(soft music) (soft music) - Coming up next on this special election day edition of Arizona Horizon, we pull back the curtain on various aspects of the voting and election process, including campaign messaging and how campaigns work to get out the vote.

That's next on this special edition of Arizona Horizon.

That's next on this special edition of Arizona Horizon.

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(soft music continues) (soft music continues) - Good evening and welcome to this special election day edition of Arizona Horizon.

I'm Ted Simons.

We begin with a look at how data and messaging are used to gather information about voters.

Those methods include polls, focus groups and more.

We took a deeper look into all this with Paul Bentz, the senior vice president of research and strategy at HighGround, and pollster Michael O'Neill from O'Neill Associates.

(whooshing sound) Good to have you both here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Paul, we'll start with you.

Just in general, how is data, information about voters gathered?

- Well, when people register to vote, all of that information is public information.

We can get that from the county recorder and get an understanding of their age, what party they've registered is and where they've lived.

And that gives us a baseline information that we can then collect and reach out to them to then do the survey research or other voter outreach to get an idea of where they stand on the issue.

- And once you get that information Michael, as far as you gotta figure out what resonates with that crowd, don't you?

- Sure, and that's what the limitation of the voter data, that's why the follow up.

Is either surveys to get quantified responses or focus groups to understand more often than not the why behind people's feelings.

- How do you frame those questions to get a better indication of why?

- Well, you ask it open-ended.

You ask, oh, why?

Tell me more about that.

And you just probe and let people run with it in their own words.

And that's where you pick up some of the language.

Then you bring those same ideas back in subsequent focus groups.

And when you find terminology that resonates, you have the basis of a message.

- I was gonna say, how many layers are used when you go out and get this information?

- Well, the first step is quantitative.

Get an idea of what things are important and at what level.

And sometimes you can ask about the same different issue a couple of different ways.

For example, education funding.

If you talk about education funding versus teacher pay versus all day care or some other notion, they're not all interchangeable.

So you can use some different methodologies to get an understanding of which ones are priorities for voters or which ones they care about most.

And then you can move into that qualitative phase that Mike was talking about where you can get really an intensity among voters about the different issues they care about and why they care about.

- And I would imagine Mike, if you have to parse the information, you gotta go through all those words and try to figure out, someone might be talking over here, but they mean something over there.

- Yeah, well that's why the why question.

- Yes.

- Why.

And what you don't get to do very much in surveys because why you can ask that question.

Very often you get an answer that needs an additional probe before you know what's really going on.

And sometimes you're two or three or four probes deep before you get to what's really bothering people.

- But if you have to go that deep, is it really bothering them?

- Well, I mean, that's one of the things that there's this common misconception when we talk about survey, research and polling.

People wonder what's driving the message there.

And what we find is that a lot of candidates end up talking about the things that they've heard in a small meeting, in a precinct committee meeting in the small loud vocal group.

But we find for example that 75% of voters think that the elections are secure and 75% think they're, they trust the results.

We're letting 25% of the angry people about election fraud to drive that narrative.

So sometimes volume and intensity outweighs the actual belief of the electorate.

And so that's where data can come in and help you really see, is it a vocal group that's really driving it or is it a bigger issue than we really think?

- And I would answer your question with it.

Does that mean that it's not really driving?

Yes, it can because having something drive you and being able to articulate are not the same thing.

So you may say, oh, I'm concerned about the border.

And then you probe three or four deep and you say, what really gets them is not necessarily what you thought.

- Interesting.

All right, let's say you're concerned about the border and you may have been concerned, you think you're concerned about A, B and C, but your words suggest D, E and F. Once you get that D, E and F, how do you translate that?

How do campaigns translate that into messaging?

- Well, you invent some words that encapsulate what you have come to learn is the real issue.

- But the challenge is they don't.

Actually what we find now is a lot of shorthand.

I mean, consultants run a lot of these campaigns, those lazy consultants that Kari Lake was just talking about.

And they have shorthand.

They have things that they know have worked, they've tested in polling.

And that's why you hear build a wall or secure the border.

That's why you don't hear a lot of candidates talking about water.

'Cause water is a complicated issue that people don't have shorthand for.

But survey research actually, especially if you're doing accurate, unbiased research can give you that stuff.

But it's hard because candidates are not comfortable talking about these more in depth issues.

