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- [00:00]
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- [01:36]
Sarah Longwell
Hello everyone and welcome to the Focus Group Podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we are plugging back into 2026 with a bit of a history lesson for you guys. Not the history of the world, just the history of focus groups. So instead of playing our focus group audio about the news of the day, because there's going to be plenty of time for that as we get into the new year and election year. We're going to look back at the origin story of our focus groups because I think it's going to tell you a bit about why we do these and what we hope you get out of them when you listen to them, especially as we head into an election season full of focus grouping. And you guys are always emailing me to be like, why do you do these and what's it going to tell us? And these aren't good at predicting things and that's not the point. We want to explain what the point is why we do them and why we think they're useful. So we're going to walk through some never before heard focus group audio from some of the very first groups I ever did when we started this whole thing. And I think what you're going to hear is, is almost like my early stages of grief as I was breaking up with the Republican Party and realizing that Republican voters were okay with the direction of the Republican Party, something that I, as a lifelong Republican, was not. So I've got the show's producer, Connor Kilgore, with me. He's been on before, and so he's going to turn the tables on me a little bit, ask me some questions. I actually don't even know what the questions are, but they are going to be so sort of the essential ones about how we do the focus groups, why we do the focus groups, what we've learned over the years. So, Connor, it's on you. Take it away.
- [03:18]
Connor Kilgore
Well, thanks for letting me back on camera, Sarah. So this is something that we talk about a little bit, but I'm not sure the listeners know as much about. So put us in your headspace In November of 2016, after Trump was first elected, like, where you were personally and professionally, because a lot of the stuff that you've built since then didn't exist back then. So walk us through sort of that origin story and the role that the focus groups played in all of that.
- [03:47]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, man, it's wild that it's been 10 years, basically, almost 10 years. You were like, in middle school when we were all starting this out, probably.
- [03:56]
Connor Kilgore
When Trump was first elected. I was a senior in high school.
- [03:58]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, fine. Still, I shudder. So. So I had been working at kind of like a Republican comms firm, policy shop, where I'd been for 15 years. I'd only had two jobs. One was I spent three years at a conservative think tank and then 15 years doing kind of Republican communications policy. And when Trump got elected, I was already kind of at the stage of was I going to run the firm where I was or. Actually, that was my plan. My plan was I was going to run the firm where I worked, take it over eventually. But Trump, like, changed all that when he happened. You know, I was also the board chair of the Log Cabin Republicans, which is the LGBT Republican group. And, you know, I wanted nothing to do with Trump. But what I saw kind of in real time was the pressure that was, like, going on because all of these groups had a post Trump in. In the primary process. Nobody thought he was Gonna win. Everybody around me was sort of like a Jeb Marco person, including me.
- [05:05]
Connor Kilgore
You weren't necessarily immediately like, this party's not going back. It's changed forever. You held out a little bit of hope there.
- [05:12]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I just thought it was a mistake. Not a mistake, A. Like an aberration of history where you had this big field of, like, relatively normal Republicans. I mean, the one I hated the most was Ted Cruz. I was pro Jeb and Marco, although I. I also, like Carly Fiorina was in that group. Like, there was a bunch of people that I would have been happy to vote for and support. And I just thought that because they sort of fractured the electorate and Trump was kind of by himself over in his burn it all down lane, that he was able to gather a significant enough plurality. And then when he knocked everybody else out, that was. John Kasich was in that field, too. Another person I would have been happy to vote for. In fact, he just didn't have a shot in the beginning. He probably would have been my top choice. Cause I love my moderate Midwestern Republicans. But anyway, at that point, I just thought, man, we've got to save the Republican Party from Trump. And so in the early days, I was sort of struggling with the idea of, do I leave everything I've been doing? But my first instinct was like, no, I'm going to stay and figure out, can we build things? Can we fight Trump? Can we primary Trump? Which is really what takes me to the focus groups, which is, you know, I met Bill Kristol. We started running around trying to figure out, hey, can we primary this guy? Which is an unusual thing to do. Right? Like, you don't usually primary the member of your own party. But there was, or I assumed there was widespread dissatisfaction with the fact that Trump had won and that there was going to be a real appetite for somebody to take him on as a primary challenger. And so I was sort of looking at 2018 as a time where you could start to primary him. And so I was running around, I was talking to, like, Larry Hogan, and we, you know, we took some runs at Kinzinger and some other folks, like, hey, you know, you should primary this guy. You know, some people said no, some people said, maybe. But the main thing everybody wanted to know was if they did that, would they embarrass themselves? Because we weren't sure somebody else could win, but we thought they could weaken Trump and allow that person to build a brand. This is what Reagan did in 76. Right. He ran a primary challenge. He didn't win it, but he became the heir apparent. And so we were trying to figure out, like, could we get an heir apparent, like a Larry Hogan who could take the Republican Party back? So that's why we started doing focus groups. I was trying to make the case to Hogan and some other people. Yeah, if you get in this, you won't embarrass yourself. Like, there's a real appetite. There's a significant chunk of the party that wants this. And then that wasn't true.
