Data analyst (in an industry that models human behavior) here: The first lesson you learn when trying to make decisions using data is that when it's gut call v. data, the gut call is right about half the time. There's always always always a good chance that your data is skewed, you're missing important variables, or a trend is just not generalizable.
I don't like gut call in that it is invariably partisan. Ask 20 Rs and Ds who is going to win the 2024 presidential and 19/20 will say their party. And being right half the time is no better than flipping a coin.
I go with data b/c it is objective even if given its limitations and does better than 50%.
To be more specific, I was talking about gut call *from an expert party* not just a rando, so like Amy Walter of Cook Political Report, in this context.
I see, but I dont think there is any pundit consensus nor is there anybody that is that immune to their partisanship. I would be curious to see a study that compared pundits to polls, although to be sure the pundits look at the polls.
It seems to me that a focus on polling has taught Democrats to view public opinion as exogenous and determined rather than a factor that they themselves can influence. This is a massive problem, one the GOP does not have.
It also seems to misunderstand what voters do when they pick a candidate: They're more picking a proxy who they identify with or whose values and judgment they trust than they are picking a basket of policy positions. An emphasis on following polls can be counterproductive to winning the larger electoral war.
Good point. Democrats seem queasy about trying to influence public opinion. Then they seem to be repeatedly blindsided when voters they find out that voters suddenly approve or believe horrible things. Those voters are of course influenced by right-wing media and even MSM media framing. Then Democrats are stumped on what to do.
I agree that Democrats have largely become afraid of their own shadows. We are slaves to polls and focus groups, which is why Fetterman mystifies so many people. He didn’t follow the polls, he followed what he thought and remained authentic. And that remains his appeal to PA voters (as a Pennsylvania voter who was knocking doors).
I would go a step further in the analysis and say that people like Trump have won precisely because they are “authentic” (or seem so) to voters. Their words aren’t couched in diplomatic speak or focus group tested language. Look at Hillary...her approval goes up when she’s herself. When she watched everything she said her ratings went down.
Democrats need to stop being so defensive and reactive and just saying what they think...in plain English. That’s how we win.
I'd agree with this, but I'd argue candidate recruitment is a key hidden variable.
To effectively contest red states, its helpful to have candidates who hold a mix of popular expressions of good policy and that probably break with the national party on a few issues that are important to their voters. This people can be both pugnacious in some ways and moderate in others because is natural outgrowth of their world view and background rather than an attempt to triangulate.
On a smaller scale, it’s important to recruit candidates who are able to connect with voters. Full stop. That is going to look different for different areas. Sherrod Brown has had enduring success in Ohio even as it’s gone redder and redder. But he wouldn’t be successful in, say, Arizona or California.
There’s no one size fits all candidate. Dems want to find “the next Obama” but it’s a matter of finding someone who speaks to people.
Yes, this is key. A fashionable idea in Democratic politics is that all successful Dem candidates who overperform in contested states and districts will or should look like Jared Golden. But it's not true. Some are dynasts like Joe Manchin, others claim the center with passion and authenticity (Tester, Brown). It's impossible to bat 1.000 but as Dems recruit candidates they should be looking for people who resemble the latter, and avoiding people who resemble, e.g., Kyrsten Sinema.
I think we need candidates who encompass all aspects of the spectrum from moderate to liberal! If we want our umbrella to be inclusive we need to have candidates who are also so, while not compromising some of our core values.
Fetterman ran well behind his ticket mate Josh Shapiro who had triple his margin- some about their opponents, nutty and nuttier, but it was a Dem year in PA and I think we are overplaying Fetterman's strategy.
Like I said it was a combination IMO (and also backed up by polls).
Mastriano was flat out crazy and voters realized that. He also didn’t campaign, he just appealed to his small base and thought that would be enough. Rs are already panicking because he’s making noise about running for the Senate seat in ‘24.
Oz, as gross as he was, campaigned. He was a chameleon who said what he needed to. He saturated the airwaves. In short, he was a candidate...a MAGA candidate, but a more “traditional” candidate. And running the nonstop “Fetterman will let all the criminals out!!” ads the last several weeks made it a lot closer.