They want those one liners so they can move back to the other thing.

- They're not comfortable but it, I mean, they're hiring you for a reason.

They wanna get this information and you're giving them this information knowing that if the information's wrong, you're not gonna get get hired again.

I mean, it's kind of a self-regulating industry, is it?

- It is.

And I say this, you can win while talking about water.

And these folks don't wanna try that.

And there are things that come up.

Education funding is a great example.

Before the 20 by 2020, when they're proposing a 1% increase for teacher pay, all of the polling showed that people thought, dramatic numbers thought education was underfunded.

We told them you could fund education and increase teacher pay and still be on the right side of the electorate.

Sometimes it takes 40,000 people marching on the capital.

- And that's what happens.

And that's why Governor Ducey flipped on that in a 24-hour period.

- And real quickly, as a pollster, why do we not see as many polls as we used to?

And how do we know what we're seeing is accurate?

- Well, they are expensive to do right.

- Well, they are expensive to do right.

And of course, what we've been talking about are strategic polls that you'll not necessarily see at all because candidates pay for those because they want access to the kind of the private, the detailed information.

Now, some of them will do double duty.

There's usually a horse race question at the beginning, and that can be modeled three or four different ways.

And then they're gonna take the one that is most positive and try to sell it to the press.

Beware.

- Yeah, I gotcha.

But in terms of doing surveys, Mike mentions the expense there.

How complicated is it?

I mean, if you wanna get really scientific and accurate, that's a big process, isn't it?

- Well, sure.

I mean, you have to have live calls.

That's still the gold standard of polling.

You need to call both home phones and cell phones to rely.

There's some changes in the industry.

People are talking about online panels, texting and other things that I think over time will be more reliable.

But right now, people whose intense responses that they wanna answer are the ones who tend to do those.

Whereas telephone polling is still pretty reliable source.

But you gotta have people, and that means, especially in this day of COVID where you gotta spread people out, you can't jam 'em in a call center anymore.

It makes a little bit more expensive.

- Yeah.

As we've talked about this before Mike, I mean, it's a complicated process.

And how do you know when you see a poll and you hear about how it's conducted, how do you know, shaky.

- Good luck.

I would agree with the point.

The goal standard is still live calling.

And I would add repeated calls to non-respondent which adds both budget and time, which means you can't do a really good poll.

If somebody has a debate, that who won the debate poll the next morning is inherently limited.

- Last question Paul.

Bottom line, data-informed campaigns mandatory these days.

- Any campaign worth it's salt is using data and polling to help drive their message.

If they don't, they're flying blind.

- Yeah.

Same idea Mike?

- Yeah.

It's a roadmap to how to win.

- Yeah.

All right.

Mike O'Neil, O'Neill Associates.

Paul Bentz, HighGround.

Gentlemen, good conversation.

Good to have you here.

Up next, how candidates try to sell their message.

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- Our look into the election process continues with a focus on the ways that campaigns attempt to sell their candidate's message.

For that, we spoke to Chuck Coughlin, president and CEO of HighGround and Jason Barraza, a partner with Veridus.

and Jason Barraza, a partner with Veridus.

(whooshing sound) Good to have you both here.

Good to see you again.

Chuck will start with you.

Marketing candidates.

How vital to campaigns?

- Incredibly vital.

- Incredibly vital.

The narrative of a campaign is the lifeblood of a campaign.

'Cause what you wanna try and establish with the candidate is a narrative that carries throughout the campaign and that the media and others can follow and that your opponent is reacting to.

- And ads, I would imagine Jason ads are critical here.

- It is, it's the absolute cornerstone of your campaign.

This is your ability to tell your story to describe who you are and why voters should come into your column on election day.

- As far as ads are concerned, what's the best kind of ad?

I mean, honestly, probably depends on the candidate, depends on the race, right?

- It depends on what you're actually trying to communicate.

Whether this is a persuasion type ad or whether you're doing a fundraising type ad.

Typically though, if we're talking about persuasion, you wanna be on TV, you wanna be talking directly to the voters while they, you have a captive audience and they're watching their nightly TV shows.

- For that message Chuck, is the message I'm great or is the message they're not.

- Well, you gotta start off with I'm great, right?

You gotta start off with that introductory narrative of your background.

Because the rule of thumb is you can't criticize somebody else before you establish your own identity.

