 2014.
Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
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Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Scott Adams, the controversial cartoonist who skewered corporate culture, has died at age 68, He announced in May 2025 that he had metastatic prostate cancer and only months to live.
Months later, in November, Adams took to X to request — and receive — some very public help from President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in addressing health insurance issues that had delayed his treatment with an FDA-approved cancer drug called Pluvicto.
Adams said he was able to book an appointment the next day. Despite the Trump administration’s public intervention, Adams shared on his YouTube show in early January 2026 that “the odds of me recovering are essentially zero.”
Adams’ former wife, Shelly Miles, announced his death Tuesday during a YouTube livestream, and then read a statement from Adams who said, “I had an amazing life. I gave it everything I had. If you got any benefits from my life, I ask you pay it forward as best you can.”
Adams rose to fame in the early 1990s with his comic strip Dilbert, satirizing white-collar culture based on his own experiences working in company offices. He made headlines again in the final years of his life for controversial comments about race, gender and other topics, which led to Dilbert‘s widespread cancellation in 2023.
Dilbert, which at its height was syndicated in some 2,000 newspapers across 65 countries, spawned a number of books, a video game and two seasons of an animated sitcom.
“I think you have to be fundamentally irrational to think that you can make money as a cartoonist, and so I can never answer succinctly why it is that I thought this would work,” Adams told NPR’s Weekend Edition in 1996. “It was about the same cost as buying a lottery ticket and about the same odds of succeeding. And I buy a lottery ticket, so why not?”
He said that he had “pretty much always wanted to be a famous cartoonist,” even applying to the Famous Artists School, a correspondence art course, as a pre-teen.
“I was 11 years old, and I’d filled out the application saying that I wanted to be a cartoonist,” he said. “It turns out, as they explained in their rejection letter, that you have to be at least 12 years old to be a famous cartoonist.”
Turning to more practical matters, Adams studied economics at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. and earned an MBA from UC Berkeley. He also trained as a hypnotist at the Clement School of Hypnosis in the 1980s.
Adams began his career at Crocker National Bank, working what he described in a blog post as a “number of humiliating and low paying jobs: teller (robbed twice at gunpoint), computer programmer, financial analyst, product manager, and commercial lender.”
He then spent nearly a decade working at Pacific Bell — the California telephone company now owned by AT&T — in various jobs “that defy description but all involve technology and finances,” as Adams put it in his biography. It was there that he started drawing Dilbert, working on the strip on mornings, evenings and weekends from 1989 until 1995.
“You get real cynical if you spend more than five minutes in a cubicle,” he told NPR’s Weekend Edition in 2002. “But I certainly always planned that I would escape someday, as soon as I got escape velocity.”
Adams satirized corporate culture for decades
Scott Adams works on his comic strip in his California studio in 2006. He announced in May that he was dying of metastatic prostate cancer.
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
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Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
Dilbert revolves around its eponymous white-collar engineer as he navigates his company’s comically dysfunctional bureaucracy, alongside his sidekick: an anthropomorphized, megalomaniac dog named Dogbert.
“Dilbert is a composite of my co-workers over the years,” Adams wrote on his website. “He emerged as the main character of my doodles. I started using him for business presentations and got great responses … Dogbert was created so Dilbert would have someone to talk to.”
Dilbert — with his trademark curly head, round glasses and always-upturned red and black tie — fights a constant battle for his sanity amidst a micromanaged, largely illogical corporate environment full of pointless meetings, technical difficulties, too many buzzwords and an out-of-touch manager known only as Pointy-haired Boss.
Even after Adams quit his day job, he kept a firm grasp on the absurdities and mundanities of cubicle life with help from his devoted audience.
He included his email address on the strip and said he got hundreds of messages each day. Recurring reader suggestions ranged from stolen refrigerator lunches to bosses’ unrealistic expectations.
“So they all, for example, say, ‘I need this report in a week, but make sure that I get it two weeks early so I could look at it,’” Adams said. “Just bizarre stories where it’s clear that they either have never owned a watch or a calendar or they are in some kind of a time warp.”
Dilbert‘s storylines evolved alongside office culture, taking aim at a growing range of societal and technological topics over the years. In 2022, Adams introduced Dave, the strip’s first Black character, who identifies as white — a choice critics interpreted as poking fun at DEI initiatives.
That ushered in an era of anti-woke plotlines that saw dozens of U.S. newspapers drop the strip in 2022, foreshadowing its widespread cancellation just a year later.
The comic strip was cancelled over Adams’ comments
Adams didn’t limit himself to cartoons. He was a proponent of what he called the “talent stack,” combining multiple common skills in a unique and valuable way: like drawing, humor and risk tolerance, in his case.
He ventured briefly into food retail at the turn of the millennium, selling vegetarian, microwavable burritos called Dilberitos. He published several novels and nonfiction books unrelated to the Dilbert universe over the years.
Adams was open about his health struggles throughout his career, including the movement disorder focal dystonia — which particularly affected his drawing hand — and, years later, spasmodic dysphonia, an involuntary clenching of the vocal cords that he managed to cure through an experimental surgery.
And he opined on social and political events on “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” his YouTube talk series with over 180,000 subscribers.
His commentary, which often touched on race and other hot-button issues, led to Dilbert‘s widespread cancellation in February 2023.