I have to agree. Polling seems to be driving the news these days, accurate or not. Between that & his antics and court cases, Trump is getting way too much air time. Democrats do appear timid, that's a good word for it. I'd like to light a fire under some of them. Those of us working hard to get out the message of Biden's successes, the dangers to democracy itself, & the need to flip not on only Congress, but state legislatures to blue, have more enthusiasm, drive, & energy than many Democratic politicians. I wish they would join us in voicing the urgency.
I ran for state rep in 2018 and have bend grappling with wrapping my head around the Dem “machine” ever since. This article clarified something very important for me: whenever you are dealing from a machine perspective, you are fundamentally coming from a non-human place. And politics is about humans. I still do a lot of canvassing, and am deeply convinced that “deep canvassing” - ie actually listening to voters, and not just messaging to/propagandizing them as voting units--is the only way democracy actually works. For example: I ran a distract of 6 coastal towns. I was told by my campaign manager, in no uncertain terms, that climate change didn’t poll well so not to talk about it. Even though town hall was predicted to be under water in a few short years, etc.
I talked about it anyway, bc I cared about it. I asked questions of voters and heard what they thought--even the deniers. If we just live on one side of a megaphone, what’s the point?
There is something, even from our supposedly “humanist” dem side, that sort of reeks of disliking people in general. Not just the so-called “deplorables”, but just has a fundamentally antisocial message that comes through the cracks, like invisible odorless gas. This reliance on data and science was like a black light (to utterly botch and mix metaphors) that made me see it. Very few political people are able to encounter a person on the other side of the door as fully human--it’s more like a harvest.
It breaks my heart, the potential for positive momentum that has been utterly crushed by this “farming equipment”. (Ie the argument thatHillary not going to certain swing states bc of the calculations, rather than a true interest In hearing from and representing them.)
Of course, there are always limited i resources and one has to be strategic in using them. A state rep campaign is nothing like a presidential campaign. But I knocked on a lot of doors that featured my opponent’s yard signs, bc I genuinely cared to let them know that I would represent them, too, if I won. I didn’t; but I know for a fact that my sincerity came through. People came up to me at the polls--who were holding my opponent’s signs” and said that they really respected my campaign and hoped I’d run again if I lost.
That is the most important thing that happened to me in my entire political effort, and represents (to me) the absolute gaping hole of missed opportunity in all of politics.
Long before 2007/8, the DNC (at the top, where of course it counts) ceased being an opposition party, they instead chose to be an alternative party. (More specifically, it goes back to ~1988 and Dukakis loss and the rescuing creation and rise of the DLC, one of whose leaders was Bill Clinton which right there says a lot about his administration and his leadership of the Dems.) The idea was to move rightward, to be more welcoming to Republican special interests and that’s where the big campaign bucks were. As we know, or should know, one of the perks of being elected is that leftover campaign money can be kept on leaving office.
Anyway, this results in the Democrats relying way too often -- predominantly -- being a defensive mode, letting the Republicans have enough rope to hang themselves. And it often works.
The problem though is that it leaves Dems with not so much to stand on. It also enables diffidence in responding to actions and statements from the GOP.
The biggest problem is that it has failed to stop the national and states’ slides towards anti-democratic authoritarianism.
Of course, there are exceptions to that.
We got the ACA (albeit after the Obama administration ensured that the little people hurt by the financial would be more fucked over than, you know, vigorously helped). Then comes the 2010 election where the Democrat candidates let’s say chose not to support the ACA anywhere as much as they should have, may be more so because benefits would take a few years to come online. All that got the senate going from a Democratic majority to a Republican one.
Another exception was the downward transfer of wealth from the ARA, all of which was short term instead of permanent.
Then you have last year’s gun control bill which, by design, essentially worthless: takes three years to kick in, states don’t have to support it, there’s a bunch of money for the police, and it has a sunset provision. Oh, and it precludes a vigorous law that would actually do much.
So, you know, little positive to talk about were anyone inclined to get too much into doing so.
What makes this yet worse is that the mainstream media skew towards being supportive of Republicans, which is bad enough, but it’s even worse given the bullshit. Fast, corrective info is all the more needed from the Dems and... it’s rarely there. Just this weekend, the Republicans responded to the horror in Israel and Gaza with deliberate, vile lies. When I say fast, the info needed to call them out soul virtually no time to ascertain that everything the Republicans said were lies. Instead, the Democrats limit their response to saying they support Israel 100%. Meanwhile the lies are still out there.
