Who was the 2024 electorate? With Pew Research's Hannah Hartig an Scott Keeter

Episode Transcript
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Farrah Bostic (00:00):
Welcome back to Crosstabs, A show about people data and power.
I'm your host, Farrah Bostic.
I meant to get this episode toyou last night, July 2nd, 2025.
But instead, I got caught up watchingthe various live streams of the
votes being taken in Congress on thebudget reconciliation bill known in
the Senate as the one big beautifulbill act before a minority leader.

(00:20):
Schumer had the name change tosomething generic and then sent
it on to the house overnight.
A few Republican holdouts stopped holdingout and after Hakeem Jeffries took the
floor in what is known as a magic minute.
Uh, as an aside, the Congress has alot of supernatural time on its hands.
Perpetual days, magic minutes.
Anyway, they held thevote and the bill passed.

(00:43):
The Immigration and Customs EnforcementDivision of the Department of Homeland
Security now has a budget that exceeds thecombined budgets of basically all of our
domestic federal law enforcement agencies.
A budget for one agency that someare saying exceeds , that of most
countries, total military spending.
On the same day today, July 3rd, theday before Independence Day, the US

(01:07):
Supreme Court ruled on whether the UnitedStates government can move without due
process to deport people to countriesthey have never set foot in, where
they may be tortured and beaten, wherethey may never again know liberty, and
it found that it can do exactly that.
I bring this up because the conversationI'm trying to bring to you today is not
really about that, but in a way it is.

(01:29):
I spoke with the excellent researchers,Scott Keter and Hannah Hardig at the
Pew Research Center who worked on the2024 validated voter survey, which
is one of a handful of high qualitypost-election surveys designed to
tell us who the electorate was in2024 and how it was different from
previous electorates who votes and whodoesn't matters in this country still.

(01:51):
It is why we fight over how todraw congressional districts and
what identification is requiredto register to vote and how much
money there should be in politics.
It is also in a way why we are fightingso hard right now over who deserves to
be an American at all, and it appearswhether you can have your Americanness
stripped from you, if the governmentchooses or have it contested depending

(02:13):
on which state you are in at the time.
Tomorrow, maybe today as youlistened to this, or a few days ago,
or whenever is Independence Day.
We count this as the nation'sbirthday, more or less.
It will be 249 years old, whothe electorate is at least in
part, is who the nation is.
I wonder if the people who made upthis electorate really had in mind

(02:36):
ringing in the 250th birthday of thisnation by becoming something terrible.
Maybe they did . This conversationexplains how hard it is to
know both who the electorate isand why they do what they do.
This research isn't designed totell us why they did what they did,
though I think that is for us all toconsider now as their choices to vote

(02:58):
or not to vote, have consequences.
We will all have to reckon with Happy4th of July to those who celebrate.
Here's my conversation with Senior Surveyadvisor Scott Keter and senior researcher
Hannah Hardig of the Pew Research Centeron their 2024 validated voter study.
So Hannah and Scott, thank you for beingwilling to talk to me about the analysis

(03:22):
Pew has done about the 2024 electorate.
And I kind of just wanna start by gettingto know each of you a little bit better.
I have joked before that this is theunofficial podcast of the Pew Research
Center, uh, because I've had a fewdifferent teams on at this point.
But, uh, I haven't had a chance to,to meet with the two of you before.
I'd love to hear a little bit about yourroles at Pew and, and kind of your areas

(03:42):
of expertise and, and how you came tobe in the position that you're in now.

Hannah Hartig (03:46):
So I've been on the politics team at Pew Research
Center for almost eight years now.
And more broadly, I've beenstudying the American public and
how they view politics, how they.
think about political news and howthey vote for a number of years.
I got my start at NBC News duringthe 2014 midterms working on the
decision desk and, and gettingimmersed in the exit poll world.

(04:08):
Um, and then from there I sort of,took on a, a bigger role in 2016,
helping them with some horse racecoverage of the primaries for the
Democratic and Republican partiesin 2016 and in the general election.
And I made my way over to Pew afew years ago and have been happily
studying the public ever since.

Excellent.
That must be,, is it a nice changeto go from the horse race coverage
to, to this well, I guess less, uh,pitched version of a political polling

For me, yes, it was a really great transition because,
you know, election is a mark in timeand so I really wanted to get a, a
deeper understanding of, the shiftsover time, how people were viewing.
Politics and non-election years,that's, it's very crucial to
understanding our society.
It's not just how people vote, it'show they view a variety of events.
And as we'll talk aboutlater, not everyone votes.

(04:57):
And we wanna reflect how everyonethinks in our country today.
And so, yes, it was a welcome change.

That's great.
Well, thank you Hannah.
How about you, Scott?

Scott Keeter (05:07):
Well, I've been with Pew for a long time.
, This is over 20 years for me.
I was an academic for much ofmy career over 20 years as a
college professor of politicalscience, studying public opinion.
I.
Got interested in doing surveysand had some experience with it,
and, uh, was fortunate enough tothen be able to transition over to
Pew in 2002 on a full-time basis.

(05:30):
But for the last, um, almost 10 yearsor so, I've been a part-time advisor
to the center, working mostly with ourmethodology team, uh, sometimes with
the politics team on, particularlyon this particular project, uh,
validating our panelists, , votesand writing about the election.

(05:50):
Uh, but I too worked at NBC fora while as a, as a consultant.
And I met Hannah in 2014when she was working there.
So

Well,
polling is a small world.

Yeah.

Yes.
That's great.
Um, so maybe let's start justwith what this project is.
Every, every election cycle.
For as long as I've been payingattention to Pew, I feel like
there has been something like this.
How, how far back does this type ofthis post-election, uh, analysis of the
makeup of the electorate go with few?
How long has it beendoing that, that project?

Yeah, so Scott actually had a hand in the original validated
voter analysis, and that was firstconducted in after the 2016 election.
And so we do those every twoyears after the general election
starting in 2016 and the midterms.
And so this was our, our fifth editionof the Validated Voters Report.

And I think one of the things a lot of people who maybe
are not in the polling world don't.
I don't understand is why, why it'sseven months after the election
that we find out kind of whatthe makeup of the electorate is.
Maybe you can talk a little bitabout the, the challenges of even
getting to the question of who voted.

Yeah, it's, um, it, it is frustrating.
'Cause people want to know pretty soonafter the election, well, why did this
happen and what, what were the forces thatdrove it and what could have been done
differently if you're on the losing side.
But the fact is that we aredepending on obtaining the actual
state voter turnout records.

Mm-hmm.

this, you know, as you know, elections in the United
States are very decentralized.
Uh, each state has control of its ownelections and follows its own calendar.
In terms of updating itsrecords and making them public.
So we have to wait until all of thestates have reported to where we have a
complete picture of of the electorate.

(07:40):
Now that doesn't meanwe can't start sooner.
We, we actually get a lot of these datawithin a month or so of the election.
A lot of states are very, veryfast in turning theirs around.
And so we're able to work on the, on theproject and, and to get a good sense of
what, what the story is, well before thetime that we've released it last week.

