MONDAY
E-mail a friendFrank Luntz
airdate February 4, 2008
Considered the go-to consultant for communication and language guidance, Frank Luntz was named by Business Week as one of the four "Top Research Minds." He's president of The Word Doctors, with a client base that includes TV networks, Fortune 500 CEOs and major news publications. He was also the pollster of record for the ‘94 Contract with America and has taught courses at Harvard and George Washington University. Luntz' books include The New York Times best seller Words that Work and What Americans Really Want…Really.
Frank Luntz
Tavis: Frank Luntz is the CEO of Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, a firm that has provided research and analysis of this year's presidential campaigns. He is also a bestselling author whose latest book is called "Words That Work - It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear." Dr. Frank Luntz, good to see you again, my friend.
Frank Luntz: It's my pleasure.
Tavis: How you been?
Luntz: Tired.
Tavis: You've been busy, man.
Luntz: I've already been to 14 states in the election. I've practically lived in Iowa and New Hampshire. I call it the caucus cough because I've never felt something so cold in my life as Iowa at night. I'm thinking, these guys want to canvas? Let's move Florida up. (Laughter) What the heck are you doing in these northern states?
Now that they're here in California, I'm thinking yeah. My guys, we got off the plane, we all looked at each other, and nobody said a word and we all started high-fiving each other because we're here in California, how great is that?
Tavis: We're glad to have you here except for the fact that you may be the rare exception, but your profession ain't looking so good these days. You guys have gotten everything wrong.
Luntz: Author? Author? Communicator?
Tavis: No - now you want to be an author. (Laughs)
Luntz: Television personality?
Tavis: No, your polling profession. What is it this year that's made you guys get just about everything wrong?
Luntz: And that's why I do my focus groups, my dial sessions for Fox News, and I'm proud of it. I think you have to look people straight in the eye. I think you have to have this kind of conversation. And instead of doing 400, 500, 800-people surveys that you do on the telephone, problem number one is they don't survey enough young people and they have made a huge difference for Barack Obama.
Number two is that they don't survey right up to the last day. Twenty percent of the Democrats and one-third of Republicans are making up their minds in the last 48 or 72 hours - sometimes polls stop before that. And number three, I think that there is this desire among the electorate to tell all the pundits don't describe us, don't analyze us. Let us do it and then you can report after the election.
I love these sessions. I think you've got a couple of clips, I hope we can show them, of the dial reactions. Because when you're looking at someone face-to-face, I can see if they back away. You don't move. You're one of the hardest people to read. You must be a good poker player, because I can't.
But when people back away or they start doing this, when we're dialing, there was a point in one of the debates - it was the one you hosted - when Hillary Clinton talked about if AIDS was the number one killer of White women 25-34, there'd be a moral outrage outcry. If you remember, some people in the audience gave her a standing ovation.
Tavis: Massive.
Luntz: In our audience, which was about 200 feet from you, and they're just looking at the TV, I looked out and there a dozen women standing up applauding a television set. "You go, girl." I've never seen anything like it. You can't get that on the telephone. You can only get that face-to-face.
Tavis: Give me a clip, Jonathan, so we can see exactly what Dr. Frank Luntz is talking about here.
[Clip]
Luntz: Now the higher the lines climb, the more favorable the reaction. And what these dials do, and we've got 30 people wired up, they tell me the exact moment, the exact word, the exact facial expression, when the candidate really makes that positive impact or loses the audience. There were a couple of times when Hillary Clinton would look over at Barack Obama, and it was the death stare. And her eyes, and she's got her face down like this.
There was another moment when he's challenging her and she picks up the glass of water, and again, the audience reacts. You don't see this on TV because we're not recording it. And they're all going, "Uhen uh, uh, uh." And I run over and I say, "What's going on?" Anyone who has to pick up a glass in the middle of getting attacked, they feel guilty. They feel responsible. She was nervous. She didn't know how to handle it. So she used this as her crutch, and the audience sees all that.
Tavis: What do you make of the fact, to your earlier point, that so many voters today - and now, as we speak, since we're in that window, we're in that 48- to 72-hour window for Super Tuesday - what is it about people making up their minds at the last minute? I could read that a number of ways.
On the one hand, are they, like, really not paying attention? On the other hand, is the choice that difficult? What's causing folk to make up their minds in the last 48, 72 hours, which is throwing all the polling data off?
Luntz: Because they are following it so closely that even a debate - it used to be they'd watch half a debate and they'd make up their minds. All the debate does is lead them to want to watch another debate, and then another, and then another. They're setting all-time records for people tuning in. And they don't just watch for the first 15 or 20 minutes. They're watching the entire discussion and they want to know more.
So they go on the blogs and they go on the web and they ask their friends, and they don't want to make a decision early because they feel they'll be shortchanging the opponent.
Tavis: So is it fair to say, then, that tomorrow night, Tuesday night, that we really have no idea what might happen if people really are, many of them, making up their minds at the last minute, to say nothing of independent voters?
Luntz: We know it's probably going to happen on the Republican side.
Tavis: It's over; John McCain's going to win it?