40 year consumer marketer here - scientific marketing is far more than issue polls. We do use data to guide our messaging and who we send It to. It's vital to our success or failure. We learn some approaches get an action (like voting) some don't. Persuasion is harder than getting an action from those already on your side. (Example - people who have already made up their minds like low turnout Dems are easier to get to actually vote than persuading some Republicans to switch). By testing which messages get a response I've been able to increase response by 2 X, 4 X for the same cost. It's the difference between success and a failed business.
What drives me crazy as a professional marketer is how poorly many Democratic campaigns, even national campaigns, are messaged. People DO NOT decide based on facts, reason, policies. They decide on emotion.
A political message stacked with the top policies from voter surveys will be weak compared to an emotional message, especially one tied to a coherent overarching message. Yet you still see these from Dems but not Republicans. That's not a failure of scientific political approach, that's thinking issue polling is all that matters.
Side note: people will tell you they decide based on various facts. Psychological research shows they even think that but that's an internal justification for their decision.
Political message strategies that are built on watered-down middle ground positions will fail compared to messages made with strong conviction and emotion supporting more partisan positions. That's how Republicans succeed at getting support when their policies are not favored in the issue surveys.
Persuasion as I've noted is hard but necessary in politics. But Dem campaigns fail when they think they can do effective persuasion in the 10 or 12 weeks of a general election campaign. Persuasion takes years. But Democrats put almost all of their spending in September and October of the election year, and ignore most voters for the next 4 years. It's true that the time just ahead of the election is when people are paying the most attention, but by then their partisan opinions are set. Dems do benefit from changes in public opinion about particular Republican candidates or even the Republican party, but that's driven by events not Democratic messaging. Republicans on the other hand attack the Democratic party and President constantly, with a variety of messages which change frequently to keep the attention of potential voters and free media. (The fact that the attacks are often pure lies does not diminish their effectiveness.)
Thank you if you've lasted this far. My points are that a scientific approach to messaging works. That is not just following an issues survey. People act on emotion not issues. Changing minds takes a long time and can't be done in the 3 months of a general election campaign. Voters respond to messages with strong convictions not messages with watered down middle ground positions.
I was listening to the much-hyped The Focus Group with Sarah Longwell. It led to interesting discussions, for sure, but my reaction to it was, “how much does this really tell us?” Like, the focus group I heard was asked if they think Biden had done enough to combat gun violence. Only one out of 9 people raised their hand. And...of course, right? Because it’s not a useful question. What is this imaginary group of people who think gun violence is a problem but wouldn’t vote for Biden over Trump? And if you’re in a group of nine strangers, aren’t you going to be pretty unlikely (gun-shy? 👀) to raise your hand and say “yes, I think the president has done enough to stop gun violence. 10/10, he nailed it.” Until mass shooting stop being a daily occurrence, no sane person is going to think enough is being done.
And that’s just a focus group, not a poll.
I mean shouldn’t the Trump years teach us that people are driven far more by emotion than anything else?
I think this is an important issue, and the Democratic Party writ large really has gone timid at a time when they should be aggressively calling out Republican authoritarianism, incompetence, and advice of terrible policies.
But, how much of the shift from 2007 could be explained by the fact that back then, Republicans were the ascendant party (at least in terms of political power) and Democrats were fighting to get back into power, whereas now Democrats have power and are trying to play defense.
The only time since 2006 that Dems were completely out of power was 2017-18 and we had the Women’s March and other grassroots activism, which faded after Dems took the House.
I think the deeper and more long standing problem is that Democrats live in fear of the median voter theorem, even though Republicans are taking increasingly extreme positions and still winning many elections. In the old days it led to triangulation, Sister Soulja moments, and the DLC giving advice to Democratic candidates about "how to talk about the issues" that was unrelated to what the candidate actually thought, and disconnected from any hope of getting credit for being a person of integrity who stood up for what he or she believed.
"...science can’t determine which course of action voters will respond best to, because the answer is entirely circumstantial."
Yes! I think data scientists understand this, but candidates (or at least their handlers) often don't. They take data which may have some utility in a certain circumstance (or a certain locale) and extrapolate it. Which turns out to be very UNscientific (and sometimes just stupid). Understanding how to use data is critical. Understanding when to use rhetoric instead of data is critical. And, as already mentioned in an earlier comment, the whole approach of using only data to determine messaging ignores the fact that effective messaging can change the way that the polls would look in real time.