(08:01):
But we, we just need to wait becausethat's the, the way the wheels of
the administration of elections goes.

Yeah, it's, it's, uh, something we've addressed on, um, last
year on a couple of episodes, talking toMichael McDonald at the Elections Project.
And, and then also to some folks fromsome of the, even just like the voter file
companies, about the complexity of gettingthese records from different kinds of
governmental units, let's say, dependingon the part of the country that you're in,
it may be down to like the village or thetownship that is holding these records.

(08:32):
And so it, it does take timeto, to gather all of that.
Um, so you're, it sounds like you'rekind of incrementally collecting
the, the data as it is available.
Maybe then talk about how you goabout, obviously one of the other
things we know from those conversationsis that there are, it's, it's very
different state to state how much.
Kind of demographic data, or evenfor that matter, voter, uh, party

(08:53):
affiliation data is on the recordabout the electorate itself, um, just
from like the voter registration file.
Um, and obviously when people arefilling out their ballots, they're
not also filling out a demographicscreener prior to doing so.
So talk a bit about how you kind of,uh, make these correlations between what
we know about the demographics of anarea or about your, from the, from the

(09:15):
panel that Pew has, uh, and projectingthat onto the actual results that we
obtained on the kind of just the ballot

So , this is a really unique analysis in that we
have a massive panel, our AmericanTrends panel of thousands of adults.
And so we have a, a variety ofinformation both about, you know, the
demographics of the people on the panel.
So, their race, their age youknow, their relative income status,
their educational attainment.
And really what the value of matching thatpanel to these voter file records is, is

(09:45):
that we're able to confirm their turnout.
And so, as you're well aware, oneof the major factors when, when
people are responding to surveys isthat they might feel social desire.
Ability, you know, to say that theyvoted, they might feel like they should
say that it's part of their civicresponsibility to say they voted.
And so part of what this matchallows us to do, and it's three
different vendors, is to confirmthat they actually did turn out.

(10:07):
Um, and so it's validating theirturnout, hence validated voters.
And so most of the other information thatwe're getting about how they, they voted
or their political preferences or some ofthese other demographic things that you're
pointing to are actually from our panel.
But that's, you know, the unique valueadd of this particular project is that
we have really a really rich portraitof the people who turned out and the

(10:28):
people who didn't, , but we're ableto validate whether they actually did
turn out in one of three voter file
vendors that we use.

I was just gonna throw in a plug for a report that
we wrote in 2018 where, uh, when wekicked off this project in 2016, we
actually had had, uh, relations withfive different commercial vendors.
And in addition to validating votesin the 2016 election, we took the
opportunity to actually try toevaluate the quality of the demographic

(10:59):
information and other data that you canfind in these commercial voter files.
And of course, as your audiencemight know if they saw these earlier
podcasts where you talk to someof these vendors, the value of
these is largely, I think for the.
Campaigns themselves, they use theseto help them reach, uh, their voters or

(11:21):
to try to convert people, to mobilizepeople that aren't regular voters.
And you know, not so much for researchpurposes as we, as we use them, but
we thought that it would be helpfulto kind of demystify the voter files.
And so we took a look at, you know, howgood is the demographic information in
it and sort of what, what does it tell usbeyond just whether somebody voted or not?

(11:44):
And that that report's on our website.
And I think it's still,still pretty interesting.

That, that is really interesting.
'cause I know that as I was starting toget into the question of, you know, I'll
fess up that like thinking about voterfile companies was not really a thing.
I had done a ton of prior,prior to really, I think prior
to the New York Times is.
Polling operation.
And, you know, I'm a,I'm a footnote reader.
If you write a methodology section,I read your methodology section.

(12:11):
. They mentioned that they were usingL two as as a voter file provider
for, for some of the surveys thatthey were doing, which, , got me to
start to dig in a little bit on whoare all of these different companies.
And we did in fact talk to someonefrom L two in the end, but now I
get emails from all of them, um,which is exciting, uh, for me.
But I will, we will referpeople to that piece.
'cause I think that was a reallyinteresting look at the, the kind of level

(12:33):
of quality and, and, um, verifiabilityof what's in each of those data sets.
So how did you ultimately narrowdown, you started with five, you're,
you're with the three, you picked sortof the three that you felt had the
highest quality, uh, data sets to beginwith, or, or were there other kind
of factors that drove your choices?

It was, It was, uh, a little less systematic than that.

Yeah, cost.

five was just too many to, to manage.
It was just, uh, the logisticsof, you know, the contracting
with them and all of that.
It was just more of a burden.
We didn't feel like the value addof, that many justified, the effort.
So, but we did, we did want to do onething, which was we wanted to make sure
that we had a vendor that was nonpartisanand we wanted to have a vendor that

(13:16):
represented sort of the conservativeside of the spectrum Republican vendor.
And we wanted to have one thatwas liberal or a democratic
vendor, progressive vendor.
And that way it's not that, it's notthat the information in, in each of
these is gonna be radically different.
I mean, after all, the conservativeswant to turn out people that are not
conservative, and the liberals want toturn out people that are not liberals.

(13:38):
So it's in their interest tohave it as accurate as possible.
But we wanted to avoid any, appearanceof favoritism from one side or
the other, as well as just takingadvantage of the, you know, the, the,
the extra information that you get.
And we do find unique voters in eachof the three files that we used.

Interesting.
Yeah.
And so, so you go through thisprocess, you have your own panel, so
you have a lot of information there.
You're able to verify them against thevoter file that they did in fact vote in,
you know, the, the last three electionsor in this, this current election.
Um, you, you mentioned I think rightbefore we started recording that the

(14:22):
questions that you ask really are about.
Their vote choice.
And then obviously you have the, thedemographic makeup of, of the respondents.
But maybe talk a bit about what sorts ofthings you ask on this survey and, and
what things you don't ask on this survey.

, Hannah Hartig (14:37):
So the main vehicle that we're matching to
is our post-election survey.
And the main thing we're askingabout is, you know, did you turn
out, did you face a long line?
If you didn't vote, doyou wish you'd voted?
And one of the key things I'm guessingwe'll talk about is if you didn't vote.
Who would you havesupported in the election?
And so we're asking a varietyof things about voting behavior.

(14:59):
You know, we take that opportunity toask a couple different issue questions.
But again, it is a panel and so we, youknow, we've been tracking pre-election
attitudes throughout the 2024 cycle.
But yes, that post-election survey wherewe take the full panel and we ask them
about their voting behavior and, and themost recent election in 2024 is where
we ask about those things like yourvote choice and, and how did you vote?

(15:20):
Did you vote by mail?
Did you vote in person?
Those kinds of things.

by, yeah.
I think there was a particular just , onthat topic that I noticed in the report
was, uh, that the number of people who aredoing in-person early voting is growing.
And obviously it's a relatively, Imean, depending on where you're, I'm
originally from Oregon where it'sbeen vote by mail for like, ever.
Um, and, uh, and now I live inNew York where we just got early
voting in, in the last, I think inthose last election cycle actually.