- [07:46]
Connor Kilgore
Yes. So I want to put a pin in the primary challenge thing and start in 2018, actually. So the first clips I have are from a couple of focus groups y' all did in Columbus, Ohio. These were people who voted for Trump in 2016, but reluctantly. And what everyone's about to hear is something you kind of mark as an oh, shit moment in your work, because these groups were either the day of or a couple days after the Trump Putin summit in Helsinki, when he sided essentially with Putin's assessment of the 2016 election over that of our intelligence community. I would say there was a lot of shrugging going on. So listen to that.
- [08:27]
Focus Group Moderator
How many people saw the kind of news coverage of the Trump Putin meeting? What was your impression of it as a Trump fan? Did you feel good about it? Do you think he handled the bail, or do you think that the media was kind of beaten up on him unfairly, or do you feel like. What was your gut reaction to that? My opinion is I get sick and media deciding they want to break in on my tv. I'm going to try to do a little brief synopsis because of what Thing is that during the press conference, the president said, Vladimir Putin said that they weren't involved in meddling with the election. And I don't have any reason to doubt him. I'm kind of paraphrasing. Does that sound right?
- [09:14]
Connor Kilgore
Yes.
- [09:15]
Focus Group Moderator
For those of you who didn't see it, does that sound. How do you react to that?
- [09:22]
Connor Kilgore
It's just not right. Okay.
- [09:24]
Focus Group Moderator
It goes back to your. For your comments earlier. Anybody else does that? Do you agree with the price of it, or do you feel like that was one of those things where maybe he was misspeaking either intentionally?
- [09:37]
Trump Supporter Participant
I think he.
- [09:38]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I think it was intentional. I think he meant what he said when I think it was wrong.
- [09:42]
Focus Group Moderator
Right.
- [09:42]
Sarah Longwell
Okay. Okay.
- [09:45]
Focus Group Moderator
Well, the previous president did make a.
- [09:47]
Connor Kilgore
Speech where he said, anyone who thinks.
- [09:48]
Focus Group Moderator
A foreign power can influence or hack.
- [09:50]
Sarah Longwell
Our election is badly mistaken. That's true. And I don't think. I don't think it had anything to do with the election, to tell you the truth. Do I think it actually made a difference? No.
- [10:03]
Focus Group Moderator
And they try every election, every country that we're saying.
- [10:09]
Connor Kilgore
So I do want to call out one thing that these focus groups were done in the days before Zoom, when this was, like, in some conference room with a camera in the corner and really terrible audio and grainy video. So there was some heroic audio editing done to make that clip worthy for a podcast. These were among the first focus groups that y' all did. Sarah, what were you sort of expecting to hear? And just walk us through how you've reacted to hearing all that in real time.
- [10:39]
Sarah Longwell
If you were like, what was all that and what does it mean? Let me just break this down for you, because this was a wild moment for me. I had come from D.C. i'd flown to Columbus to do a series of focus groups. I was sitting behind the glass. It's funny to hear the moderator, one of the early, early moderators of the groups, who's one of my old colleagues. And what's interesting, and I'm not sure you can quite tell from the sound we played, is that when we asked about it, we said, what do you think about Trump siding with. With Putin over America's intelligence community? Everybody was like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, they were just looking at us blankly and had heard nothing about it, which is why what you're hearing is actually the moderator having to explain to them what happened, which is tough, because once you start explaining, you end up injecting your own sort of viewpoint into it. Like, the moderator's trying to say, well, he was on the stage with Putin. You know, he was. He was saying something different than what American intelligence was saying. And how do you feel about that? And they're all learning about it from the moderator because they didn't know it happened. And that was the oh, crap moment. The oh, crap moment was realizing that in Washington, the whole Republican Party was freaking out. Paul Ryan was speaker at the time, and they were like, he can't side with Putin over America's intelligence community. This is an insane thing to do. Right? This is the before times when doing stuff like that still engendered just shock to the system. And Republicans were speaking out about it, which led Trump to say that he didn't say the thing that he said. Like, the reaction was so big in Washington that Trump said, well, I didn't say. It's hard for me to go back and exactly say how he did it. But it was like Trump's original comment was, I don't see why he would have. Right. He said, I don't see why he would have, meaning he didn't see why Putin would have interfered in the election. And then he said, oh, I misspoke. I meant, I don't see why he wouldn't have. Like, the story was that Trump claimed to have not said what he originally said because the blowback was so fierce in Washington, but the voters didn't know anything about it. It's not that they didn't have an opinion, it's that they didn't know. They hadn't even heard about it. And this was when I discovered something that has become a real hallmark of the work, which is to figure out not just what voters think about this or that, but what do voters actually hear, what breaks through, what do they actually get in terms of information? And one of my early lessons was you have this way in your head where you assume, and this is a natural thing to do, you assume everybody has the same information that you do, that you're all working from the same data set, because that leads you to be like, well, how can people vote for him if they know X, Y, Z? And there is truth to that in that everybody did know about Access Hollywood and they voted for him anyway. So there are elements of things that people definitely ignored, but there's also an entire category of information that voters just didn't know about, and this was one of them. And that was a big lesson early on.