Not a politician, or a data scientist, but as someone who follows politics the bit about strategic responses to polls is the most relevant. Republicans simply won't say that the economy is good under biden. They will say its very important to them because they think its a line of attack that will work. A lot of politics is like this: fundamental dishonesty based around what is perceived as the median swing voter.
Take trans issues. The reality is that almost everyone who fights against trans rights is also opposed to gay marriage. But trans rights are seen as the media voter social issue, so that's where all the republicans concentrate their discourse, as though they're FINE with gays now, they just are angry about these NEW groups. Donald Trump has pretty much said as much out loud.
IMO what this fails to capture is that while persuadable voters exist, median voters really don't. A persuadable voter is someone disaffected from politics, someone with issues that they feel aren't addressed, someone who has idiosynchratic views that pull them in opposing directions. Or, more realistically, the issues matter far far less than the existing identity groups and how that guides political affiliation. People can believe a lot of things if they think all their friends believe something similar.
The downsides of a vibes-based approach are obvious, but the upside is that it does actually embrace the chaos of reality where it is. For me, the biggest reason people support Biden is because of the contrast he paints with Trump, as an upbeat, experienced, unifying speaker characterized by empathy and careful consideration.
Excellent commentary! I should note that what you're describing is essentially a rediscovery of the ancient art of rhetoric, an art once commonly known as the "handmaiden of democracy" and believed to be so essential to leadership that it used to comprise one-third of the curriculum in higher education. The study of rhetoric teaches that persuasion is not a matter of mechanistically applying facts, but rather selecting the best means of persuasion out of a vast universe of possible strategies. Properly understood, rhetoric is a probabilistic art learned through practice, not a deterministic science. Importantly, rhetoric understands that messaging is about invention and has to be appropriate to time and context (kairos)—things that surveys and other post hoc social scientific tools can never dynamically measure.
A professor named Lynn Vavrek has been doing studies on preference, self reported and observed and I think her findings are the KEY to success for the Democrats.
Let me give an example from my life. I work in aviation. We do research with customers on what food they want to eat. We always get fantastic feedback on healthy meal choices. Wr put healthy meals onboard. Nobody selects them. Stated desires don’t translate into observed actions.
There are ways to simulate these decisions in real life and she did some great work on it. What she found was that the stated positions (in market research) didn’t actually match the trigger issues that actually made them vote for one candidate or another.
Video is worth watching. After you see it, you will understand why the Republicans over index on the border and the various “woke” issues, because it was a bigger driver of swing voters than nuts and bolts stuff like the economy.
I want every D campaign to see this and to start doing this type of research. It feels like the Rs are already there.
Intriguing, started the video and will finish, but I think there is something there. People campaign on issues that work, and if you see the Rs targeting crime and immigration it is because they have the edge, where Dems are generally supported on healthcare, abortion and environment (Pew polling https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/October-2022-ABC-news-poll )
I think the woke is a bit more difficult to pinpoint b/c it is vague but it strikes out with peoples identity and though they like to think of themselves liberal (in the classic sense, tolerant, freethinking) when the left embraces the Identity issues- LBGTQ+ et al I think a lot of people say, oh those are not us - at least the traditional heart landers. My thoughts,, but I will watch this. Thanks
Brian, thank you for not rushing to offer explanation and judgement regarding the Israel/Palestinian disaster. Everyone else has something to say, whether it is true and useful or not.
All I know for sure is this little part of our planet is one of the most complex and frustrating geopolitical/religious/ethnic situations in human history. Issues going back to ancient times like they were yesterday. Intractable grudges. Very powerful nations involved in their business, with possible global military implications. A mess of blame and human suffering that defies a solution.
How could anyone rush a reasonable column, a post, or a speech overnight?
I look forward to what you have to say about it, when you are ready....
Well put. What it comes down to, I think, is that science and data tell us a lot, but aren’t always decisive on their own. We still need to bring our principles into our principled decision-making process.
Data analyst (in an industry that models human behavior) here: The first lesson you learn when trying to make decisions using data is that when it's gut call v. data, the gut call is right about half the time. There's always always always a good chance that your data is skewed, you're missing important variables, or a trend is just not generalizable.
