It’s a crucial question ahead of any vote, and the person asking me has had plenty of reason to be mulling it over.  A high-ranking aide in Henrique Capriles’s campaign against Hugo Chávez for the Venezuelan presidency, he goes on to explain the profile of his candidate’s target voter.

“You know how, when Chávez speaks, you listen to him but you don’t believe a word he’s saying?” I nod and he smiles. Their target voter, he explains, reacts in exactly the same way. That’s the good news.

There’s just one rub, though: When opposition figures speak, this target voter reacts in much the same way.

This is the elusive ni-ni — a term derived from “neither-nor” in Spanish that was invented by Venezuelan pollsters to describe a broad swath of the Venezuelan electorate that, 13 and a half years into the hyper-confrontational, uber-polarized mayhem of the Chávez era, refuses to identify with either side in the political debate.

Ni-nis are sometimes thought of as undecideds or swing voters, but the image in our heads shouldn’t be that of a dithering voter unable to make up his mind between two attractive options. On the contrary, many ni-nis have settled views on both the Venezuelan government, which they see as an ineffective cult run by a ridiculous megalomaniac, and on the opposition, perceived as a plutocratic club run by a resentful, greedy former elite.

Ni-nis are far from undecided. In fact they’ve made up their minds: They despise them both.

Ni-nis make up, by some estimates, the largest portion of the Venezuelan electorate: people tired of unending polarization, of shouting matches between their chavista uncle and their anti-Chávez cousins during what were meant to be nice family gatherings. To some extent, they’ve listened to both sides and have accepted each side’s characterization of its opponents, while rejecting each side’s characterization of itself.

Certainly, the government has expended a huge amount of official resources — including its growing hegemony over broadcast media — to cement a negative caricature of the opposition in its supporters’ minds: a fascist rump deep in the pocket of the U.S. State Department.

For Capriles’s team, the challenge has been to up-end that caricature. In this, he has a natural advantage: Unlike many in Venezuela’s upper class — to which he unquestionably belongs — Capriles is genuinely comfortable hanging out with regular Venezuelans.

Campaigning in barrio after barrio, he never looks happier than when he’s out and about talking to ordinary people about their everyday problems, listening to their fears and laying out a message of moderate reform aiming at genuine inclusion.

The ni-nis he so badly needs to reach are, by definition, skeptical, and the barrage of government petro-spending Capriles has had to contend with is often overwhelming.  Yet Capriles’s natural knack for face-to-face campaigning, together with an energetic campaign that has taken him to 100 cities in just the last 29 days, has earned him a hearing from an audience that until recently would simply tune out any political message from either side of the divide.

We must not understate the challenges. Capriles still faces a charismatic world figure with a passionate mass following, an almost limitless supply of petro-dollars to spend, and unlimited, free access to the broadcast media.

The election is Oct. 7. Chávez remains ahead in most recent polls, with the most credible poll of polls giving him a 46-to-34 lead. Even then, 20 percent of the electorate still has yet to commit to one side or the other. Nobody said it was going to be easy to bring them  around. And it isn’t.

**Francisco Toro blogs about the Chávez era at CaracasChronicles.com.