USAFacts President on Integrity in the Election

Poppy McDonald. She's president of the not for profit and nonpartisan USA Facts, also a former president and chief operating officer of the news site Politico. She joins us on this Monday on the phone in Hawaii. Hi, Poppy, how are you, Hi, Carol. I'm doing well. It's so nice to be back with you. Well, it's great to have you back with us. Um I've got to first ask you Hawaii virus. Their cases I believe have been going down, if I'm correct, is that right? You are right? They

have had very few cases going down dramatically. They really did choose to close their state to visitors and it had an outsized impact in terms of the devastation to Hawaii's economy. When USA Facts did analysis looking at her case, what was the job lost impact? Hawaii was the hardest hit and in September and the state had lost about ten thousand seven jobs and hit high of fifteen point one percent unemployment, as most of the rest of the

country was coming. Um really reducing unemployment and that impact, and that was because of their reliance on leisure and the hospitality sector. So they reopened for the first time in mid October. And UM, are you know, we'll be following the data to see what happens there. Yeah, it's really fascinating. I love that you went right to the facts. You know, it's interesting. Um, I know we talked with you. I think in early October. It was about a month

out from the election. Um, facts do matter. We know that, and I want to do a deeper dive into that in just a moment. But you know, what's kind of changed in your world as you look at you know what people are searching on when it comes to USA Facts, what they want to know, especially as we've gotten closer to the election, and we've seen certainly the races and individual states get closer the polling is showing us that the race is much closer in a lot of places.

So I'm curious what what are people what do they want to know as we get, you know, closer to this election now that it's tomorrow, Thanks Carol. According to data just in from my team at USA Facts, as the election is looming, no surprising, you know, COVID related terms continued to dominate the search for both candidate policy information as well as on our site in terms of how many people have been diagnosed and how many deaths. I think interesting though, um, if we look at what

else are people searching for? Related for sure is what are the top causes of death in the United States? And there is certainly some conversation about how devastating has COVID and um, is it just like the flu or is it having an outside impact? And so we did analysis looking at between February and October, what were the top causes its death in the United States. COVID comes in third. Um it's We're now at about two hundred

and twenty eight thousand cases. Heart disease is at four hundred and eighty thousand, three ninety cancer at four hundred and twenty six thousand, one hundred seventy two UM and behind COVID then is stroke at a hundred and ten thousand and flew. It's down at the seventh pause thirty eight thousand, one d seventy one cases. So um, that's a place Americans are going. They're also looking, I think, at um, what does there look life look like as

middle class Americans. So our second most traffic content is how much does the average American family pay in Texas? And so we have analysis looking at in twenty eight teen the African American family in the middle of income earners and we define that as literally the middle in this country, which looks like on average people who make about fifty dollars a year and they have paid about fifteen thousand, seven dty dollars in taxes, and that's combining federal, state,

and local taxes UM. And then in general just in federal taxes about two thousands, three nine two. So um, those are really the talk to. And then of course people are looking at voting rates, what's turnout then how many people vote by mail? So really related to the topic of the moment, right, which is the selection. I think that's really interesting about kind of wanting to understand like how much people are paying in taxes, and I wonder.

You know, it's interesting, right, you've seen this before, you you know, Ran Politico. You know we've talked about in elections before that it was all about the economy, right, it's the economy stupid. Go back to the Clinton, uh you know campaign, although I've heard other people say I think it was our Michael mckeeth it's saying it's it's all about COVID stupid, like you know. So it's interesting to see what people are searching on to give you an idea of what really matters as we go into

the election. And maybe some of it has to do with, you know, everybody's individual and personal experiences, but it it kind of tells us a little bit what's going on in the psyche right of voters. Absolutely, and you would think that jobs and economy are always the dominant theme. I think immigration was something that was a hot topic, right, but has really been replaced by healthcare and people dominantly thinking about m M. My space is my family's safe

and you know who's looking out for me right now? Poppy? Whatever happened? Um? And I bring this up because I was watching and listening to a piece over the weekend and just said, you know that we've become a society that it feels like facts don't matter anymore, and and it feels like I think, uh. One person who's interviewed was said something like, well, facts are boring. It's not what gets the algorithms moving on social media, um, which of course plays into how you make money on a

lot of social media platforms. I mean, you ran political, you know the importance of understanding sources and facts. What's happened over the past decade when it comes to the respect that facts used to Garner Carol, that's a great question, and I wish I had all the answers. I do think it is entertainment when you're throwing around adjectives and um, big headlines right um, and you're going to get um.

