Understanding Voter Dynamics in the 2024 Election with Elizabeth Jarosz

Transcript

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But she didn't get specific about where she stood on some of these issues, and so that, coupled with people feeling like they didn't really know who she was, was not a good combination, right.

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So we've got the context not in her favor, we've got the issues not in her favor, and then the third part, third bucket I'm going to talk about is women, and this is a big believe it or not, in my opinion, a big bucket.

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I don't think people are talking about this enough in the media, but there's so many ways into the women phenomenon in this election.

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Welcome back to the United she Stands podcast, the show that brings kindness and women into politics.

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I'm Ashley and I'm Sarah.

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And we're two women from Ohio who are here to become more educated about American politics and build a community so we can all get involved and make an impact together.

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We hope we'll inspire and empower you along the way.

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Welcome back to another episode of the United she Stands podcast.

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Today we have a very special guest, elizabeth Jarrose, and we're going to talk all things this election and data and voter behavior and y'all know Ash and I are in IT and love data, so this is going to be a really great conversation for y'all to listen to, especially at this point in time, a couple of weeks after the election.

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Elizabeth Turow is a qualitative market research expert who has spent the last 24 years understanding the human condition, giving her unique window into our culture.

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As one of the strongest market researchers in the nation, she's the secret weapon for many Fortune 500 companies around the world.

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The largest and most successful companies hire her when they truly want to understand their audiences.

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Over two decades, elizabeth has worked with more than 80 Fortune 500 companies and over 100 multi-million dollar brands and counting.

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She's pioneered and led innovative market research techniques around the world and conducted thousands of interviews and focus groups.

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Elizabeth has hosted everything from special reports for NBC News in Detroit to network promotions.

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She has been featured on various networks, including the Today Show, regis and Kelly and Fox News Live.

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She's also served as an expert commentator for Battleground News and On the Money.

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At election time, she decided to tackle some of the most controversial issues of our time in a social experiment called Behind the Glass.

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Her first hot-button issue was Trump supporters versus undocumented immigrants.

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The digital pilot instantly went viral, gaining over 2 million views on social media, garnering articles in Huffington Post and more, and landing Elizabeth on CNN to talk about it.

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Elizabeth graduated from the University of Michigan Business School, ranked in the top 1% of the nation for academic excellence and leadership.

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In 2008, she completed her master's degree in spiritual psychology and she now introduces exciting techniques from psychology and spirituality into her interviewing methodologies.

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We really think you're going to enjoy this episode and, like I said before, it is perfectly timed.

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We're going to jump right in.

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So can you just tell us a little bit about your background?

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How did you get here?

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You know what was the path that led you to kind of this market research and these you know these groups that you've been studying and working with.

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Yeah, I'm in market research because I'm just insatiably curious.

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I just love to know why.

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And so I do qualitative market research and I'm always trying to figure out why things are happening, why people feel the way they do, why they think the way they do.

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You know, and our company, ipsos I work for a big company called Ipsos.

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They do like all the major polling, and so I would watch on TV like an ABC News Ipsos poll or an ABC News or Ipsos routers poll or whatever it would be, and I'm like but why does the data say that?

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And nobody was really digging in in a really professional like research way.

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I mean, there are reporters who do interviews and those are great, but like to have the rigor of qualitative market research and really seriously figure out why.

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And so I just jumped in and said I'm going to do it.

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And so I launched, you know, you know multiple projects and then started posting them on YouTube and really just giving the voice to the people.

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So instead of a pundit telling you their opinion, right, or whatever, you're actually hearing from the voters themselves Like why are they feeling the way that they're feeling?

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And that's kind of all what I'm about.

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Separately, I am really interested in bringing people together.

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I love to take people from different sides and, you know, put them together and facilitate conversation because, at the core, you know, I've been doing market research for 25 years now and I've done it around the world and I can tell you without fail, we are much more alike than we are different.

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And I don't mean to say that to be pejorative or Pollyanna or anything.

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I mean truly much more alike than we are different.

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And I don't mean to say that to be pejorative or Pollyanna or anything.

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I mean truly.

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You know like we have human values and we are much more alike than we are different.

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And so when I can speak to people on the values level often even people you wouldn't think would ever come together do, and that to me, is like my real work.

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So, you know, after the election and all that, I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity to do that.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I think we're going to need a lot of it, for sure.

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I absolutely agree and I'm with you.

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I'm so interested in the why and why people behave the way they do, like when I meet someone, I just want to know immediately about their childhood, because I'm like why do you act the way you do?

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And like childhood is so telling about that.