This article is good analysis.
I don't like gut call in that it is invariably partisan. Ask 20 Rs and Ds who is going to win the 2024 presidential and 19/20 will say their party. And being right half the time is no better than flipping a coin.
I go with data b/c it is objective even if given its limitations and does better than 50%.
To be more specific, I was talking about gut call *from an expert party* not just a rando, so like Amy Walter of Cook Political Report, in this context.
I see, but I dont think there is any pundit consensus nor is there anybody that is that immune to their partisanship. I would be curious to see a study that compared pundits to polls, although to be sure the pundits look at the polls.
It seems to me that a focus on polling has taught Democrats to view public opinion as exogenous and determined rather than a factor that they themselves can influence. This is a massive problem, one the GOP does not have.
It also seems to misunderstand what voters do when they pick a candidate: They're more picking a proxy who they identify with or whose values and judgment they trust than they are picking a basket of policy positions. An emphasis on following polls can be counterproductive to winning the larger electoral war.
Good point. Democrats seem queasy about trying to influence public opinion. Then they seem to be repeatedly blindsided when voters they find out that voters suddenly approve or believe horrible things. Those voters are of course influenced by right-wing media and even MSM media framing. Then Democrats are stumped on what to do.
I agree that Democrats have largely become afraid of their own shadows. We are slaves to polls and focus groups, which is why Fetterman mystifies so many people. He didn’t follow the polls, he followed what he thought and remained authentic. And that remains his appeal to PA voters (as a Pennsylvania voter who was knocking doors).
I would go a step further in the analysis and say that people like Trump have won precisely because they are “authentic” (or seem so) to voters. Their words aren’t couched in diplomatic speak or focus group tested language. Look at Hillary...her approval goes up when she’s herself. When she watched everything she said her ratings went down.
Democrats need to stop being so defensive and reactive and just saying what they think...in plain English. That’s how we win.
I'd agree with this, but I'd argue candidate recruitment is a key hidden variable.
To effectively contest red states, its helpful to have candidates who hold a mix of popular expressions of good policy and that probably break with the national party on a few issues that are important to their voters. This people can be both pugnacious in some ways and moderate in others because is natural outgrowth of their world view and background rather than an attempt to triangulate.
On a smaller scale, it’s important to recruit candidates who are able to connect with voters. Full stop. That is going to look different for different areas. Sherrod Brown has had enduring success in Ohio even as it’s gone redder and redder. But he wouldn’t be successful in, say, Arizona or California.
There’s no one size fits all candidate. Dems want to find “the next Obama” but it’s a matter of finding someone who speaks to people.
Yes, this is key. A fashionable idea in Democratic politics is that all successful Dem candidates who overperform in contested states and districts will or should look like Jared Golden. But it's not true. Some are dynasts like Joe Manchin, others claim the center with passion and authenticity (Tester, Brown). It's impossible to bat 1.000 but as Dems recruit candidates they should be looking for people who resemble the latter, and avoiding people who resemble, e.g., Kyrsten Sinema.
I think we need candidates who encompass all aspects of the spectrum from moderate to liberal! If we want our umbrella to be inclusive we need to have candidates who are also so, while not compromising some of our core values.
Fetterman ran well behind his ticket mate Josh Shapiro who had triple his margin- some about their opponents, nutty and nuttier, but it was a Dem year in PA and I think we are overplaying Fetterman's strategy.
I was here. A lot of it was who they were running against.
And frankly the Oz strategy (read: Republican strategy) of running against crime worked. It softened support.
Like I said it was a combination IMO (and also backed up by polls).
Mastriano was flat out crazy and voters realized that. He also didn’t campaign, he just appealed to his small base and thought that would be enough. Rs are already panicking because he’s making noise about running for the Senate seat in ‘24.
Oz, as gross as he was, campaigned. He was a chameleon who said what he needed to. He saturated the airwaves. In short, he was a candidate...a MAGA candidate, but a more “traditional” candidate. And running the nonstop “Fetterman will let all the criminals out!!” ads the last several weeks made it a lot closer.
Curious Jenna how you would account for Shapiro's strong showing, or was it mostly about Mastirano being so crazy.
