¶ Rich Thau joins the Chuck ToddCast
Well, joining me now somebody I've known for a couple of decades, Rich Taw. He is a message guru, if you will, a market research tester, makes his living helping advocacy groups and trade associations test various messages to try to appeal to certain constituencies where I consume a lot of his work is for something called the Swing Voter Project.
It's something he does in conjunction with Axios. If you are a subscriber to those Axios newsletters and you've and you've seen analysis of the Biden Trump voter, or the Obama Trump voter, or the Obama Trump Biden Trump voter, it's all thanks to Rich here and he goes state by state. Tessed with him. I watch Sheep has a YouTube channel. It's there. He puts up highlights of his monthly swing voter groups that he does. There was one
in Michigan that I spent a lot of time. If you guys will recall those sophisticated listeners of my podcast have already heard me taut Rich's focus groups of Michigan. He's got some new ones in Pennsylvania, but he's probably arguably talked to more Biden Trump voters than anybody in America and probably has his pulse, his finger on the pulse of these voters as well as anybody. Rich hod I do promoting you on this one, and you know what, am I leaving.
Out ten out of ten? Perfect job, Thank you. It's an honor to be with you, Chuck. I really appreciate it.
And you're also doing a Decider's project which is very similar. Again, these are it's all qualitative research. It's focus groups, it's not polling. And I want to get into sort of those the differences in those techniques and the ability now
¶ The value of focus groups in understanding voter opinions
that you can focus we have larger and larger focus groups. At what point does it become quantitative instead of qualitative? We can talk about that, but you really are you really are a big You feel like you get a lot out of focus groups, don't you?
I do.
And the reason for that is a lot of people in research like to count heads.
I like to see what's inside people's heads.
And that's the distinction between quant and qual For me is I want to understand why people believe what they believe what they know, as opposed to guessing what they know, as supposed to me only saying well, seventy one percent believe this, twenty nine percent believe that.
No, it's it's I always say, the single most important question I try to answer all the time in political analysis is the why? Right? Why is at the core It's the single most important question I think that we try to answer in the political space. Well, let's just get Look, you started this. You've gone ten years now essentially doing these. I feel like you first started doing the Obama Trump voter focus groups back in the first Trump term. I did. So you're getting close to ten years of data now.
Aren't you? Not quite?
I'm getting closing in after March of twenty nineteen, So
¶ The pandemic made it easier to conduct focus groups remotely
I again, cause the first month we did it in person in Appleton, Wisconsin. In fact, for the first thirteen months from March of twenty nineteen through March of twenty twenty, we did them in person. I traveled between the East Coast and the Midwest month after month, and the pandemic
set in. We didn't miss a month. We just kept going and did them online and became a little bit easier to recruit because people didn't have to physically go to a location and we could get people from across an entire state as opposed to merely one town or one region in a state. So the pandemic actually tragic for so many people. Actually for us worked out well for this particular project.
Has this totally Before we get into sort of the substance of what you've been finding over the last few months is the entire focus group world changed to do in person focus groups matter anymore.
So, I think they matter.
A lot of the vendors who had facilities close them permanently because people were more than willing to do them online.
So it's a lot of change in that.
Particular to do it online right instead of you know, hanging out for a couple hours, even though you're getting paid at some office park, you know, in the suburbs.
Exactly.
Yeah, from a respondent perspective, it definitely was less work
¶ The challenges of remote focus groups
for them, although I should say it's more work for my team because we have to actually, if we want to do it right, pre qualify people not just in terms of their demographics and psychographics, but also their Internet connectivity. You know, literally do they have enough megabits to be on a zoom call for an hour and a half without freezing up over and over again. So we actually
literally test every person with a tech check. Well before you just had to show up and sit in a seat and you know, eat a turkey sandwich with some potato chips. So it's a very different type of experience from my team. But from the response perspective, you know they're in a comfortable spot. I have to worry about things like dogs barking and kids bothering people during the focus group, and I enjoy the experience more in person,
and I can moderate a larger group in person. I can do ten or twelve people in person, but ten or twelve boxes on a screen and zoom is impossible.
My max is like seven.
Well, look, I've conducted focus groups a few times myself. I've observed quite a few of them in person and
¶ How to prevent one loud person from hijacking a focus group
virtually and count me as a skeptic of the in person focus group. And here's why, Rich, And I'm curious how you factor this in. I think it's a lot easier for one person to hijack and in person focus group than it is a virtual focus group. And that's always the danger when you're doing this qualitative research, is it not.
Yeah, Well, the hijacking thing, you have to be super careful about that. So I'll give you away one of my big secrets, Chuck. I don't think I've ever said this publicly before. I have been trying to figure out I had been trying to figure out for years, how do you get the loudmouth person not to get recruited
into the focus group. And I didn't find a perfect solution, but I found something that I think anecdotally has worked, which is, we have a screening question that says, do you have any bumper stickers on your car that convey a political message? The idea being if you want the entire world to know what you believe politically so much so you're stuck it on the back bumper of your car, I probably don't want you in my focus group.
Interesting to use that as an eliminator.
I used that as eliminating.
Absolutely, absolutely love it. I love it. What a great eliminator question.
Yeah, so again, it's not perfect.
But the other thing is what's the quality of the moderating right, If you're a decent moderator, you know how to put the loudmouth person who happens to show up back in their corner, carefully, respectfully, repeatedly if necessary.
And I just find it's it takes practice.
There are techniques doing it, and if you're a crummy moderator, you can't do it, and the person dominates the conversation, and that's.
No, and then you've ruined the focus grip. I've ruined the focus So I've seen that. Look, it's why frankly a professional like yourself, Peter. I you know what, I The person I observed the most over the years was Peter Hart. Other than yourself. There's there's another prominent person out there who I think is a bit too leading in his focus group moderating at times, mister Lunce. And I'm very friendly with him. You are too. We like Frank.
¶ Can you be an effective moderator if people know who you are?
He is in some ways made focus groups great, right, made more people aware of them sometimes, I think, and I actually wonder, can you be an effective focus group moderator if people know who you are before it starts.
So I don't want to disparage Frank. I've known him again thirty plus years.
No, and he was arguably a pioneer in helping to make this a mainstream idea to study political habits.
And dial testing, which he popular which is kind of key thing I do in my message testing work.
Very important.
I think One reason why I have generally flown below the radar is that I want to be anonymous right to the people who who sit down in a focus group, and I've I've had focused group respondents come up to me and say that I'm somehow different from Frank Luntz, who were had where they had been responded in his group prior to being in mind and offline.
I'll tell you a very funny story. I don't want to repeat it public.