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But no, I think that's amazing work and I love that.

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You were just like why, and no one else was doing it, so just why don't I just do it myself?

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So that's great.

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So maybe can you tell us a little bit more about the process of conducting the focus groups and maybe you know, like, what do they look like?

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How do you gather your sample?

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How do you plan out the questions?

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I know we saw on your YouTube yesterday that you had a focus group with Trump supporters versus undocumented undocumented immigration.

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So if you maybe want to use that like as an example of how you went about that one specifically, I think that'd be really interesting.

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Well, that's a good one.

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That's one that's really near and dear to my heart.

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It's for a series I call Behind the Glass.

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So in my world, usually you go to a focus group facility and there are.

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You know I'll be moderating.

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You know what we call consumers, right, let's say we're talking about shampoo or whatever pizza or whatever it is right.

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And then there's clients behind the glass.

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So there's this like one way mirror.

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It's kind of like when you watch on television and you see like the interrogation rooms of like detectives or whatever you know.

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It's like that one way mirror, glass, right, but it's me moderating and it's the clients listening and you know, I I this started in 2016 for me when Trump ran the first time and I thought, gosh, what if I could use that for good?

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Right, like what if I could use it to allow people to listen to others that have different opinions?

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So, instead of clients being behind the glass, I would put someone totally opposed to the other side behind the glass, right?

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So that was the so when I did, trump supporters in the front room, undocumented immigrants watching from behind the glass, and they heard this conversation they've never heard before about themselves, right, like how someone else perceived them and their journey.

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And then I flipped it and I let the other side go in front and the other side listen, and this separation of that was really magical, because you can't debate, right, it's kind of like undebateate.

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You have to listen.

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It's, it's, and so the.

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So the listening created a lot more opportunity.

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Then I brought them together in one room and facilitated this dialogue in a specific way where they had to sort of you know, respectfully, have discourse and at the end they end up hugging each other and like so grateful that they met each other.

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Like if you watch part two of there's like heal the divide, divide part one and Heal the Divide part two of that series part two, you can see the ending and it just that really warmed my heart because nobody knew.

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I didn't know if the experiment would work.

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You know, I had no idea.

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I just knew at the core we're more alike than we are different.

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If I could get them to see that it might work.

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You know, and I want to do that for all the major issues of our time, right, like I mean, that would be my vision and my goal.

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Yeah, how do we do your process in mass right?

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Like, yeah, like immediately and like very expedited and in terms of finding the people.

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I know that was another one of your questions.

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It's a, it's a real process.

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Like you know, I'll create criteria of the kind of people that I want to find, and then I have to use recruiters or just my resources, my scrappiness, to find them, you know.

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So the undocumented immigrants were a lot harder to find than the Trump supporters, obviously, and they're taking a risk by being on camera and talking to me, and so I had to, like, really get in with some of the people in the community first and then sort of get them.

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But typically it's it's easier than that, but there's criteria that we have and then there's, you know, finding those exact people that meet those criteria.

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You have to screen them and then you have to schedule them and they all have to be available at the same time, and you know you want people that are articulate.

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So there's a lot that goes into it.

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Yeah, and then like when you're collecting, like that data?

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or you know what.

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I mean Kind of those results like what do you kind of, how are you doing that?

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What do you do with that Right?

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What kind of?

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What's the outcome other than, obviously, this, this great thing where the two sides saw each other?

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I mean, is there something you're doing with that data afterwards?

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Yeah.

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I'm healing the world I know.

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You know, okay.

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So market research is a big umbrella.

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There's the data part of it which is called quantitative research, which is kind of like the polling, and then other like if you do a survey and they give you numbers and you can say this idea is better than that, or this candidate candidates better than that.

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That's not what I do on a daily basis.

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I can read the data and then I can say, oh, this candidate is leading, or these people feel a certain way, why is that?

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And then I find these people and I talk to them about all the motivations and the thinking and the psychological stuff that's behind why they might think that way and feeling.

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Here's why the data says what it says.

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Or you know, here's, here's what their hopes and dreams are.

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You know, like during the election season I did a lot of ideal president stuff and they would create their ideal president.

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Like you know, imagine these two candidates don't exist and anything is possible, like what would you want right now?

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Right, and so like those kinds of things can be kind of fun, but you're reporting that back.

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So that's kind of the whole outcome.

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Okay, that's really like in the real world.

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I have clients and I do a report and I present it.

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But you know, for the election stuff is really more of a passion project of mine, and so the reporting out is to the people of the world right.

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It's through YouTube, it's through whatever platform I can.