- [13:49]
Connor Kilgore
Yeah. And sometimes people can hear about these things in real time, and they're kind of like, well, is this really that much worse than all the terrible behavior I'm used to from every politician? So the spring of 2019, y' all shipped up to New Hampshire to do a couple of focus groups. And like you said earlier, you're trying to test the waters on whether there was any appetite for some alternative to Trump in the Republican primary. And.
- [14:18]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, but can I just say, we went to New Hampshire because New Hampshire's the kind of place a. Because they have an early primary, but a lot of moderates always feel like they can do better in a place like New Hampshire. It's filled with kind of normie Republican moderates. And so your John McCain's always did better coming out of places like New Hampshire. And so we had New Hampshire in our mind as a place to take an early stand, to demonstrate that you could disrupt Trump's just, like, cakewalk to the renomination. And we thought if we could get 30% in New Hampshire. That that would create enough of a, like, oh, no, Trump's vulnerable narrative that you could start making something happen, which is why we went to New Hampshire. Okay, sorry, go ahead.
- [15:03]
Connor Kilgore
Yeah. This state is full of people, I should say, who are maybe lean, not just moderate, but liberal, but who are still registered as independents, and who are plugged into politics enough to say, I'm going to pull a Republican primary ballot for this more moderate candidate who I like better. That is a big reason why John McCain blew the doors off of George W. Bush in 2000, why he won again here in 2000, why John Kasich has done so well. It's why it was one of Nikki Haley's stronger states in 2024. But let's listen to what the Republican base and how the Republican base talked about Trump.
- [15:41]
Trump Supporter Participant
Have any of you folks even been to a Trump property? What's interesting is you can't even find a smudge in a window. Now, if you've ever spoken at a conference in New York, for instance, you can't even plug in a laptop computer. You have to wait for a union electrician to come over and plug it in for you. In that environment, he has figured out how to build these superb towers and maintain them with excellence for decades until he became president. The Trump Tower is one of the most desirable addresses in New York City. And he's satisfying the fussiest people on the planet. Now, all of a sudden, it's not so desirable, and that's because of security. They don't like having to go through all that stuff every time they come in and go. But except for that, you know, it's always been way up there. And to me, to be able to do that in an environment like New York, he's no dummy. And the interesting thing is the lowest level union employee can walk up to him and talk to him on a job, and there are no repercussions. He wants to hear from him.
- [16:42]
Sarah Longwell
And there have been precedents that I haven't particularly cared for, but it's the United States of America. I live here. I want this country to be good. I will support that president. I might not be like dancing in the street, but I'm not going to be trying to, you know, dig into what he did when he was 12 and every girl he talked to. What if he did this or that the other day? Like, it didn't stop.
- [17:00]
Trump Supporter Participant
He does more Twitter followers than the New York Times, his subscribers, L.A. times, et cetera. He's the first president who can actually get his message out unedited by the liberal media.
- [17:14]
Sarah Longwell
Just because the debt went up, is that a bad thing?
- [17:17]
Connor Kilgore
Right?
- [17:18]
Sarah Longwell
Was it?
- [17:18]
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- [17:20]
Sarah Longwell
That's true. But what did it go up for? I bought a brand new sports car.
- [17:23]
Rocket Money Advertiser
My debt went up too, but I'm.
- [17:24]
Sarah Longwell
Happy as can be.
- [17:27]
Connor Kilgore
They showed a picture of a child in a cage and they were blasting Trump for it. And they said, actually, this was taken in 2014, but if you commit a.
- [17:35]
Trump Supporter Participant
Crime, you go to jail, you don't take your kids with you. It wasn't even a Trump policy, by the way. I mean, Obama was doing the same thing. When you detain the people, you don't take your kids with you. That's the way it is.
- [17:52]
Younger Trump Supporter Participant
And this was the first time I wrote it, and I think I voted because I knew that he was such a good businessman. Like, he owns a lot of things, he's good with the money. And I was thinking that if he got into office, he would help get more jobs, like, for my generation, because it was a struggle to even find work, like being a college graduate, just getting out, it was very hard, very hard to get a job.
