A lot happened between March 16th when the White House announced the 15 Days to Slow the Spread and the April 16th announcement of guidelines for Opening Up America Again. During this time, my company ran a series of public opinion polls in an effort to tease out insights on what people were thinking and what the long term impact on politics might be as a result.
At Wick, we build technology to help political consultants execute more affordable and accurate polling.
We knew that COVID was going to demand a shift in strategy for every candidate and issue, but we had no idea how to advise our clients on where to start their research. We needed a foundation of insights that would help guide the questionnaire design strategy, so we started this project to create those insights.
The strategy produced unexpected insights that are covered in the presentation and examples are provided below (The full presentation can be downloaded here for free).
1. The first section of the presentation outlines the public opinion on the response of the government to COVID, and then dives into the reasons behind the differences in public opinion on the length of time that the economy should stay closed.
2. In our "Millions of New Voices" graphic that you see below, we explain that the fear level of COVID-19 teased out millions of vocal activists in formerly silent segments of the electorate. These segments are expressing political opinions about COVID to their friends and online, and “it is important for candidates and issue groups to know what these newly outspoken voters think about their candidacies and issues to capitalize on opportunities and prepare for threats.”
3. As you can see below in our “Blurred Lines” graphic, we suggest that there are too many votes to lose for party leadership to take a strong stance to open the economy or to keep it closed. This means candidates and issue groups need to be independent in finding the platform that works for them.
Read the full findings and learn more about Wick’s accurate and affordable research platform on its website at https://www.wick.io/market-research.html