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I can run it on.

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Yeah, no, that's really incredible.

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It's really interesting work.

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I really love it.

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Yeah, we're both data.

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We're both data gals.

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We both work in IT and analytics.

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We both work in IT and analytics.

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So sorry, I had to ask you about the data.

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Okay, yeah, so we're like all in, and I feel like to relate this to IT and just like industries that we've both worked in, I feel like that's like transitioning from okay, here's the data.

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Like transitioning from okay, here's the data.

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This is what it's telling us, but like why?

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I feel like the transition to why has is like very difficult, and we're like a lot of companies and industries are currently, so it's just kind of funny to make that connection.

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It doesn't seem like it should be, but it's quite a leap.

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Yeah, absolutely Okay.

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So we're gonna talk a little bit more specifically, maybe, about the election results.

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So, based on your research, were you expecting Tuesday's results and you know yes or no, whichever way you go, kind of why.

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Okay, I will bring in some data here if you don't mind.

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So because I work for Ipsos and we do a lot of polling, we have a lot of data right.

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So the short answer to your question is I thought it was going to be a lot of polling.

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We have a lot of data right.

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So the short answer to your question is I thought it was going to be a lot closer than it was, and that is from both the data that Ipsos published as well as the qualitative research I've been doing over the last like call it eight months right, talking to people.

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At a certain point about a month before the election, I looked at my friends and I said the tide is turning, I can feel it, and so I knew there was a, there was a, some sort of turn toward Trump about a month ago and I just felt that intuitively and it's like.

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It's like when you interview so many people over the course of so long, you can start to feel things.

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You know, you just sort of feel the pulse of where things are, and I was interviewing a lot of swing state voters because that's kind of where we thought that the election would be decided, and of course it was, and so I could feel the tide turning.

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But that's just like a feeling, right.

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The data kept saying it was a tie and you know I wasn't like feeling it would be a landslide with Trump.

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I just felt like gosh, there's some sort of momentum happening coming this direction.

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And I can.

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If you guys are interested, I can talk to you about why I think it happened.

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Yeah, so I haven't worked it all out yet, right, it's still early days, but there's kind of three areas that I'm talking about at the moment and there's so many more.

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But, like, the first one is the context we were in as a country, like sort of our background, our backdrop, right.

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And if we look at data, it can tell us the majority of the country I think it was like 78% or something felt like we were on the wrong track.

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It was a really high number.

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I'm not remembering the exact number off the top of my head, but it's up there, it's in the 70s, and that's tough in and of itself, right.

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So if you're coming in any way associated with the administration that's in office and you're, you know, 70, some percent of the country think you're on the wrong track.

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That's a tough situation to be in.

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There's also the global.

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If you look globally, most of the leaders post COVID lost their elections, right?

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So it's just sort of a natural like oh, we went through something bad, let's try something new, mentality, right.

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And so also, president Biden's approval rating was that we had it at 37%, which is quite low.

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40% is a threshold of like whether a president would get reelected or not.

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So if, like he were running, it's possible he wouldn't have gotten elected because it's under that 40 percent.

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And when you look at globally, we've Ipsos has offices in 80 countries.

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We've been doing, you know, election research for a long time and over the course of many, many years.

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If you look at elections, a president with a 37 percent actually a president at 40 percent approval rating, the successor has a one in eight chance of winning.

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It's really low.

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So that's the context.

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Yeah Right, like it was a tough situation for anyone on the Democratic side.

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It could have been any candidate.

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Now we can debate whether Kamala Harris was the strongest candidate or not.

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You know, that's where I'm happy to do that, but any candidate on that side would have had a hard time.

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The second point is the most important issues to the people, and I did a lot of research on this and Ipsos did a lot of research on this.

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So you know, the top three issues are economy, political extremism or protecting democracy, and then immigration, and you guys probably know that it's been all over the media, but Trump was really ahead on the economy and immigration right Two of the three issues.

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Kamala Harris was actually ahead on.

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Protecting democracy, however, that one is kind of a weird one.

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It splits, because when I do research among Republicans, they think protecting democracy means something totally different than when I talk to Democrats.

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So it's like, even if you're saying that's an important issue, you're saying it for a different reason, and so she didn't have any sort of real advantage on the top three issues.

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And I don't think personally and you know what I hear from voters that she did a good enough job explaining exactly what she would do on signing the bill that Trump you know tanked and you know into law, but she didn't get specific about where she stood on some of these issues and so that, coupled with people feeling like they didn't really know who she was, was it, was it not, a good combination, right?