And so you have to establish your own identity first.

Sometimes campaigns make that mistake of lobbying the hand grenade first before introducing themselves, and they never were able to get above that negative narrative then.

- And people say Chuck, people say they hate negative ads, they hate the ads in general.

They're tired of seeing them, but they must work or we wouldn't be seeing 'em.

- In the current election system, they are bread and butter.

- Really.

- Well, you are contrasting with A and B.

It's you have an A and B choice in a closed primary system.

It's you have an A and B choice in a closed primary system.

In the primary we have now, you have a much broader field, but it's a very low turnout cycle.

You don't see that much of those campaigns we did in this last cycle because one candidate had a lot of money.

But that's a rarity that you see a lot of advertising in a primary.

But once it's down to the general, it's candidate A or candidate B. it's candidate A or candidate B. I know the answer to this, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.

Can you advertise too much?

- Well, I guess that depends on what your message is.

If you're communicating the wrong message, you absolutely can advertise too much and force voters away from you.

But generally speaking, once you've set that message, you've set what your campaign is about and what your candidacy is about, it is repetition.

It is hitting voters again and again and again until they know your message better than you do.

- Is there a way for campaigns to know that this isn't working, this ad isn't working.

This message, this narrative isn't quite cut.

- If you're getting the feedback from your polling and from your research out there that it's not changing, it's not moving.

At some point you do have to make a modification, change something up and seek a different message.

- That's interesting.

It's not so much, it's all falling off the cliff, but you're not gaining momentum.

It's not improving things.

- Usually you feel that right away.

- Really?

- Yeah.

I mean, you're in this little bubble, you're in this little group of people and everybody has tightly wound opinions about what you're doing.

And you launch your, like a close ad.

Everybody's supposed to have a close ad, the last five days of the campaign, six days.

You wanna end on an upbeat, you wanna give voters something about you to bring you to their campaign, you know, to close on an up note.

And you know, you're trying to do that.

I remember a campaign I was in, everybody hated the close ad we had done and we're like, we can't go with that.

And we pulled it off the air after a day, went back to another ad that was much more upbeat and going strong.

But yeah, that's the kind of, Jason's right?

You get all kinds of feedback.

You get all kinds of feedback.

The campaign room is generally aware of how things are going.

- Social media, Jason, social media in this day and age, again, a requirement?

- I think you need to have it, but you gotta respect what it is.

And a lot of times the focus is put too much on social media.

Social media has the danger of keeping you siloed, right?

So a lot of social media is speaking to your own audience.

So if you're looking to use social media as a tool for the masses, you can't be guaranteed that those people are paying attention.

- Interesting.

Compared to door to door campaigning, is that old-fashioned?

Can that work in this modern world or is that still, that's still a good deal?

- Oh no, if you're in a legislative race, in a district race or a city council race, a smaller district race where you can pick your doors and you know the neighborhoods where the unaffiliated or the swing voters are and you're knocking on a specific door, really incredibly important.

Similarly with social media.

You can customize a social media feed right to people that you want to talk to.

And so it's depending on who you wanna talk to, what voter are you trying to influence and how are you trying to do that?

And same question regarding rallies.

Do rallies really make a difference or is it just to cement the converted?

- I was gonna say, maybe for the people attending, probably not that big of a difference.

They're already sold.

You're probably not gonna find too many opinions changing for the attendees of the rally.

But man, showing that rally in the media and in the press afterwards and how much popularity you may or may not have, that can have a huge impact on voter.

- Agree with that.

- It's like the debate.

You know, like the debates you've done, people are really tuning in to see, hey, did that guy really score a point?

Most of us are tuning in to find out how they screw up.

'Cause I wanna grab that viral moment and I wanna make something of it.

The Lake rally with Trump this weekend, I didn't see it.

I was out of town.

I've heard three times now that she was vacuuming the carpet around him.

Maybe not the best thing for her to do with undecided female voters, but she did.

But that's the kind of thing that people look for in a rally too.

You wanna look for an upbeat moment, which is really enthusiastic and it draws people together or your opponents are gonna look for the other thing.

- And that goes along with endorsements.

Obviously these folks that were at the Trump rally, they want Trump's endorsement.

They wanna be seen on stage and, you know, hugging and shaking hands and such.

Do endorsements really matter?

Do endorsements really matter?

