Speaker 1: Well, joining me now somebody I've known for a couple
Speaker 1: of decades, Rich Taw. He is a message guru, if
Speaker 1: you will, a market research tester, makes his living helping
Speaker 1: advocacy groups and trade associations test various messages to try
Speaker 1: to appeal to certain constituencies where I consume a lot
Speaker 1: of his work is for something called the Swing Voter Project.
Speaker 1: It's something he does in conjunction with Axios. If you
Speaker 1: are a subscriber to those Axios newsletters and you've and
Speaker 1: you've seen analysis of the Biden Trump voter, or the
Speaker 1: Obama Trump voter, or the Obama Trump Biden Trump voter,
Speaker 1: it's all thanks to Rich here and he goes state
Speaker 1: by state. Tessed with him. I watch Sheep has a
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. It's there. He puts up highlights of his
Speaker 1: monthly swing voter groups that he does. There was one
Speaker 1: in Michigan that I spent a lot of time. If
Speaker 1: you guys will recall those sophisticated listeners of my podcast
Speaker 1: have already heard me taut Rich's focus groups of Michigan.
Speaker 1: He's got some new ones in Pennsylvania, but he's probably
Speaker 1: arguably talked to more Biden Trump voters than anybody in
Speaker 1: America and probably has his pulse, his finger on the
Speaker 1: pulse of these voters as well as anybody. Rich hod
Speaker 1: I do promoting you on this one, and you know what,
Speaker 1: am I leaving.
Speaker 2: Out ten out of ten? Perfect job, Thank you. It's
Speaker 2: an honor to be with you, Chuck. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And you're also doing a Decider's project which is very similar. Again,
Speaker 1: these are it's all qualitative research. It's focus groups, it's
Speaker 1: not polling. And I want to get into sort of
Speaker 1: those the differences in those techniques and the ability now
Speaker 1: that you can focus we have larger and larger focus groups.
Speaker 1: At what point does it become quantitative instead of qualitative?
Speaker 1: We can talk about that, but you really are you
Speaker 1: really are a big You feel like you get a
Speaker 1: lot out of focus groups, don't you?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: And the reason for that is a lot of people
Speaker 2: in research like to count heads.
Speaker 3: I like to see what's inside people's heads.
Speaker 2: And that's the distinction between quant and qual For me
Speaker 2: is I want to understand why people believe what they
Speaker 2: believe what they know, as opposed to guessing what they know,
Speaker 2: as supposed to me only saying well, seventy one percent
Speaker 2: believe this, twenty nine percent believe that.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's I always say, the single most important
Speaker 1: question I try to answer all the time in political
Speaker 1: analysis is the why? Right? Why is at the core
Speaker 1: It's the single most important question I think that we
Speaker 1: try to answer in the political space. Well, let's just
Speaker 1: get Look, you started this. You've gone ten years now
Speaker 1: essentially doing these. I feel like you first started doing
Speaker 1: the Obama Trump voter focus groups back in the first
Speaker 1: Trump term. I did. So you're getting close to ten
Speaker 1: years of data now.
Speaker 3: Aren't you? Not quite?
Speaker 2: I'm getting closing in after March of twenty nineteen, So
Speaker 2: I again, cause the first month we did it in
Speaker 2: person in Appleton, Wisconsin. In fact, for the first thirteen
Speaker 2: months from March of twenty nineteen through March of twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: we did them in person. I traveled between the East
Speaker 2: Coast and the Midwest month after month, and the pandemic
Speaker 2: set in. We didn't miss a month. We just kept
Speaker 2: going and did them online and became a little bit
Speaker 2: easier to recruit because people didn't have to physically go
Speaker 2: to a location and we could get people from across
Speaker 2: an entire state as opposed to merely one town or
Speaker 2: one region in a state. So the pandemic actually tragic
Speaker 2: for so many people. Actually for us worked out well
Speaker 2: for this particular project.
Speaker 1: Has this totally Before we get into sort of the
Speaker 1: substance of what you've been finding over the last few
Speaker 1: months is the entire focus group world changed to do
Speaker 1: in person focus groups matter anymore.
Speaker 3: So, I think they matter.
Speaker 2: A lot of the vendors who had facilities close them
Speaker 2: permanently because people were more than willing to do them online.
Speaker 3: So it's a lot of change in that.
Speaker 1: Particular to do it online right instead of you know,
Speaker 1: hanging out for a couple hours, even though you're getting
Speaker 1: paid at some office park, you know, in the suburbs.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from a respondent perspective, it definitely was less work
Speaker 2: for them, although I should say it's more work for
Speaker 2: my team because we have to actually, if we want
Speaker 2: to do it right, pre qualify people not just in
Speaker 2: terms of their demographics and psychographics, but also their Internet connectivity.
Speaker 2: You know, literally do they have enough megabits to be
Speaker 2: on a zoom call for an hour and a half
Speaker 2: without freezing up over and over again. So we actually
Speaker 2: literally test every person with a tech check. Well before
Speaker 2: you just had to show up and sit in a
Speaker 2: seat and you know, eat a turkey sandwich with some
Speaker 2: potato chips. So it's a very different type of experience
Speaker 2: from my team. But from the response perspective, you know
Speaker 2: they're in a comfortable spot. I have to worry about
Speaker 2: things like dogs barking and kids bothering people during the
Speaker 2: focus group, and I enjoy the experience more in person,
Speaker 2: and I can moderate a larger group in person. I
Speaker 2: can do ten or twelve people in person, but ten
Speaker 2: or twelve boxes on a screen and zoom is impossible.
Speaker 3: My max is like seven.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I've conducted focus groups a few times myself.
Speaker 1: I've observed quite a few of them in person and
Speaker 1: virtually and count me as a skeptic of the in
Speaker 1: person focus group. And here's why, Rich, And I'm curious
Speaker 1: how you factor this in. I think it's a lot
Speaker 1: easier for one person to hijack and in person focus
Speaker 1: group than it is a virtual focus group. And that's
Speaker 1: always the danger when you're doing this qualitative research, is
Speaker 1: it not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the hijacking thing, you have to be super
Speaker 2: careful about that. So I'll give you away one of
Speaker 2: my big secrets, Chuck. I don't think I've ever said
Speaker 2: this publicly before. I have been trying to figure out
Speaker 2: I had been trying to figure out for years, how
Speaker 2: do you get the loudmouth person not to get recruited
Speaker 2: into the focus group. And I didn't find a perfect solution,
Speaker 2: but I found something that I think anecdotally has worked,
Speaker 2: which is, we have a screening question that says, do
Speaker 2: you have any bumper stickers on your car that convey
Speaker 2: a political message? The idea being if you want the
Speaker 2: entire world to know what you believe politically so much
Speaker 2: so you're stuck it on the back bumper of your car,
Speaker 2: I probably don't want you in my focus group.
Speaker 1: Interesting to use that as an eliminator.
Speaker 3: I used that as eliminating.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely love it. I love it. What a great
Speaker 1: eliminator question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so again, it's not perfect.
Speaker 2: But the other thing is what's the quality of the
Speaker 2: moderating right, If you're a decent moderator, you know how
Speaker 2: to put the loudmouth person who happens to show up
Speaker 2: back in their corner, carefully, respectfully, repeatedly if necessary.
Speaker 3: And I just find it's it takes practice.
Speaker 2: There are techniques doing it, and if you're a crummy moderator,
Speaker 2: you can't do it, and the person dominates the conversation,
Speaker 2: and that's.
Speaker 1: No, and then you've ruined the focus grip. I've ruined
Speaker 1: the focus So I've seen that. Look, it's why frankly
Speaker 1: a professional like yourself, Peter. I you know what, I
Speaker 1: The person I observed the most over the years was
Speaker 1: Peter Hart. Other than yourself. There's there's another prominent person
Speaker 1: out there who I think is a bit too leading
Speaker 1: in his focus group moderating at times, mister Lunce. And
Speaker 1: I'm very friendly with him. You are too. We like Frank.
Speaker 1: He is in some ways made focus groups great, right,
Speaker 1: made more people aware of them sometimes, I think, and
Speaker 1: I actually wonder, can you be an effective focus group
Speaker 1: moderator if people know who you are before it starts.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to disparage Frank. I've known him
Speaker 2: again thirty plus years.
Speaker 1: No, and he was arguably a pioneer in helping to
Speaker 1: make this a mainstream idea to study political habits.
Speaker 2: And dial testing, which he popular which is kind of
Speaker 2: key thing I do in my message testing work.
Speaker 1: Very important.
Speaker 2: I think One reason why I have generally flown below
Speaker 2: the radar is that I want to be anonymous right
Speaker 2: to the people who who sit down in a focus group,
Speaker 2: and I've I've had focused group respondents come up to
Speaker 2: me and say that I'm somehow different from Frank Luntz,
Speaker 2: who were had where they had been responded in his
Speaker 2: group prior to being in mind and offline.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you a very funny story. I don't want
Speaker 3: to repeat it public.