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So so so we've got the context not in her favor, we've got the issues not in her favor, and then the third part, third bucket I'm going to talk about is women, and this is a big believe it or not, in my opinion, a big, a big bucket.

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I don't think people are talking about this enough in the media, but there's so many ways into the women phenomenon in this election.

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You know, many people thought that women would turn out in much higher rates than they did.

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When we look at the actual data, I think it's like 52% of women turned out for Kamala Harris when Biden had 57%, so it's actually down and we all predicted it would be higher, usually driven by reproductive rights.

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And when I did qualitative research, it felt like that, like I talked to so many women, even on the conservative side, that were going to turn out to vote, and sometimes for the other side, sometimes for the Democratic side, because of reproductive rights.

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So that was a real shocker.

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That one sort of took me aside a little bit when I saw what actually happened.

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As we're digging deeper into that, it's interesting that many of the swing states don't have the highest abortion ban, like the toughest abortion bans.

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So that's interesting because I think we were looking at that as more national level and not state by state, so I don't know how much of that came to be.

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The other part of the women thing is I started to discover this in my research there are a lot of people that kept saying I mean, I'm just going to say it, it's sort of like unconscious bias, but it's sort of like sexism.

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We don't know, we have, okay, and so I'm not blaming anyone for it, it is what it is.

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But it would come out like she's not qualified, and then we would have a conversation about well, let's talk about what were her qualifications.

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Oh, you know, she was AG, she was Senator, she was VP.

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Okay, well, what qualifications did Trump have when he won in 2016?

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Oh well, you know.

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Or Obama, what kind of?

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You know?

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How does it compare to what Obama had, you know, when he won?

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And of course, she's more factually, she's more qualified than these folks, right?

00:18:46.769 --> 00:18:53.432
And then it's like oh yeah, but she just doesn't seem ready, or you know, and then you know we would continue to have these conversations.

00:18:53.432 --> 00:18:55.493
Well, you know, I didn't know anything she did as a VP.

00:18:55.493 --> 00:18:57.213
Well, do we know what other VPs did?

00:18:57.213 --> 00:19:11.981
And then no, and then it's like, okay, you know, we would kind of keep talking and ultimately it would come down to I just don't feel like other countries are going to take a woman president seriously, especially countries that don't respect women.

00:19:13.242 --> 00:19:25.386
And this was a genuine fear and I understand that people you know it's the context they have A lot of these folks weren't aware that there were a lot of other countries that have female leadership that have been very well respected.

00:19:25.386 --> 00:19:30.313
But you know, it's not our job to educate and research, it's our job to really understand.

00:19:30.313 --> 00:19:37.567
You know how people are feeling and it was a genuine fear, and so I started thinking gosh, I really wonder how much the woman factor is going to.

00:19:37.567 --> 00:19:38.990
You know, is the?

00:19:38.990 --> 00:19:49.538
Is the excitement to come out to vote of women going to offset this fear of like, you know, like a woman can't, won't be taken seriously as a president?

00:19:49.538 --> 00:19:56.685
And I didn't know how that would turn out and a lot of people weren't talking about that and I'm wondering if that has something to do with the numbers that we're seeing?

00:19:56.685 --> 00:19:58.632
I think it might.

00:19:59.755 --> 00:19:59.955
Yeah.

00:20:00.445 --> 00:20:03.509
And I don't want to blame it on on, you know, the fact that she's a woman.

00:20:03.509 --> 00:20:11.326
I just think that this is an interesting phenomenon and you know, I, as a woman, I would have hoped we were kind of a little further, you know, than that.

00:20:11.326 --> 00:20:13.410
But um absolutely.

00:20:13.770 --> 00:20:20.510
No yeah, we've actually like word for word some of the things you've just said, like we've had posts about.

00:20:20.510 --> 00:20:20.892
We've had.

00:20:20.892 --> 00:20:26.511
We've like said to you know, we know the Barbara Lee foundation does research on women in politics Specifically.

00:20:26.511 --> 00:20:30.838
We know there's a real barrier to women in politics and all those things you said are true.

00:20:30.838 --> 00:20:33.314
So I'm not surprised to hear that.

00:20:33.964 --> 00:20:46.118
I am curious, if you've heard, because I do think one of the demographics of women, the you know kind of subgroups of women that got pulled from her in this election, had to do with RFK.

00:20:46.118 --> 00:20:54.574
And I was curious, you know, in your, in your research and your interviews, talking to people like, did you, did you see a lot of that, like especially among suburban white women?

