Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight, Part II

“Pollingism” Has Failed Democrats and Voters. Last Tuesday Showed the Power of Magnetism.

This piece first appeared, in much longer form, in Michael Podhorzer’s Weekend Readings.

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***PART I of this two-part series appeared Friday, November 7, in The Contrarian. If you haven’t already read it, we recommend enjoying the piece as a whole to appreciate fully Shenker-Osorio’s thesis and distinction***

Photo by Sandip Kalal

Taking the Temperature Versus Changing It

The mistake Pollingism demands that we make is to take the temperature of the electorate and calibrate what to say on this basis. But taking the temperature today doesn’t help us to know, much less control, where it will be set tomorrow.

While Democrats are brandishing thermometers, Republicans power up flamethrowers. They figure out not merely “where people are,” but rather where they could be capable of going, if they hear some refrain repeated. MAGA’s stories are potent and memorable, not about the issues people register as most important but rather those that MAGA wants brought to the fore.

In contrast, Pollingism relies on survey results. In these, voters are given lists of issues and rank their importance. In surveys, “the economy” reliably features as people’s top issue. But this does not mean that paid ads on this topic are how to get more people to want to vote, let alone for you. Especially if those ads rely upon vague abstractions and not bold breaks from the status quo. Promising what your opposition labels “price controls” gets conversation going, ditto having a repeated refrain about rent control (among other things) that gets the owning class very bothered. Pledging an “opportunity economy” or posting about prices does not.

Most Republicans are more successful than most Democrats at telling stories that have virality across the board and credibility with their voters. The storming of school boards over CRT was dramatic and attention-getting enough to draw coverage, which reinforced the cycle of both virality and credibility. The world defined by Pollingism simply doesn’t include these kinds of real-world consequences and feedback loops.

Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About

A temperature-taking strategy could never have predicted or produced the power of “Willie Horton” and “welfare queen” back in the day or “DEI” and trans panic in 2024. In these cases, Republicans inflamed a story that struck a chord with a base all too happy to evangelize it.

There are also instances where Democrats do break from middle of the road messaging and seize the mic. There is a pattern to these breakout moments: they are unapologetic. Jasmine Crockett’s frequent MAGA takedowns, Zohran Mamdani’s agenda-setting populism and unbothered clapbacks, Andy Beshear’s refusal to take the anti-trans bait, Chris Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador, and J.B. Pritzker’s repudiation of the regime, to name a few. There is a reason why some of these are among the only Democrats voters recall and admire: they are not saying what is poll-tested as “popular” but rather making popular what needs to be said.

Meanwhile, Republicans trumpet their plans to set the conversational terms, secure in the knowledge that this won’t afford Pollingism-plagued Democrats any advantage. We witnessed the same rinse and repeat with attacks on DEI. Republicans changed the temperature with a complete narrative strategy. They did not merely air ads tailored to each district come campaign time; they humiliated university presidents in Congressional hearings, organized their base to bring these issues up locally, and unleashed media personalities to keep beating the drum, despite the fact that no poll shows DEI as a top issue. In a Magnetism approach, you lift up causes your supporters want to trumpet, in order to make them of more mainstream interest. And you revel in repelling the voters who will never support you because this is what forces your political rivals onto hostile terrain — hapless against the conversational terms you have set.

Despite the right being a one-hit divide-to-conquer wonder, Democrats act like it’s brand new every time. Consider the response to the demonization of CRT. When pressed on the topic in 2021, for example, VA gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe made the debate gaffe repeated round the state: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”Democrats presented no alternative, affirmative story to voters, nor did they clap back at Republicans’ dog whistle politics even though there is a proven approach for contending with this predictable pattern.

The same goes for the border in 2024; Democrats tried to out-tough Republicans, which swing voters didn’t buy and base voters found off putting. And on again for the infamous “she’s for they/them” ad. Despite the right wing trumpeting their plans to go on assault against trans people, most Democrats failed to deploy effective rejoinders. Indeed, instead of running against their actual opponents, Democrats often amplify their storylines.

Democrats are especially likely to get caught off-guard when Republicans repeat the unflattering stories Democrats also tell about themselves. From WelcomeFest to Third Way to Searchlight, Democrats who claim to be concerned that voters reject their party for being too “woke” keep publicizing these accusations, seemingly to ensure the media amplifies and voters hear them.