- [18:25]
Connor Kilgore
How he treats women historically, and you can't change any of that. So when I look at him, it's not something I expect out of him anymore. I expect the businessman who's going to, you know, maybe drive, change or be able to accomplish something that a regular politician wouldn't be able to do.
- [18:42]
Sarah Longwell
Man, I know I haven't listened to that in a while. Man. It's all in there. The what about. The what about Obama? These are all hallmarks of the focus groups. As Republicans started to make their peace with Trump and went from I voted for him because I just didn't want to vote for Hillary Clinton, and I didn't think he would win to no, Trump is good. Actually. This show is sponsored by Quints. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh. I know I am. Quint has me and all of you covered with luxe essentials that feel effortless and look polished. They're perfect for layering, mixing, and building a wardrobe that lasts. Their versatile styles make it easy to reach for them day after day. And I really need some simple things I can just reach for day after day. Otherwise, I will wear bulwark gear every day. Quints has all the staples covered, from soft Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like designer pieces without the markup, to 100% silk tops and skirts for easy dressing up to perfectly cut denim for everyday wear. Their wardrobe essentials are crafted to last season after season. Their Italian wool coats are real standouts. They're beautifully tailored, soft to the touch and built to carry you through years of wear, not just one season. Because I hate it when coats fall apart after one season. But not these guys. These are built to last. And the quality shows in every detail. The stitching, the fit, the fabrics, every piece of it is thoughtfully designed to be your new wardrobe essential. Speaking of essentials, one of my favorite leather jackets is from Quince too. I wore it to dinner the other night. It's the best. So the coolest thing I own. And like everything from Quint, each piece is made with premium materials in ethical trusted factories and then priced far below what other luxury brands cost. Refresh your wardrobe with Quint. Don't wait. Go to quint.com the Focus Group for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too, which is good. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com the focus group to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com the focus group.
- [21:02]
Connor Kilgore
Well, let me ask you this because I think one thing we've wrestled with the last few months is how the Republican Party is going to evolve from here. And I think what you heard was very much characteristic of Trump's first term when everyone was like, oh, he's under siege by the deep state, they're coming after him with the phony Russia investigation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now the defense of him sounds a lot different as we deal with the Epstein files and so forth. So wondering, compare and contrast a little. How, how's the defense of him looking now?
- [21:35]
Sarah Longwell
Man, it's so interesting to think about the 10 year span because there's, there's been an evolution from people kind of being like, look, yeah, I didn't like Hillary Clinton and I don't think Trump's a good guy. Like, there wasn't a defense of him. And then over time they started to sort of warm up to him. Like at first it was like the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And then it turned into he's just my friend. And like at some point there was a lot of sunk costs into Trump. And so like they'd been defending him for so long that once the court cases came, I remember seeing it in these early days, the rally round Trump effect. The idea that attacking Trump was, you know, oh, that's what the mainstream media does. And, oh, the Guy saying, the thing about his Twitter is so interesting too, just because that was such a hallmark of Trump in the early days, was he wasn't filtered through anybody else. He was communicating with people directly. He did develop a parasocial relationship with voters in a way that most politicians didn't. And in fact, Democrats, like, even 10 years later, they ran the 2024 campaign, like that wasn't real, like that wasn't true. Like you didn't have to have your own unfiltered conversation with voters that Trump had sort of long understood that was something that you need to do. He just broke the barriers down. He didn't let anybody else get between him and the voters. And he still does that. I think though, the one thing that's different now in the second term, as you watch people, is one, he's a lame duck. And so there is a sense of what comes next after him. Like, voters don't think he can run for a third term. Like, you gotta be really deep down the MAGA rabbit hole to think that Trump can run for a third term. And so for all, a lot of them, they're just like, look, I wanted the good times back when Trump was president the first time. They do do this thing where they just miss that 2020 and the pandemic ever happened on Trump's watch. They like basically only associate it with Biden. And what they associate with Trump is that he had a good economy and they wanted that good economy back. And it was still like, I'm the businessman. But now they really are starting to get more disillusioned. Like, there's a real sense now of, well, I hired him to fix the economy, he's not doing it. And normie voters are much more frustrated with him and kind of starting to look for, like, the next thing. It's funny because for the normie voters, I think a lot of them, like old Normie Republicans, like, they're fine with J.D. vance. The people who are less interested in J.D. vance are kind of the newcomers. Like, there's all these people who they became Republicans, but they're not Republicans, they're red pilled. And Susie Wiles just talked about this in that Vanity Fair interview where she said, oh, there's these, these podcast people and she didn't say gripers, but that's what she meant. Like there's all these people who came into the Republican Party, but they hate the Republican Party. They just came for Trump. And so, like, they don't know what to do. In a post Trump world where people do have all these sunk costs. And so, like, when you talk about, well, what comes next and who do you like? Like, J.D. vance is kind of the only person they think of, but they do it with like a shrug, like, he's fine, but. So I don't know. What do you think the answer is to how it's evolved? You watch all these.
- [24:51]
Connor Kilgore
You know, I've been very struck in the last year on how. Because I think this is something we heard a little bit of during the Biden years among Democrats. If you do a focus group of Democrats during those four years, it would not be uncommon for people who are like, part of the base to grade him, because we do this, you know, give him a letter grade to, say, a B or a C. And I've been surprised how many, you know, Trump fans would grade him at a B or a C, would say things like, well, I like a lot of the general direction, but there's maybe I wish the economy were picking up a little faster. I don't really understand why the whole Epstein files thing is taking so long. It is a lot more reminiscent of the sort of malaise that we saw during the Biden years from Democrats than it is of the rationalizations and being quick to aggressively defend him that we saw during the first term.
- [25:45]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, they still do. I would say that there's a difference. Right now, when we're sorting the groups, the base voters still kind of do a, like, Rome wasn't built in a day. He needs time. Which is why when you see J.D. vance and even Trump come out and say, we need more time, I never quite understand the chicken or egg relationship. But I do know their focus grouping things as well. And I do think they have a sense that there is a in their base, a willingness to give them a little more time. However, there's a whole bunch of voters who voted for Trump, who do not care for Trump personally and who only voted for him because of the businessman stuff, because of the economic stuff, because of the affordability issue. And by the way, those are a lot of Hispanics and a lot of young people. And those are the first people to kind of quit Trump to be like, you said you were going to do all this stuff right away, and you also said no wars. And like, you're B.S. oh, this is the other thing that's in here that we just hear over and over again. That was an early indicator, which is Trump's not a regular politician. Man, do Republican voters not want a regular politician? And Trump is starting to get in his second term, some of that regular politician. He's not telling the truth. He's not making anything better. And so a lot of people that I think Republicans thought they had brought into the tent, they walked in for 2024 and walked right back out again.
- [27:08]
Connor Kilgore
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the establishment.
- [27:12]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
- [27:14]
Connor Kilgore
Right.
- [27:15]
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- [28:15]
Sarah Longwell
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Connor Kilgore
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- [28:31]
Sarah Longwell
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- [28:32]
Connor Kilgore
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Sarah Longwell
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- [28:47]
Connor Kilgore
You mentioned sunk costs earlier and this last clip is also from these 2019 New Hampshire groups. Also 2019, 2016 Trump voters. People really felt like they were sort of personally under siege for how they felt about Trump. You know, strained some of their personal relationships. So let's listen to how they talked about that.
- [29:08]
Sarah Longwell
I love when people who, you know, voted for Hillary take some sort of moral high ground because it's like, you know, excuse me, like I don't support him because he's a ding dong, but you know, in your mind you're going, well, he has a ding dong, but he's doing a good job.
- [29:20]
Weight Watchers Advertiser
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- [29:28]
Connor Kilgore
So what's wrong, I think is a big part with this country is that nobody wants discussions anymore. It's either you feel our way or you're an idiot for thinking that way.
- [29:35]
Sarah Longwell
I work in a very small office and there's only 10 of us and there's only me and one other person. And the topic at lunch, they call us stupid. They call us like, you can. How can you be such an idiot? How can you vote for him? So much so that they got dog toys that are Trump like and give it to their dogs and they pull his head off and his hair out and they'll say, here, here's, here's the new trunk picture. And I'll look and I'll be like, are you kidding me? Can you just grow up?
- [30:05]
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- [30:07]
Sarah Longwell
And they didn't say anything then about the way Trump behaves.
- [30:11]
Connor Kilgore
I think this is really interesting. It is a group dynamic that sets in when we, and we don't do as many in person focus groups anymore. But I remember we, we did a couple of groups in Iowa also with Trump voters a couple of years ago, and when people were just sitting together in the lobby of the studio beforehand, it felt like they were all going to go out to dinner afterwards.
- [30:34]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, this is something actually about the focus groups that the way we do them, and it's not the way everybody does them, but it is the way we do them, is that we are deeply interested in getting their unvarnished opinions. We want the most truthful thing that they're gonna say. So a lot of people do focus groups with the goal of we're gonna message, test things against them and figure out, like, which things people gravitate to. And we do that as well, especially when we're going into building a campaign. But for a lot of these, we're just trying to listen and we're just trying to understand. And one of the things we do to make people feel comfortable expressing their real opinions is that we put them in groups with the people who are like, the same as them. Like, we tell them right at the beginning, you're all Trump voters, you all voted for him, you know, in 2020 and in 2016. And everybody like, exhales, like, you see them be like, okay, this isn't going to be combative. I'm with people who are like minded and what you can hear in the groups is that they spend a lot of their time feeling under siege from their colleagues, from their family, from their friends for voting for Trump. And that created, over time, like, a real tribal sense, both of being aggrieved and then sharing with other Trump voters. Like, that's why the rallies have such a red solo cup effect, is people like being around other Trump voters because they feel like they're not being judged there. And that really did dig people in. And because Trump did this thing where he created a parasocial relationship, and because people felt like they took grief for saying that they voted for Trump, it created a depth of connection with Trump that other politicians just don't have because they feel like they took the slings and arrows. And that is why, too, that they rush to defend him. Like, it's not even that they're so maga, it's that they're dug in in some cultural way, and you're not gonna persuade them out of it because they've already devoted too much of themselves to it.
- [32:43]
Connor Kilgore
It feels a little bit subversive to be supporting Trump the way they are. There's a sort of respectability thing that people sometimes do, which is like, oh, you know, I don't like the tweets. I just like the policies. We heard the woman who's like, I don't support him. He's a ding dong. And she's saying in my head, I'm like, he's a ding dong who's doing a good job. Sarah, is there anything else you want to say on this front? I have a couple mailbag questions as well that I think get to some of what we've just talked about.
- [33:11]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, the only thing I'll say is now, like, Trump's been with us for a very long time. I do think that when I think about it strategically, when I'm not just analyzing voters, but I'm thinking about how do we make it so sort of Trumpism or the toxic forces that Trump has unleashed on our politics. How do we sort of beat back against those? You know, there's a couple things that I know to be true now. One is the Republican Party is not going back, and everybody should, like, understand that the voters don't want it back. They don't want the old Nikki Haley. And one of the reasons that Trump won again in 2024 in the primary is that Ron DeSantis seemed like a regular politician to them. They really did want and still want. They want a disruptive force, sort of the base level voters and almost none of them are interested in Republican ideas of old. Like people might say conservative, but like they don't know what that word means. Like they do not believe in limited government. They don't believe in free markets, they don't believe in American leadership in the world. Anything that is sort of reminiscent of the Republican Party is mostly gone from the voters in the Republican Party. And in fact, Trump ran against the Republican establishment every time he ran. And so he also taught a lot of these voters to hate the Republican Party. Like they, like Trump. Trump is the one they're connected to. And I think just as we think about going forward, you know, J.D. vance might have a little bit of what Biden had in that people were like, biden rocked with Obama. Right? He was, he was with Obama and I loved Obama. And So Biden's fine. J.D. vance might have some of that with Trump, but he does not have the ability to be Trump. And the voters, I think are going to be very lukewarm on him. But anyway, just the not going back thing is really important for people to understand. But they're not going to turn on Trump. They're never going to say they were wrong. These kinds of voters, what will happen, and this is where Democrats have to think really hard about this, is that a lot of the people who voted for Trump, who are sort of independents or red pilled voters or Hispanics or young people, they are all back up for grabs because they voted mainly on economic vibes and the fact that Biden was too old. And so I think the way that people felt really dejected in the wake of the 2024 election, as though the country maybe wasn't what they thought it was. I just can't tell you how much of it had to do with Biden being old in the economy. Yes, Kamala Harris was put in there, but people saw the idea that she was put in there as like an installation and anti democracy. And so Democrats have a real chance to reset right now. Like a real chance at a time when the Republican Party, now that it has become deeply committed to this one person, when he's gone, they don't really have a plan. And Democrats can build a plan and build an alternative and they're never going to have a better opportunity than right now, but they do have to seize it. All right, go to the mailbag. Otherwise I'll jabber on forever.
- [36:26]
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- [38:28]
Connor Kilgore
All right, a lot of these are polled actually from the comments on the last time we did our sort of FAQ episode. And so they're maybe even nerdier than some of those last things we talked about. I wish I could ask Sarah how Dems compared to GOP voters as to information accuracy, in my mind, Dems may not know the answer to a given question, but far too many GOP voters will give an answer that couldn't be more wrong, and much of it wrapped up in conspiracies and Just incorrect facts. I'm not saying Dems no more, but based on my experience, the GOP side has insane inane and couldn't be more wrong influences far deeper than Dems do.
