I give them experiments and they respond with speeches. — Louis Pasteur
What Debt Message Works Best?
Overview Independent Women’s Voice commissioned Evolving Strategies to run a PocketTrial® online survey experiment testing eight conservative messages on the national deficit and debt. A PocketTrial® quantifies the true impact of a message using a customized, double-blind, and fully controlled experimental design. It’s like a small-scale clinical drug trial, but it’s a message we’re testing. Many politicians favor talking about the debt in terms of stealing from our children. Others talk in terms of specific budget or pro-growth proposals to address the problem; freezing the budget, cut-cap-and-balance legislation and amendments, entitlement reforms, and pro-growth tax reforms. And still others speak about the debt in terms of free-market values vs. an over-grown and stultifying federal government, or in terms of our National Security should our creditors leverage our debt against us. But what message is really most effective at increasing support for spending cuts to reduce the deficit and national debt? Which argument works best, and with which swing voters? How do arguments on the debt impact the political landscape, support for Democrats and Republicans? To answer these questions, we ran a PocketTrial® online survey experiment exposing more than 4,600 registered, pure independents and weak partisans – no strong Republicans or Democrats – to one of eight Conservative messages on the debt and deficit crisis and a comprehensive Progressive message or a Control group (fielded February 10th - 20th). All Conservative messages were tested alone as well as in combination with the Progressive message (the Progressive message was also tested alone).
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