An article by Politico profiles the work done by the Herndon Alliance and American Environics to reshape the health care debate in America

(original Politico piece here)

Health care reform is once again on everyone's lips. The current debate began to take shape on the road to the white house, in the primaries. It came from the camps of Obama, Clinton, and even Edwards. The need for health care reform was a hot button issue in the last election, a key signifier that across the board everyone was beginning to recognize the calls of their constituents to fix what many see as a system that was broken. But beyond repair? The question remains.

Previous campaigns to reform health care -- like the Hillary Clinton led initiative in 1993 - 94, and the Dean led one of 2004 -- failed by and large due to the fact that much of the focus was directed at the uninsured, while many of those who already had insurance were left twisting in the wind without a clue as to what their futures may hold with the new plan. As well, the great swath of disinformation coming from the right-wing in regards to what this "socialized" approach to medicine would hold for everyday Americans described scenarios oscillating at a Cold-War pitch not at all unlike those the AMA has been threatening the American public with for years.

Naturally, such disinformation sought only to derail the plan rather than to offer a genuine critique of the messaging strategy. But what it did was provide was a window into the thought process of those unconvinced segments of the American populace. When progressives went back to the table for this new round of debate, those at the Herndon Alliance were concerned with not replicating this prior mistake.

As the Politico piece elaborates:

"They [Herndon] position health care as part of the American dream -- providing peace of mind if their children fall ill, lifting the economic fortunes of the middle class and preventing anyone from losing insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

"Traditionally, those on the left have aimed at the head," Van Vranken said. "And a lot of this stuff is aiming at the heart, trying to get at the values of the American people. ... Everyone is serious about the words they are using and thinking long and hard about what resonates and what works and what doesn't scare the American people."

Those who helped organize Herndon were tired of losing the argument.

The source of much of that change in messaging is American Environics' social values research. American Environcis was hired to define groups of receptive population segments for targeting in upcoming debate about health-care reform.

[American Environics] identified persuadable constituencies, covering 67 percent of the electorate, and figured out what made them tick. "Proper Patriots" want hardworking people to get the health care they deserve. "Marginalized Middle Agers" want coverage they can count on, but are susceptible to attacks because they worry about government competence and dislike change. "Mobile Materialists" value individual choice over employer choice, and definitely favor a private market for insurance.

"By developing a health reform concept and an accompanying offensive narrative that connects with the values and beliefs of American voters while addressing the issues that concern them, we will expand the base of support for reform without losing those who are already with us," Herndon Alliance wrote in a 2007 presentation.

Herndon presented its findings to the campaigns of Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John Edwards. Deliberate or not, Herndon's footprints were discernable.

Clinton assured voters they could keep their insurance if they liked it, but could also choose from a mix of public and private plans. Obama always stressed the need to rein in insurers. Edwards tapped into polling that showed voters wanted a public insurance option.

Still, the fight has only just begun. As those on the climate side of regulation are beginning to realize, just getting our man into the White House is not a guarantee for any real, substantial change. Those of us fighting to reform America's Health Care have known all along that there are better options for the American people, but at least now we are beginning to understand just how to sell those options in the face of heavily entrenched resistance.

(original Politico piece here)

January 12, 2009,

Introduction
A broad inspection of public opinion data on the state of our economy reveals that Americans are worried about the future, less than optimistic about government's ability to face down the crisis, and ambivalent about Keynesian approaches to recovery.  Furthermore, as they imagine future possibilities, they seem to be relying upon traditional partisan and ideological understandings of the economy.  Thus, Democrats are more likely to support government spending as a stimulus strategy while Republicans are more likely to support reduced taxation.  However, the high incidence of "don't know" and contradictory or otherwise ambivalent responses suggests that Americans may be open to bold leadership.

This report consists of three parts.  The first summarizes the current state of public opinion regarding the economic crisis and its implications for Obama's proposed stimulus plan.  Here, we draw on surveys by CNN, Politico, Rasmussen, Gallup, and NBC/WSJ.  The second part of the report summarizes longitudinal data from the General Social Survey culled together by our research team.  These data reflect Americans' longstanding ambivalence regarding public spending and taxation.  The third offers some broad recommendations for approaching economic recovery given the current state of public opinion.
 
The Current Situation
Right now, Americans are feeling the pinch.  Fully eighty-nine percent of Americans report being dissatisfied with the current economic situation (63% are "very dissatisfied") (Politico).  Sixty-eight percent report that they are changing their habits to reduce their overall household spending (Gallup 12/14/2008).  Of those who have money in the stock market, 87% report losing money.  Almost half of them (47%) say they have "lost a lot of money in the stock market" in the past year (ibid.). According to Rasmussen polling released in early January 2009, half of Americans (50%) say their personal financial situation is getting worse while only 19% say their situation is improving.  As a result of the paired housing and financial crises, Americans are much more worried about their ability to "maintain the standard of living [they] enjoy" than they were prior to April 2008 when the housing crisis came to a head (Gallup).