- [39:05]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, there's a huge gap between people who are Dems and people who are sort of MAGA Republicans, not the normie Republicans, like, kind of normie Republicans. They are. You know, they read the Wall Street Journal. Maybe they do Fox News, like. But I wouldn't say that they're the ones sort of steeped in Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson nonsense. Right. There's plenty of Republicans who are not those people. However, I'll say the biggest difference between Democrats and Republicans is this. Republicans speak in language to say, I am. I am a conservative because I'm religious. I am a conservative because I was raised that way, because I'm, you know, from a place like Republicans. Identity, like, political identity is very much like a who they are. It is deeply rooted. Whereas Democrats use the language of I think or I believe. If you say, like, why are you a Republican? Or why are you a Democrat? A Democrat will say, well, I believe X, Y, and Z, or I think X, Y, and Z and I want to do something about it. Republicans will say, I am. I am this thing. And a lot of that then sort of comes down to Democrats will give you facts from the media or on issues that they really care about. Their political affiliation tends to be rooted in a sense that they believe in something or. Or a solution to something or a problem. They want to Sol and Republicans, because it's about identity, as opposed to how I came up, which was that it was a series of things that you did believe. Right. It was like an ideological project because it's so rooted in identity. There are sort of. I don't want to say they're not bringing facts because you cannot paint people with a big brush. You just can't. But there is now a huge group of Republican voters or Trump voters, because again, I think calling them Republicans is a little bit off because they're not like the old Republican Party, but they're the ones who are like, they are Republicans and therefore they listen to Tucker and they listen to Candace Owens and they listen to, you know, the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, and like the Shapiro listeners, they can give you 100 facts about why they think Democrats are idiots. Like, those are sort of different qualitatively. They tend to be sort of negatively polarized. Right. Because Ben Shapiro is there every day to fill them up with why Democrats are worse. But he's honest oftentimes about the flaws in the current sort of MAGA establishment. But a bunch of the other influencers on the right, Megyn Kelly, everybody else, they're there to just like, fill you up with. And again, there's degrees, but they'll fill you up with a lot of nonsense. And those voters are often, what is the phrase? Always wrong but never in doubt. You can sort of tell when somebody is deep in the right wing. You know, they listen to Alex Jones, they listen to the QAnon influencers, like, and there's a lot of them, and those are different.
- [42:09]
Connor Kilgore
One point I would make too. I think we can all stipulate that the information problem on the right is a much bigger one these days. But it is also a very common feature of just regular old partisans in America to have a certain shade on the truth that is most flattering to their own side. We have heard plenty of Democrats since the 24 election talk about thinking the election was stolen. You know, we had some people who sort of maybe lied to themselves about Joe Biden's abilities longer than they. They probably should have. But in fairness to the people who've talked about the election, the 24 election being stolen, there's also been a little bit of that on the losing side in pretty much every presidential election. Yeah, there was a little bit of like, the voting machines in Ohio were rigged against John Kerry. I know people who think the election was stolen from mitt Romney in 2012. And what made the big lie different was that elites went along with that and threw gasoline on that fire.
- [43:05]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, there's always conspiracy theories. There has never been a devoted conspiracy theorist in the White House with a megaphone, which is why the current right is different. I said Republican influencers. I was naming them all. The biggest MAGA influencer of all is Donald Trump, and he sets the flywheel of the false information in motion most of the time.
- [43:29]
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- [44:31]
Connor Kilgore
All right, I got one more. Two more questions. Actually, having a psych degree, I've always wondered how you run your groups. And I've noticed people say things like, just like he said earlier or. And I agree with her, that's. That's always concerned me because hearing how one person answers the question can influence another's answer. I kind of wish these weren't groups. I'd be very interested to hear how much people's answers would change if they were alone in the room.
- [44:55]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, this is a great question. Let me tell you why the groups are most important and why it's better actually to get information from people in groups. It's because people are actually influenced by their. In groups. In real life, they're not alone. In real life, they might be alone in a voting booth. And you're right that there's a certain amount of group cohesion that forms in the groups, but that's also what happens in life is that they find other people that they attach to and that they trust people like them much more so than any elite who's going to talk to them. And they say, like, yeah, I agree with that. And that's why I'm part of this. And so seeing the things actually from others that people gravitate to is really interesting from a persuasion standpoint. And so, so the group dynamic mimics more closely life dynamic than individual things. We do do deep dives with individuals, though. Sometimes those are interesting, too. But saying like, ah, I'd get a different answer if they were alone versus the group is like, maybe, but that's not actually how life works.
- [46:02]
Connor Kilgore
Yeah. And something you like to say about persuasion is that you're not necessarily convincing people to believe a whole new thing. You are unlocking something that already sort of lives inside of them. So it's the same thing. Like when people, when we, like, tweets on Twitter, we are seeing something that we think is well put and that we want to associate ourselves with when we probably agree with the, you know, the general gist of somebody's remarks that's right. Okay. A problem in quantitative methods, classical surveys is a specific group of the population is unwilling to answer because they mistrust science. So do you have issues getting some of these folks into focus groups and is missing this, missing some of the current political streams? So I work on a lot of our recruiting and I'll kind of start with this. We use a market research vendor and the vast majority of their clients are not political at all. And so the people signing up to take these surveys are just signing up to get paid for their opinions about. Mostly about products, usually not about politics. This is a common problem with. Oh, are there shy Trump voters who don't want to answer the phone and tell some pollster that they're voting for Trump? These are people who are largely not thinking about political surveys until they end up with ours.
