A fool, Mr. Edgeworth, is one who has never made an experiment. — Erasmus Darwin
How does the Paul Ryan pick impact swing voters? The impact of Romney/Ryan ads on weak partisan & pure independent voters.
Overview
Key Findings
How do swing voters respond to Ryan’s introduction to the Republican ticket? Does Ryan help or hurt Romney? These questions are impossible to answer with traditional surveys. To answer these questions, we executed a Romney/Ryan PocketTrial testing the impact of pro and anti-Romney ads on swing voters.
Our findings turn the “war on women” logic on it's head; male swing voters seem highly susceptible to advertising, and women much more stable in their opinions and vote-choice. The campaigns would do well to concentrate on courting men, not women.
Our 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.
Romney” ad or the attack ad alone, but the combined effects are sometimes significant.
The vast majority of swing voters still have had minimal exposure to Paul Ryan and the new Romney/Ryan ticket. Despite the saturation coverage and unusual excitement surrounding the VP pick, most swing voters still had little knowledge of Ryan; fully 60 percent of weak partisans and pure independents had either never or only just heard of Ryan but didn't know much about him. Just 7 percent of swing voters knew a lot about Ryan. We therefore exposed these voters to current political ads, both negative and positive, featuring the Romney/Ryan ticket. We surveyed more than 1,000 registered pure independents and weak partisans – no strong Republicans or Democrats – from August 14-17th. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a true experiment – three treatment groups and a control. Statistical analyses were performed to identify significant “treatment” impacts.
Female swing voters do not shift significantly to either the “Pro-
Neither Presidential nor Congressional vote preferences shift significantly with one ad alone. When Female voters see both the “Pro-Romney” and “Anti-Romney” ads, Romney goes from a slight advantage with Obama to a disadvantage and the Congressional vote shifts substantially to the Democrats.
Male swing voters are impacted more consistently by single ads, and both ads together largely cancel out the impacts. When Male voters see both the “Pro-Romney” and “Anti-Romney” ads, Romney goes from parity with Obama to a slight advantage. The Congressional vote shifts substantially to the Republicans.
Male voters seem to be impacted most by the “ProRomney” ad, but appear more susceptible in general to election advertising impacts.
“[At a time when Gingrich was at the peak of popularity, Evolving Strategies’ experiment] prefigured what weeks later became reality, when a barrage of negative advertising from Romney and his super-PAC effectively sank Gingrich. “I’ve mentioned Evolving Strategies before, a D.C. consultant - Michael Warren, Reporter, Weekly Standard group that does some really interesting online experiments . . .” “In this hard-to-predict GOP primary season, among the most interesting - Sean Trende, Senior Elections Analyst, RealClearPolitics polls are coming out of a husband-wife team, Adam and Sabrina Schaeffer.” - Clark S. Judge, Managing Director, White House Writers Group 1 “If you need sophisticated research that leads to significant results, Evolving Strategies is the partner for you.” - Michael Wm. Schick, Partner, Adfero Group