(15:46):
Um, or maybe the last two.
And so it's interesting tosee that rate of growth.
Were there any kind of interestingtrends that you saw in terms of things
like wait time or method of voting?
Across the, across the sample.

I think you highlighted the main, the main things that we
found too far, it was just a growthamong people who supported Democrat
or Harris or Trump in the election.
And so there's been, you know, amodest uptick in, in Republicans
who are voting early as well.
Um, and they tend to favorin person early voting.
But, you know, 2020 was obviously amassive year for, for male voting.

(16:18):
Um, but we're seeing a continuationof people voting before election
day among both Democratic supportersand Republican supporters.

Yes, I'm old enough to remember that when Oregon went
to mail-in ballots, everyone wasvery worried that this was going
to create a Republican advantage.
And not really, it just turnedout to be the way it is.
Like no one, no one minded.
And obviously it's nowjust effectively mandatory.
I think my mother fills outher ballot and drops it off at
the library across the street.

(16:47):
But, but that's 'cause shewaits till the last minute.
So, um, sorry mom outed you.
But it's interesting to have thatkind of have that kind of data.
It's also, you know, heartening tosee that people are, are adopting
these, new methods of, voting sinceobviously making it easier to vote.
I think it's a good thing in general.
Any other kind of things that,that surprised you or that stood

(17:08):
out in the, in this research?
Were there kind of things thatyou weren't anticipating seeing?
I know that, you know, you're, you'redoing ongoing research among the
electorates, so I'm just curiousif there were, if there were any
big surprises demographically orbehaviorally across this analysis.

Well in, in terms of the substance of, of what happened
I think that a lot of it waspretty well signaled in advance.
Particularly, uh, DonaldTrump's gains among.
Non-white voters.
And the fact that he was, uh, makingexplicit appeals to people who were
, sort of disengaged or irregular voters.

(17:44):
The thing of course that you don't knowis, uh, that saying that you're doing
these things, doing a lot of social mediaor whatever the channels were, you don't
know whether they're going to pay off.
And I think what, what the reportdid was it established quite clearly
that his efforts to mobilize peoplewho were, disengaged from the process

(18:06):
four years ago, uh, were successful.
And while it wasn't a massive amountof, , you know, sort of net gains
for him, it was a close election.
And I think it was probablyenough to spell the difference
between success and failure insome of the battleground states.

There were definitely some folks trying to maybe get ahead
of the full analysis, a little bit of,of what the electorate looked like.
But nevertheless, the story that has,I think, sort of begun to, you know,
maybe it's not as extreme as it was inthe first instance, but it nevertheless
seems to be fairly consistent, is thissense that two things turnout was down
from 2020 still very high historicallyspeaking, but, uh, down from 2020 that

(18:47):
there were some advantages in gainsfrom both non voters in switching that
Trump enjoyed, that Harris did not.
And that the conclusion to some degreeis even if all the non-voters had
voted, he still would have won that,that the, that that sort of taken
for granted narrative of non-voterstend to vote for Democrats is.

(19:09):
Declining or, or, or, or has switched?
I, I think the interesting thingthat I noticed in, in the report was
actually that number has been, or thatratio has been declining since 1960.
Um, so I wonder how much this hasfallen off a cliff or whatever.
But maybe you can kind of talk a bitabout how you arrive at any kind of
analysis around what would non-votershave done had they, had, they
participated, and obviously even if theyhad, not all of them would have, but

(19:31):
nevertheless, um, maybe talk a bit abouthow you arrive at, at that conclusion.

So it's something that we've been thinking
very deeply and hard about.
Right.
Backing into some of the psychelectoral math is, is really tricky.
And of course we don't have the fullcounterfactual to just rewind in time
and, and simulate a hundred percentturnout on what that would've looked like.
One of the most straightforward wayswe have , to go about that is what
we just discussed, is just askingnon-voters who they would've supported.

(19:57):
And we found that theywere pretty evenly divided.
You know, Trump kind of enjoyed like a,a modest advantage over Harris among,
among this group, but very close and.
Ha, Democrats have long enjoyed, Ithink , we see that in a variety of
ways, a turnout advantage, right?
, When turnout, is higher,Democrats do better.
There are kind of likeinterrelated themes here, right?

(20:18):
It's the people who don't turnout consistently they're more
likely to be voters of color.
They're less likely to haveformal levels of education.
They're more likely to be young.
All of those things compound, right?
If, if that relationship between thedemocratic advantage among these groups is
weakening and they're also less likely toturn out, that suggests that when turnouts

(20:39):
higher Republicans are starting to,even the playing field among Democrats.
And this is somethingI think , we've been.
Acutely attuned to in the Trump era.
So I think there's evidence ofthis relationship weakening,
beginning potentially in 2012.
Again, it's, it's hard to arriveat some of these estimates.
But certainly I would say20 16, 20 20 and now 2024.

(21:00):
I think we are getting moreevidence from these variety of
different analyses to suggest thatthat relationship is weakening.
But yeah.
Sky, I don't know if there'sanything else you wanna add to that.

No, I think there are, there are a couple of.
Things that you could doto sort of bracket this?
I mean, one of, one of them is that,that we don't address this in the report.
The report's very factual and focused.
But you know, this, movement of lesseducated voters non-white voters and
so forth, in the direction of thepopulist conservative party is not.

(21:35):
Confined to the United States.
This is something that we'reseeing all around the world.
You know, that, these changesare, are not happening in a vacuum
here in, in the United States.
Trump is, obviously a factor,but , he's not the only reason
that , this is happening.
At the same time, we are kind ofreluctant to even make a statement quite

(21:56):
like that , because we know that thiselection was held in the context of a
very specific set of conditions thatJoe Biden was an unpopular incumbent,
that he had presided over the countryduring the COVID, uh, years with a lot of
inflation, which of course was happeningin lots of other places in the world.

(22:17):
And people were in a veryanti-establishment mood.
It's hard to know whether anyincumbent could have weathered that.
And ultimately he didn't.
Uh, but his successor, couldn't get the job done.
So I, I think that if you're lookingfor a, a sort of big picture bottom line
from this, it's very hard to say whatthe implications of the election were.

(22:41):
but it's very intriguing to see.
As Hannah says that, you knowsomething that's been true for a long
time, just wasn't true last year.

This.
Turnout birth persuasion conversationis really interesting because
inherent in it is this idea thatviews are fixed in a funny way.
And we know that views change,particularly among people who
don't turn out consistently.
, I, I love to point this out, butit's important for our community.
I think in, in the polling world, it'slike we are some of the weird ones.

(23:10):
We study what people think aboutpolitics, and a lot of the country
doesn't think about politics.
And so again, you know, Scott's suggestingwe don't wanna be too declarative
about this, but views change, right?
A lot's already happenedin the past six months.
Things will happen in the next,over the course of the next few
months or the next few years.

