A new Pew Research Center study provides evidence that Republican voters are smarter about current affairs, issues and news:

Republicans, on average, answered one more question correctly than Democrats (5.9 vs. 4.9 correct). These differences are partly a reflection of the demographics of the two groups; Republicans tend to be older, well educated and male, which are characteristics associated with political and economic knowledge. Still, even when these factors are held constant, Republicans do somewhat better than Democrats on the knowledge quiz.

Among the largest gaps comes over knowledge of who leads the U.S. Senate. About half (48%) of Republicans are able to identify Reid as the current majority leader, while only a third of Democrats can name their own party’s Senate leader. More Republicans can name Reid (48%) than Steele (37%), the RNC chairman.

The one question in the survey in which Democrats slightly outperform Republicans is about the number of women now serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. Close to six-in-ten Democrats (58%) know that more than one woman serves on the high court, compared with 50% of Republicans. Though the Democratic Party is made up of more women than men, this finding does not appear driven mostly by gender. Republican men and women are about equally likely to answer this question correctly (about half each), while solid majorities of both Democratic men (60%) and women (57%) get this question right.

Politico has rolled-out an aggregator site that keeps track of the lastest public polls.  I find this to be another great tool, and recommend bookmarking it.

 

A new study out shows that a solid majority (77%) of seniors (65+) online say they shop, read news, manage their finances, and even play free games on the internet.  This is the highest percentage among any age group!

The reserach found that older Americans - including both Seniors (also referred to as “Matures�) and the younger Baby Boomer cohort - have overwhelmingly made the internet an integral part of their everyday lives and often rival younger generations in online activities.

The study finds that seniors may lag behind younger generations in adapting to new technology (texting, social networking, etc), but this mature population is becoming more dependent upon the web for information.  Seniors also happen to be the largest voting bloc in most key Congressional districts across the country.

This highlights the importance of a strong web strategy for campaigns that includes easy-to-navigate pages for the online senior population that may not be into all the bells and whistles.  The single most important aspect for any campaign website is its ability to convey information clearly and effectively.

Check our latest article in Politics Magazine…

Many of the campaigns we are involved in this time of the year are primary races with crowded fields. As researchers, these can be some of the most challenging and most interesting races to study because of the variety of ways that voters process information and make decisions among multiple candidates.

Often campaigns and consultants make one of two mistaken assumptions about the way primary voters make choices and these lead to poor strategy and poor performance….MORE

With numerous surveys showing Congressional job approval near an all time low and the President’s job approval rating slipping, Democrats will now drop everything and pin their hopes on a successful legislative session on one issue: health care. 

While it isn’t news that congressional Democrats want to pursue legislation designed to bring more government control into the system, it is rather interesting that they are picking a fight on the one issue the Republicans and their outside conservative allies are ready for.  Since the now infamous “Hillary-Care” battles of the early 90’s, conservative grassroots organizations have been building an army of activists for this exact issue. 

Democrats have huge majorities in the House and Senate AND have President Obama in the White House ready to sign away anything they send him.  But numerous studies indicate that the public is against the spending decisions made by this President, which to date is the Congressional Democrats biggest legislative “achievement.”  With such huge majorities, congressional Democrats have mismanaged the CIA/torture debate, couldn’t pass card-check legislation that their union allies insisted on, and lost support within their own caucus on climate change legislation.  Pick any one of the above issues and the Democrats had full ability to roll the Republican minority under the table on the House and Senate floor. 

Because the Democrats haven’t been able to manage their own caucus effectively, it’s very interesting they are choosing the battle which will unify the conservative base of the Republican Party, as well numerous independent grassroots coalitions opposed to more government control of health care.  Polling data shows solid support in fixing the current system, but there are vast differences between Republicans and Democrats as to HOW to fix it.  Democrats want more government control; Republicans want more private, free-market-based solutions.  While Democrats may be successful in winning the votes on the floors of the House and Senate, they may lose the battle of public perception.  Stay tuned.

UPDATE: After a few discussions about our initial impressions, I want to make a few clarifications because I think my general overview was too critical of a number of operations that went very well.