00:20:54.574 --> 00:20:57.727
You know there's this huge Make America Healthy Again movement.

00:20:57.727 --> 00:21:08.772
Yeah, you know, unfortunately, a lot of pseudoscience and misinformation in that, but I think I think that movement's very large, like much larger than I think people realize, and so I was just curious if you saw any of that.

00:21:08.772 --> 00:21:09.234
I did.

00:21:10.266 --> 00:21:15.351
It's all qualitative because, you know, the numbers on him were really small, so a lot of people didn't focus on it.

00:21:15.351 --> 00:21:30.855
But in my groups RFK would come up for a couple of reasons the health, the focus on health, which is, by the way, a genuine concern, right Like people have real concern about our healthcare and some of these issues that he was talking about, right.

00:21:30.855 --> 00:21:33.104
So I think there's some validity there.

00:21:33.104 --> 00:21:36.009
I think it did catch some attention in a big way.

00:21:36.009 --> 00:21:49.219
But also, rfk came up because there was distaste for both of the other candidates, so they're looking for a third party candidate that could potentially win.

00:21:49.219 --> 00:21:54.817
That could, you know, send a message that hey, we don't like what these two sides keep doing.

00:21:54.817 --> 00:21:59.534
Right, and a lot of independents were in that category in the beginning.

00:21:59.534 --> 00:22:05.573
Right, rfk endorsing Trump and sort of becoming on that side.

00:22:05.573 --> 00:22:13.258
I always kind of wondered what effect that would have and for a long time in my interviews I didn't hear that it was having a lot of effect.

00:22:13.258 --> 00:22:16.773
You know they were sort of more focused on the front candidate.

00:22:16.773 --> 00:22:24.420
But toward the end, like right before, you know, rfk and Trump were seen a lot together.

00:22:24.619 --> 00:22:26.548
There was a lot of conversation about healthcare.

00:22:26.548 --> 00:22:29.039
There's a lot of conversation about healthcare.

00:22:29.039 --> 00:22:35.278
There's a lot of conversation about autism and vaccines and whether there's a link to that or not, and I think there's a lot of mothers that are worried about that.

00:22:35.278 --> 00:22:36.301
You know.

00:22:36.301 --> 00:22:41.736
I mean, when you see autism numbers going up like you want a reason, you want to know why.

00:22:41.736 --> 00:22:44.403
Right, and you know.

00:22:44.403 --> 00:22:47.474
If you talk to some people, they say there's studies that show no link.

00:22:47.474 --> 00:22:51.226
If you talk to others, they say there's studies that have been hidden, and you know.

00:22:51.226 --> 00:22:53.694
So I think people just don't know.

00:22:53.694 --> 00:22:54.685
Yeah.

00:22:55.127 --> 00:22:55.891
Yeah, I was just curious.

00:22:55.891 --> 00:23:00.684
I just, you know social media, once you search for it, right, you get the algorithm.

00:23:00.684 --> 00:23:14.983
And suddenly I was curious about that group and I have seen so much, much, so much support for Trump among those women specifically that you know will be in the M-A-H-A instead of the M-A-G-A kind of apparel.

00:23:15.044 --> 00:23:21.097
So I was just curious yeah, I have three comments from three different things that you said.

00:23:21.097 --> 00:23:55.675
First, when you said about a month ago that you started to feel that shift towards Trump, I think that's fascinating because I'll speak for myself, ash, I'll let you either disagree or agree I felt like a month ago, or maybe even just a few weeks ago, I felt a shift more towards Kamala, and I was even talking to Ashley on Election Day and I was like, well, you know, this is when, like the average folk who doesn't you know, don't always spend their time with their nose down in political articles and data and whatnot, this is when they start to, you know, pay attention, because it's, you know, the election is coming up.

00:23:55.675 --> 00:24:09.560
Maybe I should.

00:24:09.560 --> 00:24:16.494
You know the algorithm and all of those things Like it's just wow, that's like fascinating.

00:24:16.494 --> 00:24:20.016
That just like kind of made my mind blow for the like 20th time this week.

00:24:20.865 --> 00:24:25.144
I think if I was left to my own devices I might have who knows what kind of shift I would have felt.

00:24:25.144 --> 00:24:37.766
But I was in the mode of honestly trying to do like if I did a Trump I shouldn't even say Trump group, if I did a more conservative leaning group or a leaning Trump group, I did an equal group leaning the other direction.

00:24:37.766 --> 00:24:44.165
So I was very steeped in like getting maybe conversations that I wouldn't naturally have in my life.

00:24:44.165 --> 00:24:47.170
You know what I mean, and so I think that's probably why.

