Beyond The Beltway – Issues In State and Local Politics

By Brad Bannon   For a number of reasons, state and local governments will be on their own trying to solve some of the most pressing problems facing the nation. Washington D.C. is focused on the war in Iraq. We have a presidential administration that believes in state and local government problem solving and it’s hard to get anything done inside the Beltway with the partisan divide between Congress and the White House. Here are some of the issues that are likely to come up in state and local campaigns in 2008 in order of importance.

High Tech and High Touch: The Use of Polls and Focus Groups in Political Campaigns

April 2006
By  Brad Bannon

Survey research is more than numbers; it is about words and feelings. For this reason, survey research should be about focus groups and not just polls.

 

In political research, polling and focus groups should go together like a horse and carriage. But, often the only kind of research that campaigns conduct is a poll. Polls serve an important need in politics but they are rigid, structured and formal.

 

If a political campaign is an effort to build a candidate and win an election, the information from the poll would provide the skeleton and the focus groups would supply the skin. Conducting a poll without doing focus groups is a lot like having an ice cream sundae without the whipped cream topping.

A Consumers’ Guide To Getting The Most Out Of Your Poll

Friday, September 03, 2004
By: Brad Bannon

After years of struggle, the campaign industry has reached a point, I hope, where just about everybody in the business understands the necessity of polling. But what still is a fight is the question of how to use the poll after you take the time, trouble and money to conduct one.

After 25 years in this business, it still amazes me how little use people make of the polling they do. I now use the time I spent trying to convince people to poll trying to get them to use the poll to make tactical and strategic decisions after campaigns conduct a survey.

There are good and bad reasons to conduct political surveys.

Public Wants Demonstrated Leadership As Democrats Take Control of Congress

Thursday, June 21st, 2007
By Brad Bannon

When sailors navigate, they look to the stars. When politicians legislate, they look to the polls. But sometimes, the sky is cloudy and often polls are contradictory. Then you have to go with your gut.

The new Democratic congressional majority has already done a lot to repair the image of a Congress that fell into disrepute under Republic control, but the Democrats still have a lot of work to do.

Red Faces and Exit Poll Blues

June 21st, 2007
Wednesday, December 01, 2004

By Brad Bannon

The good news for the polling industry was that the national telephone surveys conducted over the days leading up to the presidential election reflected the actual election result with most of them showing President Bush with a slim lead over his Democratic challenger John Kerry. The bad news is that the post-election exit polls conducted after the Americans had voted were way off.

Even in an imperfect world, a post-election survey should reflect the actual results better than a pre election survey.

In a pre-election survey, the pollster faces several problems. First, you have to find people to talk to which is a major problem when you’re trying to call people at home on land lines. Once you reach the person at the phone number from your sample, you have to figure out if the person you’re talking to (a.k.a., the respondent) is actually someone who is going to vote which in itself is a matter of some difficulty. People also might change their minds during the time period leading up to the election.

More after the jump…

Polls . . . Polls . . . Polls . . . Lots of Numbers But What do the Professionals Look At?

Friday, August 06, 2004

By Brad Bannon

Watching the polls is not nearly as interesting as watching Catherine Zeta Jones but it is an election year and a presidential election year at that and we are political professionals  so we should be keeping close tabs on the national political surveys. And if we use the national polls to understand the presidential race, we should use them for good not for evil.  The biggest problem with the national political surveys conducted by news organizations is the reliance and the prominence of the trial heats. The head to heads are the first and sometimes only thing that the sponsors report. But if you really want to understand the public opinion environment that governs the presidential race, you have to go to the poll websites to look under the hood and kick the tires.

Read more after the jump…

In 2006, All Politics Has Become National and That Bodes Badly for the Republicans

Sunday, June 04, 2006

By Brad Bannon

Usually it’s “all politics is local” but this year, it may be that “all politics is national”.

The national public opinion climate looks pretty bleak for Republicans. Only one out of every three Americans approve of George W. Bush’s performance as President. Two out of every three Americans believe that the United States is off on the wrong track.  The approval rating for the GOP controlled Congress is even lower than the President’s rating as only a quarter of the public give thumbs up to the folks on Capitol Hill. What does this mean for Republicans up and down the ballot this year? Big Trouble.

Find out more after the jump…

The Polls Speak but the Polls Aren’t Listening As Public, Political Perceptions & Goals Differ

Sunday, July 03, 2005

By Brad Bannon

At the national, state and local level there are a lot of angry voters these days and a lot of that anger is a function of the chasm between the issues that politicians talk about and the problems that voters worry about.

Current events in Washington DC illustrate the problem. While members in Congress fiddle with the fates of Terry Schiavo and faceless figures like John Bolton and Priscilla Owen, Americans focus on the two big issues of the day- the economy and Iraq.

MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM

War in Iraq   19%
Economy/Jobs   19%
Terrorism  7%
Social Security  5%

More after the jump…

Campaign 101: Learning from Major Campaigns, Offers Insights into Running Local Elections

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

By Brad Bannon

In the same way that high school football players can learn a lot about the game by watching the pros play in the Super Bowl, local political activists should be able to learn a lot about campaigns by watching the players in the presidential race.

By the same token, the people who work in presidential races can easily forget the basic rules of politics they learned when they started out as local political activists. In fact if you examine closely the inside workings of the Kerry campaign, as the editors of Newsweek did in the new book, ‘Election 2004’, it is clear that the people who called the shots for the Democratic presidential candidate made several basic mistakes they could have avoided if they had remembered what they learned in Campaign 101 back in the day.

John Kerry had the opportunity to beat George W. Bush. During the presidential campaign, a majority of American voters felt that the country was heading in the wrong direction and faulted the President for his handling of the economy and Iraq. Voters were searching for an alternative to re-electing the President but the Democratic candidate did not run a good enough campaign to take advantage of the political vacuum.

These are some of things that the Kerry campaign commanders should have learned in basic training. Don’t forget these rules when you run your own campaign:

1. Communicate a clear and consistent message

2. Persuade, don’t educate

3. Respond quickly to attacks

4. Run a tight ship with a clear chain of command

LEARN MORE AFTER THE JUMP…

Polling For Mayoral Campaigns Face Unique Needs In Determining Voter Needs and Winning Message

Thursday, January 13, 2005

By Brad Bannon

Because of declines in urban tax bases and the increasing demand to provide city services to needy populations, mayors are always on the hot seat and face a unique set of pressures. For this reason, mayoral campaigns are increasingly competitive. Polling in mayoral contests also present a unique set of challenges which are worthy of treatment that you might not get attention in a general discussion of polling techniques.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP…