» Evolving Strategies
Who Can Beat Obama?
March 3, 2012
An experiment shows the scales tilt toward Romney.
Michael Warren
March 12, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 25
Is Mitt Romney the best remaining Republican candidate to go up against Barack Obama in the fall? Or would Rick Santorum, the most likely alternative, fare better in a general election? An experimental study conducted by the firm Evolving Strategies suggests Romney may have the advantage over Santorum in a general election, but not for the most obvious reasons.
First, a note about the survey model. Evolving Strategies uses experimental data to understand how communication and advertising strategies affect voters, much in the way product advertisers determine how to craft television and radio commercials. In this experiment, survey respondents were broken into three groups. The first group watched two television advertisements about Mitt Romney: a positive one and one attacking him. The second group watched two similar ads about Santorum, one positive and one negative. The third group, the control, watched nonpolitical ads. Then, each respondent answered questions to gauge how he or she would vote in a general election. This method attempts to measure the effect of the campaign ads on voting preferences.
The results of such an experiment can be predictive. In December, when Newt Gingrich had reached his peak popularity within the Republican presidential field, Evolving Strategies conducted a similar survey among Republican primary voters. The most telling result was that the former House speaker seemed to be very vulnerable to negative ads. Those who viewed both positive and negative ads about Gingrich were considerably less supportive of him than those in the control group. In other words, the negative ads worked. The experiment prefigured what weeks later became reality, when a barrage of negative advertising from Romney and his super-PAC effectively sank Gingrich.
So what did this latest survey discover? The results suggest that Romney is the superior general election candidate. While the control group—those respondents who watched nonpolitical advertisements—split their support evenly at 40 percent between Obama and Romney (standing in as a “generic” Republican candidate), those who watched the Santorum ad treatment, both positive and negative, favored Obama to Santorum 45 percent to 38 percent.
On the other hand, those who watched the Romney ad treatments favored Romney over Obama 44 percent to 35 percent. That’s a statistically significant difference. Based on these results, Romney would perform better against Obama than would Santorum.
Why is that the case? The general election ads the respondents viewed were specially created for this study. The positive ad the Romney group watched featured two sides of the Romney pitch: an explanation and defense of his business experience, and a contrast between his free-market vision for the economy and Obama’s government-driven vision. “President Obama’s brand of capitalism sends your money to his friends’ companies,” Romney says in the video. “I will, instead, make America the most attractive place in the world for entrepreneurs and innovators and job creators, and get America working again.”
The negative Romney ad, something akin to what Obama might run in the fall campaign, focuses on Romney’s years at Bain Capital. “Why isn’t Romney concerned about the poor?” the text reads after video of Romney’s post-Florida primary gaffe. The ad ends with Romney arguing with protesters about the nature of corporations. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people,” says a haggard-looking Romney in the hot Iowa sun. “Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets?”
The results suggest this line of attack against Romney may not hold up in an election about the economy, particularly if Romney rebuts the criticisms by directly challenging the president’s own economic policies. In fact, when the survey asked respondents whether or not they believed Obama’s economic policies would work, those in the Romney group were less inclined to believe they would work than those in the control group.
What about the Santorum ads? The positive ad focuses first on Santorum’s vision for the country. “It’s an election about what kind of country you’re going to leave the next generation,” Santorum intones. “Are we going to be a country that believes, as our Founders did, that our rights don’t come from the government, they come from a much higher authority?” Following that, Santorum clarifies his position on contraception by explaining that his “public policy position is that this contraception should be available.” The ad also shows Santorum touting his economic plan, quoting the Wall Street Journal’s definition of it as “supply-side economics for the working man.”
The negative ad features a string of video clips showing Santorum discussing his socially conservative beliefs. On contraception: “I don’t think it works. I think it’s harmful to women. I think it’s harmful to our society.” On abortion: “I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion should be criminally charged for doing so.” On social issues as a whole: “These are important public policy issues.”
The focus on social issues (but not necessarily the substance of his positions) would apparently hurt Santorum against Obama, but the breakdown doesn’t cut across gender lines. Santorum doesn’t perform any worse with women than he does with men—37 percent of men support him and 38 percent of women. Both Romney and the “generic Republican” of the control group have the same one-point margin of difference between the genders.