Speaker 1: No, and again I don't I'm not We're not trying
Speaker 1: to pick on Frank here. But look, I found this
Speaker 1: difficult myself, right I And you know, in the in
Speaker 1: the world of network news, you know, they want you know,
Speaker 1: you want Chuck Todd and they're talking to voters, right
Speaker 1: and you talk to independent voters. It was really hard
Speaker 1: sometimes to get them to to you know, not feel
Speaker 1: like they were talking to Chuck Todd and feeling like
Speaker 1: they were trying to make an answer that I might
Speaker 1: have in their own heads that I might quote unquote
Speaker 1: approve of or and it's just like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: It's like you don't you know I'm trying to you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to, you know, pretend I'm not here type
Speaker 1: of mindset, and that's why I asked that. And I've
Speaker 1: wondered if Frank, in some ways you can't make the
Speaker 1: focus group about the moderator. That's my point, and I
Speaker 1: think that's where I have failed, and I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: Frank struggles sometimes with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think for me, I'm a boring ass, late
Speaker 2: middle aged white guy, and I am as vanilla as
Speaker 2: I can possibly be in the focus groups.
Speaker 1: I am very good at a failure, not very vanilla.
Speaker 1: But yes, you play vanilla well on TV.
Speaker 2: Well, I do, because that's how you get the right answer.
Speaker 2: And also that's how you don't get accused of being biased, right,
Speaker 2: And I really do everything I can to try to
Speaker 2: again throw the pitch straight down the middle of the plate.
Speaker 1: What is how do you verify? You know everybody wants
Speaker 1: to say they're a swing voter. Do you go to
Speaker 1: the voter file to verify these folks? I know you've
Speaker 1: got a recruiting team, is it, Sego? I think, does
Speaker 1: your recruiting for all of your focus group projects? Do
Speaker 1: you do voter file verification on these people?
Speaker 2: So I do not let me tell you what we
Speaker 2: do do. So This is an imperfect process. I am
Speaker 2: the first person to admit it. It is impossible to
Speaker 2: know who voted for whom or whether they voted. It's
Speaker 2: possible to know whether they voted. It' impossible to know
Speaker 2: for whom they voted. No one was in the voting
Speaker 2: booth or sitting at the kitchen table with them if
Speaker 2: they voted at home. Right, So two parts of the
Speaker 2: recruiting process. Part one sego recruits them and does not
Speaker 2: ask them are you a swing voter? They ask who'd
Speaker 2: you vote for in twenty twenty four, and then four
Speaker 2: years earlier, who'd you vote for.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: If they happen to say Trump and twenty four Biden
Speaker 2: in twenty, then they immediately make the first cut.
Speaker 3: But that's not enough for me. I have a person
Speaker 3: on my team.
Speaker 2: His name is Matt, and one of his jobs is
Speaker 2: to personally interview every single one of these swing voters
Speaker 2: before the focus group and say, okay, you said you
Speaker 2: voted for Trump and twenty four, why did you vote
Speaker 2: for Trump and twenty four? Why did you vote for
Speaker 2: Biden in twenty twenty? And if they can't give a
Speaker 2: plot pausible answer to those questions, they're not invited into
Speaker 2: the group.
Speaker 3: We toss them overboard.
Speaker 1: You don't try because another screening question I've heard is
Speaker 1: how did you vote in twenty twenty? Not who did
Speaker 1: you vote for? But do you remember how you voted
Speaker 1: and where you went to vote? I've heard sometimes that
Speaker 1: can be an effective screener question to find out if
Speaker 1: people are byes and you're not.
Speaker 3: It could be, and maybe we'll start doing it now
Speaker 3: that you suggested it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's there's no Again, there's no
Speaker 2: perfect way of doing this. And note and what happens
Speaker 2: is people's memories fate. I mean, last year we did
Speaker 2: focus groups in twenty twenty four we were asking about
Speaker 2: their voting patterns in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't remember what I had for breakfast two days ago.
Speaker 1: Low and well, especially with COVID brain rich, we've all
Speaker 1: liked none. I can't remember anything in twenty nineteen and
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen are the same year to me. Sometimes, right,
Speaker 1: anything pre COVID is just a blur.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and so again, no perfect way of doing this.
Speaker 2: The thing is people, well I think labels us to
Speaker 2: get at least. Something that I think is close to
Speaker 2: the most truthful answer that's out there is the fact
Speaker 2: that people don't know who or what category we're looking for.
Speaker 2: If they knew we were looking for Trump voters, are
Speaker 2: looking for consistent Democratic voters, they would answer that way
Speaker 2: to get their one hundred and twenty five bucks, But
Speaker 2: not knowing what we're looking for, it gives them no
Speaker 2: reason to lie to us.
Speaker 1: So one hundred and twenty five bucks a session, right,
Speaker 1: and that's what the time commitment is? What three hours?
Speaker 1: Two hours? What?
Speaker 2: No? No, no, no, no, it's a total an hour
Speaker 2: and forty five minutes, fifteen minutes sort of warm up,
Speaker 2: and then ninety minutes of conversation.
Speaker 1: Rich, you are going to have a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: my listeners are going to really one hundred twenty five
Speaker 1: bucks for less than two hours of work? Count me in.
Speaker 3: It's a good deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not a bad deal. Eighty bucks an hour?
Speaker 1: Huh a right, not quite yeah, pretty close, No, not
Speaker 1: quite that. What are we looking at? Sixty bucks an hour?
Speaker 1: But so yeah, not been a good money. Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 1: All right, let's dig in. You just did Pennsylvania and
Speaker 1: you're just doing the seven battleground states and you're literally
Speaker 1: going in a rotation every month. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 2: Quite a rotation, but it's where we were hitting each
Speaker 2: state at least once and most of them twice in
Speaker 2: the year.
Speaker 1: Got it. So Michigan was the one you flagged a
Speaker 1: few to me there that was fascinating. And I keep
Speaker 1: talking about this one before we get into Pennsylvania, where
Speaker 1: we're going to play some clips for you folks, so
Speaker 1: get ready for that. The Michigan group from September. What
Speaker 1: stood out to me there was there was this one
Speaker 1: gentleman who was really concerned about the consolidation of power,
Speaker 1: the lack of checks on Trump, all of these things,
Speaker 1: thought he was being power hungry and wasn't ready to
Speaker 1: change their vote. Has that been a consistent finding? Are
Speaker 1: you starting to see that? Was there a consistency between
Speaker 1: Michigan and Pennsylvania on that issue?
Speaker 2: So what's consistent is that not every month, but I've
Speaker 2: come across a number of those people who are giving
Speaker 2: very anti Trump comments but would not take Harris if
Speaker 2: they had to redo the vote. And it happened again
Speaker 2: this month in Pennsylvania. I send you a clip on
Speaker 2: that where I had a woman who said she disapproved
Speaker 2: of Trump.
Speaker 1: I don't. Actually I have it here and I want
Speaker 1: to get into this a second, and let's let's you
Speaker 1: dove into it, but we're going to play the clip
Speaker 1: for folks.
Speaker 4: I disapprove because number one, he's a felon. I don't
Speaker 4: think a fellon should be president of the United States.
Speaker 4: He's a pathological liar. This ice thing is getting out
Speaker 4: of control. If is getting out of control. The government
Speaker 4: is shut down, and I don't think that he's doing
Speaker 4: enough for the people. Prices or sky high like.
Speaker 5: Insurance premiums are going to be going up, and I
Speaker 5: think that he could do something about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Brenda, my part of my job is to play
Speaker 2: devil's advocate. So if you love me in a second,
Speaker 2: to let me ask you a question. So you mentioned
Speaker 2: that he's a convicted felon. He was a convicted felon
Speaker 2: before the election. What you voted for him knowing he
Speaker 2: was a convicted felon? So why are you holding that
Speaker 2: against him now?
Speaker 6: I guess, well, he there should have been something in
Speaker 6: place in the constitution. I know what you're asking me,
Speaker 6: but I don't know it didn't bother me then, but
Speaker 6: now it is because there's so many things coming out,
Speaker 6: like you know, with the Maxwell files and all these things.
Speaker 6: So I think the Constitution should have done a better
Speaker 6: job by saying number one, that he had no political
Speaker 6: experience at all, and that the other thing is a.
Speaker 2: Convicted brend I'm sorry, I'm me to be argumentative at all,
Speaker 2: but he had been president for four years. He had
Speaker 2: experience when you voted for him again last November.
Speaker 7: Right, yeah, so I'm I'm I'm some a bit confused,
Speaker 7: like why did you choose him over Kamala Harris?
Speaker 5: Because I thought the heme was better that I didn't
Speaker 5: particularly like her, so between the two, it was like
Speaker 5: I had to go with him because I didn't like her.
Speaker 1: You insert yourself and say, you know, he was a
Speaker 1: convicted felon before you voted for him in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and then Rich she goes through this Hammin and Han
Speaker 1: and she basically like, I just couldn't vote for Kamala harr.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, Brenda was awesome. That was quite an exchange.