No, and again I don't I'm not We're not trying to pick on Frank here. But look, I found this difficult myself, right I And you know, in the in the world of network news, you know, they want you know, you want Chuck Todd and they're talking to voters, right
and you talk to independent voters. It was really hard sometimes to get them to to you know, not feel like they were talking to Chuck Todd and feeling like they were trying to make an answer that I might have in their own heads that I might quote unquote approve of or and it's just like no, no, no, no, It's like you don't you know I'm trying to you know, I'm trying to, you know, pretend I'm not here type
of mindset, and that's why I asked that. And I've wondered if Frank, in some ways you can't make the focus group about the moderator. That's my point, and I think that's where I have failed, and I'm guessing that Frank struggles sometimes with that.
Yeah, I think for me, I'm a boring ass, late middle aged white guy, and I am as vanilla as I can possibly be in the focus groups.
I am very good at a failure, not very vanilla.
¶ Do you check voter files to ensure people are swing voters?
But yes, you play vanilla well on TV.
Well, I do, because that's how you get the right answer. And also that's how you don't get accused of being biased, right, And I really do everything I can to try to again throw the pitch straight down the middle of the plate.
What is how do you verify? You know everybody wants to say they're a swing voter. Do you go to the voter file to verify these folks? I know you've got a recruiting team, is it, Sego? I think, does your recruiting for all of your focus group projects? Do you do voter file verification on these people?
So I do not let me tell you what we do do. So This is an imperfect process. I am the first person to admit it. It is impossible to know who voted for whom or whether they voted. It's possible to know whether they voted. It' impossible to know for whom they voted. No one was in the voting booth or sitting at the kitchen table with them if they voted at home. Right, So two parts of the recruiting process. Part one sego recruits them and does not ask them are you a swing voter? They ask who'd
¶ The screening process for focus group participants
you vote for in twenty twenty four, and then four years earlier, who'd you vote for.
In twenty twenty.
If they happen to say Trump and twenty four Biden in twenty, then they immediately make the first cut.
But that's not enough for me. I have a person on my team.
His name is Matt, and one of his jobs is to personally interview every single one of these swing voters before the focus group and say, okay, you said you voted for Trump and twenty four, why did you vote for Trump and twenty four? Why did you vote for Biden in twenty twenty? And if they can't give a plot pausible answer to those questions, they're not invited into the group.
We toss them overboard.
You don't try because another screening question I've heard is how did you vote in twenty twenty? Not who did you vote for? But do you remember how you voted and where you went to vote? I've heard sometimes that can be an effective screener question to find out if people are byes and you're not.
It could be, and maybe we'll start doing it now that you suggested it.
I mean, I think it's there's no Again, there's no perfect way of doing this. And note and what happens is people's memories fate. I mean, last year we did focus groups in twenty twenty four we were asking about their voting patterns in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty. You know, I don't remember what I had for breakfast two days ago.
Low and well, especially with COVID brain rich, we've all liked none. I can't remember anything in twenty nineteen and twenty fourteen are the same year to me. Sometimes, right, anything pre COVID is just a blur.
That's it.
Absolutely, and so again, no perfect way of doing this. The thing is people, well I think labels us to get at least. Something that I think is close to the most truthful answer that's out there is the fact that people don't know who or what category we're looking for.
If they knew we were looking for Trump voters, are looking for consistent Democratic voters, they would answer that way to get their one hundred and twenty five bucks, But not knowing what we're looking for, it gives them no reason to lie to us.
So one hundred and twenty five bucks a session, right, and that's what the time commitment is? What three hours? Two hours? What?
No? No, no, no, no, it's a total an hour and forty five minutes, fifteen minutes sort of warm up, and then ninety minutes of conversation.
Rich, you are going to have a whole bunch of my listeners are going to really one hundred twenty five bucks for less than two hours of work? Count me in.
It's a good deal.
Yeah, it's not a bad deal. Eighty bucks an hour? Huh a right, not quite yeah, pretty close, No, not quite that. What are we looking at? Sixty bucks an hour? But so yeah, not been a good money. Yeah, it's good. All right, let's dig in. You just did Pennsylvania and you're just doing the seven battleground states and you're literally going in a rotation every month. Yeah, it's not.
Quite a rotation, but it's where we were hitting each state at least once and most of them twice in the year.
Got it. So Michigan was the one you flagged a few to me there that was fascinating. And I keep talking about this one before we get into Pennsylvania, where we're going to play some clips for you folks, so
¶ Voters express anti-Trump comments but wouldn't change vote to Harris
get ready for that. The Michigan group from September. What stood out to me there was there was this one gentleman who was really concerned about the consolidation of power, the lack of checks on Trump, all of these things, thought he was being power hungry and wasn't ready to change their vote. Has that been a consistent finding? Are you starting to see that? Was there a consistency between Michigan and Pennsylvania on that issue?
So what's consistent is that not every month, but I've come across a number of those people who are giving very anti Trump comments but would not take Harris if they had to redo the vote. And it happened again this month in Pennsylvania. I send you a clip on that where I had a woman who said she disapproved of Trump.
I don't. Actually I have it here and I want to get into this a second, and let's let's you dove into it, but we're going to play the clip for folks.
I disapprove because number one, he's a felon. I don't think a fellon should be president of the United States. He's a pathological liar. This ice thing is getting out of control. If is getting out of control. The government is shut down, and I don't think that he's doing enough for the people. Prices or sky high like.
Insurance premiums are going to be going up, and I think that he could do something about it.
Okay, Brenda, my part of my job is to play devil's advocate. So if you love me in a second, to let me ask you a question. So you mentioned that he's a convicted felon. He was a convicted felon before the election. What you voted for him knowing he was a convicted felon? So why are you holding that against him now?
I guess, well, he there should have been something in place in the constitution. I know what you're asking me, but I don't know it didn't bother me then, but now it is because there's so many things coming out, like you know, with the Maxwell files and all these things. So I think the Constitution should have done a better job by saying number one, that he had no political experience at all, and that the other thing is a.
Convicted brend I'm sorry, I'm me to be argumentative at all, but he had been president for four years. He had experience when you voted for him again last November.
Right, yeah, so I'm I'm I'm some a bit confused, like why did you choose him over Kamala Harris?
Because I thought the heme was better that I didn't particularly like her, so between the two, it was like I had to go with him because I didn't like her.
You insert yourself and say, you know, he was a convicted felon before you voted for him in twenty twenty four, and then Rich she goes through this Hammin and Han and she basically like, I just couldn't vote for Kamala harr.