I have to agree. Polling seems to be driving the news these days, accurate or not. Between that & his antics and court cases, Trump is getting way too much air time. Democrats do appear timid, that's a good word for it. I'd like to light a fire under some of them. Those of us working hard to get out the message of Biden's successes, the dangers to democracy itself, & the need to flip not on only Congress, but state legislatures to blue, have more enthusiasm, drive, & energy than many Democratic politicians. I wish they would join us in voicing the urgency.
I ran for state rep in 2018 and have bend grappling with wrapping my head around the Dem “machine” ever since. This article clarified something very important for me: whenever you are dealing from a machine perspective, you are fundamentally coming from a non-human place. And politics is about humans. I still do a lot of canvassing, and am deeply convinced that “deep canvassing” - ie actually listening to voters, and not just messaging to/propagandizing them as voting units--is the only way democracy actually works. For example: I ran a distract of 6 coastal towns. I was told by my campaign manager, in no uncertain terms, that climate change didn’t poll well so not to talk about it. Even though town hall was predicted to be under water in a few short years, etc.
I talked about it anyway, bc I cared about it. I asked questions of voters and heard what they thought--even the deniers. If we just live on one side of a megaphone, what’s the point?
There is something, even from our supposedly “humanist” dem side, that sort of reeks of disliking people in general. Not just the so-called “deplorables”, but just has a fundamentally antisocial message that comes through the cracks, like invisible odorless gas. This reliance on data and science was like a black light (to utterly botch and mix metaphors) that made me see it. Very few political people are able to encounter a person on the other side of the door as fully human--it’s more like a harvest.
It breaks my heart, the potential for positive momentum that has been utterly crushed by this “farming equipment”. (Ie the argument thatHillary not going to certain swing states bc of the calculations, rather than a true interest In hearing from and representing them.)
Of course, there are always limited i resources and one has to be strategic in using them. A state rep campaign is nothing like a presidential campaign. But I knocked on a lot of doors that featured my opponent’s yard signs, bc I genuinely cared to let them know that I would represent them, too, if I won. I didn’t; but I know for a fact that my sincerity came through. People came up to me at the polls--who were holding my opponent’s signs” and said that they really respected my campaign and hoped I’d run again if I lost.
That is the most important thing that happened to me in my entire political effort, and represents (to me) the absolute gaping hole of missed opportunity in all of politics.
Long before 2007/8, the DNC (at the top, where of course it counts) ceased being an opposition party, they instead chose to be an alternative party. (More specifically, it goes back to ~1988 and Dukakis loss and the rescuing creation and rise of the DLC, one of whose leaders was Bill Clinton which right there says a lot about his administration and his leadership of the Dems.) The idea was to move rightward, to be more welcoming to Republican special interests and that’s where the big campaign bucks were. As we know, or should know, one of the perks of being elected is that leftover campaign money can be kept on leaving office.
Anyway, this results in the Democrats relying way too often -- predominantly -- being a defensive mode, letting the Republicans have enough rope to hang themselves. And it often works.
The problem though is that it leaves Dems with not so much to stand on. It also enables diffidence in responding to actions and statements from the GOP.
The biggest problem is that it has failed to stop the national and states’ slides towards anti-democratic authoritarianism.
Of course, there are exceptions to that.
We got the ACA (albeit after the Obama administration ensured that the little people hurt by the financial would be more fucked over than, you know, vigorously helped). Then comes the 2010 election where the Democrat candidates let’s say chose not to support the ACA anywhere as much as they should have, may be more so because benefits would take a few years to come online. All that got the senate going from a Democratic majority to a Republican one.
Another exception was the downward transfer of wealth from the ARA, all of which was short term instead of permanent.
Then you have last year’s gun control bill which, by design, essentially worthless: takes three years to kick in, states don’t have to support it, there’s a bunch of money for the police, and it has a sunset provision. Oh, and it precludes a vigorous law that would actually do much.
So, you know, little positive to talk about were anyone inclined to get too much into doing so.
What makes this yet worse is that the mainstream media skew towards being supportive of Republicans, which is bad enough, but it’s even worse given the bullshit. Fast, corrective info is all the more needed from the Dems and... it’s rarely there. Just this weekend, the Republicans responded to the horror in Israel and Gaza with deliberate, vile lies. When I say fast, the info needed to call them out soul virtually no time to ascertain that everything the Republicans said were lies. Instead, the Democrats limit their response to saying they support Israel 100%. Meanwhile the lies are still out there.