The more substantial difference is how Santorum performs with college-educated voters compared with voters without college degrees. In the control group, Obama trailed among college-educated voters, 43 percent to 38 percent; in the Romney group, Obama trailed by an even greater margin, 53 percent to 37 percent. Romney’s 10-point swing among the college educated, among those who viewed the ads, is statistically significant.
But college-educated voters overwhelmingly prefer Obama to Santorum, 57 percent to 33 percent. But Santorum performs slightly better (39 percent to Obama’s 38 percent) with non–college-educated voters than does the generic Republican (38 percent to Obama’s 41 percent).
There are, of course, limits to the survey’s conclusions. Respondents watched two minutes of content rather than experiencing two months of post-convention campaigning. But the advertisement treatments are instructive in which messages can work for Republicans in the general election campaign, and which can’t.
If voters continue to worry about the economy, and Obama’s handling of it, Romney looks well-suited to respond. If Santorum is the nominee and the economy is still stuck in the doldrums, voters will want to hear how his economic vision contrasts with the president’s. But with a media culture primed to focus on Santorum’s social views, even if the candidate himself tries to steer the discussion back toward the economy, the GOP could be in a worse position to take back the White House.
Michael Warren is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
Can the Iowa Caucuses be Far Behind?
December 20, 2011
By Clark S. Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute
If Christmas is here, can the Iowa caucuses be far behind? What are the candidate’s prospects, weeks before the voting begins? You have heard about ups and downs in the major polls. Following is data on Romney, Gingrich and Perry you have probably not heard about, as well an item on Ron Paul.
Romney-Gingrich-Perry Poll:
In this hard-to-predict GOP primary season, among the most interesting polls are coming out of a husband-wife team, Adam and Sabrina Schaeffer. He holds a PhD in American politics, she a masters in American history, both from the University of Virginia. She is a long-time director in the firm I head.
Through their own firm, Evolving Strategies ( www.evolving-strategies.com), these two have been experimenting with Internet-based, low-budget ways to test not just the state of opinion but the dynamics. Using control groups as well as groups that they expose to differing lines of competing arguments and mixes of competing ads, they try to duplicate the back and forth of campaign debate. They ask not who is up today, but who can be up tomorrow – and whose star will fade, if he doesn’t do something fast?
Two weeks ago, they demonstrated the promise of their methods as they “executed an online message experiment testing pairs of positive and negative ads about Romney, Gingrich, and Perry.”
Dividing nearly 700 op-in respondents into a control and testing group, they showed those they were testing a series of pro and negative ads (all of which had actually run on TV) for Gingrich, Romney and Perry.
Here is what they found, which have proven prescient:
“Despite his surge and continuing lead in the polls, Gingrich appears highly vulnerable to attack. GOP primary preferences still appear unstable and susceptible to small changes in the flow of information.
“Gingrich’s support is decimated when respondents are exposed just once to a positive and negative ad about Gingrich. The percentage of respondents picking Gingrich as their first choice in the primary falls more than 15 points, from 42 to 26 percent.
“Mitt Romney’s negatives seem to be priced in; Romney ads don’t shift his vote share. Romney benefits most from Gingrich’s decline, rising 10 points, from 27 to 37 percent.
“There are signs of hope for Perry, but he gains only slightly as Gingrich deflates. A first look at the performance of Perry’s 5 positive ads suggests his “Outsider” message is most effective….
“[V]oter opinion in the early caucus/primary states could shift quickly and substantially against Gingrich in the coming weeks as the information flow intensifies and voters tune in to the contest.”
In Iowa, Ron Paul and Romney and to a lesser extent Perry have shared the fruits of Newts fall. But here is a flash: While Romney’s message about himself is getting much better, he is still struggling with his message about where the nation is and where it can and should go. Ron Paul’s message is can take him only go so far. And don’t count Gingrich is out.
In Iowa and nationally, the GOP contest will come down to one question: who is the best carrier of the message of limited government, economic growth and national security? No one has even close to a lock yet.
Attack on Gingrich in Iowa working?