00:24:47.991 --> 00:24:53.259
Yeah, definitely yeah, and I was not, you know, making it a more holistic.

00:24:53.259 --> 00:24:55.869
You know, conversation for me, that's for sure.

00:24:55.869 --> 00:24:58.856
Yeah, our algorithm was very Kamala-hyped.

00:24:59.125 --> 00:25:01.111
So I think we and I think that's true for most people.

00:25:01.131 --> 00:25:07.965
I mean, if it's not your job, it's a lot of work.

00:25:07.986 --> 00:25:12.153
It's often uncomfortable uncomfortable you know what I mean, like so hard to do, absolutely, um, also.

00:25:12.153 --> 00:25:47.030
So my second thing I wanted to bring up ashley and I just recorded a election reaction episode right before this conversation and we, um, we talked about how a lot of abortion amendments passed, but trump still, and so I know you kind of touched on that a bit and kind of your third point for why, you know, the election went the way it did and with women and whatnot, and so I just find that, yeah, I, I told Ashley, I'm like I think there's an episode that we can do on that whole thing, cause that's just so fascinating.

00:25:47.030 --> 00:26:01.476
You know how that kind of played out, and and I do wonder, like, if I don't know, if we didn't have so many abortion amendments on the ballot on specific, you know, on state specific ballots this year, would it would have been like how would the numbers have changed?

00:26:01.476 --> 00:26:04.689
I think they would have changed, I do.

00:26:05.130 --> 00:26:05.471
Can you tell?

00:26:05.490 --> 00:26:06.031
me more about that.

00:26:06.451 --> 00:26:29.809
Yeah, when I was interviewing a lot of the women particularly those that were conservative but were struggling they were undecided because they were conservative but they really wanted women to have the right to choose and make their own decisions about their reproductive rights, and some of what was happening with people dying was not sitting well with women, and so they were really torn, but they were conservative at the core.

00:26:29.809 --> 00:26:44.013
So those women who had the opportunity to say, hey, I can vote for you know choice here and still vote for, you know, a presidential candidate that holds my conservative values they got to do that.

00:26:44.013 --> 00:26:52.237
But if that wasn't on the ballot, they would have been more conflicted, right, and some of them probably would have gone in a direction they don't typically vote in.

00:26:53.165 --> 00:26:53.385
Yeah.

00:26:53.727 --> 00:26:55.310
I think I believe that wholeheartedly.

00:26:55.632 --> 00:26:56.595
That's really interesting.

00:26:56.595 --> 00:26:59.811
It's almost like the amendments hurt like hurt.

00:26:59.811 --> 00:27:01.797
You know the odds for the abortion.

00:27:01.825 --> 00:27:08.115
Yeah, I don't know if it was a Republican strategy or not but, if it was, it was you know it worked yeah.

00:27:08.355 --> 00:27:13.734
Yeah, and I forget my third point, but if I think of it I'll bring it up.

00:27:13.734 --> 00:27:31.388
Can you talk about and maybe this could be two separate questions kind of what's your biggest learning so far since researching voter behavior and maybe like pre the selection and post the selection, if there's a difference?

00:27:32.230 --> 00:27:58.101
I think one of the things that still strikes me as so interesting is that there are a lot of people that don't engage until the very end, and I did a lot of research around undecided voters because we all thought those would be the folks that decide the election, you know, and typically they are, and I would ask them you know why are you undecided?

00:27:58.340 --> 00:27:59.590
And I was so.

00:27:59.590 --> 00:28:05.292
Normally in previous elections they hadn't really engaged yet, right, but in this election it wasn't always that.

00:28:05.292 --> 00:28:36.252
It was that they were genuinely conflicted about the candidates and there's a misperception that undecided voters were kind of I don't know, like there was a lot of talk about them, like that they weren't, they couldn't decide, or that they really weren't they undecided or you know, like all these things Right, but like that wasn't my experience, like these were like really engaged folks that genuinely cared and wanted to like make the right decision and didn't like things about each side, right.

00:28:36.252 --> 00:28:39.654
And then we're genuinely trying to weigh like is this more important to me than that?

00:28:39.654 --> 00:28:41.098
And you know how it was.

00:28:41.098 --> 00:28:46.801
And so I think that that was a little different for me this time than you know I've seen in the past.

00:28:46.801 --> 00:28:50.683
In the past election it's more sort of straightforward in previous elections?

00:28:50.683 --> 00:28:52.991
I think yeah that doesn't surprise me to hear.

