It appears that pollsters are searching for the next semi-imaginary demographic with characteristics so broad that somebody is bound to fit in. Soccer Moms. Security Moms. Nascar Dads. I personally hope the next big demographic is Pissed Off Americans, and pundits spend energy trying to decipher just who these mystery people are and what they are so pissed off about.
The teenage daughter of a work colleague who met me on an outing told her mother that I could be a “sporty Mom, except really weird.”
The Washington Post reviewing the campaigning in New Hampshire quotes a local academic expert as suggesting that the next swing vote could be Military Moms who identify as Republicans or independents. The article mentions one local woman in that category who is considering switching her vote and perceives competence in foreign affairs to be of high importance. The local expert goes on to say that Military Moms might be most like to support Hillary Clinton.
Quick note. This is not a candidate essay. I am not using these observations to launch into a well reasoned sermon about my candidate. I don’t have one. If I have my citizenship in time, my candidate will be the Democratic one however much they still make me feel like a Pissed Off American.
Jennifer Donahue, a political analyst connected to Saint Anselm College, noted there are other trends in New Hampshire that have not reached the national level. This is why I always viewed newly discovered demographics a bit skeptically. Based on this article, there might be a new demographic that exists in New Hampshire that might or might not ever pierce national consciousness. I have no doubt that many women with relatives and family members in the military are thinking about what their best choices are. My question is why specifically identify Military Moms as women who are interested in foreign policy? Obviously, Military Moms have a direct and visceral stake in this. Any woman with children is probably thinking about foreign policy and wondering if their first grader might end up in Iraq in the one hundredth edition of the surge. Any American with an ounce of alertness is pondering the meaning of foreign policy. In that sense, any American who is awake could easily join Military Moms as the next big demographic.
The article quotes a poll noting that women in military families were less likely to support Clinton than those in non-military families. It finally ends with a big ” I don’t know what will really happen” from the assigned expert on New Hampshire and by inference other primaries with this stunning insight,so anything that has hap pended so far is significant,but nothing that has happened so far can’t be changed. If these deeply held convictions are the basis for how new demographics are formulated, it is ultimately an exercise in reading tea leaves and making emphatic statements that say nothing but sound important.
The New York Times reminds us that marketing matters studying women and their voting patterns. In general women since Reagan have been slightly more likely to favor the Democratic candidates, and among female subgroups, single women tended to be more likely than married women to do so. that however, is starting to change and married women are starting to shift in preferences.
Janet Elder, the author, focuses on some of the dilemmas Republicans face in finding new niche groups. She quotes one male Republican supporter as an example. He expressed displeasure over the handling of the war and Katrina and states his tendency of viewing a Democratic party candidate favorable because the current administration is not really governing according to the will of the people. Sounds like a Pissed Off American to me. It also illustrates that not every Republican in the universe is a natural authoritarian who disdains the commonalities of democracy.
She cites a Republican pollster for John McCain to offer up what new demographics Republicans are trying to invent in order to capture votes. He identifies two groups re-hab republicans and Walmart women.
The rehab republicans and I love that name because it brings up so many possible images are people the pollster sees as having a hard time dealing with the party, they aren’t happy with the war and they disapprove of President Bush. In other, words one apparent fertile source of voters are alienated from the party and its major policies. A fellow like the potential Democratic voter who previously identified as a Republican. I realize I am no genius but it seems like it might be difficult to persuade people who say they are possibly switching precisely because of Iraq back to a Republican party when all of the candidates support our continued destruction of that country. The author did not reveal the super secret strategy the pollster thought could be used to do this. Possibly because there really isn’t one. I believe we often call it “crossing your fingers”. Walmart women are described as those with lower incomes, are less educated, tend to be more conservative, and have been impacted by economic difficulties. His big argument for why those women might be a good group to attract is that they have doubts about Hillary.
What the pollster either won’t admit or does not realize is that even if these women do have doubts about one particular candidate they might not have doubts about the others. They might even have doubts about Hillary Clinton and still vote for her. These Walmart women might be the exact same demographic that he admitted were unhappy with the Republican party and the direction events in Iraq are taking. I wonder if he thinks that women with less education or men are easily manipulated and incapable of making rational decisions and can be sold some pretty package. He is assuming that those in economic difficulties will act in a predictable manner and revert to a belief in authoritarianism, a faith in elites who are presumed to be smarter. The Walmart Women might be in the same groups as the Military Moms. These demographics might not really
exist.
Demographics can be a useful guide but are they really predictive? Missing from either of the two articles was any discussion of racial or ethic demographics. Nor can we infer that a Republican candidate cannot magically rebound and capture those who were disaffected from the party. We don’t know and neither do the appointed experts.
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to hear from folks who know substantially more about demographics than I.
income is derived from demographics I have to say as one of my clients said it’s voodoo. I worked in advertising, graphics. My husband is a number cruncher, statistician, market research guy. He works with pure data just the numbers, these in turn go to the tea leaf readers, the analysts who pore over the breakdowns looking for the obvious, or how tho bend the obvious for purposes of manipulation. All depend on questions and choices given and so limit the results (George Bush,great president or greatest?)
All this provides as much clarity as pouring over chicken entrails, in order to push people into believing that the chicken is anything but a chicken. The marketing dept at the Gap where I worked in the 80’s spent a ton of money for a study that told them not to put the punk clothes near the entrance as the mom’s would baulk at coming in. The daughters however wanted these clothes, a common sense situation that didn’t require the voodoo of numbers but common sense.