Speaker 2: She really had a lot of reasons why she didn't
Speaker 2: approve and some of them had nothing to do with
Speaker 2: her vote. Because she's just complaining. Also, he didn't have experience,
Speaker 2: And I said, well, he served for four years as president.
Speaker 2: You can't say in twenty twenty four he didn't have experience, right.
Speaker 2: So but really, what it came down to for her
Speaker 2: was she couldn't vote for Harris. And what I keep
Speaker 2: encountering your earlier point is that there are folks who
Speaker 2: twist themselves into pretzels to justify not choosing Harris then
Speaker 2: and not choosing Harris now if they could revote, they
Speaker 2: just for a variety of reasons, cannot abide her and
Speaker 2: will take anything from Trump.
Speaker 1: Richard, Are we going to talk around the elephant in
Speaker 1: the room? Right? I mean, it's hard not to wonder
Speaker 1: if this had to do with her being a black woman.
Speaker 2: Well, so you've got multiple issues there, right, You've got
Speaker 2: woman of color, person of color, and female. So I've
Speaker 2: come across in the course of the last year plus,
Speaker 2: people who wouldn't vote for her because she was female,
Speaker 2: who told me.
Speaker 1: Explicitly that they wouldn't vote for her because she was.
Speaker 2: Female, People who danced around the race issue. But certainly
Speaker 2: I suspected from the comments that they that was the reason.
Speaker 1: Well, that's funny like, look, Brenda's it's one of those.
Speaker 1: She says, I thought he was better than I didn't
Speaker 1: particularly like her, so between the two, it was like
Speaker 1: I had to go with it because they didn't like
Speaker 1: her like she doesn't. She can't can't articulate why she
Speaker 1: doesn't like her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and keep in mind, Brent is a woman of color,
Speaker 2: so super super interesting, and I've got I.
Speaker 1: Don't know what to make of that. That's fair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, but I can tell you what to make
Speaker 2: of it. To me, it's fractly pretty straightforward. For some
Speaker 2: of these folks I spoke to, they are either deeply
Speaker 2: religious or deeply conservative socially, they think that men should
Speaker 2: be in control, men should be in power, women should not, and.
Speaker 1: Biden was somebody they could vote for. But Clinton and
Speaker 1: Harris may have been literally simply their gender may have
Speaker 1: been the disqualifier for these voters.
Speaker 2: It would have been a large part of the consideration,
Speaker 2: along with By the way, a lot of these folks
Speaker 2: thought that Biden failed and she was part of a
Speaker 2: failed administration, and they didn't want to have their fingerprints
Speaker 2: on that for the next four years.
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Speaker 1: Their fee is free unless they win. I look at
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four campaign. You know and there's different
Speaker 1: ways people want to interpret it. I was actually relieved
Speaker 1: to know that voting was normal. It is normal to
Speaker 1: me that people simply vote against and vote on the
Speaker 1: economy like that has been you know, That's how you
Speaker 1: and I were professionally raised in politics, right Rich, Like
Speaker 1: that is how it worked in the eighties and the
Speaker 1: nineties and the odds, Like, that's just how it worked.
Speaker 1: Only recently have we made all these other issues in there,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, wait a minute, post COVID voters
Speaker 1: are starting to behave we're more normally again. It's about finances,
Speaker 1: it's about competency.
Speaker 3: It is and I will say on whether you have
Speaker 3: E clip on this also.
Speaker 2: But one thing that we uncover month after month is
Speaker 2: that the dissatisfaction with Trump among these Biden to Trump voters,
Speaker 2: among those who are dissatisfied with him now, it's mostly tied,
Speaker 2: not exclusively, but mostly tied to the state of the
Speaker 2: economy and how they're struggling, and how they see a
Speaker 2: billionaire who doesn't need to have to worry about these things,
Speaker 2: not addressing the concern that most matters to them.
Speaker 8: Doesn't affect him. Simple he's not feeling the effects of it.
Speaker 8: So when you're not directly impacted by something, even if
Speaker 8: it's going on around you, you tend not to worry
Speaker 8: about it. He's too busy playing hopscotch in Russia. I
Speaker 8: don't know, he's just not worried about anything over here.
Speaker 9: Well, I think that he's more focused overall on the
Speaker 9: economy as a whole. He's focused on using tariffs and
Speaker 9: carpet bombing with tariffs to try to force deals, which
Speaker 9: he hopes eventually will address inflation. But it's not he
Speaker 9: thinks he's going to bring jobs back by forcing these tariffs.
Speaker 9: It's almost an unforced error. If he was focusing on
Speaker 9: one place than another with his tariffs, it wouldn't hurt
Speaker 9: as bad. But he just has to hit everybody all once,
Speaker 9: all at the same time with them, and it's causing
Speaker 9: mayhem with prices of goods and services overall.
Speaker 1: What I find remarkable is how much they're following the
Speaker 1: day to day on tariffs like these. Weren't uninformed voters
Speaker 1: about the current state of the economy, which if I
Speaker 1: were in the Trump white House that would really make
Speaker 1: me nervous. They're following this tariff stuff fairly closely.
Speaker 2: So one of the great fascinations I have with the
Speaker 2: project now compared to a year ago when I was
Speaker 2: doing then Trump to Biden voters as supposed to now
Speaker 2: Biden to Trump voters, was that I would ask Biden
Speaker 2: voters people vote for him in twenty twenty, please name,
Speaker 2: if you could, one thing that President Biden has achieved
Speaker 2: in office that he himself would call an achievement. So
Speaker 2: I didn't want a snarky answer like, oh, he achieved
Speaker 2: high inflation. I didn't want so, okay, So the people
Speaker 2: would stop, and about roughly half each time I asked
Speaker 2: it could not name a single thing that Biden had
Speaker 2: achieved in office that he himself would call an achievement.
Speaker 2: And among those who could name something, way disproportionately it
Speaker 2: was the same topic student loan relief.
Speaker 1: No kidding, now, infrastructure, which was actually probably the best
Speaker 1: to achievement he got.
Speaker 2: You know, chuck It says, though infrastructure never happened, chips
Speaker 2: never happened, Relief Act never happened, Inflation Reduction Act never happened.
Speaker 2: So for them, I want you imagine the mind of
Speaker 2: a swing voter. Now I'll get to the Trump point
Speaker 2: about it in a second. The comparison. So you're thinking
Speaker 2: about President Biden, you're thinking, okay, so he's basically slept
Speaker 2: through the last three and a half years. One time
Speaker 2: they came to him with an executive order, he signed
Speaker 2: it trying to relieve student debt, and that's all he did.
Speaker 3: And that's your conception of him.
Speaker 2: Trump comes in and suddenly he's in the news constantly,
Speaker 2: He's in your social media feed constantly, and if you
Speaker 2: have voted for him, you're like, finally someone is doing something.
Speaker 2: So it's the bias toward action versus the disapproval of inertia,
Speaker 2: which is what they associated with Biden. And I can't
Speaker 2: tell you how many times this year I've heard about Trump.
Speaker 2: At least he's doing something. Whether they like it or not.
Speaker 2: They still like the fact that there's action as opposed
Speaker 2: to Biden's inertia.
Speaker 1: No, I've always said that what's interesting, there's always motion
Speaker 1: with Trump. The question is is their movement. Like I
Speaker 1: have always said, I feel like life with Trump, covering
Speaker 1: him is literally like being on a roller coaster because
Speaker 1: you get on and off in the same place.
Speaker 2: Well, but that's from your perspective, getting as close to
Speaker 2: the process as you are.
Speaker 3: You see that. I think that nuance is lost with
Speaker 3: the folks that I'm talking to.
Speaker 2: So, you know, Trump's his flair for the dramatic. His
Speaker 2: ability to sign his name in huge bowld letters with
Speaker 2: a big sharpie and to hold it up. That looks
Speaker 2: like action to someone who didn't happen to see Biden
Speaker 2: signing these multi trillion dollar bills into law, and Trump's
Speaker 2: doing it repeatedly. The image of him in the Oval
Speaker 2: Office is him holding up some leather binder with his
Speaker 2: big signature on it and then boasting about it.
Speaker 3: And for people I talked to, that's action.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting Rich to take a step back here.
Speaker 1: Biden really was an outlier of the last thirty years
Speaker 1: in how they conducted that presidency. When I think about
Speaker 1: the image management of the you know, Michael Deaver and
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan right when when I was you know, and
Speaker 1: how you know, I basically we in college we studied
Speaker 1: Michael Deaver as image management in my political science classes.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton was clearly always you know, some you know
Speaker 1: people say he was. We would borrow some of Reagan's
Speaker 1: gestures and stuff, and he had he was always performing
Speaker 1: George W. Bush. They were very image conscious. It ended
Speaker 1: up biting them in the butt with the mission accomplished
Speaker 1: thing at one point. But again, it was about the visuals.
Speaker 1: It was about always, you know, showing showing him and
Speaker 1: what they wanted to put him in the best possible light.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was really very much engaged that way. Trump too.