In a YouTube livestream that month, Adams — while discussing a Rasmussen public opinion poll asking readers whether they agree “It’s OK to be white” (which is considered an alt-right slogan) — urged white people to “get the hell away from Black people,” labeling them a “hate group.” The backlash was swift: Dozens of newspapers across the country ditched Dilbert, and the comic’s distributor dropped Adams.
The incident also renewed focus on numerous controversial comments Adams had made in the past, including about race, men’s rights, the Holocaust and COVID-19 vaccines. Adams defended his remarks as hyperbole, and later said getting “canceled” had improved his life, with public support coming from conservative figures like Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk.
Adams, in his final years, was a vocal supporter of President Trump and a critic of Democrats.
But he extended his “respect and compassion” to former President Joe Biden in a video the day after Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis became public in May 2025.
The prognosis was personal for Adams: He shared that he too had metastatic prostate cancer and only months to live, saying he expected “to be checking out from this domain sometime this summer.”
“I’ve just sort of processed it, so it just sort of is what it is,” he said on his YouTube show. “Everybody has to die, as far as I know.”
News
Iran acknowledges mass protest deaths, but claims situation under control as Trump mulls response
Iran’s theocratic rulers are under the most intense pressure they’ve felt in years, as President Trump leaves the option of a U.S. military intervention on the table in the face of a fast-mounting death toll amid more than two weeks of anti-government protests across the Islamic Republic.
Mr. Trump said Sunday that Iranian officials had called him looking “to negotiate” after his repeated threats to intervene if authorities kill protesters. In an unusual move, meanwhile, Iran‘s state-controlled media aired video on Sunday showing mass casualties in and outside a morgue in a Tehran suburb.
The video shared widely online shows dozens of bodies outside the morgue, which CBS News has geolocated to the southern Tehran suburb of Kahrizak. The bodies were wrapped in black bags, and people can be seen grieving and searching for their loved ones at the site.
The state TV reporter says in the clip that some of those seen dead may have been involved in violence, but that “the majority of them are ordinary people, and their families are ordinary people as well.”
Video posted by social media users on Sunday showed scenes from the same morgue, and people could be heard wailing in the background as others appeared to be looking for loved ones amid the bodies.
It is unclear why Iranian authorities might have chosen to show the mass casualties, but it could be an attempt to show sympathy with the protesters and to bolster their narrative that it is more radical actors, inspired by Mr. Trump’s messages of support, behind the violence, not the government.
President Trump and Iranian officials have escalated their warnings over the past week, with both sides insisting they’re ready for, but not seeking a military confrontation.
On Sunday, however, Mr. Trump said Iran’s leadership had called looking to talk.
Trump issues fresh warning, says Iran seeking negotiations
“The leaders of Iran called” yesterday, he told reporters Sunday on Air Force One, saying “a meeting is being set up … They want to negotiate.”
“We may have to act before a meeting,” Mr. Trump warned. He first warned 10 days ago that if Iran killed protesters, the U.S. would “come to their rescue,” but he’s yet to say what exactly would prompt some action against the regime, or what that might entail.
A senior U.S. official confirmed to CBS News on Sunday that the president had been briefed on new options for military strikes in Iran, after Mr. Trump warned that if the regime started “killing people like they have in the past, we would get involved.”
“We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts,” he said at the White House. “And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts.”
The U.S. has not yet moved any forces in preparation for potential strikes on Iran, officials with the military’s Central Command told CBS News over the weekend.
Iran’s top diplomat claims protests “under total control”
Iran did not confirm any direct outreach to the Trump administration, but speaking on Monday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested the regime had brought the protests under control – repeating the government’s claim that the U.S. was to blame for the violence.
The “situation is now under total control,” Araghchi said, according to the Reuters news agency, as Iranian state TV aired video of massive pro-government demonstrations around the country.
Government-controlled broadcaster IRIB called one demonstration and funeral march an “Iranian uprising against American-Zionist terrorism.”
In the face of Mr. Trump’s repeated threats, Araghchi said Iran was “ready for war, but also for dialogue” with the U.S. at any time.
In another indication that the regime may believe it is weathering the storm, the foreign minister said internet service would be resumed in coordination with Iran’s security services, though he offered no specific timeline.
Rights groups say death toll from protests could be in the thousands
According to human rights groups based outside the country, which rely on contacts inside Iran, the death toll has already climbed into the hundreds.
The Washington D.C.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said that, as of Sunday, the 15th day of protests, at least 544 people had been killed, including 483 protesters and 47 members of the security forces. HRANA said the unrest had manifested in 186 cities across all of Iran’s 31 provinces.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), which is also based in the U.S., said over the weekend that it had “eyewitness accounts and credible reports indicating that hundreds of protesters have been killed across Iran during the current internet shutdown,” accusing the regime of carrying out “a massacre.”
The Iran Human Rights (IHR) organization, based in Norway, said Saturday that it had confirmed at least 192 protesters were killed, but that the number could be over 2,000.
“Unverified reports indicate that at least several hundreds, and according to some sources, more than 2,000 people may have been killed,” IHR said in a statement, adding that according to its estimate, more than 2,600 protesters had been arrested.
HRANA estimates that over 10,000 people have been detained.
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