Yeah, Now, Brenda was awesome. That was quite an exchange. She really had a lot of reasons why she didn't approve and some of them had nothing to do with her vote. Because she's just complaining. Also, he didn't have experience, And I said, well, he served for four years as president. You can't say in twenty twenty four he didn't have experience, right. So but really, what it came down to for her
was she couldn't vote for Harris. And what I keep encountering your earlier point is that there are folks who twist themselves into pretzels to justify not choosing Harris then and not choosing Harris now if they could revote, they just for a variety of reasons, cannot abide her and will take anything from Trump.
Richard, Are we going to talk around the elephant in the room? Right? I mean, it's hard not to wonder if this had to do with her being a black woman.
Well, so you've got multiple issues there, right, You've got woman of color, person of color, and female. So I've
¶ Voters will twist themselves into pretzels for why they couldn't vote Harris
come across in the course of the last year plus, people who wouldn't vote for her because she was female, who told me.
Explicitly that they wouldn't vote for her because she was.
Female, People who danced around the race issue. But certainly I suspected from the comments that they that was the reason.
Well, that's funny like, look, Brenda's it's one of those. She says, I thought he was better than I didn't particularly like her, so between the two, it was like I had to go with it because they didn't like
¶ Many voters wouldn't vote Harris due to her race and gender
her like she doesn't. She can't can't articulate why she doesn't like her.
Yeah, and keep in mind, Brent is a woman of color, so super super interesting, and I've got I.
Don't know what to make of that. That's fair.
Yeah, well, but I can tell you what to make of it. To me, it's fractly pretty straightforward. For some of these folks I spoke to, they are either deeply religious or deeply conservative socially, they think that men should be in control, men should be in power, women should not, and.
Biden was somebody they could vote for. But Clinton and Harris may have been literally simply their gender may have been the disqualifier for these voters.
It would have been a large part of the consideration, along with By the way, a lot of these folks thought that Biden failed and she was part of a failed administration, and they didn't want to have their fingerprints on that for the next four years.
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¶ Gender was a disqualifier for Clinton & Harris
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law on your cell phone. And remember all law firms are not the same, So check out Morgan and Morgan. Their fee is free unless they win. I look at the twenty twenty four campaign. You know and there's different ways people want to interpret it. I was actually relieved
to know that voting was normal. It is normal to me that people simply vote against and vote on the economy like that has been you know, That's how you and I were professionally raised in politics, right Rich, Like that is how it worked in the eighties and the nineties and the odds, Like, that's just how it worked. Only recently have we made all these other issues in there, and you're like, oh, wait a minute, post COVID voters
are starting to behave we're more normally again. It's about finances, it's about competency.
It is and I will say on whether you have E clip on this also.
But one thing that we uncover month after month is that the dissatisfaction with Trump among these Biden to Trump voters, among those who are dissatisfied with him now, it's mostly tied, not exclusively, but mostly tied to the state of the economy and how they're struggling, and how they see a billionaire who doesn't need to have to worry about these things, not addressing the concern that most matters to them.
Doesn't affect him. Simple he's not feeling the effects of it. So when you're not directly impacted by something, even if it's going on around you, you tend not to worry about it. He's too busy playing hopscotch in Russia. I don't know, he's just not worried about anything over here.
Well, I think that he's more focused overall on the economy as a whole. He's focused on using tariffs and carpet bombing with tariffs to try to force deals, which he hopes eventually will address inflation. But it's not he thinks he's going to bring jobs back by forcing these tariffs. It's almost an unforced error. If he was focusing on one place than another with his tariffs, it wouldn't hurt
as bad. But he just has to hit everybody all once, all at the same time with them, and it's causing mayhem with prices of goods and services overall.
What I find remarkable is how much they're following the day to day on tariffs like these. Weren't uninformed voters about the current state of the economy, which if I were in the Trump white House that would really make me nervous. They're following this tariff stuff fairly closely.
So one of the great fascinations I have with the
¶ Voters are following tariff news very closely
project now compared to a year ago when I was doing then Trump to Biden voters as supposed to now Biden to Trump voters, was that I would ask Biden voters people vote for him in twenty twenty, please name, if you could, one thing that President Biden has achieved in office that he himself would call an achievement. So I didn't want a snarky answer like, oh, he achieved high inflation. I didn't want so, okay, So the people would stop, and about roughly half each time I asked
¶ Nearly half of voters couldn't name a Biden achievement
it could not name a single thing that Biden had achieved in office that he himself would call an achievement. And among those who could name something, way disproportionately it was the same topic student loan relief.
No kidding, now, infrastructure, which was actually probably the best to achievement he got.
You know, chuck It says, though infrastructure never happened, chips never happened, Relief Act never happened, Inflation Reduction Act never happened. So for them, I want you imagine the mind of
¶ Only Biden achievement voters were aware of was student debt relief
a swing voter. Now I'll get to the Trump point about it in a second. The comparison. So you're thinking about President Biden, you're thinking, okay, so he's basically slept through the last three and a half years. One time they came to him with an executive order, he signed it trying to relieve student debt, and that's all he did.
And that's your conception of him.
Trump comes in and suddenly he's in the news constantly, He's in your social media feed constantly, and if you have voted for him, you're like, finally someone is doing something. So it's the bias toward action versus the disapproval of inertia, which is what they associated with Biden. And I can't tell you how many times this year I've heard about Trump.
¶ Voters think that Trump is at least doing something
At least he's doing something. Whether they like it or not. They still like the fact that there's action as opposed to Biden's inertia.
No, I've always said that what's interesting, there's always motion with Trump. The question is is their movement. Like I have always said, I feel like life with Trump, covering him is literally like being on a roller coaster because you get on and off in the same place.
Well, but that's from your perspective, getting as close to the process as you are.
You see that. I think that nuance is lost with the folks that I'm talking to.
So, you know, Trump's his flair for the dramatic. His ability to sign his name in huge bowld letters with a big sharpie and to hold it up. That looks like action to someone who didn't happen to see Biden signing these multi trillion dollar bills into law, and Trump's doing it repeatedly. The image of him in the Oval Office is him holding up some leather binder with his big signature on it and then boasting about it.
And for people I talked to, that's action.
You know, it's interesting Rich to take a step back here. Biden really was an outlier of the last thirty years in how they conducted that presidency. When I think about the image management of the you know, Michael Deaver and Ronald Reagan right when when I was you know, and how you know, I basically we in college we studied Michael Deaver as image management in my political science classes. Bill Clinton was clearly always you know, some you know
people say he was. We would borrow some of Reagan's gestures and stuff, and he had he was always performing George W. Bush. They were very image conscious. It ended up biting them in the butt with the mission accomplished thing at one point. But again, it was about the visuals. It was about always, you know, showing showing him and what they wanted to put him in the best possible light. Barack Obama was really very much engaged that way. Trump too. Biden was the out liar. And I guess it's a
¶ Biden wasn't built for the modern media, couldn't message his wins
combination of old COVID, right, you sort of put all those together, and you know, I wonder if if the Democrats are overrating their problems. Basically, they just had a nominee that just wasn't built for the modern media age.