Speaker 1: Biden was the out liar. And I guess it's a
Speaker 1: combination of old COVID, right, you sort of put all
Speaker 1: those together, and you know, I wonder if if the
Speaker 1: Democrats are overrating their problems. Basically, they just had a
Speaker 1: nominee that just wasn't built for the modern media age.
Speaker 2: Now, to me, he dealt with the media the way
Speaker 2: Jerry Ford dealt with the media, which is seriously, I mean.
Speaker 1: It was make that a Jerry Ford reference. You're probably losing, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly that.
Speaker 2: I'll sign a bill, have a ceremonial, We'll invite the
Speaker 2: three major networks and everybody will know about it, and
Speaker 2: lo and behold, they didn't. And I have a whole
Speaker 2: montage I can show it to you someday of swing
Speaker 2: voters in during Biden's term having no idea what was
Speaker 2: going on in terms of process in Washington, achievements. Did
Speaker 2: no idea he worked on climate change, no idea about infrastructure, No,
Speaker 2: didn't know it. Who served on the January sixth committee.
Speaker 2: I mean, just go down the list of stuff they
Speaker 2: just didn't pay attention to. And so the challenge it's
Speaker 2: really obviously we're dancing around the term. It's the attention
Speaker 2: economy we're living in that Trump has mastered it. Biden
Speaker 2: never mastered it. And I would argue if the Democrats
Speaker 2: have any chance of winning anything again, they have to
Speaker 2: learn how to master it, because that's the world we're
Speaker 2: living in where people are distracted constantly and Trump manages
Speaker 2: to break through it, and you've got to.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting because I'll have my friends in
Speaker 1: the left say it's you. People in the media didn't
Speaker 1: do enough to showcase Biden, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, if you actually do all your
Speaker 1: Google searching up, there's plenty of coverage of everything you did.
Speaker 1: What was missing was Biden trying to amplify the coverage himself.
Speaker 1: And I think, what you know, what just about everybody
Speaker 1: in corporate America is doing I assume you have a
Speaker 1: for profit client list these days who are thinking the
Speaker 1: same thing, which is you've got to take it. You've
Speaker 1: got to do your own communicating. You can't rely on
Speaker 1: legacy media, free media anymore. And if you are, you're losing, right,
Speaker 1: anybody that does that, whether you're a politician or your
Speaker 1: Coca cola right, you've got you know, Bud Light found
Speaker 1: out the hard way. Right, You've got to be take advance.
Speaker 1: You've got to proactively do your own communicating. This is
Speaker 1: not all the media's job, is this or this? We're
Speaker 1: all the media now, including the communications shop of the
Speaker 1: White House. And I think in that this is where
Speaker 1: Biden's entire operation was a relic. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're personally way more entrepreneurial about this than
Speaker 2: the entire White House was in the last administration. So
Speaker 2: I mean that's the difference, and I think people have
Speaker 2: to understand that. And the thing was a lot of
Speaker 2: people follow the Swing Voter project, people on the left,
Speaker 2: people on the right. There are folks in the Biden
Speaker 2: administration I know paid attention to what I was producing
Speaker 2: each month, and it was abundantly clear from these highlights
Speaker 2: videos I put out that the message wasn't getting through,
Speaker 2: and I was always mystified by this. Now it wasn't
Speaker 2: just me. Obviously, I'm just one guy out there. I'm
Speaker 2: not tied to the administration. I mean, Republicans like what
Speaker 2: I do too, But my god, like, really, month after month,
Speaker 2: I'm discovering that no one knows about your multi trillion
Speaker 2: dollar legislative achievements. How is that not something that you're
Speaker 2: solving for? I was, again, just a question I'm asking.
Speaker 2: Let's put it that.
Speaker 1: Way, all right. I want to do another excerpt here
Speaker 1: because this is a little counterintuitive to what I think
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom is these days, is whether Trump is exercising
Speaker 1: more executive power trying to consolidate the presidency. We've had
Speaker 1: the no King's rally, right, is this penetrating? Is this
Speaker 1: an issue? So let's play this exchange. You have Kaylana
Speaker 1: h Anthony D Jim b All responding here on this
Speaker 1: question of the simple question you asked, was you know,
Speaker 1: do you see Trump exercising more power than Biden, Obama
Speaker 1: and Bush. So let's let's sen know those answers.
Speaker 10: I mean, they've all deported people, They've all, you know,
Speaker 10: done different things. But I mean, maybe not in the
Speaker 10: same towards the same topic, but I think generally as
Speaker 10: a whole, Dave, he's about the same with executive power.
Speaker 3: Okay, Anthony, what about you?
Speaker 11: Similar to what was said that, I think that, but
Speaker 11: being in the president, he has ultimate authority similar to
Speaker 11: what the other roles were as well with the other
Speaker 11: previous presidents. Maybe he's more vocal saying it, but I
Speaker 11: think I don't see any difference with what they were
Speaker 11: able to do and what they've done.
Speaker 12: Barack Obama and Joe Biden had more executive orders than
Speaker 12: any president by numbers.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 12: George Bush and Barack Obama had more executive orders than
Speaker 12: anyone they had. I mean, George Bush used the nine
Speaker 12: to eleven bombing to push consolidate power in the presidency.
Speaker 12: Barack Obama did it because he had pretty much everyone
Speaker 12: behind him for whatever he did. So those two definitely,
Speaker 12: if not more the same amount.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what's interesting here, Rich, is that they
Speaker 1: they all think it's no different than Obama or Bush
Speaker 1: in particular, and even Biden to an extent. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the thirteen people I had in Pennsylvania, about half
Speaker 2: of them thought he was exercising more, but about half
Speaker 2: of them thought it was the same amount as these
Speaker 2: prior presidents. And as just noted in these clips, they're
Speaker 2: basically saying, well, you know, Obama did this executive thing,
Speaker 2: and Biden did this thing, and they're comparing what they
Speaker 2: see Trump doing to what these prior presidents doing, and
Speaker 2: they don't detect a qualitative difference. And to me, that
Speaker 2: was so fascinating is that the media is constantly talking
Speaker 2: about how Trump is breaking all these norms, but they
Speaker 2: don't see that. They see Trump as just being part
Speaker 2: of a continualum of presidents doing things they shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 1: Let me let me posit something here for you to
Speaker 1: take in, which is whether it was amplify. Fine, I'm
Speaker 1: going to connect something here from the one thing Biden
Speaker 1: that you said voters took away from what they thought
Speaker 1: Biden accomplished with student loans. What's interesting about that topic
Speaker 1: that happens to be a topic that the right also
Speaker 1: amplified when he did it. When I look at executive
Speaker 1: power with Bush, Obama and Biden, and Trump, the party
Speaker 1: out of power would amplify anytime that they thought they
Speaker 1: were over using their power. Bush with FISA and all
Speaker 1: of that, Obama with his executive orders, Biden with what
Speaker 1: he did. You know, it seems as if the only
Speaker 1: way these swing voters actually get an idea of what
Speaker 1: a president does is not only how they amplify it,
Speaker 1: but how the opponents amplify it. And this strikes me
Speaker 1: as while maybe we as sort of more neutral Washington
Speaker 1: pros and understand how executive power works, and yeah, Trump
Speaker 1: really is consolidating power way we haven't seen before, because
Speaker 1: that accusation has been out there about, you know, from
Speaker 1: the right on Obama and Biden and from the left
Speaker 1: on Bush and Trump. It is not unusual to the
Speaker 1: average swing voter, is it.
Speaker 3: It's not. I think that's a brilliant observation.
Speaker 2: And having your actions defined by your enemies means that
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily have control of that narrative. It's obviously
Speaker 2: it's coming from the people who disagree with you. And
Speaker 2: it could easily be the case that the people who
Speaker 2: I talk to who are unhappy with Trump's executive actions
Speaker 2: are getting their news from sources that are amplifying that
Speaker 2: in a way that the people who aren't bothered by
Speaker 2: his actions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, reaction are you seeing. Is that a pattern
Speaker 1: that you noticed when you started this back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: that in some way what breaks through is not just
Speaker 1: what is what the opponents are also talking about, that
Speaker 1: that's ultimately what breaks through is when you actually engage,
Speaker 1: when you get both positive coverage and negative coverage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to chuck because the the I ask
Speaker 2: people every month where they get their news from traditional media,
Speaker 2: whether they get it from social media, and this splintering
Speaker 2: and the splintering has been around since the beginning of
Speaker 2: the project. People get their news from a variety of sources,
Speaker 2: but more and more of them are telling me they're
Speaker 2: getting in the news mostly or exclusively from social media sources.
Speaker 2: So I'm finding that the universe that they're in is
Speaker 2: just totally different from the news consumption that you may
Speaker 2: have or I may have. And the idea that someone
Speaker 2: never looks at a traditional media outlet ever and they
Speaker 2: get their news from TikTok.
Speaker 3: If a war broke out, you know, my first inclination.