Republicans create the conversations that work to their advantage; most Democrats respond to whatever Republicans put forward — or what the survey questions they formulate say voters prioritize. Democrats win when reality breaks through — after the 2008 crash, when the Covid horrors of Trump were fresh in 2020, or right now as MAGA has turned our government into a weapon against us — but they don’t do a good job of foregrounding the topics that benefit them.

Indeed, the Pollingism they default to often has them structure their queries so narrowly, they fail to consider the full range of topics, let alone articulations of them, it could be possible to make salient.

Falling Into the ‘Credulity Chasm’

One staple in discourse about the 2024 election is an argument over whether Democrats needed to focus on the economy versus making democracy central. “Team economy” found voters largely unmoved by “democracy” talk. This is little wonder: Democracy is far too important a concept to try and sell with meaningless abstractions like “democracy.” Messaging on any topic has to be presented in terms of how it will impact the voter.

But economy or democracy as concepts, let alone wording choices, are far from the only options. In an election in which an unpopular incumbent party that voters blamed for their economic pain was facing the return of a right-wing regime, making clear exactly what MAGA rule would mean was another option.

Pollingism proponents maintain that vilifying Trump did little to move the vote choice needle. The explanation for this is that he was already so well known, negatives about him were “baked in.” And so they concluded that anti-Trump talk was a failed pursuit instead of considering that perhaps the ways they had tried making these arguments, from messengers, to messaging, to means of delivery, was the issue.

But volumes of data before November and since show that what most clearly differentiated the Harris voter from folks who did something different (selecting Trump, third party, or staying home) was whether or not they believed the MAGA Project 2025 agenda would actually come to fruition. Not their desire for said agenda, not their hunger for an “opportunity economy,” or even middle class tax cuts, but whether or not they took Trump at his word that he would unleash the horrors that, now visited upon us, have proven unpopular.

We named this phenomenon the credulity chasm. In August of 2024, for example, we found that 58 percent of Democratic voters believed that Republicans would implement the Project 2025 agenda. Only 21 percent of Republicans did. Our post-election survey showed more of the same.

Of course, it’s possible that the campaign itself and affiliated Super PACs couldn’t credibly convey the threats because voters would view their warnings as hyperbolic and self-interested. But this again is where strategy is essential. Instead of asking what are the most RCT-certified “persuasive” ads we can make on the topic voters tell us matter most, we should instead be considering what is the most potent argument in our favor and how we can get it out into the world.

Could Democrats have made voters believe what MAGA put into 920 published pages would come to pass? To be sure, the Harris campaign made Project 2025 a centerpiece at the convention and attempted to bring it to the fore throughout the campaign. But, again, it’s possible this message couldn’t come directly from the candidate, nor from surrogates. Critically, the greatest concentration of outside resources did not focus on pushing this information, nor did Democrats apply the kind of 360 degree actions and activists and ads approach Republicans always use. This would have included, for example, Congressional hearings with Project 2025 architects, press conferences about specific pieces of the agenda, earlier and more robust support for innovative efforts such as having adult film stars convey warnings about the end of porn, and in community organizing to get local folks to bring it up to friends.

Would this have yielded a different electoral outcome in 2024? It is impossible to say. But the fact remains we limit what it’s possible to try and are left evaluating which among the constrained options attempted before merit redo the next time.

Indeed, one can see in this week’s election results and exit polls that many folks turned out to repudiate the Trump agenda. The credulity chasm is closing — what many people believed could never occur has already come to terrifying fruition and this has impacted their voting behavior.

Conclusion

So here we are, with Democrats breathing a sigh of relief after Tuesday’s excellent showing. An ideological range of candidates made affordability the center-piece of their campaigns — successfully dominating conversation against opponents who tried to foreground anti-trans attacks, crime, or some other issue. Beyond the marquee races, we saw gains in unlikely places – from Bucks County PA, ground zero for the anti-CRT turned anti-trans strategy, ousting all Republicans from its school board to Mississippi breaking the Republican super-majority in the legislature. We should absolutely celebrate these wins, and also learn the right lessons from them for the fight we are very much still in.

We often hear of the need for a “big tent” to combat authoritarianism, a term that seems to mean welcoming in more people but not immigrants and their allies, not LGBTQ people and their loved ones, not women who’d like some reproductive autonomy and their champions. And, yes, it will take a mass movement to bring down this regime. But for a big tent to stand, it requires a central rod — otherwise it’s a tarp that smothers you. To win this battle, we must run on — not from — the broadly-held values most Americans cherish, and bring the issues that matter most to us to the fore.

Messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio is the host of the Words to Win By podcast and Principal of ASO Communications.