Why we know so little about so many voters.
Since America returned Donald Trump to the White House, there’s been no shortage of criticism of the Democratic Party.
One critique in particular has been pretty common: That we Democrats spend an inordinate amount of time playing “identity politics” by focusing on slender slices of Americans instead of appealing to the core values and aspirations of all people.
You might be surprised to know why this criticism is off base. Not because we don’t attempt to pander but that we couldn’t be good at pandering even if we wanted to.
Because we simply don’t know much about millions of voters.
This failing stems from a very simple reality: Very little work goes into being able to identify a wide range of voters, figure out what they think, and get them to vote for Democrats.
As a result, Democratic campaigns tend to view many Americans as a kind of Hall of Monoliths — assuming that millions of voters all have the same dreams and ambitions among Hispanic, Asian American, Black, and other groups of Americans.
For just one example, Asian Americans are one of the fastest-growing groups of potential Democratic voters in America. But you wouldn’t know it based upon the information we use to find these voters and talk with them. Because the most basic tool that all Democratic campaigns use — the “voter file” that supposedly lists every voter in America — does an abysmal job of helping you identify Asian American voters. As a result, organizations that focus on mobilizing these voters use a mixture of incomplete data, guesswork, and prayer to ensure that we’re hitting the right voters with the right message every election cycle.
To make matters worse, figuring out how Asian American voters with different backgrounds and life experiences think about the world would take a lot more well-funded research than is currently being done into this crucial group of Americans. It would certainly be more complicated than talking with a few Asian Americans here and there and then aggregating them into what “BIPOC voters” think about immigration, affordability, and other issues.
I’ve seen the value of investing in connection with all Americans in my firm’s work with groups mobilizing different communities of voters around the country. Polling shows nuance and difference in issue attitudes within otherwise broad demographic categories. Language and imagery builds on unique cultural traditions. Highlighting voices from the community makes a huge impact on people used to being left out of the civic conversation.
But unfortunately, this kind of customized campaigning is infrequent in today’s Democratic Party.
Democrats’ failure to upgrade their knowledge base on groups like Asian Americans is especially perplexing when you consider that talking with these voters in targeted ways delivers phenomenal results. I know because we’ve done it and it works. People actually thank you for sending them political direct mail. (Yeah, I know it’s weird but it happens.)
But since the powers-that-be have never made this kind of voter data a priority, every two years the people that strive to mobilize many millions of American voters struggle to mount campaigns that reach just a fraction of their intended audience. All the while, Democratic leaders mouth platitudes about honoring everybody’s lived experiences. I have a hunch a lot of people would prefer that we also honor their dreams of keeping their job and buying a house.
At a time when corporate marketers seemingly know every Google search you’ve ever made, your vacation preferences, and your favorite guilty pleasure, there’s no reason that our understanding of voters is so inadequate.
You find time and money for the things you value. Despite the fact that there are groups all over America doing important work mobilizing Native American, Black, Asian American, Hispanic, and other voters, this work is made more difficult by the lack of institutional support and money.
It’s clear that after all the performative rhetoric and Zoom-meeting declarations, too many people in Democratic politics still don’t truly care how much we’re missing out by not doing a better job knowing who all our voters are, what they think, and how to persuade them to support us.
It’s not like we don’t have the money to do a better job at this.
It wouldn’t even take another $1.5 billion. (The reported cost of the Harris campaign)
Here are three ways to get started…
Change how we do research. I’ve offered some ideas on how to improve our research process in other newsletters. It’s clear that the days of basing the future of our country on small sample sizes of voters asked to respond to a limited set of questions to which 95% of voters don’t even respond must end. These limitations are multiplied when we’re trying to mobilize voters from hundreds of different backgrounds. Building a new research model is desperately needed.
Demand better information in the voter file. There’s no question we can do better; Corporate America does a lot of this already. And this upgrade would be one of the most affordable and cost-effective steps that the Democratic Party could take this year. Everyone needs to call on the DNC and other voter file gatekeepers to invest what it takes to upgrade our knowledge base. Now.
Don’t just come around every two years. As with Democratic campaigning in general, we are desperately in need of a paradigm shift to a 24/7/365 campaign to ALL Americans — including Americans from every background. The absence of a coordinated and vigorous Democratic response to the current MAGA assault on American values is simply the latest piece of evidence that the Democratic Political Industrial Complex still sees the easiest way to make a big profit is to confine “campaigning” to sixty days every two years.
At a time when despite the current optimism surrounding the midterms, the long-term outlook for Democrats looks very daunting indeed, doing foundational work into identifying and communicating with all of our potential voters isn’t optional anymore.
In fact, it could be the thing that prevents whatever comes after Donald Trump from ensuring we have another 4 or 12 or however many years of the current national disaster.
So let’s get to it.