Speaker 2: Would be, let's go and see how NBC or CNN
Speaker 2: is covering it or Fox. Why How could you just
Speaker 2: be looking at TikTok videos? If the United States is attacked.
Speaker 1: Well, let me reassure you about something. Actually, I was
Speaker 1: involved with a conference called Trust in Media and where
Speaker 1: it's more about trust in the entire information ecosystem, working
Speaker 1: with a group of folks who come actually from the
Speaker 1: national security space, people that worked in the first Trump term,
Speaker 1: who were worried about the health of the information ecosystem. Right,
Speaker 1: this is bigger than just journalism. And so we had
Speaker 1: a presentation John Delavope, who's done a lot of gen
Speaker 1: Z and millennial work, one of the notations and Edelman
Speaker 1: also did a presentation that when there is breaking news,
Speaker 1: when there is a huge story, that there is still
Speaker 1: a desire to go to a main, a legacy news source,
Speaker 1: and that even among gen Z or millennials, the only
Speaker 1: almost the one time that they will check into those
Speaker 1: sources is if something big is happening, right, a big moment,
Speaker 1: they think, oh, I better go check that out. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a shooting or there's a storm or something like that.
Speaker 1: So it's not all TikTok yet, right, I mean I was.
Speaker 1: I was oddly reassured that younger folks, who are almost
Speaker 1: mostly getting their stuff and essentially curating their own media,
Speaker 1: is what I call it it's self curation. Some of
Speaker 1: it is legacy, but they don't know that it's legacy. Right.
Speaker 1: They follow somebody specifically who just happens to work at
Speaker 1: a legacy media company. Right. But I was I thought
Speaker 1: that was interesting, So I take your point there. But
Speaker 1: it does feel like when the chips are down, they think, oh,
Speaker 1: those big companies have the resources to do live reporting
Speaker 1: right now. Right, there's still that perception out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I question is how often does that
Speaker 2: happen given their lack of knowledge of all the things
Speaker 2: that Biden did for four years that were widely covered
Speaker 2: when they happened. That's why, and particularly Chuck, the things
Speaker 2: that get missed by my swing voters are process related things,
Speaker 2: legislation getting passed in Congress, things being signed into law,
Speaker 2: and emotional hearings.
Speaker 3: That's the they never happened for most of these folks.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, here's I'm gonna the last clip we're
Speaker 1: going to play here is as a this is this
Speaker 1: to me is the probably one of your favorite questions
Speaker 1: because you just find out what is breaking through? You
Speaker 1: asked us each month, what question would you ask President
Speaker 1: Trump if you could ask him anything. So let's play
Speaker 1: all the responses here.
Speaker 4: But ask why so many lies.
Speaker 10: About everything?
Speaker 4: I would ask him what he's doing for the economy.
Speaker 2: That was a big part of his campaign promise, and
Speaker 2: I don't see any difference steam files.
Speaker 3: What about the Epstein files?
Speaker 1: Would you want to know?
Speaker 4: Why aren't they released?
Speaker 9: I might ask him how much controled donors have over
Speaker 9: his decisions.
Speaker 4: I'd ask him how he managed to get the hostages
Speaker 4: out of Gaza, But ask.
Speaker 11: What he thinks is the biggest threat to the United
Speaker 11: States right now?
Speaker 1: Why do you love Russia so much?
Speaker 4: Are you in the Epstein as I.
Speaker 1: Would ask if you would handle January sixth different if
Speaker 1: he had the chance.
Speaker 3: To, do you really care about people and everything we're
Speaker 3: going through?
Speaker 12: Will he ever learn to not attack every person that
Speaker 12: disagrees with him?
Speaker 8: Is there a way to benefit financially him and his
Speaker 8: billionaire buddies without attacking the poor?
Speaker 1: All right, let's see Epstein shows up once twice, three times?
Speaker 1: That's interesting? What breaks through that Epstein broke through a
Speaker 1: little bit of Russia campaign donor stuff? What shocked you?
Speaker 2: So here's what I take away from this exercise. I've
Speaker 2: been this has been happening month over a month. So
Speaker 2: I in this group, I think I mentioned six basically
Speaker 2: approve of Trump's actions in office, seven disapproved.
Speaker 1: It's about the ratio we're on, right, It's about that right,
Speaker 1: It's like a forty five fifty five ratio, depending on
Speaker 1: the all you use exactly.
Speaker 2: But among the people who approve of what he is doing,
Speaker 2: they still made a number of very negative comments or
Speaker 2: ask negative questions when I asked them to come up
Speaker 2: with a question for the president, so they could have
Speaker 2: asked questions like what makes you such an effective leader?
Speaker 2: Or how did you broker such an amazing deal in
Speaker 2: the Middle East? Go down all these lists of questions
Speaker 2: that would have been indicative of an appreciation.
Speaker 1: And advarratious one. I mean it was one, Carolyn m
Speaker 1: I'd ask him how he managed to get the hostages
Speaker 1: out of Gaza. Okay, feels like a supportive type of question.
Speaker 2: That's one, But the rest of them are all basically negative.
Speaker 2: And to me, what it suggests is that while they
Speaker 2: approve of his performance in office, among those who approve,
Speaker 2: there are still very significant lingering doubts. And it's it's
Speaker 2: almost like making a bee line to their psyche when
Speaker 2: it comes to how they feel about Trump, What question
Speaker 2: would you ask skip.
Speaker 1: If I were a democratic strategy here trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how do I win over these voters. I sit
Speaker 1: here and I look at these questions, and I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I think I can do this with every one of
Speaker 1: your proofs, and I'd be like, oh my god. They
Speaker 1: know everything I would use against him. They know he's
Speaker 1: kind of in the hands of Russia, they know he's
Speaker 1: kind of in the hands of big rich people. They
Speaker 1: know all these things, and they vote for him. Anyway,
Speaker 1: What would you tell a client that thought, well, these
Speaker 1: people must not know these things, and it's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: they do, and they don't approve of them either, but
Speaker 1: they still voted for him. What do you take away
Speaker 1: from that?
Speaker 2: Well, what I take away from that is that a
Speaker 2: lot of their focus is on things that they say
Speaker 2: when you ask them about it matters somewhat, but don't
Speaker 2: get to the nub of what really is bothering them
Speaker 2: and what is bothering them the most right now, if
Speaker 2: I had to broadly generalize among those people who are struggling,
Speaker 2: is his performance on the economy and the idea that
Speaker 2: he is a billionaire who promised to get inflation under
Speaker 2: control and they're still struggling to make ends meet. Go
Speaker 2: back to the thing we were talking about earlier on
Speaker 2: the economy, and how that is sort of the traditional
Speaker 2: issue that regulates how people feel the economy comes up
Speaker 2: organically in the conversations, Chuck when I ask them, what.
Speaker 1: Issue not the only issue that comes up organically.
Speaker 3: It's not the only one.
Speaker 2: Immigration comes up, mostly in an approving way, but sort
Speaker 2: of often the times I like what he's doing, I
Speaker 2: don't like how he's doing it.
Speaker 1: That is the theme of most of these groups. For me,
Speaker 1: that's what I always take away, and I'm always very careful.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, what democrats don't understand is voters
Speaker 1: like his goals. They don't like his execution.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't.
Speaker 2: The way I try to analogize Trump, who have struggled
Speaker 2: to understand why.
Speaker 3: People like him or approve of him, I shouldn't.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say, these people don't like them,
Speaker 1: but vote for him. This is different, right, we don't
Speaker 1: like them. And yet you know, it's like Aaron Sorkin wrote,
Speaker 1: you want me on that wall in deep dark corners
Speaker 1: at the parties, you don't want to admit to your friends, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's the Jack Nicholson monologue from a few good.
Speaker 3: Men, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And so the analogy I use is a little bit different,
Speaker 2: is like a medical analogy. So the reputation that surgeons have,
Speaker 2: for example, of not being warm and fuzzy.
Speaker 1: Kind of jerky. Yeah, yeah, I know it all. It's
Speaker 1: god complex, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, if they know
Speaker 2: how to take out that infected whatever it's in your body,
Speaker 2: and they do that, right, who cares if they're and
Speaker 2: you know what, I just I just want to make
Speaker 2: sure they can do the job that I hired them
Speaker 2: to do, which is in this case, for example, get
Speaker 2: illegal aliens out of the country, or push back on
Speaker 2: unfair trade practices from other countries. Those are the kinds
Speaker 2: of things that they're willing to tolerate a lot of
Speaker 2: his behavior in order to get the ends that they want.
Speaker 2: And so that's that's why you get this response. But
Speaker 2: but to me, you know, for a lot of the
Speaker 2: folks I'm talking to, the vote between Trump and Harris
Speaker 2: last year, to draw another analogy out was like being
Speaker 2: a thirsty person who has to choose between drinking wheat
Speaker 2: grass juice and castor oil. You have to drink something
Speaker 2: because you're really thirsty, but whatever you choose is going
Speaker 2: to be unpleasant. It tastes like ba right blah, and afterwards,
Speaker 2: having drunk it, you're going to think, I really have
Speaker 2: to drink that.