- The lack of them matters.

I think that it gets noticeable if you don't have endorsements in your corner.

But I don't know too many voters that are standing on the sideline saying, I need to see how this person or this person is voting before I make a decision.

They're necessary evil, but they're not gonna get you across the finish line all alone.

- Maybe a little bit of nudge then at best.

- Yes.

And let me say this though.

I guess it depends on the size of the endorsement.

We have a whole slate of candidates on the Republican side that are there because of a Trump endorsement, That's what carried them across the finish line.

And that just speaks to the power and the influence that you're seeing on that side of the aisle.

- And you mentioned debates and goodness knows we know about those around here.

Do they make a difference.

- In that sense I think they do in the sense that people are looking for mistakes.

People are looking for an item to capture.

The most memorable debate line I thought in your senate debate was, we all know guys like this.

That was a pretty good line.

It sort of got some traction out there.

The independent candidate had a few as well.

And so that's really what you're looking for.

It's not something that makes a giant movement underneath with the whole electorate.

I would imagine Jason, at this time a debate, I mean, how many people are now just being introduced to these candidates for the first time?

- I hope they think that no one's being introduced to 'em for the first time.

I hope that they have an idea or at least seen on TV who the candidates are and what's going on.

But certainly if they haven't, I mean, the debate can serve that purpose, but in the end I think that Chuck is right.

You're looking for one liners.

You're looking for people to make a flap in a debate.

In the end it probably can have the potential of hurting you more than it does helping you.

- Last question, Jason we'll start with you.

The single best strategy to sway the undecided voter.

The single best strategy to sway the undecided voter.

- Finding how they already agree with you.

A lot of times we talk about persuadables and people think that that's changing somebody's mind.

Persuadable is not changing somebody's mind.

Persuadable is all about helping that voter understand that they already agree with your point of view.

- Interesting.

Chuck, best method.

Best road to take.

- Yeah, it's understanding your data, understanding who your swing audience is, what they wanna hear, what they wanna believe.

How that correlates with what you wanna talk about.

And then marrying those two messages together so you're building a campaign narrative on that momentum and you're giving them a reason to come to you.

You're not really gonna convince them, you're giving them permission to come to you.

- Wow.

Good stuff.

Chuck Coughlin, Jason Barraza.

Gentlemen, good to have you both here.

Great conversation.

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- We wrap up our voting and election special with a look at what it takes to get out the vote.

We spoke to Lorna Romero Ferguson, owner of Elevate Strategies and John Fetherston from Husch Blackwell.

and John Fetherston from Husch Blackwell.

(whooshing sound) Good to have you both here.

Good to see you both again.

- Yeah.

- Thanks for having us.

- Lorna I will start with you.

How important is getting out the vote?

It's incredibly important.

I mean, it's one thing to have a well run campaign and a message.

But if you're not encouraging voters who are gonna support you to actually turn out and vote, there's really no purpose to your campaign.

I mean, you can do all the mail pieces that you want, you can do digital, you can do door knocking, but if you're not actually encouraging people to make sure that they either fill out their early ballot or give them the information of how they can vote on election day, it's probably gonna be to your detriment.

So most campaigns, they really focus on making sure that they can identify who in their target audience are their likely voters and making sure that they're consistently reaching out to them until they can see that they've actually gone and voted.

- Can it get lost though in a campaign to get out the vote effort?

- Well, I'll echo what Lorna said.

In a midterm like this year, traditionally a lower turnout election, GTV is even more important because every voter you remind the vote is crucial, can really make the difference.

And, you know, GTV has changed over the years.

It really used to be, you know, making sure granny has a right of the polls on election day.

And, well, may still be that way for Republicans with their leaders telling their voters only vote on election day and don't vote by mail.

But for Democrats, it's much more of a make sure folks are signed up on the early voting list and then once they get their ballot, remember to turn it back in.

- Best way to make those messages clear.

Best way to get out the messages to get out the vote.

- Yeah, it's really, it really depends on your target audience.

And it's the same thing with any kind of campaign message.

For an older audience, you're gonna wanna do, you know, TV and mail 'cause they have a tendency to focus on that.

For a younger audience that's not focused on TV and actually doesn't really check their mail very often, digital is a really good outlet to do it.

So you really have to, when you're doing a strong get out the vote effort, you really have to hit every market, every audience and any type of outreach effort.