00:28:53.251 --> 00:28:57.819
Yeah, that kind of does surprise me to hear, because I feel like if you're engaged.

00:28:57.961 --> 00:28:59.923
I mean, yeah, I don't know.

00:28:59.923 --> 00:29:07.410
It's just it's very hard for me to you know, I'll show my partisanship here.

00:29:07.410 --> 00:29:17.971
It's very hard for me to understand how anyone engaged and was paying attention if they saw any of the things being said at rallies could like, like, look at these two candidates and have a tough decision.

00:29:17.971 --> 00:29:20.522
Yeah, the undecided voters for me makes sense.

00:29:20.522 --> 00:29:23.914
When they're not engaged, they're not seeing any of the stuff we see every day, you know.

00:29:23.914 --> 00:29:26.561
So, yeah, that's, that's really interesting actually.

00:29:26.950 --> 00:29:30.619
I think that one comes down to two different things that are really unrelated, like.

00:29:30.619 --> 00:29:32.492
One is the media silos we're in.

00:29:32.492 --> 00:29:37.953
I know you said rallies, but most of the people I interviewed didn't watch full rallies.

00:29:37.953 --> 00:29:40.284
They didn't even watch full convention speeches.

00:29:40.284 --> 00:29:42.854
It was clips on social media that they saw.

00:29:42.854 --> 00:29:50.478
So when you're doing that, you get the clips that whatever your algorithm feeds you is beating you and you know it's all slanted.

00:29:50.478 --> 00:29:56.019
So it's like we're living in two separate universes, right, like our facts aren't the same anymore.

00:29:56.019 --> 00:29:56.601
So there's that.

00:29:56.601 --> 00:29:59.013
The other part of it is there was a lot of.

00:29:59.013 --> 00:30:06.939
I don't really like Trump as a person, but I'm voting for him anyway because I had more money when he was president.

00:30:07.619 --> 00:30:45.538
And I think that's why I wasn't surprised to hear that, because I've heard that so many times now where, like, yeah, I'm with Ash, where I'm like I can't, yeah, my partisanship showing to it, like I like I cannot even imagine personally that, like doing that, but yeah, just from what I, what I've seen, and yeah, yeah, more money in my pocket, like, yeah, he's a crazy human, but yeah, and it's like when I talk to you know, let's say, a mom who is shopping at the dollar store because she can't afford a real grocery store and literally can't feed her children, like, is what he says at a rally gonna really be more important than that?

00:30:47.614 --> 00:30:58.712
It's not, and I do think that's a little bit of what the Harris campaign missed is the true importance of that to some of these folks, like you know, that are really, really struggling.

00:30:58.712 --> 00:31:01.038
And I know she tried to talk about it.

00:31:01.038 --> 00:31:04.576
I, she really did, and she tried to give you know things that would help.

00:31:04.576 --> 00:31:10.653
I don't know that the I don't know she was also.

00:31:10.653 --> 00:31:29.221
This is hard because what I heard in my research is when Biden was the one running, people were saying we're hurting right, and then the Biden organization or administration would say but if the economy is good, but inflation is going down and these are like you know.

00:31:29.240 --> 00:31:33.496
You got to go to college to study economy to understand what even this number means.

00:31:33.496 --> 00:31:36.760
It doesn't matter if I'm still can't afford my food Right.

00:31:36.760 --> 00:31:44.651
So it came off like the Biden administration wasn't hearing them, wasn't listening to them, wasn't caring about them.

00:31:44.651 --> 00:31:50.032
It was like, yeah, but the economy's great, you know, and so that's that's tough, you know.

00:31:50.032 --> 00:31:57.650
And then when she went on the View and said she wouldn't do anything differently, I think those are the kinds of things that were tough for folks, yeah.

00:31:58.571 --> 00:31:59.233
Yeah, it is.

00:31:59.233 --> 00:32:03.511
I mean, you know we're trying to obviously postmortem as well and like just understand it.

00:32:03.511 --> 00:32:09.795
So it is, it's so helpful to hear from you, because we don't have all those perspectives and I think it's it's hard.

00:32:10.036 --> 00:32:10.297
I don't?

00:32:10.517 --> 00:32:11.721
you know me and Sarah were talking about it.

00:32:11.721 --> 00:32:19.134
We people surround themselves with like minded people, and so how do we start to break down, you know, some of those barriers.

00:32:19.134 --> 00:32:22.611
I'm not sure what the answer is, but we obviously need to figure it out.

00:32:23.232 --> 00:32:25.097
You just listen to more people, if you can.