(23:30):
And so of course that's our jobis to track how people feel.
But that's part of the weird tension insome of these conversations is, you know,
turnout is, you're either this or this,and you either turn out or you don't.
And we know that that's not howelections work or politics work.

Well, I love to hear that because, um, as a, my, my background is
as a qualitative researcher, and so I findthese kind of mechanistic explanations
for people's behavior to be not what itlooks like in meet space with real people.
And I think that kind of, I, I'll confess,it wasn't until, I dunno, a couple months
ago, I I, I hadn't realized that thiswas a ideological idea, that turnout and

(24:07):
persuasion, like, I didn't understandthat that had like a, a valence to it.
That was anything other than just like.
Wouldn't you do both?
But apparently, at leastamongst Democrats, there's
like a real theory about that.
, One thing makes you go far to the left.
One thing makes you who to the center odd.
As a marketer it's like, hmm,I think I need both, but okay.
But you, you raise a reallyinteresting question as well, which

(24:30):
is, and here I'm thinking about lastweek's election in New York City.
Uh, I lived in New York for 20 plusyears and I'm now out in Long Island.
, But a lot of the analysis that we'reseeing is essentially like, well this was
just a different electorate in 2025 thanin the 2021 New York City mayoral race.
Like there were different.
Different types of votersvoted than voted last time.

(24:52):
And this is kind of the ongoing challengeof any sort of attempt to predict
the outcome of an election is who doyou think the electorate's gonna be?
And then the other thing that I think you,you do take pains to note in the report
is we are living in this period of very.
It's very specific, partisan polarizationand deep antipathy, uh, amongst partisans

(25:17):
on either side, towards the other party.
And so subtle shifts can make ahuge difference in the outcome.
And a lot of these shifts in certainlyon the turnout side of things.
And, you know, how many Biden votersvoted for Harris versus Trump versus
the couch as people like to say.
Those, those shifts are subtle.
Like it's, it's a two points, 1.3

(25:39):
points here and there.
And just on that basic sort of, didyou vote, did you switch from one party
to another when you chose to vote?
All of those things can just likelead to real interesting results at
the same time after the election.
Again, I hear, I'm thinking about theNortheast, there were a lot of those arrow
maps that the, that the New York Timesliked to do where it was like the, the

(26:01):
Redshift idea, but it was hard to parselike Redshift plus decline in turnout.
I'm curious about whether anybody isattempting to kind of model this state
by state since obviously we don'thave a national popular election.
It is an electoral college process.
You know, the UK loves to do their MRPstudies and hardly anybody does them here.

(26:22):
And I'm just curious about like howmuch anyone's trying to model, sort of
state by state how turnout worked orhow how that affected, um, outcomes.

We did take a look internally at our data, our, our
panel's not really designed to dostate level analysis, and so we've
always been very reluctant even todo battleground states versus every.
All the others,
but we're all very curious people.
So I, I did take a look at that andwhat you see is really not surprising

(26:53):
because the campaign was so heavilyfocused on the battleground states.
Turnout in the battleground stateswas quite a bit higher than it
was in the rest of the country.
Now, I don't know if you, you know,you have to take into account which
are the battleground states and what'stheir baseline level of turnout.
But the, the fact is that, uh, there wasa lot of mobilization going on there,

(27:16):
and so you didn't have as much falloff in support, let's say differential
falloff that hurt Harris becauseBiden's voters didn't, didn't turn out.
At a greater rate than, thanTrump's voters didn't turn out.
Not saying that very well, butyou know, so the mobilization in
the battleground states helped.

(27:36):
So what happened there is thatwhatever change happened had
to come from other sources.
And our data suggests, and this is,this solved, very tentative, and we
don't put it in the report 'cause itis, it is tentative, but our, , our data
suggests that it was mobilization ofthe non-voters, the new and returning
voters, uh, in the battleground states.

(27:59):
It probably was more important eventhan, as a factor than it was nationwide.
But this is slicing thesalami very, very thin.
And so, it, it's kind of speculative.
But, , I do think it would be funif you had the data to be able to
model it on a state by state basisbecause it, it still is a little

(28:19):
true that all politics is local.

Yeah, I mean, you, you get right to the thing that I was,
the initial reason I reached out tothe team about talking to someone
about these results is I have been.
Particularly, I mean, look, I workon the commercial side in market
research, and we also tend not to studypeople who outright reject a category.
Like, you know, if you're, if you'rejust, you're, you're not a soda drinker,

(28:43):
there's not a lot of point in measking you which soda you'd like best.
You don't drink it, there's no point.
But I think because there is achurn in people voting this time,
not voting the next time peoplesitting at a couple of elections
and then, and then getting involved,new voters coming into the system.
It has been a real kind of questionmark for me about what do we know.

(29:04):
About non-voters and about thatkind of rate of churn that, that we
see between people who vote in onecycle and then sit out the next one.
Uh, new people coming into the electorate.
And, and, you know, and obviously alot of this comes down to is it even a
campaign strategy to try to get thosefolks who tend to choose, and I, I
really hate this metaphor, but theytend to choose the couch, um, tend to

(29:25):
choose childcare and, uh, commuting towork and all the other responsibilities
they have in their lives over voting.
But, uh, what do you know,what do you know about non
voters from, from this study?

So we already highlighted one of the major findings, which
is that they're, they're fairlyclosely divided in their preferences.
And, and as we noted , theytend to be less likely to have
formal levels of education.
They're younger than the people who vote.
They're closely divided in theirpartisan affiliation in 2024.
Of course, that changesfrom election to election.

(29:57):
They're paying slightly lessattention to politics depending on
the metric, uh, that you're using.
But yeah, I mean, some of thecharacteristics at held in
previous presidential electionswere true in 2024 as well.

Your question also just sort of goes to, goes to the
issue of like, how big is thisgroup of people that, that are, um.
Sort of , up in the air.
Like not the chronic voters, the peoplewho are always gonna show up, but the
people who are in play as, as it were.
And I mean, our estimate in this electionis, is that at defining this as who did
something different between 2024 and2020 is that it was almost a quarter

(30:34):
of, of the total eligible public whocould vote did something different.
They either turned out when theyhadn't before, they didn't turn
out when they had before or theyvoted in both elections, but they
switched their candidate preference.
And we haven't gone back and done along look at this, although our panel
does make it possible for us to atleast go back, you know, four years.

(30:58):
And the sheriff voters that were.
In that category of, of changersof one sort or another was
about the same four years ago.
It just may be that that's the nature ofAmerican politics right now is that about
three quarters seem to be locked intosomething and one quarters , is available.

(31:19):
If you look at it that way, ifyou're a campaign to either be
demobilized, mobilized, or flipped.

Mm-hmm.