- [47:19]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, if we miss political streams, it's because we didn't think to recruit them, not because we can't recruit them. And I also don't think that the shy phenomenon is a phenomenon anymore. Like, people are perfectly happy now to tell you that they voted for Trump and they do not feel embarrassed by it. I think that might have been true in 2016, but I actually think it was had less, much less to do with there being shy Trump voters and much more to do with the way pollsters were weighting their respondents because they didn't realize how many more people in certain areas. Right. If they were like, well, turnout in these more rural counties is usually X. They didn't realize that Trump was going to be able to like increase that by 50% or 20% or whatever he did in these various places. And so they just, like, weren't weighting things accurately.
- [48:11]
Connor Kilgore
One closing question for you, Sarah. Which race of 2026 are you most excited to do a lot of focus grouping on?
- [48:19]
Sarah Longwell
You know, I'm really interested in the Ohio governor's race. Ohio has been a state that is just been firmly, firmly read. Now, that used to be a swing state when I was young. I remember in 2004, Kenyon, where I went to college. I was graduated by then. But they made the national news because everyone was staying in line to vote because Ohio was like on the knife's edge. And now Ohio is just a firmly red place. But Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor there. And it's going to be interesting to see how people in Ohio, I think, look, let's just say it, I think there's been an unbelievable amount of naked racism, honestly, against Indians specifically, like, American Indians has become one of the groups that they are one of the most hostile to. And so I'm interested to see whether in a state now that Trump has just been absolutely dominating and the Democratic candidate is a woman named Amy Acton and she's running an incredibly hyper localized race that's quite good so far. I'm really interested to see how people react to that race.
- [49:28]
Connor Kilgore
I am interested in Amy Acton in particular as a candidate because if she is able to pull off this race, she was one of the top public health officials in Ohio throughout Covid. And that leads to all of the slings and errors that the public health community as a whole got during COVID I think in the Senate race a few years ago, right after the pandemic, Josh Mandel was calling her the Fauci of Ohio. I am interested to see how her record on Covid plays into that race as well. My answer for favorite race to focus group might be the Republican Senate primary in Texas. Ken Paxton is currently the front runner for the Republicans in Texas. He's the sitting attorney general and he is one of the worst human beings in a party that has become much more accommodating to bad human beings lately. Cheated on his wife, nearly was expelled from office a couple of years ago, had several Republicans vote for his impeachment. And yet he might knock off John Cornyn, who's the incumbent Republican senator. And it's not like Cornyn has done a Liz Cheney routine. His only real crime has been that he is putting on the red hat. But he's kind of boring about it.
- [50:44]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, right. That's right. No, they want the most corrupt guy like Ken Paxton is bringing all the corruption and you know, the Riz of the tabloids because he's just been out there doing all kinds of wild things while claiming his Christianity is at the center of things. Like he's got it all. He's got the hypocrisy, he's got the corruption, the self dealing. He's got the was almost kicked out early days when they were still trying to pretend like they had standards and that's who the voters want. And so I agree with you. Will they choose a nakedly corruption person over boring MAGA establishment? Because I do think it's a good race to pick because it's interesting as we think about the sort of MAGA establishment America first split that is coming in the Republican Party.
- [51:32]
Connor Kilgore
Yes. And there's a sort of a third place sidecar candidate in the race named Wesley Hunt. He's a congressman from the Houston suburbs. He's long been thought to be kind of a rising star, could be an X factor in that race.
- [51:45]
Sarah Longwell
I'm also, I mean, just overall, what I'm really interested. I want to see voters crater in their approval on Trump. We're already seeing a lot of movement against Trump. A lot of sort of last in, first out voters who were, you know, I'll vote for him because of the economy, who are now like, I hate this guy. I want Trump to leave office well below 30% approval rating. And so watching how voters grapple with his lame duckness, the bad economy, that's going to be fun.
- [52:13]
Connor Kilgore
And we're like, halfway there, halfway there. Well, that sounds like a great way to start 2026. Sarah, thank you for letting me turn the tables on you a little bit and pick your brain about our whole origin story here.
- [52:28]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, good job, Connor.
- [52:29]
Connor Kilgore
Thanks.
- [52:30]
Sarah Longwell
And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the focus group podcast. We will be back next week as we start off 2026 with some new focus groups. We'll see you guys then.