Now, to me, he dealt with the media the way Jerry Ford dealt with the media, which is seriously, I mean.
It was make that a Jerry Ford reference. You're probably losing, right.
Yeah, exactly that.
I'll sign a bill, have a ceremonial, We'll invite the three major networks and everybody will know about it, and lo and behold, they didn't. And I have a whole montage I can show it to you someday of swing voters in during Biden's term having no idea what was going on in terms of process in Washington, achievements. Did no idea he worked on climate change, no idea about infrastructure, No, didn't know it. Who served on the January sixth committee. I mean, just go down the list of stuff they
just didn't pay attention to. And so the challenge it's really obviously we're dancing around the term. It's the attention
¶ Trump has mastered the attention economy
economy we're living in that Trump has mastered it. Biden never mastered it. And I would argue if the Democrats have any chance of winning anything again, they have to learn how to master it, because that's the world we're living in where people are distracted constantly and Trump manages to break through it, and you've got to.
You know, it's interesting because I'll have my friends in the left say it's you. People in the media didn't do enough to showcase Biden, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm like, you know, if you actually do all your Google searching up, there's plenty of coverage of everything you did. What was missing was Biden trying to amplify the coverage himself.
And I think, what you know, what just about everybody in corporate America is doing I assume you have a for profit client list these days who are thinking the
¶ Candidates can't rely on the media to communicate for them
same thing, which is you've got to take it. You've got to do your own communicating. You can't rely on legacy media, free media anymore. And if you are, you're losing, right, anybody that does that, whether you're a politician or your Coca cola right, you've got you know, Bud Light found out the hard way. Right, You've got to be take advance. You've got to proactively do your own communicating. This is
not all the media's job, is this or this? We're all the media now, including the communications shop of the White House. And I think in that this is where Biden's entire operation was a relic. Yeah.
I mean, you're personally way more entrepreneurial about this than the entire White House was in the last administration. So I mean that's the difference, and I think people have to understand that. And the thing was a lot of people follow the Swing Voter project, people on the left,
people on the right. There are folks in the Biden administration I know paid attention to what I was producing each month, and it was abundantly clear from these highlights videos I put out that the message wasn't getting through, and I was always mystified by this. Now it wasn't just me. Obviously, I'm just one guy out there. I'm
not tied to the administration. I mean, Republicans like what I do too, But my god, like, really, month after month, I'm discovering that no one knows about your multi trillion dollar legislative achievements. How is that not something that you're solving for? I was, again, just a question I'm asking. Let's put it that.
Way, all right. I want to do another excerpt here because this is a little counterintuitive to what I think conventional wisdom is these days, is whether Trump is exercising more executive power trying to consolidate the presidency. We've had the no King's rally, right, is this penetrating? Is this
an issue? So let's play this exchange. You have Kaylana h Anthony D Jim b All responding here on this question of the simple question you asked, was you know, do you see Trump exercising more power than Biden, Obama and Bush. So let's let's sen know those answers.
I mean, they've all deported people, They've all, you know, done different things. But I mean, maybe not in the same towards the same topic, but I think generally as a whole, Dave, he's about the same with executive power.
Okay, Anthony, what about you?
Similar to what was said that, I think that, but being in the president, he has ultimate authority similar to what the other roles were as well with the other previous presidents. Maybe he's more vocal saying it, but I think I don't see any difference with what they were able to do and what they've done.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden had more executive orders than any president by numbers.
I'm sorry.
George Bush and Barack Obama had more executive orders than anyone they had. I mean, George Bush used the nine to eleven bombing to push consolidate power in the presidency. Barack Obama did it because he had pretty much everyone behind him for whatever he did. So those two definitely, if not more the same amount.
I'll tell you what's interesting here, Rich, is that they they all think it's no different than Obama or Bush in particular, and even Biden to an extent. Yeah.
So the thirteen people I had in Pennsylvania, about half
¶ Voters thought Obama & Biden overreached as much as Trump
of them thought he was exercising more, but about half of them thought it was the same amount as these prior presidents. And as just noted in these clips, they're basically saying, well, you know, Obama did this executive thing, and Biden did this thing, and they're comparing what they see Trump doing to what these prior presidents doing, and
they don't detect a qualitative difference. And to me, that was so fascinating is that the media is constantly talking about how Trump is breaking all these norms, but they don't see that. They see Trump as just being part of a continualum of presidents doing things they shouldn't be doing.
Let me let me posit something here for you to take in, which is whether it was amplify. Fine, I'm going to connect something here from the one thing Biden that you said voters took away from what they thought Biden accomplished with student loans. What's interesting about that topic that happens to be a topic that the right also amplified when he did it. When I look at executive power with Bush, Obama and Biden, and Trump, the party out of power would amplify anytime that they thought they
were over using their power. Bush with FISA and all of that, Obama with his executive orders, Biden with what he did. You know, it seems as if the only way these swing voters actually get an idea of what a president does is not only how they amplify it,
¶ Trump's consolidation of power doesn't seem unusual to swing voters
but how the opponents amplify it. And this strikes me as while maybe we as sort of more neutral Washington pros and understand how executive power works, and yeah, Trump really is consolidating power way we haven't seen before, because that accusation has been out there about, you know, from the right on Obama and Biden and from the left on Bush and Trump. It is not unusual to the average swing voter, is it.
It's not. I think that's a brilliant observation.
And having your actions defined by your enemies means that you don't necessarily have control of that narrative. It's obviously it's coming from the people who disagree with you. And it could easily be the case that the people who I talk to who are unhappy with Trump's executive actions are getting their news from sources that are amplifying that in a way that the people who aren't bothered by his actions.
Yeah, yeah, reaction are you seeing. Is that a pattern that you noticed when you started this back in twenty nineteen, that in some way what breaks through is not just what is what the opponents are also talking about, that that's ultimately what breaks through is when you actually engage, when you get both positive coverage and negative coverage.
Yeah, it's hard to chuck because the the I ask people every month where they get their news from traditional media, whether they get it from social media, and this splintering
¶ Many voters are getting their news exclusively from social media
and the splintering has been around since the beginning of the project. People get their news from a variety of sources, but more and more of them are telling me they're getting in the news mostly or exclusively from social media sources. So I'm finding that the universe that they're in is just totally different from the news consumption that you may have or I may have. And the idea that someone never looks at a traditional media outlet ever and they get their news from TikTok.
