Finger on the dial
Some pollsters and researchers sometimes use a kind of live-response tracking to test what effect a debate or broadcast has on a voter. They provide a focus group, or a studio audience, with a dial on which they can express their approval or disapproval to whatever the person on the stage / debate / broadcast is saying.
I remember that in '04 (I think it was), you could watch one of the last presidential debates on C-Span on a separate channel that allowed you to watch not just the debate, but also a graph that showed how a cross-section of the audience was responding to what was said. Old Europe watched it, I think.
In Holland, there was an election debate in 2003 on a commercial broadcaster, where each party leader was grilled for x minutes by a questioner, while the audience was fitted out with these dials, and on the screen behind him the graph showed how what he was saying was being received, real-time. (I dont remember whether the politician could see it himself too.)
Anyway, during the last Republican primary debate, there were also voters at the ready, "finger on the dial", in at least two different places.
The nasty party
Frank Luntz had gathered a focus group of 30 undecided--or sort of undecided--Republicans. Joe Klein was there as well and recorded
some observations on the
Time blog.
Huckabee and to a lesser extent McCain received plaudits for their performance from the pundits and mainstream observers. But Klein's observations suggest that the very things that were praised might not at all have gone down well among conservative voters:
Quote:In the next segment--the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee's college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants--I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, "After all, these are children of God," the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s). [..]
But there was worse to come: When John McCain started talking about torture--specifically, about waterboarding--the dials plummeted again. Lower even than for the illegal Children of God. Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. "I don't have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11," said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.
I posted
a longer excerpt on an old thread of mine called,
O oh oh, what a jolly party the Republican Party is...
Media curves
Media Curves is a "service of HCD research" that apparently specialises in exactly this kind of opinion research, and they did such a study on the Republican debate as well. They gathered 637 self-reported Republicans, Democrats and independents, and showed them segments from the debate - a couple of segments each of McCain, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee responding to questions or making points.
I.e.: the sample of participants here was much bigger than in Luntz group; but they only got to see some selected segments of the debate - barely over 5 minutes in all, in fact. You can view the segments that were showed and
how the viewers responded real-time.
FWIW, this study demonstrated that Mike Huckabee has significant growth potential - not just among Republican voters, but across the aisle too. All participants were asked beforehand whom they would vote for in the primaries if they were asked to vote for a Republican. They were then asked the same question again after they saw the segments. The
press release summarises how opinions changed:
- Of the Republicans, prior to viewing the debate segments, 30% said Giuliani, with Romney and Huckabee trailing at 11-12% and McCain at 7%. (This means the group roughly reflected the current poll standings for Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee, while McCain supporters were underrepresented.)
Afterwards, the numbers for Giuliani, Romney and McCain had changed barely - but many undecideds went to Huckabee, whose support doubled from 11% to 21%.
- Of the Independents, prior to the viewing, 26% said Giuliani, 12% McCain, and just 6-7% Romney and Huckabee. Afterwards, 28% said Giuliani, 12-13% said McCain or Huckabee, and 7% Romney.
- Of the Democrats, prior to the viewing, 26% said Giuliani, 16% McCain, and just 5-7% Romney and Huckabee. Afterwards, 27% said Giuliani, 15% each said McCain or Huckabee, and 6% Romney.
In short, among Republicans, Huckabee instantly became the main challenger to Giuliani's dominance. Among both Independents and Republicans, Huckabee jumped from a shared third place with Romney to a shared second place with McCain.
And in a way this is only logical: while Giuliani and McCain are already well-known people who are unlikely to suddenly win over a great many new supporters, Huckabee is still a newcomer, whom only a small share of voters have really taken the effort to listen to yet.
The same research used a different way to poll people's opinions as well. Both before and after viewing the segments, Republicans, independents and Democrats alike were asked to evaluate each of the four candidates on a scale from 100 (complete support) to -100 (no support at all). The results are
listed here, and shown below in this graph of mine:
