Polling and focus groups: the importance of measuring public opinion on your issue

Whether it’s paid advertising or earned media outreach, communications campaigns are expensive. It’s critical to ensure your communications are relevant and persuasive to your target audience.

Am I starting on my own 1-yard line? The 50-yard line? My opponent’s 30?

Before you begin planning campaign strategy and communications, you need to answer some key questions:

• Is the public aware of your issue?

• How concerned are they about it?

• Do they understand the issue and its relevance to them?

• Do they support your position?

• How well do they know your industry and company or organization? 

If you’ve been following the Texas Republican primary campaign and runoff, you have seen Texas Governor Greg Abbott endorsing and campaigning for Republican primary challengers to legislators who opposed his school voucher proposal. But instead of campaigning against those incumbents on vouchers, he campaigned on the border – including against incumbents who supported him on border legislation. Why is this? Because border security/immigration outranks other issues as the issue Texas voters care most about by far. Education ranks far behind in single digits with no voter mandate to address the issue.

Making your case

What seems obvious to you from a communications standpoint might – or might not – be what resonates strongest with the public. Paid advertising is expensive, and earned media opportunities are limited. When you do have your audience’s attention, you need to be sure you're making the most compelling case for your cause.

• Which of the half-dozen reasons to support your position is most persuasive to the public?

• Which ones convince people who were previously opposed to support your position?

• Which messages strengthen weak support?

• Which opposition messages have the most impact, and do they need to be countered?

• Who is the most credible information source to help make your case?

Here’s a simple example of a message testing series with an initial and informed ballot:

Initial ballot test - pre-messages:

Q: Do you favor or oppose using local and federal incentives for residential solar programs? (Strongly support, Somewhat support, Somewhat oppose, Strongly oppose, Unsure)

Message testing:

Informed ballot test - post-messages:

Q: Now that you have had a chance to learn more about the issue, do you favor or oppose using local and federal incentives for residential solar programs? (Strongly support, Somewhat support, Somewhat oppose, Strongly oppose, Unsure)

This type of survey design provides an initial, pre-campaign measure of support then examines the impact of supporter and opposition messages. The informed ballot provides a post-message measure. Additionally, this structure allows pollsters to conduct advanced statistical analysis to identify which messages correlate with a change in support. This helps campaign strategists prioritize messages supporters should emphasize and also identify which opposition messages may need to be addressed.

Examples

Some real-life examples where research ahead of a campaign is critical for communications:

• Before running a campaign demanding accountability on child welfare, you need to know: Does the public know there's a foster care emergency in their area and/or statewide?

• When discussing electric utility industry solutions to address Winter Storm Uri outages, it’s critical to know: Does the public understand the primary reasons why most of the state lost power during the storm?

• When discussing health care issues in Texas, does the public know Texas ranks last for health care coverage and that rural hospitals are closing? What is the simplest way to explain the connection between health care coverage and long-term health outcomes?

• What makes the strongest case for encouraging renewable energy expansion, and how persuasive are anti-renewable arguments?

Research options are expanding

Measuring public opinion can be done several ways, and new technology has made highly specialized research possible and more affordable. Some common questions we get asked about research:

Should I conduct a poll, or do focus groups or even in-depth interviews make more sense? 

This depends on your audience, the types of questions you’re trying to answer, and what you plan to do with your results. One consideration that might impact which approach is best is whether your issue affects people statewide, in a region or city, or a smaller area within a city. Other considerations are how you will use the results, and who you’ll share them with: a C-suite executive might want to see consumers discussing their issue in depth to inform strategic planning, while a reporter may require a statistical measure of opinions to report on. Digital Advance can recommend a research approach and develop a plan that best fits your needs.

How do researchers conduct polls now?

Much of today’s polling is done online, which is more affordable. But depending on your audience, polling over the phone may be the best or only option. Data collection companies now build sophisticated survey panels, and sometimes researchers aggregate their samples from multiple providers to complete the desired number of interviews and diversify sampling for better randomization and to minimize error. Sampling also can include blends of methodologies such as phone and online, or even using text with links to online surveys.

Can I reach a specialized audience?

Do you need to talk to core voters? Small business owners? Doctors/nurses? Teachers? IT decision-makers? Research with highly targeted audiences can be critical for strategic communications and is now feasible within reason. Additionally, being able to show what critical audiences think about a specific issue or proposal can be highly influential to policymakers.

How accurate is polling?

Election polling accuracy has come under scrutiny in recent years – and rightly so. Polling tight elections and trying to predict turnout can add to pollsters’ already extremely challenging tasks of achieving reliable sampling, avoiding questionnaire bias, and mitigating fraudulent responses in surveys. A closely divided public and an unprecedented and turbulent election environment greatly exacerbate this challenge.

That said, polling still provides an accurate measure of attitudes, how much an issue matters to the public, who they find to be credible, and which supporting and opposing arguments they find convincing. Overall, we strongly believe election polling that misses the mark by a few percentage points or fails to accurately predict turnout in close races is not a convincing reason to dispense with conducting research on policy issues where understanding public sentiment is critical.

Let’s talk! 

If you’d like to discuss how research can help you communicate effectively on a policy issue or just want to talk about the latest poll you saw in the news – we geek out on this stuff – please reach out!