If a war broke out, you know, my first inclination.
Would be, let's go and see how NBC or CNN is covering it or Fox. Why How could you just be looking at TikTok videos? If the United States is attacked.
Well, let me reassure you about something. Actually, I was involved with a conference called Trust in Media and where it's more about trust in the entire information ecosystem, working with a group of folks who come actually from the national security space, people that worked in the first Trump term, who were worried about the health of the information ecosystem. Right,
this is bigger than just journalism. And so we had a presentation John Delavope, who's done a lot of gen Z and millennial work, one of the notations and Edelman also did a presentation that when there is breaking news, when there is a huge story, that there is still a desire to go to a main, a legacy news source, and that even among gen Z or millennials, the only almost the one time that they will check into those sources is if something big is happening, right, a big moment,
they think, oh, I better go check that out. Right, there's a shooting or there's a storm or something like that. So it's not all TikTok yet, right, I mean I was. I was oddly reassured that younger folks, who are almost mostly getting their stuff and essentially curating their own media, is what I call it it's self curation. Some of it is legacy, but they don't know that it's legacy. Right. They follow somebody specifically who just happens to work at
a legacy media company. Right. But I was I thought that was interesting, So I take your point there. But it does feel like when the chips are down, they think, oh, those big companies have the resources to do live reporting right now. Right, there's still that perception out there.
Yeah, I guess I question is how often does that happen given their lack of knowledge of all the things that Biden did for four years that were widely covered
¶ Swing voters completely miss the process part of government
when they happened. That's why, and particularly Chuck, the things that get missed by my swing voters are process related things, legislation getting passed in Congress, things being signed into law, and emotional hearings.
That's the they never happened for most of these folks.
All right, Well, here's I'm gonna the last clip we're going to play here is as a this is this to me is the probably one of your favorite questions because you just find out what is breaking through? You asked us each month, what question would you ask President Trump if you could ask him anything. So let's play all the responses here.
But ask why so many lies.
About everything?
I would ask him what he's doing for the economy.
That was a big part of his campaign promise, and I don't see any difference steam files.
What about the Epstein files?
Would you want to know?
Why aren't they released?
I might ask him how much controled donors have over his decisions.
I'd ask him how he managed to get the hostages out of Gaza, But ask.
What he thinks is the biggest threat to the United States right now?
Why do you love Russia so much?
Are you in the Epstein as I.
Would ask if you would handle January sixth different if he had the chance.
To, do you really care about people and everything we're going through?
Will he ever learn to not attack every person that disagrees with him?
¶ If voters could ask Trump anything, Epstein question most common
Is there a way to benefit financially him and his billionaire buddies without attacking the poor?
All right, let's see Epstein shows up once twice, three times? That's interesting? What breaks through that Epstein broke through a little bit of Russia campaign donor stuff? What shocked you?
So here's what I take away from this exercise. I've been this has been happening month over a month. So I in this group, I think I mentioned six basically approve of Trump's actions in office, seven disapproved.
It's about the ratio we're on, right, It's about that right, It's like a forty five fifty five ratio, depending on the all you use exactly.
But among the people who approve of what he is doing, they still made a number of very negative comments or ask negative questions when I asked them to come up with a question for the president, so they could have asked questions like what makes you such an effective leader? Or how did you broker such an amazing deal in the Middle East? Go down all these lists of questions that would have been indicative of an appreciation.
And advarratious one. I mean it was one, Carolyn m I'd ask him how he managed to get the hostages out of Gaza. Okay, feels like a supportive type of question.
That's one, But the rest of them are all basically negative. And to me, what it suggests is that while they approve of his performance in office, among those who approve, there are still very significant lingering doubts. And it's it's almost like making a bee line to their psyche when it comes to how they feel about Trump, What question would you ask skip.
If I were a democratic strategy here trying to figure out how do I win over these voters. I sit here and I look at these questions, and I'm sure, I think I can do this with every one of your proofs, and I'd be like, oh my god. They
¶ Swing voters bake in the worst things about Trump and vote for him anyway
know everything I would use against him. They know he's kind of in the hands of Russia, they know he's kind of in the hands of big rich people. They know all these things, and they vote for him. Anyway, What would you tell a client that thought, well, these people must not know these things, and it's like, oh, no, they do, and they don't approve of them either, but they still voted for him. What do you take away from that?
Well, what I take away from that is that a lot of their focus is on things that they say when you ask them about it matters somewhat, but don't get to the nub of what really is bothering them and what is bothering them the most right now, if
¶ Biggest concern of swing voters is the economy and cost of living
I had to broadly generalize among those people who are struggling, is his performance on the economy and the idea that he is a billionaire who promised to get inflation under control and they're still struggling to make ends meet. Go back to the thing we were talking about earlier on the economy, and how that is sort of the traditional issue that regulates how people feel the economy comes up organically in the conversations, Chuck when I ask them, what.
Issue not the only issue that comes up organically.
It's not the only one.
Immigration comes up, mostly in an approving way, but sort of often the times I like what he's doing, I don't like how he's doing it.
That is the theme of most of these groups. For me, that's what I always take away, and I'm always very careful. I'm like, you know, what democrats don't understand is voters like his goals. They don't like his execution.
Yeah, they don't.
The way I try to analogize Trump, who have struggled to understand why.
People like him or approve of him, I shouldn't.
I'm just going to say, these people don't like them, but vote for him. This is different, right, we don't like them. And yet you know, it's like Aaron Sorkin wrote, you want me on that wall in deep dark corners at the parties, you don't want to admit to your friends, right, Like it's the Jack Nicholson monologue from a few good.
Men, Yeah, exactly.
And so the analogy I use is a little bit different, is like a medical analogy. So the reputation that surgeons have, for example, of not being warm and fuzzy.
Kind of jerky. Yeah, yeah, I know it all. It's god complex, et cetera.
Exactly.
But at the end of the day, if they know how to take out that infected whatever it's in your body, and they do that, right, who cares if they're and you know what, I just I just want to make sure they can do the job that I hired them to do, which is in this case, for example, get illegal aliens out of the country, or push back on
unfair trade practices from other countries. Those are the kinds of things that they're willing to tolerate a lot of his behavior in order to get the ends that they want. And so that's that's why you get this response. But but to me, you know, for a lot of the folks I'm talking to, the vote between Trump and Harris
¶ Swing voters viewed both Harris and Trump as unpleasant choices
last year, to draw another analogy out was like being a thirsty person who has to choose between drinking wheat grass juice and castor oil. You have to drink something because you're really thirsty, but whatever you choose is going to be unpleasant. It tastes like ba right blah, and afterwards, having drunk it, you're going to think, I really have to drink that.
And that's how they feel.