Continue reading "Opinion Matters: How are Americans Thinking About Economic Recovery?" »

An update to American Environics' previous Roadmap 2005, which contains a summary of how American values have evolved since 2004 and the results of the updated segmentation based upon the 2007 American Values Survey.



In 2005, American Environics created the first Road Map for a Progressive Majority, which used data from Environics' 3SC survey to map the social values of the American electorate to better understand the social values of the various "publics" in the United States.  At the time, American Environics was relatively new and the data used to create the initial roadmap was adapted from surveys primarily designed for commercial clients in the United States.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation provided seed funding in 2004 to create the first Road Map by adapting the existing Environics data set to create the initial segmentation of the U.S. population based upon its social values. The insights derived from the research in 2005 created a number of important insights to progressive organizations and groups attempting to advance a progressive agenda in a variety of public policy areas.  

The first Road Map provided detailed analysis of the progressive base, constituencies of opportunity, and methods to target both the base and the various swing constituencies. The study looked at the social values, demographics, issue positions, and media consumption habits of voters, and at the time represented the most comprehensive study of social values designed to help progressive organizations solve public policy problems.

By 2007, American Environics undertook the task of designing a new social values survey designed to cover a much larger number of social values related to public policy and social change. AE reduced the number of corporate and commercial social values and, working with social scientists, added a number of academically validated social values directly related to political decision making and attitudes on public policy issues. The result was a survey with more than 800 questions that tracks 130 social values constructs and attitudes on public policy issues from health care and immigration to nuclear proliferation and reproductive health. It also contains detailed questions on demographics, media consumption, and lifestyles. The American Values Survey is today the largest and most comprehensive research instrument available to progressive social change communities.

One of the primary goals of the survey was to create a new, more robust standard political segmentation system that can be used by a wide variety of progressive organizations to gain deep understandings as to the world views of key blocks of voters.

This update to the Road Map for a progressive Majority contains a summary of the new methodology used to gather data for the AVS, a brief summary of how social values have evolved since 2004, and the results of the updated segmentation based upon the 2007 American Values Survey.

Also Featured Inside:

-- Case Studies of Earthjustice, the Green Group Project, California Alliance, SCOPE, ACORN, the Herndon Alliance and more

-- Survey Methodology and American Values Survey Core Constructs explained

-- Evolution of American Social Values 2004 - 2007

-- The Political Values Segmentation System, and What it Means for Your Organization

-- America's 15 Distinct Psychographic Segments

Download the entire PDF here (1281 KB, November 2008)

The same kinds of social values that determine whether or not one subscribes to landline telephone service - social values our company tracks like Aversion to Complexity, Technology Anxiety, Tried and True - impacts their decisions as voters. Importantly for 2008 (and beyond), pollsters that treat landline and cell phone only voters the same are making less than accurate predictions.

Traditional public opinion polling has evolved over the years, but since the latter part of the 20th Century how those surveys are conducted hasn't changed all that much. To completely oversimplify, the process is pretty straightforward: get a representative sample of respondents on the telephone, design an instrument that asks good questions, weight the sample when appropriate and run the crosstabs.

While all of those steps are important to ensure accuracy, pollsters tightly hold their secret formulas for weighting samples. It's the industry's version of KFC's 13 original spices. Virtually all pollsters, however, when thinking about weighting do so by weighting a combination of demographic information or partisanship.

In the last few years changes in technology have complicated matters a bit for pollsters. The rise of the use of cell phones and caller ID have skewed the kinds of people that answer survey calls and agree to participate in the research. There has been a tremendous amount of debate in the pollster world, for example, about cell phones. For a long time, cell phones were excluded from most polling research. While many (if not most) pollsters now try to incorporate cell phone numbers into their research, the response rate is often different between landline and cell phone respondents.

Continue reading "Cell Phones, Landlines and the 2008 Election" »

Is Dr. Pepper a Republican soda? Do Democrats prefer Popeye's fried chicken to Chick-fil-A?

A recent article in the New York TImes examines the explosion of microtargeting in political campaigns and what these seemingly individual choices tell us about ourselves and our political values. American Environics Senior Vice-President, Jeff Navin, speaks on the little issues making big political waves.

What's for Dinner? The Pollster Wants to Know