Speaker 3: And that's how they feel.
Speaker 2: It's not that they one was was highly preferable to
Speaker 2: tell he was two unpleasant choices.
Speaker 1: And and the outcome is likely to leave you in
Speaker 1: the bathroom. Now, where do we take this? Going all
Speaker 1: the way right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, stop yeah. Let me ask one other
Speaker 1: question about these groups this year, and I assume any
Speaker 1: Democrats breaking through in a positive way to these voters.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: And I have to tell you if you if we
Speaker 2: were doing a little thesaurus dot com right now and
Speaker 2: typed in the word contempt and ask for every synonym
Speaker 2: for the word contempt, those are the adjectives these folks
Speaker 2: used to describe how they feel about the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Not only that, to your question directly, there's no Democrat
Speaker 2: on the horizon that gets them excited. They're not paying
Speaker 2: a lot of attention to the to the presidential race,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty eight, I did show them a Gavin
Speaker 2: Newsom social media post mocking the president's style.
Speaker 3: They they thought it was not genuine, not that words.
Speaker 2: They thought it was real, like he had done it,
Speaker 2: but they thought he was basically taking.
Speaker 1: The President's style, trying too hard.
Speaker 3: It's trying too hard. But also that only Trump knows
Speaker 3: how to do this.
Speaker 2: Well, Newsom is kind of faking it by doing it,
Speaker 2: by taking on the Trump style, and they saw right
Speaker 2: through it.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a great warning for people. I
Speaker 1: think the because I have some sources on the left
Speaker 1: to think, hey, I want to find my own Trump.
Speaker 1: I'm like, do you are you sure? I don't know
Speaker 1: if Americans want Trump light, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: they want to. Sometimes you don't want more a derivative
Speaker 1: of something you maybe only wanted to have once.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Well, and some would argue that Governor DeSantis found
Speaker 2: that out the hard way the Republican primary.
Speaker 1: Right, No, you know it. What people want is Trump's
Speaker 1: personality more than the policies. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: the that's the probably the hard the hardest thing for
Speaker 1: political strategist to accept in this in this current conversation.
Speaker 2: I got to tell you, Chuck, I've been at the
Speaker 2: focus group business now for twenty four years. I've moderated
Speaker 2: well more than a thousand focus groups in the course
Speaker 2: of my career and going back well before Trump was
Speaker 2: ever a nominee ever on the politic will scene at all.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about two thousand and eight, twenty twelve whatever.
Speaker 2: I kept turing over and over again from people center right.
Speaker 2: We want somebody who fights. Republicans don't fight, They give
Speaker 2: up too easily. The Democrats are constantly all over them.
Speaker 2: The Democrats know how to fight, Republicans don't know how
Speaker 2: to fight. And Trump scratched an itch. He scratched the
Speaker 2: itch of somebody who's willing to fight for them.
Speaker 1: Well, now are the left that's that? Now it's the
Speaker 1: left that's complaining that Democrats don't know how to fight exactly.
Speaker 2: That's the thing I always found hilarious is that Democrats
Speaker 2: think that Republicans fight better. Republicans think the Democrats fight better.
Speaker 2: And I've heard this in groups, separate groups and over
Speaker 2: the course of years, and it's always amazed me that
Speaker 2: neither one has an appreciation for their own ability to
Speaker 2: fight and an overestimation of the other side's ability to fight.
Speaker 1: That's always so true. And ultimately, you know, it's whichever
Speaker 1: side is presiding over a better economy is the better fighter.
Speaker 1: It's funny that it works, right, It's it's it's sometimes
Speaker 1: that's does anybody else pop positively? Forget Democrats? I mean,
Speaker 1: when you you know, you know, is there is there
Speaker 1: admiration for Silicon Valley or skepticism? Is there? You know?
Speaker 1: Is this rise in sort of you know, Steve Bannon
Speaker 1: and I had a I had interviewed Bannon a few
Speaker 1: months ago, and you know, so he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I was asking him why he and Lena Kahan have
Speaker 1: something in common, and his his thesis was, well, we're
Speaker 1: both skeptical when of consolidated power. And I thought that
Speaker 1: that was a pretty fair that that is what what
Speaker 1: we ignites the Sanders voter and the Trump voter. Is that, right,
Speaker 1: a bit of skepticism of the powerful institutions. Are these
Speaker 1: voters that are they the are they the skeptics or
Speaker 1: are they something else?
Speaker 2: I wouldn't describe them as being I mean, they're definitely skeptical,
Speaker 2: So yes to that question.
Speaker 1: No doubt that the vote against. They're not vote for us, right,
Speaker 1: they vote against there are They feel like people that
Speaker 1: decided who not who they couldn't stomach as president, not
Speaker 1: necessarily voting for who they preferred.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like to describe them as serial presidential monogamous. You
Speaker 2: know about the terms, you know, serial date, serial monogamous,
Speaker 2: you date one person break.
Speaker 1: I was accused of that over the years. Okay, well
Speaker 1: I never could date multiple. I never understood my friends
Speaker 1: who could do that. I'm like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: can't do it. So I was a serial monogamous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So these are serial presidential monogamous, meaning they dated
Speaker 2: George W. Bush, they got sick of him, they chose Obama,
Speaker 2: they got sick of Obama, they chose Trump, they got
Speaker 2: sick of Trump, they got they chose Biden, and then
Speaker 2: they some of them were so sick of Biden they
Speaker 2: actually went back to Trump again.
Speaker 3: Gave them a second chance. But there they are. There.
Speaker 2: Their loyalty to any presidential candidate or president is a
Speaker 2: shallow as a as a tip of a pin.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like they're always looking for something new, always.
Speaker 3: That is, that's absolutely what they want. They are.
Speaker 2: They're easily dissatisfied, easily put off. And the thing that
Speaker 2: amazed me back in twenty twenty one was how quickly
Speaker 2: they bailed on Biden, you know, And I'd asked them
Speaker 2: how they felt about Biden in.
Speaker 1: The first three or four months.
Speaker 2: I feel, I'm feeling relief, I'm feeling proud, I'm feeling calm.
Speaker 2: And then within a few months it was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean they just one thing, obviously, it is Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: the delta variant, and then they were done. And for
Speaker 2: three and a half years he could not win them back,
Speaker 2: so they were merciless toward him. Some could argue that
Speaker 2: that was basically an unforced error on Biden's part, but
Speaker 2: these folks did never went back.
Speaker 3: This year very different. Every month.
Speaker 2: The number of people who are approving or disapproving of
Speaker 2: Trump is fluctuating endlessly, and there's no consistency from month
Speaker 2: to month. And I'll have some higher levels of approval
Speaker 2: one month, lower levels the next. There's no seeming pattern
Speaker 2: in terms of what direction it's going. I can tell
Speaker 2: you roughly, since February, just under sixty percent say they
Speaker 2: still approve of the job he's doing. But that's again
Speaker 2: February's responds versus aprils versus July versus now, So you
Speaker 2: know it's the timing.
Speaker 3: When I asked it. I didn't ask all of.
Speaker 1: Them, just in the laste anything consistent about the people
Speaker 1: in his orbit. Kennedy, Vance Rubio, and Haig Seth are
Speaker 1: arguably the most prominent members in Trump's orbit. Christy Nome,
Speaker 1: maybe Stephen Miller. Do any of these folks pop in
Speaker 1: these groups?
Speaker 2: Most of these folks are not familiar with most of
Speaker 2: these people I asked. I've asked about Robert Kennedy Junior
Speaker 2: a couple of times, and healthcare policy. They were split
Speaker 2: between approve of Kennedy, disapprove of Kennedy, don't know what
Speaker 2: he's doing, so it was kind of shallow For those
Speaker 2: who do support. They want to see America be healthier again,
Speaker 2: so the MAHA theme is important to them, but they
Speaker 2: get very sketchy when you start talking about making it
Speaker 2: harder to get vaccinations and those types of things. They're
Speaker 2: willing to go along, but just not as far as
Speaker 2: Trump is going.
Speaker 1: So if I were watching these focus groups and I
Speaker 1: wanted to help Bill McRaven become president, and when the
Speaker 1: presidency is an independent, what would I what what what?
Speaker 1: What would my advance? What would your advice be to
Speaker 1: a I say Bill McRaven, because he's my avatar of
Speaker 1: what a what a potential you know sort of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, mythical independent figure that that might be able
Speaker 1: to break through. I think somebody with a military background. YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: That's my thesis. Whether it's true or not, it's a
Speaker 1: whole nother story. But if you were thinking about trying
Speaker 1: to run outside the two party system right now, because
Speaker 1: there's such deep sort of distrust of is there something
Speaker 1: to glean from these voters or are they are they are?
Speaker 1: They just not gonna They're just not gonna be They're
Speaker 1: just going to keep picking between the two parties.