40 year consumer marketer here - scientific marketing is far more than issue polls. We do use data to guide our messaging and who we send It to. It's vital to our success or failure. We learn some approaches get an action (like voting) some don't. Persuasion is harder than getting an action from those already on your side. (Example - people who have already made up their minds like low turnout Dems are easier to get to actually vote than persuading some Republicans to switch). By testing which messages get a response I've been able to increase response by 2 X, 4 X for the same cost. It's the difference between success and a failed business.
What drives me crazy as a professional marketer is how poorly many Democratic campaigns, even national campaigns, are messaged. People DO NOT decide based on facts, reason, policies. They decide on emotion.
A political message stacked with the top policies from voter surveys will be weak compared to an emotional message, especially one tied to a coherent overarching message. Yet you still see these from Dems but not Republicans. That's not a failure of scientific political approach, that's thinking issue polling is all that matters.
Side note: people will tell you they decide based on various facts. Psychological research shows they even think that but that's an internal justification for their decision.
Political message strategies that are built on watered-down middle ground positions will fail compared to messages made with strong conviction and emotion supporting more partisan positions. That's how Republicans succeed at getting support when their policies are not favored in the issue surveys.
Persuasion as I've noted is hard but necessary in politics. But Dem campaigns fail when they think they can do effective persuasion in the 10 or 12 weeks of a general election campaign. Persuasion takes years. But Democrats put almost all of their spending in September and October of the election year, and ignore most voters for the next 4 years. It's true that the time just ahead of the election is when people are paying the most attention, but by then their partisan opinions are set. Dems do benefit from changes in public opinion about particular Republican candidates or even the Republican party, but that's driven by events not Democratic messaging. Republicans on the other hand attack the Democratic party and President constantly, with a variety of messages which change frequently to keep the attention of potential voters and free media. (The fact that the attacks are often pure lies does not diminish their effectiveness.)
Thank you if you've lasted this far. My points are that a scientific approach to messaging works. That is not just following an issues survey. People act on emotion not issues. Changing minds takes a long time and can't be done in the 3 months of a general election campaign. Voters respond to messages with strong convictions not messages with watered down middle ground positions.
I was listening to the much-hyped The Focus Group with Sarah Longwell. It led to interesting discussions, for sure, but my reaction to it was, “how much does this really tell us?” Like, the focus group I heard was asked if they think Biden had done enough to combat gun violence. Only one out of 9 people raised their hand. And...of course, right? Because it’s not a useful question. What is this imaginary group of people who think gun violence is a problem but wouldn’t vote for Biden over Trump? And if you’re in a group of nine strangers, aren’t you going to be pretty unlikely (gun-shy? 👀) to raise your hand and say “yes, I think the president has done enough to stop gun violence. 10/10, he nailed it.” Until mass shooting stop being a daily occurrence, no sane person is going to think enough is being done.
And that’s just a focus group, not a poll.
I mean shouldn’t the Trump years teach us that people are driven far more by emotion than anything else?
My fave line from that episode was Jen Psaki, summing up what the focus group wants: “a 30-year-old with 40 years of experience and wisdom.”
I think this is an important issue, and the Democratic Party writ large really has gone timid at a time when they should be aggressively calling out Republican authoritarianism, incompetence, and advice of terrible policies.
But, how much of the shift from 2007 could be explained by the fact that back then, Republicans were the ascendant party (at least in terms of political power) and Democrats were fighting to get back into power, whereas now Democrats have power and are trying to play defense.
The only time since 2006 that Dems were completely out of power was 2017-18 and we had the Women’s March and other grassroots activism, which faded after Dems took the House.
I think the deeper and more long standing problem is that Democrats live in fear of the median voter theorem, even though Republicans are taking increasingly extreme positions and still winning many elections. In the old days it led to triangulation, Sister Soulja moments, and the DLC giving advice to Democratic candidates about "how to talk about the issues" that was unrelated to what the candidate actually thought, and disconnected from any hope of getting credit for being a person of integrity who stood up for what he or she believed.
"...science can’t determine which course of action voters will respond best to, because the answer is entirely circumstantial."