December 15, 2011
The Newt has been hammered unmercifully by the GOP field in the last few days, but especially by Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. The question asked by AT Political Correspondent Rich Baehr in today’s PJ Media is; does this kind of negative campaigning hurt Gingrich?
A survey of how supporters of Gingrich, Romney, and Rick Perry respond to positive and negative ads for their candidate as well as for other candidates demonstrates Gingrich’s vulnerability. The survey by Evolving Strategies indicates that nearly half of Gingrich’s supporters might abandon him after seeing a tough negative ad. The study suggests Romney would benefit from a Gingrich decline, but did not test how much Ron Paul would benefit.
The latest Rasmussen survey (subscribers only) seems to bear that out as Byron York reports:
A new survey from pollster Scott Rasmussen shows support for Newt Gingrich in Iowa has fallen sharply in recent days. The poll shows the former House speaker with the support of 20 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers — down from 32 percent in the last Rasmussen survey released November 15.
Gingrich has now fallen into second place in the Iowa race, behind Mitt Romney, who is at 23 percent, up from 19 percent in the last Rasmussen survey.
The complete poll results are: Romney, 23 percent; Gingrich 20 percent; Ron Paul, 18 percent; Rick Perry 10 percent; Michele Bachmann, 9 percent; Rick Santorum, 6 percent; and Jon Huntsman, 5 percent. Ten percent of likely caucus-goers said they support some other candidate or are not sure how they will vote.
In the new survey, every candidate but Gingrich gained support in the last few weeks. The biggest gainers were Romney, up four points; Paul, up eight points; and Perry, up four points. Michele Bachmann climbed three points, as did Jon Huntsman, who has been to Iowa a grand total of one time in the campaign.
Gingrich, on the other hand, fell 12 points.
“This is the fifth consecutive monthly poll with a new leader,” Rasmussen says in an email. “It was Bachmann in August, then Perry, Cain, and Gingrich. Amidst all the volatility, Romney’s numbers have held steady each month, and Ron Paul has been in double digits each month.”
Everybody appears to be getting a second look by Iowa Republicans and Gingrich is suffering because of it. In truth, the more people know about Gingrich the less they appear to like him.
I am not convinced Romney is ahead in Iowa at this point. With a little more than two weeks to go, it looks like a three man race with Gingrich having the inside track – as long as he can get his supporters to the caucus sites. Romney and Paul are light years ahead of Gingrich in organization which means that volatility will probably rule until the voters make their choices.
One interesting note: The way that the caucuses are conducted makes a voter’s “second choice” important. Romney is the clear second choice of the vast majority of Republicans which may be a deciding advantage in a close race.
Will Ron Paul Be the Next GOP Frontrunner?
December 15, 2011
Ron Paul, the 76-year-old Texas congressman, appears to have a real chance of winning the Iowa caucus on January 3. In the two most recent surveys taken this week, he has moved into second place, leading Mitt Romney by 5 points in each poll and pulling within one point of Newt Gingrich in one of the surveys.
Gingrich may have peaked too soon, providing his competitors enough time to damage him with their ad campaigns. Even worse, Gingrich’s attack on Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital this week, which could have been delivered by the group chanters of Occupy Wall Street, was a good example of his ability to self-destruct .
New York Times polling guru Nate Silver argues that the Iowa race is very fluid, and that Paul is the latest candidate to demonstrate some momentum. Silver, who weights the most recent poll results much more heavily than earlier ones, believes Paul is headed for a second place showing of 20% or more, and if his momentum continues, and Gingrich’s recent slippage accelerates, maybe in the low 30% range, which would almost certainly mean victory. Silver rates Paul’s chances of winning outright in Iowa at 28%.
After Iowa comes the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire and Paul is
hanging in strong, polling in the high teens in 3
rd place .
If Paul were to win Iowa, it is certainly possible he could pass Gingrich for second in New Hampshire. But winning New Hampshire is not out of the question, either. If Mitt Romney’s numbers continue to trend down in Iowa, and he finishes a very weak 4th or 5th , which would be a real blow to maintaining his position as one of the national frontrunners, a Paul victory in Iowa might give him enough of a pop in New Hampshire to win there too.