And I'll add, that's one of the, the value adds of
this particular analysis, right?
Is using that panel data as ithelps us kind of triangulate
this churn in the electorate.
'cause the, you know, the exits are,are really the exit polls, sorry,
are really focused on the people thatshowed up in that particular election.
And that's a really richdata source in and of itself.
But using this panel data allows usto walk out that sort of churn who's

(31:51):
showing up it, and it matters for someof these subgroups when people are
extrapolating their narratives out, right?
It's like, oh, Hispanicvoters shifted by X amount.
Well, is that because differenttypes of Hispanic voters showed up?
Is that because the same exact, you know,I'm, I'm just using an example here.
The same exact voters that showedup in 2020 showed up in 2024 and.

(32:12):
There was a wholesale changein how they viewed politics.
I think it's a really, it's justanother opportunity to showcase the
value of panel data here and forthis particular look at the election.

Yeah.
And then, uh, we'll link to itas well, one of the reports that
you, uh, have on the website.
It has some nice animations as you kindof scroll down of how the different
cohorts kind of moved around , andwhere where the non-voters and where
the switchers funneled themselves to.
I was talking to, , a ShankarOsorio last week and she made the
good point of like, actually it'susually like a four-way race.

(32:45):
It's the two parties, some third party,and then not voting are the choices that
Americans actually have when they, whenthey decide about what they're gonna do
it does look like there were some kindof in, I mean, just some interesting sort
of structural shifts that a lot of the,I mean, I have two books on my shelf.
One is the emerging Republicanmajority and one is the emerging

(33:06):
Democratic majority, uh,written about 30 years apart.
Um, but um, but like this sort ofdemographics as destiny thing just seems
like not so much and that there's somereally interesting kind of comparisons
even between 2016 and 2024 when you havea woman democrat running for president
and like women dropped off and someof the ethnic cohorts dropped off.

(33:30):
And, um, and there weresome other changes as well.
And I'm, I'm curious about, you know,did you see kind of corresponding
gains for Trump among thosegroups or did those groups tend
to funnel more into the non-voterside of things or, or can you tell

Yeah.
I think this points to something youasked earlier, which is like one of the
key questions, and it's that it's, Ialmost think of it as a spectrum, right?
If you're turning out people whohaven't supported you in past,
that's a form of persuasion.
You're convincing someone to turn out.
And so it's like, you know, itdepends on your starting place.
Of course, if you're locked into politics,, are you sort of souring on whatever

(34:10):
political party you've been attached to,or are you not liking the candidate that's
representing that party at that time?
And so maybe you decide, sit out thisselection, or as you pointed to, there
are a variety of just daily life thingsthat occur that might prevent someone
, from casting a ballot when they plan to.
And then.
You might make your way all the wayover to the other side and decide
to, to switch your allegiances.

(34:32):
But obviously if you're someone whohasn't been engaged with the political
process before depending on whereyou are in life or that, that is kind
of a different calculus, you know,you're getting different messages from
different parties and so they justmight be persuading you to turn out for
the first time if you haven't before.
And so that's where it allgets tricky because it's,
yeah, it's not black and white.
You either turned out or you'repersuaded, to vote for someone different.

(34:55):
I think this alludes to something youwere pointing to earlier, which is that
if you're seeing a change in the typesof people who are turning out, that's
potentially a form of persuasion, right?
Um, you're not convinced to switchsides, but maybe you decided you
wanted to sit this, this round out.

you know, Scott, you've, you've been using the word mobilization
as part of this equation as well,which is just, it does seem like
there's, you know, there's multiplelayers to get through here, right?
You've gotta, you've gotta convincepeople to vote and then you've gotta
convince people to vote for you.
And yet on the other hand, there are allsorts of factors that demobilize people.
And I'm, I'm wondering if either of youcan speak to, do, do you have a sense

(35:33):
of broadly what motivates or demotivatespeople to participate in elections?

Well, I don't think any of our data , can speak directly to it.
You know, we have done work in the pastthat that shows that at least people who
recall being contacted by campaigns andso forth are more likely to turn out.
That's kind of a duh finding maybe.
But,
That it actually, thecampaigns really matter.

(35:59):
They may matter in terms ofpersuasion, uh, but they definitely
matter in terms of turnout.
If you don't, uh, reach out and asksomebody, there are just enough.
Things in our society, if you're notalready an intrinsically, highly motivated
voter type of person, there's just enoughgoing on in people's lives, enough, uh,

(36:21):
friction in the process that, um, youknow, it's easy for people not to vote.
It's just not as important to, toa lot of people as it as it might
be to the three of us, for example,because we study politics and, , you
know, , keep on top of this stuff.
So because of that campaigning,really does, does make a difference.
And we can see it, for example, inthe turnout, in the battleground

(36:45):
states as compared with the, withthe rest of the, of the country.
The question of persuasionis a, is a different story.
And there, I think what's,what is interesting is that.
We know that, uh, people who arereally highly politically engaged tend
not to be very persuadable, right?
I mean, they are paying attentionto messages, so, you know, at

(37:05):
least theoretically you mightbe able to persuade them.
But because they tend to be ideologicallyinclined, they, are not really open to
persuasion, to the same degree as peoplewho are not as politically engaged.
And so , the consequence of thatis that , what moves them tends to
be things like unhappiness with thestatus quo, inflation, um, having

(37:30):
trouble making ends meet, , tryingto figure out who to blame for.
The perception of job competitionfrom recent immigrants or other
kinds of, uh, things that we thinkwere at play in, in this election.
And if, the less engaged folks are movedby those economic factors or, or social

(37:52):
factors, uh, and then the campaignscan come in and mobilize them, then
you have the potential for some realchange from one election to the next.
And that might be one part of theexplanation of, you know, how Trump was
able to come back and make, you know, makeup a fairly wide difference between , his
margin of defeat to Joe Biden and thefact that he was able to, to actually

(38:15):
win a plurality of the popular vote.

. Farrah Bostic (38:18):
I'm also curious about some of the findings that you had around age.
Uh, another kind of emergent narrativefrom this year is that younger voters,
particularly younger male voters.
Shifted towards the Republicanside of the spectrum.
And I'm, I'm curious about what youfound when you looked at, at those
kind of age and gender breakdowns.

We did see, um, a bit of a shift among young men in particular.
If you zoom out, it's, you know,it, it depends on if you're looking
at 2020 compared with 2024, if youknow, where you put 2016 in, in this
understanding of, of where young men are.
But our data does suggest between2020 and 2024 a bit more of a shift
towards Trump than among eitheryounger women or older men, for

(39:00):
example.