It's become an engaging format that is entertaining to Americans that said um, USA facts did some pulling to say, like, do Americans even care about the facts? Um? Is it important to them? And we did find that, you know, eight antient Americans said that the spread of information has become a major problem and report often or always getting conflicting and formations from different sources, and sixty seven percent of Americans say that they often are always come across

sources that only include one side of a debate. And so you know, part of why USA facts exist, as we do think Americans are hungry to understand what where do things actually stand by the numbers. Sure adjectives are entertaining, but at the end of the day, it is confusing

when you're getting conflicting reports from two different sources. And let's ground it back in data so it us say facts or we try to make it really easy for Americans or the media or politicians to go and at least start debate with the facts and then hopefully have a healthy disagreement about how we move forward. You know, I've remember going to start as a journalist, Like I thought it was very interesting that you could often yes facts or facts, but you could often find a set

of statistics to tell your story. And I think it was a little mind blowing to me initially, Like, okay, and this is where you have to be really smart and really understand where the material was coming from so that you knew whether it was going to be not tainted, but it was going to be subjective because of where it was coming from. Yeah, we do, UM ask and journalists, but especially Americans to go to a lot of work to understand is that source um, that I'm reading? Is

it objective? Art? Is there? Is it coming from like a good place? Um? And so you know understand that people are confused right now. We have forty percent of Americans say it's difficult to know if a candidates telling the truth UM. And that forty percent of Americans say they do pay close attention, but they're often unsure where to go for information they trust. UM. And I think probably not surprising. When we looked at twenty nineteen, what

was the dominant source of daily news information? UM, A majority of Americans said social media. That's dropped about thirty two percent UM, with only thirty seven percent of people saying that they use socialist social media daily and only seven percent of those saying they actually us that is a source of information. Wow. Wait, so it's dropping in terms of what people are going there or not dropping

it is. Yeah, it's dropping. So in nineteen and majority of Americans said and that was the top source they went to social media almost daily. It's now down. When we did the pole this share. A year later, seven percent of people say they're using it daily and only seven percent of people say they trust social media. That's really interesting. I do wonder them when you think about social media folks, you know, the CEO is being called before Congress or before Senate committees, and you know their

responsibility to kind of police their platforms. I mean, I wonder if you have some thoughts on that, especially since it's interesting to see less people getting it, but still a lot of people go to social media to get their news. It is still the third most used source, so it is still a place people are going to for information, just behind local TV news and national TV news networks as well as cable, so it's actually the

fourth must use source. UM And in terms of you know, what's the responsibility of these folks to run social media platforms? I mean, I think if you see trust down to seven percent, and that's the lowest rating that we found in terms of trust um highest being of people who say they trust local TV news. When you look at that gap, you have to wonder for the viability of

these platforms, UM. Are there measures that they need to take to ensure that they don't continue to decline as a way as the source that people go to to get information. Hey, Poppy, just got about a minute left here. What are you gonna be looking for after the elections? And I mean there's a lot of assumption that we may or may not have uh an answer come at the end of Tuesday night. But in terms of searches on the site, what kind of trends are you going

to be looking for? And just got about forty seconds here. Well, for sure, we're going to be following voting rates, so we are at fifty was the latest turn out an election? Does that increase? And what happens with mail voting intent of ballots were cast by mail? We're expecting that's going to tack up, and so we'll be looking at, um, what did participation look like by the numbers UM, as well as tracking with our Voters Center, UM, where did

people turn out to vote? And how did that compare to the candidates that we were seeing really get access on our platform? Is volume up on the platform just quickly? Absolutely? We're up two thousand percent to here in terms of traffic coming to go a see facts dot org. WHOA okay, um, great to check in with you Poppy, thank you so much,

a lot of data there and really informative. And again, facts matter, folks, and they are dealing with, you know, government facts and just pulling it together on really these major issues. Pappa McDonald, President of USA Facts, joining us on the phone from Hawaii.