Speaker 3: That's a great question.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure necessarily that they are rushing to have
Speaker 2: a third party alternative. When I asked about no labels
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, when that was still part
Speaker 2: of the conversation, there was a hesitation there to get
Speaker 2: involved in those kinds of things, thinking that you'd be
Speaker 2: tossing the vote away. But for me, I think they
Speaker 2: what I would encourage people who want to break through
Speaker 2: center independent like you're describing left or right is I
Speaker 2: would try to be raising some issues that I know
Speaker 2: matter to people that are not part of the conversation
Speaker 2: right now. So, for example, when I asked about Biden's age,
Speaker 2: people would tell me, and I asked two questions, what
Speaker 2: is the ideal age for someone to be president and
Speaker 2: what's the oldest acceptable age for someone to be president?
Speaker 2: The ideal age was basically early the mid fifties. The
Speaker 2: oldest acceptable age was in the mid sixties on average.
Speaker 3: When I asked that, I.
Speaker 2: Rarely do I get an age above seventy as being
Speaker 2: oldest acceptable. We now have a president who's almost eighty
Speaker 2: years old. We just had one who ended at eighty two.
Speaker 2: I would be taught talking about things like setting age
Speaker 2: limits for presidents as part of a constitutional amendment. I
Speaker 2: think that would be an important thing to do.
Speaker 1: You can break through with these with with you that
Speaker 1: actually might connect with voters, I think.
Speaker 3: After having process.
Speaker 1: I asked that skeptically, because as much as ires a
Speaker 1: lot of process things I'd like to fix about our democracy,
Speaker 1: it's hard to get mass interest in some of these things.
Speaker 2: I would say generally yes in the and in the
Speaker 2: absence of having very old presidents for what for us
Speaker 2: could easily be twelve years of presidents over the age
Speaker 2: of seventy five, seventy or seventy five.
Speaker 3: It's remarkable.
Speaker 2: I think in that context people might be you know,
Speaker 2: what I'm done, and I think and the other thing
Speaker 2: I would say is, and again I'm going to ask this.
Speaker 2: I haven't de gone that deep into it yet, but
Speaker 2: I plan to. Is the whole issue of pardons and
Speaker 2: having the president have unfettered pardoning power. I can tell
Speaker 2: you that the pardons from Biden as he left office
Speaker 2: and the part that Trumps has given people since he
Speaker 2: took office have enraged a number of these swing voters.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting. Corruption is always when you look
Speaker 1: at big swings that we've had in midterm elections in particular,
Speaker 1: corruption has actually always been one of the through lines.
Speaker 1: There's like been an economy and you know, because it's
Speaker 1: a way to Hey, they're so worried about their friends.
Speaker 1: They're not focused on your bottom line. They're so worried
Speaker 1: about this, right, there's this you know, you so a
Speaker 1: through line of to me, if you're going to have
Speaker 1: a successful midterm, if you're the out party, you need
Speaker 1: a little bit of corruption messaging against the party in
Speaker 1: power in order to have some success. But I've had
Speaker 1: this thesis that the reason it doesn't work against Trump
Speaker 1: is these voters already think the whole system is corrupt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's corrupt, but the entire systems corrupt. Every president does
Speaker 1: is a little bit corrupt, So they don't have the
Speaker 1: same gag reflects maybe that some of us do watching
Speaker 1: what Trump does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just wonder whether at the end of a
Speaker 2: second Trump term, folks who constantly tell me how mistrustful
Speaker 2: they are of politicians exactly as you just described, whether
Speaker 2: at some point something happens where they say, you know what, this,
Speaker 2: what we've just had in the last twelve years has
Speaker 2: not worked for us, and they react to it viscerally
Speaker 2: to the point where someone who's able to make this
Speaker 2: case is able to make it meaningfully and wants to
Speaker 2: actually put it at the top of the national agenda.
Speaker 2: I don't again, to me, this is going We need
Speaker 2: to see the polling on it. We have to see
Speaker 2: after the polling shifts and moves more in this direction
Speaker 2: of the course of Trump's second term. But to me,
Speaker 2: I'm getting a sense that if what Trump has promised
Speaker 2: doesn't come to pass for the people who voted for him,
Speaker 2: and that what Biden promised didn't come to ask for
Speaker 2: them when they voted for him and saw what happened
Speaker 2: in his four years. Does that create an opening for
Speaker 2: your independent candidate or some reform minded R or D
Speaker 2: to say, you know what, it's time for a generational shift.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: We're not going to have We're not going to elect
Speaker 2: another eighty year old president in twenty eight.
Speaker 1: We may elect our youngest president ever type of mindset.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have our first millennial president. We'll skip over
Speaker 2: gen X altogether. Right, let's start it on that. I know, yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's rude, Jenny.
Speaker 3: But that's but the thing.
Speaker 2: But I guess the point is with that comes the
Speaker 2: opportunity to make changes and the other thing we're overdue
Speaker 2: for if you really know, I just haven't started yet.
Speaker 2: Joel Lapor's new book on the Constitution is that you know,
Speaker 2: you know, constitutional changes happen in spurts.
Speaker 3: They they're clustered together.
Speaker 2: There are a few short periods of time where you
Speaker 2: get three or four amendments all at once, and we
Speaker 2: haven't had one of these in a very long time.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I mean this is sort of my people.
Speaker 1: You know, people ask me, I'm always say I'm short
Speaker 1: term pessimistic, long term optimistic. And this is the reason
Speaker 1: if you I think we're loosely in the in you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the repeat, you know, sort of repeating
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century. And you know, our response to
Speaker 1: consolidated power, big business, robber barons getting too close with
Speaker 1: government was women's suffrage, giving women the right to vote,
Speaker 1: direct election of senators, and the income tax. All of
Speaker 1: that was designed essentially to start to tackle this sort
Speaker 1: of you know, industrial barons that were sort of dominating
Speaker 1: our lives then. And arguably it's the last time we
Speaker 1: really did a lot of constitutional maintenance, right. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: did the twenty second Amendment, you know, after FDR, and
Speaker 1: we gave we lowered the voting aged eighteen, but those
Speaker 1: weren't sort of societal ills type of thing, right versus that,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right, we basically we've only really had
Speaker 1: three big periods of amending the constitution. This the beginning
Speaker 1: the Civil War and essentially right before the New Deal.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I think if the frustrations that people are
Speaker 7: feeling need an outlet, and we can identify the things
Speaker 7: that are most angering and frustrating people that we could
Speaker 7: easily see another one of those periods coming up.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's funny it, you know, we may
Speaker 1: be stumbling upon it. It's like if you're going to
Speaker 1: try to run outside the system, right, if you're going
Speaker 1: to run against both parties in some form, right, and
Speaker 1: you may do it within one of the two parties,
Speaker 1: or you run as a third party independent calling for
Speaker 1: this constitutional convention so that we can you know, keep
Speaker 1: seventy year olds out of the White House, and you
Speaker 1: know do campaign you know, you know, put campaign finance
Speaker 1: guardrails in here. Maybe undoe presidential pardons. Create a pardon board, right,
Speaker 1: so that there isn't you know, essentially we've decided it
Speaker 1: turns out that the founders were on this one presidential
Speaker 1: pardon was a mistake, and here's a better way to
Speaker 1: do it. And you create almost a pardon board where
Speaker 1: you still allow for executive pardons, but they actually have
Speaker 1: to pass through a committee. It isn't just a singular person,
Speaker 1: which many states do. By the way, where we've especially
Speaker 1: where there have been scandals. There's a famous Fred Thompson
Speaker 1: became an actor because of a pardon scandal in the
Speaker 1: state of Tennessee in the seventies. They couldn't find the
Speaker 1: guy to play Fred Thompson, so they asked Fred Thompson
Speaker 1: to play himself, and his acting career took off from there.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite little little pieces of Hollywood
Speaker 1: political trivia. But boy, you know, talking with you on
Speaker 1: this reform and corruption, you know you still got to
Speaker 1: talk about the economy, but you might be able to
Speaker 1: break through a little bit with reforming and corruption. It
Speaker 1: sounds like at least that's what you're thinking.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking that and also tying the two together. Right,
Speaker 2: why are people struggling? It's because these vested interests are
Speaker 2: holding you back. They're charging you too much, They're making
Speaker 2: your life miserable in terms of customer service.
Speaker 3: I mean, we haven't Chuck, Chuck, We've talked for an
Speaker 3: hour now, we still have having talked about AI, right,
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. I'm this is and maybe I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you a few ideas, or maybe you've already
Speaker 1: done this. So one of my favorite when I have
Speaker 1: an audience. I'll you know, when I start talking about
Speaker 1: people will ask a question about AI. I'll quickly ask is.
Speaker 1: I'll say, how many of you would pay extra to
Speaker 1: have a human handle customer service? And literally two thirds
Speaker 1: of the room. Well, I've done this now for the
Speaker 1: last few months, and there's always a majority of the
Speaker 1: room raises their hand. That a willingness to pay extra
Speaker 1: for a human being? It actually is. I am weirdly
Speaker 1: optimistic about the AI effication of the Internet because it
Speaker 1: may be the thing that gets us outside of our screens.