And, and one of the other charts that you have in there that, I
really encourage people to take a look atis a like generation, well, I don't wanna
say generational, but a like decades basedbirth cohort shift, because I think that's
one of the other things that sometimes.
You know, it's, it's not like,uh, everyone's 21 forever, sadly.
And so, and so, um, you know, thepeople who were 18 to 29 in 2016

(39:23):
are gonna be more or less in the 30to, you know, 30 plus category now.
and there was also some drop offamong those voters supporting
the democratic tickets.
So there's sort of a, a shift to theright, which you know, that's an old
narrative that the older you get,the more conservative you become.
And there was an idea that millennialswere gonna break that trend.
And, and maybe they areish, but also maybe not.
And yet this, you know, each success ofyear, that kind of 18 to 29 group for

(39:48):
young men has like, there, there hasbeen a lot of hand wringing about , what
exactly explains the, the shift there.
Some analyses I've seenhave shown sort of a.
It's all kind of highly correlatedwith a lot of factors that young men
are attending college less so, they'renot in the higher education cohort.
They may be earning less, they maybe in the less affluent cohort.
They may be not as sort ofeconomically mobile, and so they're

(40:10):
less likely to be in urban areas.
I mean, there's all these kindsof, , factors that may correlate there.
What, what do you make of any ofthose kinds of explanations of
what's going on with younger voters?

And the first thing I would say is that, that it's just, it's
unfortunate, but I just don't think.
We have good data to really unpack thisquestion to the degree we would like.
It, it's, it's just a case thatthat young adults are very difficult
to find and survey to get goodrepresentative samples of young adults

(40:43):
these days, especially young adultsthat are not engaged in politics.
You know, it's just,it's not a dirty secret.
It's hardly a secret at all that,uh, surveys tend to overrepresent
politically engaged people.
And that problem is, is really worse whenyou're talking about younger demographics.
And so, I'm, I'm not saying this toexcuse our inability to give you a

(41:06):
definitive answer, but simply to saythat there's a lot of disagreement
among the surveys that we saw overthe over the course of the past year.
There were some surveys, includingour own, that showed really rather
massive shifts in a Republican directionand party affiliation among young.
Men.
But then there were other surveysthat we did that were bigger and

(41:29):
possibly better, that , showed theshifts that we're talking about.
But they weren't, as dramatic as oneof the studies was, and as some of the
other surveys that you've seen published.
And so I think, we have to be cautiousin not over reacting to the notion
of the manosphere is, is driving,you know, young men to the, into

(41:53):
the arms of the Republican party.
I think that's, I think that'spremature, both because we
don't have the data for it.
And also because there still is thesimple explanation that, you know,
the last four years were really toughon a lot of people economically,
especially people who are economicallymarginal to begin with, who may not be
established in jobs, who sort of more.

(42:16):
You know, subject to the, to the badwinds of the economy and so forth.
And so there might be simplerexplanations for why , young people
and young men in particular were morereceptive to trump's messages, uh,
than they might've been in the past.
Um, and so I'd, I'd like to seeanother couple of years worth of data

(42:38):
before we draw any firm conclusionsabout whether there's a, like a real
generational shift happening here.

I'm glad you did point out our age cohort data though, but that
was, um, something we included in thisyear's edition and it, I, I love it for
the exact reason that you just said, itallows you to understand how people are.
Changing over time.
And as you know, we're not 21 forever.
And what our data suggested, again, notto over interpret this turnout versus
persuasion point, but , the peoplewho were born in the nineties and two

(43:08):
thousands the change in the marginwas largely the result of a different
mix of people showing up in 2024.
Compared with 2020 in the 1980s.
It's a slightly different story.
We, we saw a higher conversion fromBiden to Trump among this, birth
cohort , than the other way around.
So Trump did make some inroads among thisgroup and he effectively changed more

(43:31):
of, of those people's minds than uh, uh,Harris did for Trump to, to convert them.
And so that's just a little bitmore specific, you know, within
that group when you're kind ofparsing them with a fine tooth comb.

Well, and, and this is why this, this is the analysis I was
wa the Pew analysis was, the analysisI was waiting for is, I think the level
of granularity here is actually reallyuseful because it is so easy for these.
Kind of broad demographic cohorts toget sliced and diced in such a way that
a narrative emerges really quickly.
That is like, uh, young men are allturning towards the Republican party.

(44:05):
And that is not true.
And it is also not explained bythe fact that they're young men.
Like that, there, there's allthese things that come with being
a young man in, in today's economyand today's internet and today's
everything else that may be influencingtheir, their choices in this way.
And I think the same thing is true aswe go through kind of, life stages.
I mean, this, years ago used to bea bigger fight I had to have with my

(44:29):
clients about we would do focus groupsand they would wanna have like, here's
the 18 to 28 group and here's the,you know, 29 to 34 group and whatever.
And I would be like, but do wewant parents in the 18 to 28
group because they're gonna bedifferent than the non-parents.
And do you want the collegestudents together with the not
in college people and like.
Life stage matters, context matters.

(44:50):
They will not soundlike each other at all.
Um, and sure enough, uh, they never did.
And so thankfully we nolonger have this fight.
Those pieces of context do really matter.
And you know, there were some amusingmemes coming into the election about
how like Gen X was betraying everyoneby tilting Republican, or maybe it's
just like when you have a house, anda mortgage and you know, you're paying

(45:15):
your kids' tuition, , you start tolook for breaks, you start to look for
ways to, uh, pay less in taxes or getmore of a benefit from those things.
And that just shifts your,your political orientations.
And it has nothing to do with your agespecifically or the year that you were
born, except in so far as it makes it morelikely that you're in those life stages.
The thing I do think about isthese types of pat explanations for

(45:40):
things or pat descriptions reallyof things take hold really quickly.
And so by the time we get these moredetailed analyses of what happened
in the election, it does feel likesome narratives have been baked.
And I'm curious about are, are thereany others that you think maybe get
unbaked by the, by this, this setof data or this set of analysis?
Are there other things that you thinklike, actually this shed a little

(46:01):
bit of light or cast a little bit ofdoubt on some things that had started
to kind of emerge as explanationsfor what's been happening over the
last two, three election cycles?

I think you've pointed to one of the big ones,
which is, I'm, I'm really glad Scottpointed to this, which is just that
we need a little bit more data on
this, , especially the youngestcohort of people who are turning out.
, So we need more data around that.
But I mean, all of these analyses,right, just help us triangulate,
like the exit serve a purpose too.
And, and you're a hundred percent rightthat sometimes narratives get formed and

(46:30):
then it's, it's hard to unbaked them.
I like that analogy a lot.
But what this offers us is just a chanceto, further confirm something that
another analysis might have been saying.
For example, um, the exitssuggested, , a large shift in support
among Hispanic voters, and sureenough, we, we found that as well.
And I know, you know, catalyst isanother great firm that put out a, a very

(46:52):
extensive analysis of this, uh, election.
And , they saw something similar interms of things that made me jump
back and say like, wait a second.
That's not what our data says at all.
Nothing's immediately coming to mind, but.
Looking at Scott to.

