Benchmark polls and focus groups

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Public polling companies conduct polls—called tracking polls—in order to see who is ahead and who is behind in a particular election contest, as well as by how much. Campaigns also conduct tracking polls, but early on they rely more heavily on polling and focus groups geared toward messaging, and they call this benchmark polling. This article aims to explain how this early campaign polling actually works and what it means for the messages voters receive. Industry terms like switchers and stabilizers are important for a campaign's ability to message and fundraise, but what do they mean? And how do they affect a campaign's overall approach?

HIGHLIGHTS

Campaigns do not use polls the same way that public opinion firms do. Rather than attempt to understand the way a race stands, campaigns use benchmark polls and focus groups to find the most resonant messages and the best language with which to relay those messages.

When focus-grouping, campaigns look for switchers and stabilizers—information that will make a voter likely to switch his or her vote or remain committed to a candidate.

Strong switchers and stabilizers are used to shape campaign messages. They are also used as evidence when asking major donors for campaign donations.

• In this article:
• Switchers and Stabilizers
• Focus groups and campaign polling
• Effects on campaign
  • Messaging
  • Fundraising
• Footnotes

Basic terms: Switchers and Stabilizers

When campaigns do focus-grouping and message polling, they are looking for what industry insiders call switchers and stabilizers.

• A switcher is a piece of information that, when presented to a voter, causes that person to switch his or her support from one candidate to a different candidate.
• A stabilizer is a piece of information that, when presented to a voter, causes that person to even more firmly believe that he or she will vote for the person he or she was already leaning in favor of.

Once found, a switcher or a stabilizer can become the key theme or message of the campaign.

A campaign's use of benchmark polls and focus groups

In a 2016 interview, Frank Luntz, a longtime Republican pollster, told Tavis Smiley, "I don’t just poll. I go out and I listen to voters and they tell me what they’re so afraid of." According to the book Campaigns and Elections, "[C]ampaigns use focus groups in one of two ways—they can help the campaign decide where (or on what) to place emphasis, or they can help ascertain the most effective phraseology to be used in making campaign appeals."

Focus groups are typically run at least twice when refining a campaign's message. According to Abacus Associates, a public opinion and research firm, the typical focus group operates with a moderator asking a group of people questions on a pre-determined set of issues. While the group answers questions, "Clients watch the session behind a one-way mirror. Clients also receive a transcript, an audio tape, and/or a video tape, along with a written analysis of the session." The results, however, are not used as quantitative data like the results from public tracking polls, notes Abacus: "Focus group research is qualitative: the responses of participants are not coded and quantified because it is not valid to generalize from the results of the relatively few focus group participants to the population in general or to organization members."

Effects on campaign

Messaging

In effect, the switchers and stabilizers found through focus-grouping affect the camapign's message and the language used to shape that message.

A campaign's effective use of switchers can be seen most vividly in two high profile examples from presidential campaigns in the 1980s. In the 1984 Democratic primary contest between former Vice President Walter Mondale and then-Sen. Gary Hart, a focus group conducted by the Mondale campaign shaped the campaign's primary message against Hart. According to Campaigns and Elections, the messaging hinged on identifying a switcher, that Hart's supporters were not entirely sure he had enough experience to handle an international crisis:

“

Mondale’s pollster tried another tack: Imagine the U.S. is suddenly thrust into an international crisis. Who would you rather have in the White House answering that call at 3 a.m.? ... It was in response to that scenario that he saw the electoral potential in reinforcing to voters the idea that Mondale would be a steady and experienced hand at a time fraught with potential international peril.

”

In 1988, in the presidential election between then-Vice President George H.W. Bush (R) and Michael Dukakis (D), the Bush campaign utilized focus groups to understand that a negative message emphasizing Dukakis' past would be the most effective technique in the campaign. According to The Washington Post:

“

That May, they convened back-to-back focus groups in Paramus, N.J. Each consisted of 15 voters who favored or leaned toward Michael Dukakis, then the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Ailes and Atwater had prepared versions of Dukakis's past statements and positions on prison furloughs, the Pledge of Allegiance, gun control and other issues they hoped to exploit in the fall. ... Dukakis's support plummeted in both groups after the material was read to them by the focus-group leader.

”

Fundraising

But what does polling have to do with a campaign's ability to raise funds? A lot, it turns out. Once the campaign has done enough benchmark focus-grouping and polling to have identified some strong switchers and strong stabilizers, they will then take that information to big donors and use it to solicit money. There is no shortage of money in American politics, but this money is generally only given out to campaigns when evidence exists that a candidate can win.

There are two distinct uses of this benchmark polling data for a campaign seeking funds from donors.

The first, and most common, use of benchmark data involves asking already committed donors for further financial commitments. Strong switchers and stabilizers provide evidence that a campaign can succeed in a given election, and campaigns use this evidence to ask for further donations. In a sense, benchmark polling data allows a campaign to tell a donor that victory can be won with more money to implement a strategy based on these switchers and stabilizers. A common misconception about successful campaigns is that they simply had more money with which to campaign. While partially true, this notion glosses over the way a successful campaign ensures such large donations—by finding strong switchers and stabilizers and then putting those to use when asking for donations.

The second use of benchmark polling involves initial donation solicitations with like-minded donors. Activists and campaigns go into any fundraising meeting with a potential donor knowing exactly which topics to discuss—and these are generally decided upon based on the results of benchmark focus-grouping and polling. Polling and focus groups not only shape a campaign's public message, but it shapes their message to specific donors as well. Campaigns can enter a meeting with a potential donor knowing not only which issues are important to that donor but where the campaign can effectively message on those issues.