It's not that they one was was highly preferable to tell he was two unpleasant choices.
And and the outcome is likely to leave you in the bathroom. Now, where do we take this? Going all the way right now?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, stop yeah. Let me ask one other question about these groups this year, and I assume any
¶ No Democrats are breaking through positively to swing voters
Democrats breaking through in a positive way to these voters.
No.
And I have to tell you if you if we were doing a little thesaurus dot com right now and typed in the word contempt and ask for every synonym for the word contempt, those are the adjectives these folks used to describe how they feel about the Democratic Party. Not only that, to your question directly, there's no Democrat
on the horizon that gets them excited. They're not paying a lot of attention to the to the presidential race, in twenty twenty eight, I did show them a Gavin Newsom social media post mocking the president's style.
They they thought it was not genuine, not that words.
¶ Swing voters didn't like Gavin Newsom's trolling social posts
They thought it was real, like he had done it, but they thought he was basically taking.
The President's style, trying too hard.
It's trying too hard. But also that only Trump knows how to do this.
Well, Newsom is kind of faking it by doing it, by taking on the Trump style, and they saw right through it.
So I think that's a great warning for people. I think the because I have some sources on the left to think, hey, I want to find my own Trump. I'm like, do you are you sure? I don't know if Americans want Trump light, and I don't know if they want to. Sometimes you don't want more a derivative of something you maybe only wanted to have once.
Anyway, Well, and some would argue that Governor DeSantis found that out the hard way the Republican primary.
Right, No, you know it. What people want is Trump's personality more than the policies. Yeah, And I think that's the that's the probably the hard the hardest thing for political strategist to accept in this in this current conversation.
I got to tell you, Chuck, I've been at the focus group business now for twenty four years. I've moderated well more than a thousand focus groups in the course of my career and going back well before Trump was ever a nominee ever on the politic will scene at all. I'm talking about two thousand and eight, twenty twelve whatever. I kept turing over and over again from people center right. We want somebody who fights. Republicans don't fight, They give
up too easily. The Democrats are constantly all over them. The Democrats know how to fight, Republicans don't know how to fight. And Trump scratched an itch. He scratched the itch of somebody who's willing to fight for them.
Well, now are the left that's that? Now it's the left that's complaining that Democrats don't know how to fight exactly.
That's the thing I always found hilarious is that Democrats think that Republicans fight better. Republicans think the Democrats fight better. And I've heard this in groups, separate groups and over the course of years, and it's always amazed me that neither one has an appreciation for their own ability to fight and an overestimation of the other side's ability to fight.
That's always so true. And ultimately, you know, it's whichever side is presiding over a better economy is the better fighter. It's funny that it works, right, It's it's it's sometimes that's does anybody else pop positively? Forget Democrats? I mean, when you you know, you know, is there is there admiration for Silicon Valley or skepticism? Is there? You know? Is this rise in sort of you know, Steve Bannon
¶ Are swing voters skeptical of big tech and consolidated power
and I had a I had interviewed Bannon a few months ago, and you know, so he said, you know, I was asking him why he and Lena Kahan have something in common, and his his thesis was, well, we're both skeptical when of consolidated power. And I thought that that was a pretty fair that that is what what we ignites the Sanders voter and the Trump voter. Is that, right, a bit of skepticism of the powerful institutions. Are these voters that are they the are they the skeptics or are they something else?
I wouldn't describe them as being I mean, they're definitely skeptical, So yes to that question.
No doubt that the vote against. They're not vote for us, right, they vote against there are They feel like people that decided who not who they couldn't stomach as president, not necessarily voting for who they preferred.
Yeah.
I like to describe them as serial presidential monogamous. You know about the terms, you know, serial date, serial monogamous,
¶ Swing voters are easily dissatisfied and looking for someone new
you date one person break.
I was accused of that over the years. Okay, well I never could date multiple. I never understood my friends who could do that. I'm like, I don't know, I can't do it. So I was a serial monogamous.
Yeah, So these are serial presidential monogamous, meaning they dated
¶ Biden & Trump pardons have enraged swing voters
George W. Bush, they got sick of him, they chose Obama, they got sick of Obama, they chose Trump, they got sick of Trump, they got they chose Biden, and then they some of them were so sick of Biden they actually went back to Trump again.
Gave them a second chance. But there they are. There.
Their loyalty to any presidential candidate or president is a shallow as a as a tip of a pin.
And it sounds like they're always looking for something new, always.
That is, that's absolutely what they want. They are.
They're easily dissatisfied, easily put off. And the thing that amazed me back in twenty twenty one was how quickly they bailed on Biden, you know, And I'd asked them how they felt about Biden in.
The first three or four months.
I feel, I'm feeling relief, I'm feeling proud, I'm feeling calm. And then within a few months it was like, yeah, I mean they just one thing, obviously, it is Afghanistan, the delta variant, and then they were done. And for three and a half years he could not win them back, so they were merciless toward him. Some could argue that that was basically an unforced error on Biden's part, but these folks did never went back.
This year very different. Every month.
The number of people who are approving or disapproving of Trump is fluctuating endlessly, and there's no consistency from month to month. And I'll have some higher levels of approval one month, lower levels the next. There's no seeming pattern in terms of what direction it's going. I can tell you roughly, since February, just under sixty percent say they still approve of the job he's doing. But that's again February's responds versus aprils versus July versus now, So you know it's the timing.
When I asked it. I didn't ask all of.
Them, just in the laste anything consistent about the people in his orbit. Kennedy, Vance Rubio, and Haig Seth are arguably the most prominent members in Trump's orbit. Christy Nome, maybe Stephen Miller. Do any of these folks pop in these groups?
Most of these folks are not familiar with most of these people I asked. I've asked about Robert Kennedy Junior a couple of times, and healthcare policy. They were split between approve of Kennedy, disapprove of Kennedy, don't know what he's doing, so it was kind of shallow For those who do support. They want to see America be healthier again, so the MAHA theme is important to them, but they get very sketchy when you start talking about making it
harder to get vaccinations and those types of things. They're willing to go along, but just not as far as Trump is going.
So if I were watching these focus groups and I wanted to help Bill McRaven become president, and when the presidency is an independent, what would I what what what? What would my advance? What would your advice be to a I say Bill McRaven, because he's my avatar of what a what a potential you know sort of uh, you know, mythical independent figure that that might be able to break through. I think somebody with a military background. YadA, YadA, YadA.
That's my thesis. Whether it's true or not, it's a whole nother story. But if you were thinking about trying to run outside the two party system right now, because there's such deep sort of distrust of is there something to glean from these voters or are they are they are? They just not gonna They're just not gonna be They're just going to keep picking between the two parties.
