Are Democrats in Disarray? It Depends When You Poll.
Recent 2024 presidential polls have shown a lot of different scenarios within the same margin of error with either a tied race or a slight Trump lead in the popular vote. At the same time, it seems like there has been a constant string of high-profile elections where Democrats do well or even outperform the polling like in the NY-03 special. This article attempts to answer the question of why the polls show good numbers for Republicans that don’t always bear out in final results and why current polling might be off.
Read MoreWhy We Launched 30 Under 30, America’s Rising Republican Operatives
We all remember that feeling of walking into a room where everyone seems to know each other, and you are trying to determine the best way to penetrate an existing network. Conversation by conversation, year by year, you hopefully find your eventual place. Once you’ve made it into the circle, is it even the right circle? There has to be a better way.
Read More2022 Polling Retrospective
Coming off what most would consider an odd election cycle, we wanted to reflect on lessons learned as one of our core values is Never Settle: We are curious, always learning, and growing. It was a cycle where we had amazing wins with incredible clients like Governors Kemp and Abbott, Senator Mullin, Congressmen Molinaro, Congresswoman Hageman, and Congressman Miller, CLF, NRCC, RGA, RAGA, and RSLC – just to name a few among the 405 general election races we conducted polling in for 2022.
Read MoreMichigan – A Polling Experiment Explained
Gretchen Whitmer dominated the Michigan governor’s race, winning by a large margin. Our polling firm, Cygnal, set out with an experiment to test our Momentum tracking methodology against traditional tracking polls.
Read MoreHow The Abortion Issue Reshaped The ’22 Midterm Landscape
On June 24th, 2022, the Supreme Court issued the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overruling Roe v. Wade and the federally protected right to an abortion. Since then, there has been a decidedly significant shift in the political environment. However, time slots and prices are irrelevant if the messaging is faulty.
Read MoreMessage Mapping: The Next Evolution of Political Message Testing
One of the most crucial components to any political campaign is television messaging. Knowing how to communicate a candidate’s message and target particular constituencies is paramount to a successful campaign. Television advertising is a great challenge given the scarcity of well-positioned time slots and increased pricing as elections grow nearer. However, time slots and prices are irrelevant if the messaging is faulty.
Read MoreHow Republicans Can ‘Thread the Needle’ in Purple States
For our friends running in competitive blue and purple states, all they are hearing this cycle is “Well, if there was ever a year to do it…” Well, that’s true. Our national survey shows that very clearly. Unsustainable inflation, never-ending tax increase proposals, calls to defund our local law enforcement, and relentless “woke” cancel […]
Read MoreCygnal National Voter Trends Panel
Cygnal President & Founder Brent Buchanan discusses the national trends and data revealed in our national voter survey for our district and issue tracking service (DIT). He is joined by data expert Noah Wyhof-Rudnick to dive deeper into these findings. Cygnal employs custom data science called District & Issue Tracking to take a large-sample statewide […]
Read MoreThe Rider and The Elephant
Often, the candidates best informed on policy have the most trouble connecting with voters. Part of the problem—for every type of campaign, but especially for policy-focused candidates—is that emotions play a central role in voter choice and decision making, but campaigns and candidates too often focus only on marshaling logic and data when communicating with […]
Read MoreThe Art of Analytics
Predictive Analytics—it’s everywhere these days. It’s used in every flavor of business from large tech companies to sports. But how are predictive analytics useful in the political arena? What can it do? When used in the political space, predictive analytics does exactly what it does in every other area where it is used: saves time and improves the allocation of resources. One campaign […]
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