Could Ron Paul be the new GOP front runner after New Hampshire? Why not? Just a month back, Herman Cain, who has never won an election of any kind, was the hot candidate in the GOP field, hitting 30% support levels nationally and higher than that in several states. The GOP pre-primary action has been a non-stop roller coaster with the Republican faithful falling head over heels first for one candidate (Bachmann) and then another (Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and now Paul), so long as the candidate is not named Mitt Romney. The volatility has been enormous. Both Perry and Cain had large rapid surges in support before almost all of their support disappeared just as quickly.
Ron Paul, I think, is a different type of candidate than the others who have flirted with the conservative base of the party this cycle. His support has been fairly steady, much like Romney’s, but has grown of late as the number of undamaged alternatives to Romney shrinks. If Gingrich becomes the latest one to play Humpty Dumpty, Paul is likely to be one of the prime beneficiaries.
A survey of how supporters of Gingrich, Romney, and Rick Perry respond to positive and negative ads for their candidate as well as for other candidates demonstrates Gingrich’s vulnerability. The survey by Evolving Strategies indicates that nearly half of Gingrich’s supporters might abandon him after seeing a tough negative ad. The study suggests Romney would benefit from a Gingrich decline, but did not test how much Ron Paul would benefit.
In essence, alone among the candidates in the field this cycle, Paul seems to start with a base, and only adds to it. Nationally, Paul is still in third place, far behind both Gingrich and Romney, but his national numbers will rise quickly if he wins in Iowa and gets first or second in New Hampshire. A week before the Iowa caucus in 2008, Barack Obama trailed Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points nationally and in New Hampshire. Within days of his solid Iowa victory, Obama was in the lead in the polls both in New Hampshire and nationally (Hillary’s tearful “I care so much” routine just before the primary may have helped her eke out a narrow win in the Granite State).
Where does Paul go after New Hampshire, assuming he has had a wild and successful ride in the first two contests? Could the GOP voters have such a death wish that they would nominate Ron Paul? In 1992, nineteen million people voted for Ross Perot for president. Nineteen million votes in the GOP primaries would get Paul the nomination.
In the end, I think the GOP will nominate a candidate who is more mainstream. The ardently libertarian branch of the party is gaining strength and has overlap with the Tea Party movement, but the Paul campaign has also attracted a healthy collection of flakes, anti-Semites, and unusually rude supporters who behave like Lyndon La Rouche backers at times. If Mitt Romney were the last man standing versus Paul, I think Romney would win. This is despite the “anyone but Romney” sentiment among some conservatives and particularly among evangelicals (where there is a healthy level of unhealthy anti-Mormon bigotry at work). Romney has the campaign organization and funding to weather a few early blows. Some of the other contenders — Bachmann, Santorum, and Huntsman — probably do not. John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd were all gone after Iowa or New Hampshire in 2008. The GOP field will shrink pretty quickly after the first two contests .
Ron Paul has almost no chance, were he the nominee, to defeat Barack Obama in the general election. Head-to-head matchups show Paul would be trounced by 10% or more, despite Obama’s mid-40% approval level. But the bigger problem might be a third-party candidacy, particularly if Paul does not like the GOP standard-bearer. And the chances of Paul going the third-party route (he was the Libertarian nominee for President once before in 1988) grow as his visibility grows in the GOP fight for the nomination. The old obstetrician obviously enjoys the spotlight and the national platform to make his case. Paul has already announced he will not be running to retain his seat in Congress.
Were Paul to run on a third-party ticket, he would do much better than when he ran in 1988. His name recognition is much higher , and he has many more true-believer supporters — an army of sorts built up over the years of campaigns. In a close election, as most everyone expects to be the case in 2012, Paul could insure Obama’s re-election bid with a third-party candidacy, since far more of his supporters hail from the right side than the left side. Paul does attract anti-war isolationists, but they are found on both sides of the political spectrum today.