That's a great question.
I'm not sure necessarily that they are rushing to have a third party alternative. When I asked about no labels a couple of years ago, when that was still part of the conversation, there was a hesitation there to get involved in those kinds of things, thinking that you'd be
tossing the vote away. But for me, I think they what I would encourage people who want to break through center independent like you're describing left or right is I would try to be raising some issues that I know matter to people that are not part of the conversation right now. So, for example, when I asked about Biden's age, people would tell me, and I asked two questions, what is the ideal age for someone to be president and what's the oldest acceptable age for someone to be president?
The ideal age was basically early the mid fifties. The oldest acceptable age was in the mid sixties on average.
When I asked that, I.
Rarely do I get an age above seventy as being oldest acceptable. We now have a president who's almost eighty years old. We just had one who ended at eighty two. I would be taught talking about things like setting age limits for presidents as part of a constitutional amendment. I think that would be an important thing to do.
You can break through with these with with you that actually might connect with voters, I think.
After having process.
I asked that skeptically, because as much as ires a lot of process things I'd like to fix about our democracy, it's hard to get mass interest in some of these things.
I would say generally yes in the and in the absence of having very old presidents for what for us could easily be twelve years of presidents over the age of seventy five, seventy or seventy five.
It's remarkable.
I think in that context people might be you know, what I'm done, and I think and the other thing I would say is, and again I'm going to ask this. I haven't de gone that deep into it yet, but I plan to. Is the whole issue of pardons and having the president have unfettered pardoning power. I can tell you that the pardons from Biden as he left office and the part that Trumps has given people since he took office have enraged a number of these swing voters.
You know, it's interesting. Corruption is always when you look at big swings that we've had in midterm elections in particular, corruption has actually always been one of the through lines. There's like been an economy and you know, because it's a way to Hey, they're so worried about their friends.
They're not focused on your bottom line. They're so worried about this, right, there's this you know, you so a through line of to me, if you're going to have a successful midterm, if you're the out party, you need a little bit of corruption messaging against the party in power in order to have some success. But I've had this thesis that the reason it doesn't work against Trump is these voters already think the whole system is corrupt. Yeah,
he's corrupt, but the entire systems corrupt. Every president does is a little bit corrupt, So they don't have the same gag reflects maybe that some of us do watching what Trump does.
Yeah, I just wonder whether at the end of a second Trump term, folks who constantly tell me how mistrustful they are of politicians exactly as you just described, whether at some point something happens where they say, you know what, this, what we've just had in the last twelve years has not worked for us, and they react to it viscerally to the point where someone who's able to make this case is able to make it meaningfully and wants to actually put it at the top of the national agenda.
I don't again, to me, this is going We need to see the polling on it. We have to see after the polling shifts and moves more in this direction of the course of Trump's second term. But to me, I'm getting a sense that if what Trump has promised doesn't come to pass for the people who voted for him, and that what Biden promised didn't come to ask for them when they voted for him and saw what happened
in his four years. Does that create an opening for your independent candidate or some reform minded R or D to say, you know what, it's time for a generational shift.
I mean, you know what's going to happen.
We're not going to have We're not going to elect
¶ Voters could be looking for another major change in 2028
another eighty year old president in twenty eight.
We may elect our youngest president ever type of mindset.
Yeah, we have our first millennial president. We'll skip over gen X altogether. Right, let's start it on that. I know, yeah, but that's rude, Jenny.
But that's but the thing.
But I guess the point is with that comes the opportunity to make changes and the other thing we're overdue for if you really know, I just haven't started yet. Joel Lapor's new book on the Constitution is that you know,
¶ Voters could be open to several new constitutional amendments
you know, constitutional changes happen in spurts.
They they're clustered together.
There are a few short periods of time where you get three or four amendments all at once, and we haven't had one of these in a very long time.
And in fact, I mean this is sort of my people. You know, people ask me, I'm always say I'm short term pessimistic, long term optimistic. And this is the reason if you I think we're loosely in the in you know, in the in the repeat, you know, sort of repeating the early twentieth century. And you know, our response to consolidated power, big business, robber barons getting too close with government was women's suffrage, giving women the right to vote,
direct election of senators, and the income tax. All of that was designed essentially to start to tackle this sort of you know, industrial barons that were sort of dominating our lives then. And arguably it's the last time we
really did a lot of constitutional maintenance, right. Yeah, we did the twenty second Amendment, you know, after FDR, and we gave we lowered the voting aged eighteen, but those weren't sort of societal ills type of thing, right versus that, I mean, you're right, we basically we've only really had three big periods of amending the constitution. This the beginning the Civil War and essentially right before the New Deal.
Yeah, and I think if the frustrations that people are feeling need an outlet, and we can identify the things that are most angering and frustrating people that we could easily see another one of those periods coming up.
And you know, it's funny it, you know, we may be stumbling upon it. It's like if you're going to try to run outside the system, right, if you're going to run against both parties in some form, right, and you may do it within one of the two parties, or you run as a third party independent calling for this constitutional convention so that we can you know, keep seventy year olds out of the White House, and you
¶ Pardon power could be shifted from president to a board
know do campaign you know, you know, put campaign finance guardrails in here. Maybe undoe presidential pardons. Create a pardon board, right, so that there isn't you know, essentially we've decided it turns out that the founders were on this one presidential pardon was a mistake, and here's a better way to do it. And you create almost a pardon board where you still allow for executive pardons, but they actually have to pass through a committee. It isn't just a singular person,
which many states do. By the way, where we've especially where there have been scandals. There's a famous Fred Thompson became an actor because of a pardon scandal in the state of Tennessee in the seventies. They couldn't find the guy to play Fred Thompson, so they asked Fred Thompson to play himself, and his acting career took off from there. It's one of my favorite little little pieces of Hollywood
political trivia. But boy, you know, talking with you on this reform and corruption, you know you still got to
¶ Reform and corruption could be a powerful message
talk about the economy, but you might be able to break through a little bit with reforming and corruption. It sounds like at least that's what you're thinking.
I'm thinking that and also tying the two together. Right, why are people struggling? It's because these vested interests are holding you back. They're charging you too much, They're making your life miserable in terms of customer service.
I mean, we haven't Chuck, Chuck, We've talked for an hour now, we still have having talked about AI, right, And so.