Luntz: It's virtually over. It's maybe a 5% outside shot for Mitt Romney. On the Democratic side, we don't know, and this is what's fascinating to me. I look at these Independents, and they can vote in the Democratic primary. And Obama's winning them, 60-40, sometimes even higher. Why doesn't a Democrat look at that and say that he's the most electable candidate?
That he's the one that has the ability to transcend traditional partisanship or ideology? If I'm a Democrat and I hate George Bush so much, why am I not going with a guy who is the most likely to replace him? I've been going to his rallies, and I go to hers as well. He's got twice as many people, they yell twice as loud.
I know that if I don't get there early, even as a member of the press, I can't get in because his are so jammed. I've used every - I offered money, I used credentials, I even offered them free television time. There are some Obama rallies that are so oversubscribed that you can't even get into. I've never seen anything like it. I wish I was alive in 1968 to see Bobby Kennedy. This is the closest thing that I have ever seen. It's that impressive to me.
His language; his emotion. But most importantly, what he does to young people. My background is as a Republican, but I have to tell you in watching the audience respond to him, it's a love affair. They say that Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love. It's for real.
Tavis: And yet - and yet -
Luntz: That's beautiful, right, guys?
Tavis: (Laughs) And yet these numbers - yeah, you should work for Obama. Yet, your wonderful Obama speech and these numbers not withstanding that keep fluctuating; it still appears that nationally she's still on top?
Luntz: Yes. And I think she's going to get a majority of the vote and a majority of the delegates from tomorrow, but I think it's going to be close enough that he'll have one more opportunity to fight. Maybe it's going to be Virginia and Maryland in the following week, maybe it'll go to March. They call it March madness, which is Texas and Ohio.
I don't think the Democratic race is over yet, and I think the people who are going to watch this show tonight are going to be thinking deeply what is the right thing to do. And one more point on this. The difference on the Republican side is that John McCain is winning because they really don't like the other two candidates that much. Or if you're voting for Mitt Romney, it's because you think McCain is too liberal, or if you're voting for Mike Huckabee, you want a more social approach to politics.
On the Democratic side, the people love Hillary Clinton, love Barack Obama. They both have incredible favorability ratings. So for them, it's not a choice of the lesser of the evils, it's who I want even more.
Tavis: How is John McCain - or put another way, how are those folk who are hating on John McCain on the right like Limbaugh, Hannity, etc., etc. - how are they going to reconcile themselves? How are they going to juxtapose getting behind this guy when he becomes their nominee, like it or not?
Luntz: I think the answer, and this again tells you what could happen in the Democratic contest, is that the anger towards Barack Obama is nothing near the anger and fear of Hillary Clinton, and that with Obama there's openness, there's room for dialogue. With Hillary Clinton, she knows what she wants to do and she's going to go out and do it no matter what anybody says.
I think in the end a lot of these people on the right are going to say, "As much as I may not like John McCain, I dislike Hillary Clinton more."
Tavis: All right, so up against -
Luntz: Which I hate, by the way. One of the things that I hate about politics, I believe we need more civility. I believe we need more conversation. I don't want us to be defining ourselves by what we're against.
Tavis: I hear that point, and what I like about you - we get along well in these conversations - is that you're always going to tell me the truth about this. So we've talked about Hillary and you're effusive about Obama, as a lot of people are. But when you put Obama up against McCain, you know what's coming here, man. McCain's going to hit him on inexperience the same say Hillary's trying to hit him.
Luntz: But McCain doesn't hit. Look at McCain. The issue for McCain in his presentation, he's so quiet. If I were advising John McCain I'd say, "Would you pump up the volume? Go back to the way it was in 2000."
Tavis: Frank, he doesn't need to do that right now. He's going to win the nomination tomorrow night. Once he gets into the journal, this guy's a former POW.
Luntz: He's tough.
Tavis: John McCain is tough. He's not going gently into that good night.
Luntz: John McCain spent five and a half years in a prison and then he entered politics? Most politicians I know did it the other way.
Tavis: Exactly. So when he starts hitting Obama on lack of - I hear you. But when he starts hitting Obama on lack of experience, on what Hillary has tried to put out, the argument of vagueness -
Luntz: That's not John McCain.
Tavis: And you're acting like race isn't going to be a factor here.
Luntz: Well, race is a factor because Bill Clinton made it a factor because Hillary Clinton -
Tavis: I'm talking about the general.
Luntz: You can't do that. That's not fair. Race was not a factor on the Republican side. It became a factor on the Democratic side. Forty years it took for African Americans and Latinos and Whites to come together. White, Black, Brown, together. It took so long, fights in the fifties and sixties; you had floor fights, 1968, in seating some of the delegates.
Mississippi, they were fighting up until the 1970's. And now President Clinton brings race into this and some of Hillary Clinton's supporters? How dare they? Again, if I'm a Democrat, I'm going to say there are plenty of reasons to challenge Barack Obama. Let's not divide ourselves right now. John McCain doesn't attack; it's not part of his modus operandi. That's one of the reasons Republicans don't like him as much, is because he's not as partisan as a traditional Republican.
Tavis: All right, so we're going to make a bet off-air about how the strategy's going to shift once we get into the general, and McCain is going to be a pit bull, mark my words. But Frank, good to have you on the program.
Luntz: It's a pleasure, thank you.
Tavis: Good to see you.
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