The serious GOP contenders need to be thinking of how they can win the nomination, and not antagonize Ron Paul too badly while doing it. If Paul becomes one of the final two or three, as I expect will be the case, the mainstream media will have a field day, thrilled to play up how extreme the GOP has become, evidenced by Paul’s success. A long, drawn-out nominating contest between Romney and Gingrich, or some other pairing, will only add to Paul’s above-the-fray appeal. If the other GOP contenders go after Paul hard, it increases the likelihood of his bolting from the party. The longer Paul stays around, the more Barack Obama and his dismal record as president will escape the spotlight. Obama wants to compete in a beauty contest versus the GOP and its nominee, not a referendum on his governing ability. Ron Paul might make that a lot easier.
Confirmed: Gingrich’s numbers starting to slip
December 15, 2011
The Gallup trendlines don’t lie. That’s Newt in brown and Romney in black:
Those are national numbers, not the numbers in all-important Iowa, but sneak a peek at the latest polls there in Pollster.com’s table. From the end of November through the first week of this month, Newt was above 30 percent in three separate surveys; in the three latest polls, he’s stuck between 20 and 22 percent, making the race a toss-up between him, Romney, and Ron Paul. If Perry gets a second look over the next two weeks, which seems increasingly likely, and some Iowans come home to the native Bachmann, then we’ve got a five-way jump ball on caucus day. Madness. What happens in New Hampshire if Iowa shakes out as, say, Paul 23, Gingrich 21, Perry 18, Romney 17, Bachmann 15? Is that the political equivalent of a “push” in gambling, leaving Romney the presumptive winner in NH, or does finishing fourth detonate the idea that he’s a lock to win in the northeast?
He’s not just tanking in Gallup, either. Here’s an interesting survey flagged by Sean Trende, who wonders whether Gingrich has a glass jaw:
It proceeded by dividing respondents into three groups. One of them, a control group, watched generic, non-political commercials.
A second group, the so-called “Gingrich condition,” watched a positive Gingrich ad, a negative ad about Gingrich, a positive Perry ad, and a negative ad about Perry (you can view the different ads here).
A third group, the “Romney condition,” watched a positive Romney ad, a negative Romney ad, a positive Perry ad, and a negative Perry ad.
In the control group, 42 percent of respondents made Gingrich their top choice in the GOP primary. But in the “Gingrich condition,” support for the former speaker was only 26 percent, a drop-off of 18 points. The winner in this scenario was Romney, who numbers ticked up substantially, even though viewers didn’t see any Mitt Romney ads.
Interestingly, in the “Romney condition,” where viewers saw ads about Romney and Perry, there was little effect on Romney’s support, and Gingrich’s support increased only marginally. This suggests that most of the negative information about Romney (and Perry) truly is “priced in” at this point.
Voters simply didn’t know the bad stuff about Newt yet, but thanks to Ron Paul’s attack ads, withering criticism from prominent conservatives, and media scrutiny of Newt’s old dirty laundry, they’re getting a crash course. That’s why he’s sinking — and more importantly, because of his organizational problems and decision to (mostly) avoid criticizing his opponents, he might not be able to reverse the trend. He’s not even exerting himself terrible in Iowa, in fact: He’s airing just one ad there right now and isn’t planning to begin his final barnstorming tour of the state until December 27. According to Nate Silver’s statistical model of Iowa polling, his odds of winning IA are down to 38 percent from 70 percent just a week ago; the pessimism’s even begun to show up in his InTrade numbers, which recently were cruising at around 35 percent and now are sagging at just 18. I’m not sure tonight’s debate will help him, either. Everyone knows by now that he’s good at them, which will blunt the impact of a strong performance, and meanwhile he’ll be taking shots from everyone onstage. (Except Huntsman, of course.) He’s still got seniors solidly behind him, which is a big deal, but if they start to abandon ship I don’t know how he survives. Time for some patented Romney Mediscare tactics, perhaps.
And if you don’t think things can get worse for him, here’s Ron Paul basically calling him a chickenhawk on Fox News today. Via GOP12:
Does Gingrich Have a Glass Jaw?
December 15, 2011
One of the big questions surrounding Newt Gingrich’s surge is the extent to which voters are familiar with his baggage. If it is already “priced in,” then he is probably a very serious candidate for the nomination. On the other hand, if he is largely trading on his strong debate performances and goodwill lingering from his term as the first Republican speaker of the House in 40 years, he may have significant vulnerabilities.
