Commentary

What Will Drive The Fall Midterms

State primaries are in full swing as the nation gears up for the fall midterm elections. Donald Trump is not on the ballot, but he nevertheless casts a long shadow with his claims about election fraud in 2020 -- AKA the Big Lie.

Comprehensive predictive analytical work during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections by Professor Koen Pauwels of Northeastern University and his academic collaborators (Professors Raoul Kubler and Kai Manke, both from University of Munster) sheds light on the forces that will likely have the biggest impact on key 2022 midterm elections.

These studies integrated conceptual frameworks from political science and marketing, building a comprehensive longitudinal data set to quantify the relative importance of each 200+ variables to predict the outcome. The model accurately predicted the 2020 presidential election outcome two weeks before election day.

Fake News Matters in Elections, But Impact Varies by Topic

Let’s start with a major factor in 2020 that will likely remain a major factor in all U.S. elections for the foreseeable future: fake news.  The research found that fake news played a dominant role. In fact, its role is stronger than it is for the candidates’ own actions such as social media posts and advertising -- and more important than the size of the candidates’ following on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

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Fake news about COVID-19 had a big impact, and its impact increased over the course of the 2020 election.

But perhaps more important than the false news that does catch on, several false news items have had no impact. For the 2020 election, consider the alleged email leaks of Biden and his son Hunter, defunding the police, voter fraud, etc. False news about Biden and fraud was associated with higher poll numbers for the candidate. When Trump supporters shared the “wrong” fake news topics, they failed to hurt Biden’s election chances.

Lesson learned:  Its not the amount of false news, but the topic that matters. Analysts and political professionals need to understand the difference.

Social Media Matters. Word of Mouth Matters Even More

Social media has a significant impact, but an important finding is that the platform matters, as topics received a warmer response on some platforms (e.g., Instagram) than on others (e.g., Twitter).

Uniquely, the study also includes offline word-of-mouth (WOM) volume and sentiment for each candidate, to test the hypotheses that “these may differ from online expressions.”  And indeed, they do, finding offline WOM had strong benefits for both candidates.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton discovered the hard way the importance of WOM. In her subsequent book, “What Happened,” she observed that word of mouth trends were a leading indicator of voter movement away from her and towards Trump following the Comey letter. Now we have analytical proof of WOM’s impact.

Lesson learned: Candidates and analysts should carefully monitor not only polls, but also social media interactions and offline WOM conversations. Further, offline WOM is distinct from social media and requires its own strategy to maximize its positive impact.

TV Still Matters

Offline marketing (in our study, TV ads) remains a powerful vehicle to get a candidate’s message across, especially on topics voters care most about, such as the economy, terror, and gun control. Finally, mainstream news mostly matters for its coverage of scandals and the general understanding it provides for interpreting fake news on the same topics.

Lesson learned:  Media is becoming more and more digital, but TV still matters in politics.

Conclusions

As attention turns to the 2022 midterms and then to the 2024 presidential election, this research gives us signals for what to be on the lookout for. Fake news works -- but only some of it; social media works, but only some platforms, and offline WOM works better. The media world is increasingly digital, but TV still drives outcomes.

And above all, topics matter. While McLuhan observed that the medium is the message, we now know that only the right message sways voters -- and the medium is not destiny.

1 comment about "What Will Drive The Fall Midterms".
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  1. Dan Ciccone from STACKED Entertainment, June 2, 2022 at 5:19 p.m.

    You can't fake news massive inflation and $6 a gallon gas. 



    "it's the economy stupid."

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