Speaker 1: The more online is artificial, the more we're going to
Speaker 1: crave humanity. We already are craving it in the customer
Speaker 1: service by my anecdotal you know, And I imagine if
Speaker 1: you started to ask and all your focus scripts, I
Speaker 1: imagine you get the same response. We hate some computer
Speaker 1: or robot thinking they know what we're talking about, right
Speaker 1: like it just it just drives us nuts, even if
Speaker 1: the robot might have the better answer, right it just
Speaker 1: we're human beings. So no, I'm convinced that you can't
Speaker 1: run for president in twenty eight without an answer to
Speaker 1: the fear of AI displacement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read your recent post about this. I thought
Speaker 2: it was brilliant in terms of how it's getting politicized.
Speaker 2: The analysis was absolutely spot on. Anybody who hasn't read it,
Speaker 2: I would ask you to post it with your show
Speaker 2: notes here because I think it's a great piece, really important,
Speaker 2: and I think whichever party figures this out first is
Speaker 2: going to have a huge advantage.
Speaker 3: Because the frustration.
Speaker 2: And I gotta tell you, Chuck, I asked Swing voters
Speaker 2: about AI couple months ago. Yeah, and the thing that
Speaker 2: came up was the loss of humanity exactly.
Speaker 3: You're that's the biggest thing that scares.
Speaker 1: Them it which again, that to me is gives me
Speaker 1: hope because we're going to crave in person. I think
Speaker 1: it's going to put a premium on in person. Again,
Speaker 1: it's going to put a premium on seeing things for yourself.
Speaker 1: In fact, I almost wondering, are we going to have
Speaker 1: retail stores back where you don't necessarily buy the product there,
Speaker 1: but you want to see and touch the product before
Speaker 1: you order it online and have it delivered to your house. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, you're seeing this touch grass movement right, people sing,
Speaker 2: getting kids out and outdoors and touching the grass because
Speaker 2: touching their screens isn't real. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: this stuff going on. I just to me, the question
Speaker 2: is does how far is it AI able to penetrate
Speaker 2: the population because it's so useful to the people that
Speaker 2: they give up some of these more tangible things in reality,
Speaker 2: and that time will tell how.
Speaker 1: That plays out. All right, let me get you out
Speaker 1: of here on this. One of my One of the
Speaker 1: things I lament is the loss of regionalism, meaning the
Speaker 1: suburb of Grand Rapids is no different than a suburb
Speaker 1: of Roanoke. Right. You know, people in Atlanta have more
Speaker 1: in common with people in Milwaukee than people in Atlanta have,
Speaker 1: and north with people in Northwest Georgia et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Did world Wisconsin versus Milwaukee, et cetera. You are the
Speaker 1: seven swing states, you have the three Midwesterns, you have
Speaker 1: the two Western and you have the essentially the two
Speaker 1: sun Belt Any regionalism, you're just there anymore? Or are
Speaker 1: all these voters in somewhat you know, homogenized American suburbanites.
Speaker 2: Uh, They're mostly homogenized with odd flavors that will come
Speaker 2: out at odd moments. So with Arizona swing voters, you'll
Speaker 2: still get a little bit of the Barry gold Water Ish.
Speaker 1: Arizona's got a little libertarian, a little more libertarian in
Speaker 1: them than most of the other states.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, so you have more more of that with
Speaker 3: the Pennsylvanians. Part.
Speaker 2: The southeastern Pennsylvanian is just a very low level of
Speaker 2: trust and belief in anything that anyone says.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I found that over the years. In this region. It's
Speaker 2: super super skeptical. I mean even more so. And I
Speaker 2: just think the Upper Midwest folks, particularly, you know, the
Speaker 2: michigan the Michiganders, there's just more of a salt of
Speaker 2: the earth type of conversation with them. They just we
Speaker 2: can just well, they were not happy with Trump in
Speaker 2: March when I spoke to them about trade.
Speaker 3: Boy, I was shocked.
Speaker 2: At seven weeks into his administration, they were excoriating him
Speaker 2: on that topic.
Speaker 1: But Michigan of all places, right, which when we were
Speaker 1: professionally growing up, you'd have thought, well, one state's gonna
Speaker 1: like tariffs.
Speaker 2: It's FISHI can yeah, But I went back there and
Speaker 2: we did those in September and twelve out and thirteen
Speaker 2: approved of the job he was doing. So you know, again,
Speaker 2: it's it's this odd shift. There's no consistency month to month.
Speaker 2: But to answer your question about geography, yeah, it just
Speaker 2: you get it's the flavoring that's just a little bits
Speaker 2: the seasoning. It's like pizza tastes different in different parts
Speaker 2: of the country, but it's still basically pizza wherever you go,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of the difference.
Speaker 1: Rich, I am such a geek for this stuff. I
Speaker 1: could keep going. This is terrific. I where could I know?
Speaker 1: You have a YouTube channel? Tell people where they can
Speaker 1: find these because you do. You do put up monthly reports.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2: So the easiest place to find us is at Swing
Speaker 2: Voter Project dot com. On that page you will find
Speaker 2: each month's highlight and that reel is on YouTube, so
Speaker 2: if you click it, it'll just play within YouTube, and
Speaker 2: I would encourage you to just watch those videos. And
Speaker 2: you can also sign up for a monthly update on
Speaker 2: the Swing Voter Project dot com page. So just go there,
Speaker 2: give us your email address. We will not sell you anything,
Speaker 2: there's nothing for sale. We don't charge for this stuff,
Speaker 2: and just join us on Swing Voter Project dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you a whole bunch of them are going
Speaker 1: to be like kick I want one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five bucks to give you my opinion.
Speaker 2: They probably not swing voters though, but if they are,
Speaker 2: you know, they can go to Sego by way, go
Speaker 2: to sago dot com if you want to register to
Speaker 2: participate in focus groups.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh well that's nice. Do you do you still
Speaker 1: do uh, quantitative polling as much? And you know how
Speaker 1: much does the focus group influence your questionnaire? Now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I really I don't.
Speaker 3: Personally don't do a huge amount of it.
Speaker 2: I'm actually associated with a remarkable company called Alpha Rock.
Speaker 2: Do you and I could talk about offline that has
Speaker 2: transforming the polling process and looking at longitudinality in questions
Speaker 2: in a way that point of time polling doesn't quick
Speaker 2: turnaround in polling. They have a tool called Ockham Ockham's
Speaker 2: Razor that is just remarkable that a lot of trade
Speaker 2: associations and others in DC are using. So I've been
Speaker 2: working with them to try to get some quant around
Speaker 2: some of my focus grouping. But basically, uh, that world
Speaker 2: is getting up ended in a way that is well,
Speaker 2: deeply needed and well deserved.
Speaker 1: I feel like the best of you know, like my
Speaker 1: favorite thing that our polsters at NBC when I was
Speaker 1: working with them, used to do was I loved a
Speaker 1: good open end right where because to me, what that
Speaker 1: was was about helping you formulate a better question down
Speaker 1: the road. Absolutely, and that and that to me is
Speaker 1: you know I've we've for for for years, would would
Speaker 1: would reword questions based on stuff we'd see in focus
Speaker 1: groups like yours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the thing's happening now you're alluded to at
Speaker 2: the very beginning so well and where we started, which
Speaker 2: is that this OUPHAM tool is able to do quaal
Speaker 2: at scale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they.
Speaker 2: Able to do basically one on one interviews not yet
Speaker 2: in a focus group, and one on ones an AI
Speaker 2: by yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, well I thought about it, but the I
Speaker 1: know somebody who's trying it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's I think it's an important thing to
Speaker 2: try to do because there if you can do this
Speaker 2: at scale, the insights will be so much richer than
Speaker 2: what I can find obviously, which all people.
Speaker 1: So much, so much more a thousand that are focus
Speaker 1: grouped rather than just you know, multiple choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's remarkable and also be able to interpret the answers,
Speaker 2: ask meaningful follow ups, categorize the answers, which is what
Speaker 2: this tool can do.
Speaker 3: So this whole world is getting up ended.
Speaker 2: I've been joking that I'll be replaced by a bot,
Speaker 2: and my respondents will be replaced by bots, and it'll
Speaker 2: be one AI asking other AI questions and kicking out
Speaker 2: a report in ten seconds.
Speaker 1: And that's going to mean you know what you're gonna
Speaker 1: end up doing, create bullshit correct, and then you're going
Speaker 1: to be going to an actual event in order to
Speaker 1: talk to actual people again. Like we're probably about five
Speaker 1: years away from that. Let's go back to shopping malls
Speaker 1: and survey people that way, right, like in person with
Speaker 1: the clipboard. Everything old will be new again if we're not,
Speaker 1: if we ai ai it up too much, that's right, exactly, Rich.
Speaker 1: This was fantastic. Thank you, my friend, Thank you chucking
Speaker 1: honor to do it.