A new survey from Evolving Strategies suggests that the latter is the case. Evolving Strategies uses what are essentially Internet-based focus groups to test the effects of different attacks on the speaker. It isn’t affiliated with any campaign this cycle.
It proceeded by dividing respondents into three groups. One of them, a control group, watched generic, non-political commercials.
A second group, the so-called “Gingrich condition,” watched a positive Gingrich ad, a negative ad about Gingrich, a positive Perry ad, and a negative ad about Perry (you can view the different ads here).
A third group, the “Romney condition,” watched a positive Romney ad, a negative Romney ad, a positive Perry ad, and a negative Perry ad.
In the control group, 42 percent of respondents made Gingrich their top choice in the GOP primary. But in the “Gingrich condition,” support for the former speaker was only 26 percent, a drop-off of 18 points. The winner in this scenario was Romney, who numbers ticked up substantially, even though viewers didn’t see any Mitt Romney ads.
Interestingly, in the “Romney condition,” where viewers saw ads about Romney and Perry, there was little effect on Romney’s support, and Gingrich’s support increased only marginally. This suggests that most of the negative information about Romney (and Perry) truly is “priced in” at this point.
Evolving Strategies concludes that “voter opinion in the early caucus/primary states could shift quickly and substantially against Gingrich in the coming weeks as the information flow intensifies and voters tune in to the contest.”
This suggests that Gingrich’s supporters really haven’t priced in negative information about him — a critical consideration at this point in the election. Gingrich is putting a truly top-notch team in place, but he has not hit the airwaves with a major ad buy and is still behind in organizing. If he is swamped by attack ads from Romney, Ron Paul and others, he may struggle to regain his footing.
Indeed, we may already be seeing the effects of these advertisements on Gingrich’s support. His lead has shrunk a few points in the past few days nationally. Most importantly, in Iowa, he is down nearly four points since peaking on Dec. 10, with one pollster showing him only one point ahead of Paul, and a second pollster showing him trailing Mitt Romney by three points.
The polling is also consistent with what the focus groups revealed about Perry: that he should not be counted out. In a field of all eight Republicans, he was the top choice of relatively few Republican voters, coming in fifth place. But when second and third choices were figured in, he was in the ballpark of both Romney and Gingrich. This suggests that, were Romney and Gingrich both to stumble, it would create an opening for Perry. And indeed, Perry has quietly crept up three points in Iowa over the past few weeks, moving from sixth to fourth place.
Overall, this confirms the general conventional wisdom about the Republican race. It is still an extremely fluid contest, where voters are just now beginning to tune in, and have very loose preferences. In other words, it’s still anybody’s ballgame.
Survey: Gingrich ‘Highly Vulnerable’ to Attacks, Romney’s Negatives ‘Priced In’
December 14, 2011
A new survey from Evolving Strategies, a Republican polling firm, has determined primary preferences among GOP voters are “unstable” and “susceptible to small changes in information.” Conducted between December 6 and 8, the survey found that Newt Gingrich is “highly vulnerable to attack” from opponents and that Mitt Romney’s negative aspects appear to be already “priced in” to how primary voters view him.
The survey, unique among firms examining the Republican primary, incorporates experimental data that examines the effect of campaign ads on support for candidates. The 672 Republican and Republican-leaning respondents were divided into three groups: a “Gingrich condition,” a “Romney condition,” and a control group. Those in the Gingrich condition watched, in random order, a positive and negative campaign ad each about Gingrich and Rick Perry; the Romney condition similarly watched four ads, positive and negative both for Romney and Perry. The control group watched a non-political advertisement.
All three groups then took the same survey, which included a question asking them to rank each candidate in order of choice for the Republican nomination. The results showed Gingrich as the first-choice candidate for 31.55 percent of all respondents. Romney was the first choice for 21.73 percent, while the remaining 5 candidates all polled in the single digits. But the results among the three groups show a more complex picture of how voters react to new information.
“Instead of asking voters if they like or don’t like some message, we figure out how all these messages actually impact voter behavior,” says Sabrina Schaeffer, the co-founder of Evolving Strategies.