- Is it always partisan?

I mean, are there nonpartisan groups to get out the vote and do they help?

Do they make a difference?

- They do.

The vast majority of it is partisan.

It's the campaigns, they wanna get their voters out.

But you're seeing an increasing amount of folks who wanna activate, especially marginalized communities and make sure they're fully engaged in the process and more voters voting is always a good thing.

And something I'd add to what Lorna just said is an increasing thing that especially Democrats are doing to get out the vote is utilizing what's called network organizing which is finding folks who kind of take responsibility for their communities, their families, their neighbors, their friends and remind them, "Hey, remember to vote."

Because that's a lot more powerful than a stranger calling 'em up or knocking on their door.

- I hear ground game in a variety of ways.

Is part of the ground game here?

- It's definitely part of the ground game.

I mean, any effective statewide campaign has a field operation, right?

And it's a field operation that's typically been in the works for a year, year and a half depending on how long the campaign's been running.

They've been talking to voters, identifying them, putting them in their database and making sure to follow up with them.

So when it's this final month of early voting leading up to election day, they're touching base with them and making sure their people turn out.

- As far as, you know, direct mail, phone messaging, texting, door to door, these sorts of things, what works best?

What is maybe a little, you know, overrated?

- As Lorna mentioned, it really is a mixture depending on who you're talking to.

I think we are still trying to figure out, as the electorate changes, what makes the most sense?

But I think a combination of all those things really matters.

But what I think makes all of that effective is the increasing data driven aspect of get out the vote, especially when it comes to early ballots.

You know, we can see from publicly accessible ballot return data, you know, who has gotten early ballot and who hasn't returned it.

And so both parties reach out to those folks and they say, hey, make sure you pop that thing in the mail.

Or if it's too late, you know, drop it off at the polling location, you know, so your vote gets counted.

- Ballot harvesting, what is it and how has just the phrase and then the fear of the phrase and everyone, you know, the pejorative phrase now in many respects, how has that changed getting out the vote efforts?

- Yeah, I mean, ballot harvesting was the strategy of one individual collecting ballots, whether it was going door to door from folks outside of their family unit and saying that they would turn it in for them.

That's created obviously now in this climate that we're in where there's election integrity questions, et cetera.

If those ballots actually get turned in, et cetera.

And so there's a lot more scrutiny when it comes to how early ballots get turned in.

We even see this now recently with early voting starting, people watching those drop off boxes to make sure there's no funny business going on.

So just the strategy in of itself coupled with what's been percolating since 2020 has really created this new environment that everyone's trying to navigate.

- And that new environment, is it suppressing a little bit to get out the vote effort?

- Absolutely.

I mean, laws like the ballot harvesting law really do make it harder for folks in their communities to go out there and try to get more folks to vote.

And let's be very clear here, right?

That ballot harvesting is a law that is addressing a problem that doesn't exist.

This idea that people were fraudulently collecting ballots, now they're changing them or getting rid of them doesn't reflect how sophisticated our mail-in ballot system is in this state.

It can't tamper with ballots and frankly if your ballot gets, you give it to a volunteer and it never gets turned in, you get notified.

So those laws create these artificial barriers but, you know, the parties, specifically the Democratic Party is finding ways around that and continuing to activate, you know, those communities that need to be heard in the process.

- Lorna, last question here.

As far as building voter support, can you start too early?

Can you start too late?

- You can definitely start too late.

I don't think you can start too early.

I don't think you can start too early.

But there's a nuance to it.

You can waste your money too early and run out of it potentially.

But I think making sure that you get your message out and communicate with voters and keep in contact with them, there's no starting too early.

- And last question for you.

How often does turnout turn an election?

- Oh, often.

And especially this year.

I think it's really gonna be who turns out, who's more excited?

Is it the Democrats who are motivated by the national trends like Roe or is it gonna be, you know, the Republican voters who are really activated by you know, the Republican voters who are really activated by the election fraud concerns or, you know, inflation?

And whoever gets more of their folks out in a state like Arizona which is increasingly competitive, they will win the day.

John Fetherston and Lorna Ramiro Ferguson, good to have you both here.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you Ted.

- That is it for now.

I'm Ted Simons.

Thank you so much for joining us on the special election day edition of Arizona Horizon.

You have a great evening.

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