Yes! I think data scientists understand this, but candidates (or at least their handlers) often don't. They take data which may have some utility in a certain circumstance (or a certain locale) and extrapolate it. Which turns out to be very UNscientific (and sometimes just stupid). Understanding how to use data is critical. Understanding when to use rhetoric instead of data is critical. And, as already mentioned in an earlier comment, the whole approach of using only data to determine messaging ignores the fact that effective messaging can change the way that the polls would look in real time.
Good piece!
Not a politician, or a data scientist, but as someone who follows politics the bit about strategic responses to polls is the most relevant. Republicans simply won't say that the economy is good under biden. They will say its very important to them because they think its a line of attack that will work. A lot of politics is like this: fundamental dishonesty based around what is perceived as the median swing voter.
Take trans issues. The reality is that almost everyone who fights against trans rights is also opposed to gay marriage. But trans rights are seen as the media voter social issue, so that's where all the republicans concentrate their discourse, as though they're FINE with gays now, they just are angry about these NEW groups. Donald Trump has pretty much said as much out loud.
IMO what this fails to capture is that while persuadable voters exist, median voters really don't. A persuadable voter is someone disaffected from politics, someone with issues that they feel aren't addressed, someone who has idiosynchratic views that pull them in opposing directions. Or, more realistically, the issues matter far far less than the existing identity groups and how that guides political affiliation. People can believe a lot of things if they think all their friends believe something similar.
The downsides of a vibes-based approach are obvious, but the upside is that it does actually embrace the chaos of reality where it is. For me, the biggest reason people support Biden is because of the contrast he paints with Trump, as an upbeat, experienced, unifying speaker characterized by empathy and careful consideration.
Excellent commentary! I should note that what you're describing is essentially a rediscovery of the ancient art of rhetoric, an art once commonly known as the "handmaiden of democracy" and believed to be so essential to leadership that it used to comprise one-third of the curriculum in higher education. The study of rhetoric teaches that persuasion is not a matter of mechanistically applying facts, but rather selecting the best means of persuasion out of a vast universe of possible strategies. Properly understood, rhetoric is a probabilistic art learned through practice, not a deterministic science. Importantly, rhetoric understands that messaging is about invention and has to be appropriate to time and context (kairos)—things that surveys and other post hoc social scientific tools can never dynamically measure.
A professor named Lynn Vavrek has been doing studies on preference, self reported and observed and I think her findings are the KEY to success for the Democrats.
Let me give an example from my life. I work in aviation. We do research with customers on what food they want to eat. We always get fantastic feedback on healthy meal choices. Wr put healthy meals onboard. Nobody selects them. Stated desires don’t translate into observed actions.
There are ways to simulate these decisions in real life and she did some great work on it. What she found was that the stated positions (in market research) didn’t actually match the trigger issues that actually made them vote for one candidate or another.
Video is worth watching. After you see it, you will understand why the Republicans over index on the border and the various “woke” issues, because it was a bigger driver of swing voters than nuts and bolts stuff like the economy.
I want every D campaign to see this and to start doing this type of research. It feels like the Rs are already there.
https://youtu.be/gwDRVS25kF4?si=_-31aWkW8rb9pHWz
Intriguing, started the video and will finish, but I think there is something there. People campaign on issues that work, and if you see the Rs targeting crime and immigration it is because they have the edge, where Dems are generally supported on healthcare, abortion and environment (Pew polling https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/October-2022-ABC-news-poll )
I think the woke is a bit more difficult to pinpoint b/c it is vague but it strikes out with peoples identity and though they like to think of themselves liberal (in the classic sense, tolerant, freethinking) when the left embraces the Identity issues- LBGTQ+ et al I think a lot of people say, oh those are not us - at least the traditional heart landers. My thoughts,, but I will watch this. Thanks
Brian, thank you for not rushing to offer explanation and judgement regarding the Israel/Palestinian disaster. Everyone else has something to say, whether it is true and useful or not.
All I know for sure is this little part of our planet is one of the most complex and frustrating geopolitical/religious/ethnic situations in human history. Issues going back to ancient times like they were yesterday. Intractable grudges. Very powerful nations involved in their business, with possible global military implications. A mess of blame and human suffering that defies a solution.
How could anyone rush a reasonable column, a post, or a speech overnight?
I look forward to what you have to say about it, when you are ready....
Well put. What it comes down to, I think, is that science and data tell us a lot, but aren’t always decisive on their own. We still need to bring our principles into our principled decision-making process.