It's so funny. I'm this is and maybe I'm going to give you a few ideas, or maybe you've already done this. So one of my favorite when I have an audience. I'll you know, when I start talking about people will ask a question about AI. I'll quickly ask is. I'll say, how many of you would pay extra to have a human handle customer service? And literally two thirds of the room. Well, I've done this now for the last few months, and there's always a majority of the
room raises their hand. That a willingness to pay extra for a human being? It actually is. I am weirdly optimistic about the AI effication of the Internet because it may be the thing that gets us outside of our screens. The more online is artificial, the more we're going to crave humanity. We already are craving it in the customer service by my anecdotal you know, And I imagine if you started to ask and all your focus scripts, I
¶ Candidates will need a good answer for AI
imagine you get the same response. We hate some computer or robot thinking they know what we're talking about, right like it just it just drives us nuts, even if the robot might have the better answer, right it just we're human beings. So no, I'm convinced that you can't run for president in twenty eight without an answer to the fear of AI displacement.
Yeah, I read your recent post about this. I thought it was brilliant in terms of how it's getting politicized. The analysis was absolutely spot on. Anybody who hasn't read it, I would ask you to post it with your show notes here because I think it's a great piece, really important, and I think whichever party figures this out first is going to have a huge advantage.
Because the frustration.
And I gotta tell you, Chuck, I asked Swing voters about AI couple months ago. Yeah, and the thing that came up was the loss of humanity exactly.
You're that's the biggest thing that scares.
Them it which again, that to me is gives me hope because we're going to crave in person. I think it's going to put a premium on in person. Again, it's going to put a premium on seeing things for yourself. In fact, I almost wondering, are we going to have retail stores back where you don't necessarily buy the product there,
¶ Regional trends in swing voters?
but you want to see and touch the product before you order it online and have it delivered to your house. Yeah.
Well, you're seeing this touch grass movement right, people sing, getting kids out and outdoors and touching the grass because touching their screens isn't real. Yeah, there's a lot of this stuff going on. I just to me, the question is does how far is it AI able to penetrate the population because it's so useful to the people that they give up some of these more tangible things in reality, and that time will tell how.
That plays out. All right, let me get you out of here on this. One of my One of the things I lament is the loss of regionalism, meaning the suburb of Grand Rapids is no different than a suburb of Roanoke. Right. You know, people in Atlanta have more in common with people in Milwaukee than people in Atlanta have, and north with people in Northwest Georgia et cetera, et cetera.
Did world Wisconsin versus Milwaukee, et cetera. You are the seven swing states, you have the three Midwesterns, you have the two Western and you have the essentially the two sun Belt Any regionalism, you're just there anymore? Or are all these voters in somewhat you know, homogenized American suburbanites.
Uh, They're mostly homogenized with odd flavors that will come out at odd moments. So with Arizona swing voters, you'll still get a little bit of the Barry gold Water Ish.
Arizona's got a little libertarian, a little more libertarian in them than most of the other states.
Right, Yes, so you have more more of that with the Pennsylvanians. Part.
The southeastern Pennsylvanian is just a very low level of trust and belief in anything that anyone says.
Wow.
I found that over the years. In this region. It's super super skeptical. I mean even more so. And I just think the Upper Midwest folks, particularly, you know, the michigan the Michiganders, there's just more of a salt of the earth type of conversation with them. They just we can just well, they were not happy with Trump in March when I spoke to them about trade.
Boy, I was shocked.
At seven weeks into his administration, they were excoriating him on that topic.
But Michigan of all places, right, which when we were professionally growing up, you'd have thought, well, one state's gonna like tariffs.
It's FISHI can yeah, But I went back there and we did those in September and twelve out and thirteen approved of the job he was doing. So you know, again, it's it's this odd shift. There's no consistency month to month. But to answer your question about geography, yeah, it just you get it's the flavoring that's just a little bits the seasoning. It's like pizza tastes different in different parts of the country, but it's still basically pizza wherever you go, and that's kind of the difference.
Rich, I am such a geek for this stuff. I could keep going. This is terrific. I where could I know?
¶ Where to find Rich's work
You have a YouTube channel? Tell people where they can find these because you do. You do put up monthly reports.
Yeah, thank you.
So the easiest place to find us is at Swing Voter Project dot com. On that page you will find each month's highlight and that reel is on YouTube, so if you click it, it'll just play within YouTube, and I would encourage you to just watch those videos. And you can also sign up for a monthly update on the Swing Voter Project dot com page. So just go there, give us your email address. We will not sell you anything,
there's nothing for sale. We don't charge for this stuff, and just join us on Swing Voter Project dot com.
I'm telling you a whole bunch of them are going to be like kick I want one hundred and twenty five bucks to give you my opinion.
They probably not swing voters though, but if they are, you know, they can go to Sego by way, go to sago dot com if you want to register to participate in focus groups.
Yeah, oh well that's nice. Do you do you still do uh, quantitative polling as much? And you know how much does the focus group influence your questionnaire? Now? Yeah, I do. I really I don't.
Personally don't do a huge amount of it.
I'm actually associated with a remarkable company called Alpha Rock. Do you and I could talk about offline that has transforming the polling process and looking at longitudinality in questions in a way that point of time polling doesn't quick turnaround in polling. They have a tool called Ockham Ockham's Razor that is just remarkable that a lot of trade associations and others in DC are using. So I've been working with them to try to get some quant around
some of my focus grouping. But basically, uh, that world is getting up ended in a way that is well, deeply needed and well deserved.
I feel like the best of you know, like my favorite thing that our polsters at NBC when I was working with them, used to do was I loved a good open end right where because to me, what that was was about helping you formulate a better question down the road. Absolutely, and that and that to me is you know I've we've for for for years, would would would reword questions based on stuff we'd see in focus groups like yours.
Yeah, well, the thing's happening now you're alluded to at the very beginning so well and where we started, which is that this OUPHAM tool is able to do quaal at scale.
Yeah, and so they.
Able to do basically one on one interviews not yet in a focus group, and one on ones an AI by yourself.
Yeah, well, well I thought about it, but the I know somebody who's trying it.
Yeah, No, it's I think it's an important thing to try to do because there if you can do this at scale, the insights will be so much richer than what I can find obviously, which all people.
So much, so much more a thousand that are focus grouped rather than just you know, multiple choice.
Yeah, it's remarkable and also be able to interpret the answers, ask meaningful follow ups, categorize the answers, which is what this tool can do.
So this whole world is getting up ended.
I've been joking that I'll be replaced by a bot, and my respondents will be replaced by bots, and it'll be one AI asking other AI questions and kicking out a report in ten seconds.
And that's going to mean you know what you're gonna end up doing, create bullshit correct, and then you're going to be going to an actual event in order to talk to actual people again. Like we're probably about five years away from that. Let's go back to shopping malls and survey people that way, right, like in person with the clipboard. Everything old will be new again if we're not, if we ai ai it up too much, that's right, exactly, Rich.
This was fantastic. Thank you, my friend, Thank you chucking honor to do it.