Perhaps most striking among the survey’s findings are the fact that only 26 percent of those who saw the Gingrich ads (the “Gingrich condition” group) were willing to list the former House speaker as their first choice, compared to 42 percent among those who did not watch the ads and who chose Gingrich as their favorite candidate. Compared to the preferences of the control group, Gingrich support falls 37 percent with those who saw his ads. That suggests primary voters exposed to negative information about Gingrich are more likely to be swayed by that information.
Contrast that to the findings on Romney. Support for Romney increased 39 percent from the control group to the “Gingrich condition” group, meaning those who saw the ads about Gingrich were swayed positively toward Romney by those ads. Also, the negative ad about Romney had no discernible negative effect on his support. It’s likely, the firm concludes, that Republican primary voters may have already calculated the negative aspects of Romney into their opinions of the race.
What these findings also suggest, Evolving Strategies notes, is that the cash-strapped Gingrich campaign could be disadvantaged against Romney’s financial juggernaut in the long term. Gingrich is likely unable to afford enough positive advertisement to counteract the much more effective negative advertisement against him from wealthier campaigns. Romney, meanwhile, will be able to buy himself positive advertisements without worrying too much about less effective negative advertisement against him.
If primary race is a long slog, campaign ads may become more important than the retail politicking of the early primary states. The impact of the national televised debates notwithstanding, Romney would appear to have the upper hand against Gingrich when it comes to competing in the world of television ads. A knockdown, drag-out war that goes well into the summer could be just what the Romney campaign is hoping for.
Poll: Gingrich ‘Decimated’ By Negative Ads
December 14, 2011
GOP presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich is extremely susceptible to negative ads and drops behind Mitt Romney when hit with charges he pushed for a health care mandate, took money from Fannie Mae and backed other non-conservative issues, according to a new poll provided exclusively to Washington Whispers.
Gingrich’s support is “decimated” when voters are exposed to just one negative ad, said polling firm Evolving Strategies.
“The percentage of respondents picking Gingrich as their first choice in the primary falls more than 15 points, from 42 to 26 percent,” they said.
In the innovative ad testing of voters nationwide, Evolving Strategies found that former Republican front-runner Romney benefits most from voters turned off by the negative Gingrich ads, with his support rising 10 points, a 39 percent increase in his standing.
But, said Sabrina Schaeffer, managing partner of the firm, Romney isn’t taking advantage of the public’s uncertainty about Gingrich with his current attacks on the former House speaker’s temperament.
“His erratic temperament is a part of the ‘old negatives’ from his speaker days, along with his infidelity. Voters are willing to forgive that because he has appeared different, mellowed in the right ways, on the debate stage,” Schaeffer told Whispers.
“Romney should focus on the ‘new negatives,’ the issue-based attacks on Gingrich from his time out of office; Fannie and Medicare drug expansion lobbying, support for a federal health mandate and cap & trade. These are mostly unknown negatives to most of the public, and they severely undercut the dominant image of Gingrich in the primary voter’s mind as the conservative revolutionary who retook the House and pushed Clinton into signing dramatic reforms,” she added.
In the survey, Evolving Strategies showed voters current ads about the candidates, one negative and one positive. In addition to gauging voter’s impressions, the viewers were asked to write down a negative and positive word for each. In Gingrich’s case, the so-called “tag cloud” highlighted words like “liar” and “politician.”
In Romney’s case, negative and positive ads shown to voters seem to move the needle very little. The pollsters say that voter’s views of Romney are “priced in,” thus negative ads don’t sting as much for him as they do Gingrich, the newest Republican to challenge Romney for the nomination.
“The big winner here is Romney,” said the pollsters. “Watching the Romney ads has relatively little impact on the primary ranking. Gingrich rises only slightly when respondents view the two Romney ads, Romney’s support is maintained, and Perry’s barely moves. Confirming previous experimental results, Romney seems to be the null candidate. Respondents know who he is, good and bad, and he advances when the negatives of other candidates are in the spotlight.”