No, I, I, same reaction.
Um, and I, I'm glad you mentioned.
The Hispanic shifts Hannah.
'cause you know, I think that that'sbeen the subject of intense interest
since really before the election,uh, looking at pre-election polling.
But, you know, it was clear both fromprecinct analyses that the New York Times
did and other organizations from the exitpolls and others that, Hispanic voters

(47:32):
have, you know, had shifted quite a bit.
The magnitude of the shiftsis, I think, debatable.
And while I, I like our data and.
Think we've done a good job of building agood Hispanic sub-sample into our panel.
The reality is that surveying Hispanicsis very difficult to, to do well.

(47:54):
And so the fact that there arecompeting estimates of, how much of
a shift there's been or out theredoesn't, doesn't really surprise me.
It's just the, the nature of the beast.
But, you know, we could also toss intothe mix here, shifts among black voters.
There's a, you know, 15 percentblack voters supporting Trump.
If, if I remember my number right, upfrom 8%, I believe four years, uh, ago.

(48:19):
That's not a massive shift.
But given how reliable African Americanvoters have been for the Democratic Party,
it was a no, it was a notable shift.
And then, you know, we we'renot really able to do a great
job with Asian Americans of.
Fastest growing minoritygroup in the country.

(48:40):
But, uh, we, we documented about a10 point shift, I believe, towards
Trump, among Asian American voters.
Now in our panel, these are Englishspeaking Asian American voters,
and that is not all, um, AsianAmericans probably, you know, misses,
misses some important politicalsubgroups of Asian American voters.

(49:00):
But that's a, you know, if you'rethinking about the future of American
politics, , these groups are reallyimportant to pay attention to.
And I think we're getting a better handleon them now than we did in the past.
We have a large enough sub-sample of themto be able to report separately on Asian
American voters.
But I think those are, those aregroups that, you know, I was very

(49:22):
keenly interested in seeing whatour numbers were going to be.
And I think we want to keep an eye

Yeah.

them going forward.

Yeah.
I mean, again, thinking about the, someof the early data coming out of the.
New York City mayoral race.
There was sort of this assumptionthat Queens has long been a kind of
conservative leaning borough of NewYork City, and it went from Mom Donny.
And part of me is like, yeah, it went frommom Donny like the, the aunties love him,
like it's like the most diverse borough inNew York, city , of a very diverse city.

(49:52):
And so, you have a lot of alot of languages spoken and a
lot of, uh, different kinds ofpeople's origin stories there.
And that also leads me to another findingthat you had about naturalized citizens
and their, their kind of shifts in theirvoting behavior, which I think is another
thing that the parties have to adapt tobecause there was a, there was a story
about that, and that story looks likeit's it's shifting at the very least.

that's, that was one another interesting
addition in this year's report.
And we were able to look backat 2020 and that was something
real, I think, uh, I first heardit on, uh, David Shores podcast.
And we're, you know, alreadylooking at that in our data as well.
And, and we saw it reflected as, in 2024.
So Trump seemed to make gains and, andagain, these are mostly a different mix

(50:38):
of voters turning out, but Trump did,uh, improve his performance compared with
2020 among, those naturalized citizens.
So people who are eligible to votebut not born in the United States,
which is another important datapoint for understanding the broader
context of the, the whole election.
I think.

Right.
I think the other thing that was useful,because I do feel like there's sort
of a, a public narrative conceptionof who immigrants are from a racial
makeup, and I think you have, you havesome cuts there as well of, naturalized
citizens , by race and ethnicity.
And so that, it's, you know,it's not one particular cohort.
It looked like, it looked like kindof across the board a shift towards,

(51:15):
towards the republican side of the aisle.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
, What's the data you wish youhad for an analysis like this?
If I
could wave a
magic wand, give you anything youwanted, what would be on your list?

I like about 5,000 more cases of people who are 18 to 25,
because

Yes.

I really want to know what's going on with that group.
And you know, it's, uh, it is just, just,uh, we're, we're frustrated that we don't,
don't have as, as many of them as we want.
You know, it's a, it's a great groupbecause it's, the future of the country.
It's more racially and ethnicallydiverse than, you know, other cohorts.
And so it's interesting in that respectbecause it tells you, tells you something

(52:00):
about what the country is becoming.
But uh, we don't have it
so.

I second that more, more younger adults, um, more people who
are, are not as politically engaged, whoaren't voting in every single election.
Just more, more of them.

I went looking last summer for anybody who just studied
infrequent or non-voters, people whoare eligible to vote but don't vote
frequently or, or don't vote at all.
and I'm curious aboutwhy this seems to be.
not more studied, I guessis the, is the question.
Uh, what do you think accounts for usknowing so little about the non-voter,

(52:39):
apart from, you know, what we cansort of surmise from demographics?

It's directly related to who responds to surveys.
And so it's as money is a factor, right?
It takes money to, to find people, toconvince them to respond to your survey.
it's hard to convince someone to sign upfor a panel, let alone a one-off survey.
Um, and so I think that's one of , thecore issues at hand is just getting people

(53:04):
to respond to surveys, particularly thosewho aren't paying attention to politics.
We don't do phone surveysanymore, but in the days of phone

It's only a few days before the election.
Now as I'm writing this, it's Halloween.
The election's on Tuesday.
After I record this, I'm gonna gocast my ballot with my in-person early
voting friends down in my neighborhood.
I hope you have either gone to vote inan early voting station or submitted
your mail-in ballot already, or you knowwhere you're gonna take your mail-in

(53:32):
ballot if you prefer to drop it off oryou've made a plan to vote in person.
It's easy to believe thatyour vote doesn't matter.
You may think you live in a safe stateor that your vote will be drowned
out by all those neighbors who don'tagree with you, but your vote does
count because it is your voice.
And in a close election, everyvote matters in our deeply

(53:53):
polarized political environment.
It matters for a very particular reason.
The electoral college will ultimatelydecide the election that's in the
Constitution, and so it's reasonableto think, as Mike Pdoa told us, people
don't vote places due, but when thelast two Republican presidents have
lost the popular vote, but won theelectoral college, when it seems like

(54:14):
it takes at least a three point margin.
To guarantee a Democratwins the electoral college.
The popular vote takes on a salience thatI think goes kind of underappreciated.
The popular vote conveys legitimacy onthe decision of the electoral college.
So even if you're in a safe districtor you're sure you're outnumbered,
nevertheless your ballot will becounted and your vote can help run up

(54:36):
the score for your preferred candidate.
It may not help your choice winelectoral college votes, but it
can help them win an election.
The rest of us can believe in.
Maybe we'll see.
On Tuesday as we round the corner on theelection season, I wanted to explore the
application of what we know about theelectorate from polling and political

(54:57):
science with someone who works inpolitics and who has a strong point of
view, someone who can stare directlyat the world in front of her and see it
as it is, not as she wishes it to be.
I don't know about you, butthat has been in short supply
for me this election season.
This season seems to wanna avoid that kindof clarity as much as it possibly can.
So enough of that.

(55:18):
My guest today is the inimitable Dr.
Rachel Bit coffer.
She is a political analyst,strategist and author of Hit Ware.
It Hurts How to Save Democracy byBeating Republicans at their own
game after a career in academiawhere she taught political science
and ran a survey research center.
Bit coffer shifted to focus onreforming democratic campaign strategy.