First, the RNC and NRCC did their jobs well.  They supplied experienced people and made strategic recommendations that were dead-on.  I know that the campaign had asked for the NRCC to pull its ads down attacking Murphy, saying that the ads were hurting Tedisco.  But, I definitely side with the Committee on this point.  Their message was clear and timely.  Furthermore, these guys don’t often make messaging mistakes.  They conduct message testing research and then produce an ad that has proven effectiveness.

Second, both the NRCC and RNC flew in teams of people for the 72-hour GOTV push.  They again showed their committment to winning this race.  The points I made earlier (below) were accounts about actual operations within the campaign and had nothing to do with the assistance the campaign received from the RNC and NRCC which were well executed.

The bottom-line here is that in every close race it is important to take a critical analysis of what we can do better.  This analysis is not to place blame (which is a useless endeavor), but rather to prepare ourselves for future battle.

Original Post:

As the door of opportunity appears to be closing on our chances to pick up a Congressional seat in the NY20 special election, there are several important lessons we can take away (even if we are able to pull out a win in the 11th hour):

• Having the advantage in registration does NOT guarantee victory. Republicans were giddy with hope going into the special election.  They had a solid candidate in a district that McCain came only three-points from taking and a significant advantage over Democrats in voter registration.  Early polling also indicated that we were on top by double digits.  All this good news may have been the reason for our failure as the campaign and strategy we executed was less than competitive, proving that having more voters in the district does little to help when we roll-out a less-than-stellar campaign.
• Targeting works. By some accounts, our eyes were blinded by our natural advantages (see above) so much that we skipped the all important step of targeting the electorate.  This turned out to be disastrous.  The Democrats ran deep segmentations of the electorate, testing messages, themes and strategies that worked to pull in a huge number of Independent voters in addition to their base.  This is a complete role-reversal for Republicans who rolled out sophisticated microtargeting starting in 2000 in Presidential and major races all over the country.  We have the technology, but we failed to use it here and it hurt us.  Even if we didn’t use actual microtargeting, our approach to segmenting the likely voters was less than effective.
• Experienced Campaign Staff and Consultants are a Must. Everyone hates campaign consultants - I get that.  But, these guys and gals have decades of experience and a tool-belt full of proven strategy and tactics that make a difference in the races they work.  I have friends that worked on this race, and I know that this campaign was a weird marriage of only a handful of very experienced staffers and consultants and a ton of people that have little or no experience running a race like this.  There was no excuse for allowing novices to hold leadership roles in the campaign.  There are more suitable races to learn on.
• Finally, GOTV (Get Out The Vote) is King. The bottom-line here is that despite our tried and true 72-hour program, we were out-gunned in GOTV.  Scores of volunteers from all over the country showed up in NY-20 to knock doors and make calls, but without the targeting I mentioned above much of their time was spent with voters that were less than likely to vote.  Our failure at the GOTV level is the culmination of the points I list above.  We were too cocky, untargeted, inexperienced, and flat out-worked.

I ran across these two maps earlier and wanted to share.

The first is a map of decreases in religious affiliation distributed by Karl Rove’s firm.  The second is a screenshot of the CQ political map function that breaks down 2008 election results by Congressional District - a very cool toy for hacks like us.  Enjoy!

Every time I turn on the TV, read a newspaper, or puruse the blogosphere I see stories of major financial losses, families losing their jobs and houses, and the world economy slowly decending into hell.  Several days ago, several newspapers and TV news shows reported on anctedotal increases in church across the country; however, the truth is that recent polling indicates no such increase.

In fact, church attendance is among the lowest measured levels in years.

Americans may not be attending church more in these ever darkening days, but it doesn’t necessary mean that they are relying on God any less than before.  I would imagine that people all over the world are finding themselves praying more and more these days.

Wilson Research Strategies releases its National Political Environment Assessment, providing analysis about what happened in the 2008 US Presidential Race.

Access it here.

Check out the FlashReport blog for an overview of a presentation by Chris Wilson regarding the election and recommendations of where the Republican Party goes from here.