And, she added, despite Romney being the beneficiary of a potential Gingrich fall if attacked, Rick Perry too picked up some steam from voters shown the negative Gingrich ads. “Voters still seem to want an alternative to Romney, leaving an opening for a candidate like Perry to earn a second look as Gingrich fades. And some new polls are showing an uptick for Perry in Iowa,” said Schaeffer.
Evolving Solutions noted that if Gingrich wins the nomination, he should expected President Obama’s team to go negative and hit his post-speaker roles and contracts.
“Obama will likely focus on these same new negatives, painting him as a corrupt insider who benefited from the seedy lobbying culture of Washington, while also reminding voters of the rabid partisanship Gingrich drove during the 90s,” said Schaeffer.
New survey shows surprising strength for GOP in head to head matchup with Obama
October 12, 2011
The political research firm Evolving Strategies in conjunction with the polling firm YouGov has conducted a national survey of three major GOP Presidentialcontenders in head to head match-ups with President Obama.
In their survey, respondents were shown short video clips of President Obama speaking on the economy, and clips from a recent GOP debate where Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney did as well. The cross-tabs for the survey were also provided.
The survey results indicated that Cain leads the GOP field with 28%, Romney follows with 20%, and Perry at 12%. However in head to head matchups with Obama, Romey runs best, leading by 7 points (40-33), Perry is next with a 6 point lead (42-36), and Cain third with a 1 point lead (35-34).
Oddly, Obama led a generic Republican by 5%, but trails in all 3 head to head match-ups. In many other recent surveys, Obama trailed in the generic ballot against an unnamed Republican , but was even or led named opponents. The number of voters who are undecided in an Obama-Cain race is higher for the other two GOP candidates. This result, confirmed in other polls, suggests that Cain is still not known to many voters, or they have not yet formed strong opinions on him, either way.
Poll: Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney All Beat Obama
October 12, 2011
Here’s how much political trouble President Obama is in: A newpoll by the authoritative Evolving Strategies firm finds that Herman Cain, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney would all beat Obama it the election were held today.
Worse for Obama: the poll, which showed some 1,000 Americans videos of both Obama and the candidates speaking on the economy, backed up recent analysis that the president has lost his mojo when it comes to tackling the deepening recession and blaming Republicans for standing in his way.
Evolving Strategies put the video spin on their poll because most of the Republican presidential candidates still aren’t known outside of Washington, the early primary and caucus states and to political junkies. Their idea was to show respondents a video clip and have them read a short 120-word biography.
As a result, the respondents felt they had more information and familiarity with the candidates and felt better making a judgment on a head-to-head contest question. Ironically, Obama still beat a “generic” Republican, but not the three front runners. Unfortunately for Obama, since the GOP primary race is now known, there is no more generic candidate to wish for.
Here are their results:
- Despite several bad debate performances by Perry in September, when respondents watched a clip of the Texas governor, he actually gained more support than any of the other candidates and beat Obama by 6-points, 42-36.
- Now Romney had a slightly higher margin—he beat Obama by 7-points 40-33, but he did it with less support. He got less support than Perry, but so did Obama, and there were more people who were uncertain about him, which doesn’t come as a surprise—there’s clearly been a lot of dissatisfaction with Romney as theestablishment candidate.
- Finally, the candidate we’re all most interested in—Herman Cain. The question is can he win the Republican primary? And can he win the general election? Well, he can certainly win the Republican primary. Across all treatments, when asked to choose among the eight GOP candidates, Cain won handily with 28 percent of the vote, followed by Romney at 19 percent and Perry at 12 percent.
- When it comes to a general election, Cain barely edged out Obama 35-34, but he moved from 5 points down in the control group with the generic Republican to 1 point up. And this jump came entirely out of Obama’s vote. It’s clear a lot of uncertainty remains in the general population about Cain—for starters he doesn’t “look like” the stereotypical GOP candidate. And he certainly doesn’t have the typical political background. But despite all that, people seem willing to give him a look – and when they get a look at him, he’s running even with Obama. What will be interesting to see is whether all those uncertain votes become more certain about Herman Cain when they get to see more of him.
Bottom Line: Herman Cain can win the general—people have an open mind about him—but he needs to close the sale with those uncertain swing voters.