(55:38):
She is known for her theory ofnegative partisanship, which we
discuss in this conversation, and forher accurate electoral predictions.
Even if election Twitteris not ready to admit that.
Biter has worked with the Doffer, hasworked with the Democratic National
Committee to implement more effectivemessaging strategies, and she regularly

(55:58):
provides commentary on political campaignsand electoral dynamics, and she very
graciously joined me on cross tabs.
Here's our conversation.
With only a few days left to electionday, I want you to know that already
more than 65 million people havecast their ballots while this trails,
the COVID era 2020 early vote, itis still a really robust early vote.

(56:21):
So if you have already voted,I wanna extend my deepest.
Thanks for your attention tomaking your own voice heard.
It's important.
We're gonna continue theconversation next week.
After the results are in, I havesome great interviews coming up so we
can continue to explore the ways weunderstand each other as fellow citizens
at scale, how we forecast outcomes,imagine and plan for the future, and

(56:44):
mobilize each other as we continue topursue, I hope the Democratic project.
I don't think it's a secretwho I'm voting for, it's.
Probably pretty obvious that a highlyeducated woman in New York is a Democrat.
But I wanna tell you that I am votingfor Kamala Harris and Tim Walls
precisely because I believe in theDemocratic project and because I love

(57:05):
this country for its unending potential.
I.
And to those of you who listen all theway to the end of each episode, I want
you to know that I'm grateful for yourinterest in this subject and for many of
you, the work you do to help us all betterunderstand each other as a body politic.
It's important not just tomy show, but to all of us.

(57:26):
So take care of yourselves andI'll see you on the other side.

polling, if you're not interested in political news
or following politics, and youpick up the phone and someone says,
can I talk to you about politics?
You're like,
I'm
good.
And you know, that's true.
However, you're surveying them overthe phone or online, if you get a
mailer that's asking you to respond toa survey those things are correlated.
, You just not as willing to respond to asurvey and fill out a long questionnaire.

(57:56):
And so yeah, that's plagues usin our, in our panel work is
in, in our survey work as well.

I always wonder about you know, just slipping in political questions
and what is otherwise like a consumerquestionnaire and just like they don't
know that they're coming in for politics.
But we're just gonna quickly ask, uh,
Yeah.
By the way.
by the way, are you, areyou registered to vote?

Yeah, exactly.

Tack it on at the end after we've asked, you know, a bunch of other
questions about, you know, their favoritesoda, whether they drink it or not.
I guess my final question for you is, whatshould I have asked you about this study?
Are there, are there particular thingsthat you're proud of or interested in
or wanna pull threads on more that, thatwe didn't get a chance to talk about?

Well, I've really enjoyed the, the conversation because we did talk
a lot about the intricacies of puttingit together and the difficulties of,
of, of trying to deal with a panel whereyou, it allows you to look at, look over
time change in the same individuals.
And so I appreciated the opportunity to,to hold forth about that a little bit.

Yeah, I really appreciate.
yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I really appreciated being ableto just kind of opine on this idea
of like turnout versus persuasion.
It's something Scott and I have, youknow, been thinking really hard about
and so really important questions and I.
Yeah, you identified them out of the gate.

Yeah.
It has become a thing that, . Again, asa marketer, we can't expect to persuade
people to buy stuff if they don't hearfrom us and have never heard of us before.
And so this kind of, it is always both.
It is always like, we haveto let you know we exist.
We have to give you a reasonto think that's a good thing.
Uh, we have to entice youto wanna give us a try.

(59:34):
All of those things are true.
And obviously the stakes are different.
I don't have to get you to do itlike for a two month period, once
every four years or two years.
I can do it every day.
But, um, but the, the.
The thinking about campaignsmatter and mobilization matters,
and, and like where you put youreffort does pay off some dividends.

(59:55):
And so if the Trump campaign hasreported spent more time looking at and
targeting infrequent or non voters ornew voters, then the Harris campaign did.
Or if one, if both of the campaignsspent most of their time and effort in
battleground states, then that's goingto shape the turnout and it's going to
shape what what the electorate looks like.
And I, you know, wrote something over theweekend about, about the kind of Mom Donny

(01:00:18):
case, which I look at as market making.
Like he went out and tried toassemble an electorate that
wasn't the 2021 electorate.
And it appears like.
The five candidates who ran for mayoron the Democratic ticket did that.
They created a differentelectorate this year.
, And it makes prediction really hard todo, but it makes these kinds of studies
really important because we can find outwhat kind of electorate they made, um,

(01:00:40):
and, uh, and start to think about whatthat means for any future electorate.
So I really appreciate the work thatyou've done and your willingness
to come on and talk to me about it.
It's, it's always fun to, for me and Ihope for these listeners to, uh, to get
into the weeds of how it's done and, andwhat we can glean from and what we can't.

Scott Keeter (01:00:56):
you.

Hannah Hartig (01:00:56):
Yeah,

Farrah Bostic (01:00:56):
thank you so much.
The last thing I like todo though is how can people
support Pew and follow your work

You can visit pew research.org.
We study a lot of things,not just politics.
So if you're interested, for example, onhow people are viewing AI or a variety
of different things happening in ourworld today, we study a lot of it.

Yes.
Anybody who works in my industry ofmarket research or in, uh, marketing
in general, if you are not lookingat the Pew Research website on the
regular, you are missing all thisamazing publicly available data that
you can't afford to go get on your own.
So you should go do it.
, I think the, the site first came on myradar because of all of the research

(01:01:39):
into attitudes towards tech and theinternet, um, because there's a, a ton
of great research there about that.
Um, so if you wanna know aboutAI adoption or crypto adoption or
any of those things, pew is greatfor that, as well as obviously the
incredibly robust political coverage.
So, uh, I thank you for your workand, and thank you for coming
on to spend the time with me.
I really appreciate it, bothof you, Scott and Hannah.

Scott Keeter (01:01:58):
Thank you.

Thanks.

Crosstabs is a production of the Difference Engine.
It is edited and hosted by me.
Farrah Bostick music is fromAudio Jungle by S Audio.
You can subscribe to our weeklynewsletter for free@crosstabspodcast.com.
You can also follow the showon Blue sky@crosstabspod.blue
sky.social,
and on LinkedIn where we share linksto new episodes and newsletters.

(01:02:24):
We also share these episodes viavideo, and you can like and subscribe
to each week's video episode onYouTube at Crosstabs podcast.
Please follow us onyour favorite platform.
Tell your friends about the show, anddon't forget to subscribe on whatever your
favorite podcast service happens to be.
If you wanna learn more about whatI do, you can find me on all the
socials at Fara Bostic, though Iam mostly on Blue Sky these days.

(01:02:46):
Or get in touch throughthe difference engine.co.
And that's it.
See you next time.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Who was the 2024 electorate? With Pew Research's Hannah Hartig an Scott Keeter