00:32:25.097 --> 00:32:31.849
That's what I'll try to bring you guys more, more folks, and if you want to send them our way, let us know Straight from them right.

00:32:34.276 --> 00:32:37.303
Like you know, but I know, if you want us to join a focus group, let us know.

00:32:38.871 --> 00:32:46.618
I mean, but I know what you're talking about right, like how some people are like how could you vote for someone with those kinds of values or that have done those kinds of things or said those kinds of things?

00:32:46.618 --> 00:32:54.432
And you know, I think for some people it came down to just practical life, yeah, and lack of education about yeah.

00:32:54.432 --> 00:32:56.894
You know, and misinformation, Misinformation.

00:32:56.933 --> 00:32:58.075
I think is really huge.

00:32:58.075 --> 00:32:59.395
Yeah, definitely.

00:32:59.395 --> 00:33:02.417
Okay, we're going to end with, I think, one more here.

00:33:02.417 --> 00:33:13.707
So, based on you know just the division we see in the country and in your focus groups, I know that you see a lot of hope and optimism in them as well, you know, do you have hope for us?

00:33:13.707 --> 00:33:19.295
Do you think we can kind of come back together?

00:33:19.295 --> 00:33:20.018
This division won't be here forever?

00:33:20.018 --> 00:33:20.519
I mean, kind of how do?

00:33:20.539 --> 00:33:21.061
you feel about the future?

00:33:21.061 --> 00:33:27.130
Well, I'm an optimist, so you're asking an optimist this question we are too we are too, so you're in some very good company.

00:33:27.871 --> 00:33:30.414
So, yeah, I'm not giving up.

00:33:30.414 --> 00:33:32.337
I'm not going to give up.

00:33:32.337 --> 00:33:36.384
I still believe that people are more alike than they are different.

00:33:36.384 --> 00:33:39.796
I think when they meet each other, that happens.

00:33:39.796 --> 00:33:49.291
You saw, like Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney, right Like, or Liz Cheney, when she did the January 6th committee, had said she had never spent any time with any of these folks.

00:33:49.291 --> 00:33:54.251
I think that is really sad that our congressional people do not talk to the other side at all.

00:33:54.251 --> 00:34:08.010
And she was so um, her word, you know like she was so sort of surprised to to have, I don't know, connected in such a way with some of the people from the other side.

00:34:08.010 --> 00:34:16.297
I think when people listen to each other and come together, that's the kind of miracle stuff that can happen, and I think we just need more of that, and I know that's what you guys are all about too.

00:34:16.297 --> 00:34:19.141
So, yeah, absolutely.

00:34:20.041 --> 00:34:20.963
Yeah, we love that answer.

00:34:20.963 --> 00:34:27.003
We, like Ash said, we're both optimists as well, and this week has really been testing that for us.

00:34:27.384 --> 00:34:33.521
Um, but we're back, going towards the up, though we had a couple of dark days, but we're we're working back towards it.

00:34:37.010 --> 00:34:39.378
It's okay to take a moment to say this is how I feel and you know, and, but we're we're working back towards it.

00:34:39.378 --> 00:34:43.610
It's okay to take a moment to say this is how I feel and you know, and, but who you guys are at your core in your hearts is never going to change right.

00:34:43.610 --> 00:34:46.135
It's going to come back, whether you like it or not.

00:34:46.936 --> 00:34:52.751
Oh well, thank you so much for your time, elizabeth.

00:34:52.751 --> 00:35:09.010
I am, I am just, I've learned so much just in this conversation and I love the work that you do because it literally brings like and I think I'm speaking for Ashley too like the data side that we love and the politics side that we love so, um, very, very fascinating.

00:35:09.010 --> 00:35:11.054
I'm so happy we we had this time with you.

00:35:11.755 --> 00:35:14.701
I love the work you guys do as well, so I'm a big fan.

00:35:15.302 --> 00:35:17.204
Thank you, yeah, thank you so much for your time.

00:35:17.204 --> 00:35:21.259
Just excited to kind of watch you keep, you know, shaping the future.

00:35:21.259 --> 00:35:23.614
So thank you for all you do and thanks for joining us today.

00:35:23.614 --> 00:35:24.838
It was great to meet you.

00:35:32.411 --> 00:35:34.255
Thanks for joining us for today's episode.

00:35:34.255 --> 00:35:35.820
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00:35:36.510 --> 00:35:41.255
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00:35:41.771 --> 00:35:44.539
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00:35:44.539 --> 00:35:49.775
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00:35:50.269 --> 00:35:57.701
With that, we'll see you next week, thank you.