Asserting positive values generally works. Trans people, immigrants, podcasters - whoever the right is blaming this week - all deserve dignity, safety and respect. Then you can start suggesting voters ask cui bono. Who benefits from this fear and division?

We dial tested a bunch of messages, on crime, econ, immigration, etc. This one on crime, was the top performing of all of them. More evidence Dems do not need to move right to make a strong case to voters. See the threads (and deck/memo) for other messages.

Post messaging, we drove Dems into positive territory almost across the board, including fighting immigration to nearly a draw. Dems have dug themselves a deep ditch on immigration with hundreds of millions on ads telling voters Rs have better answers. They should really stop.

When framed as a choice, voters across key segments overwhelmingly picked a left leaning, inclusive populist worldview over the right's dark, obsessive and weird use of marginalized communities to generate a sense of threat and fear. Even in this terrain it's 59 to 37. +22!

NEW POLLING with Lake Research: we found Dems have made progress in tough South and Southwest battleground terrain, going from R+5 4 months ago to R+1. Strong, clear messaging moved voters +9 towards Dems over the survey. PLUS NINE. More details in this🧵.

off kilter Democratic priorities were. For these voters Gaza was part of an anti-Dem narrative more than an individually decisive issue. This was how we framed the net effect in our research summary, linked here - chartingthewayforward.substa…

In our research last year we tried very hard to not flatten Dem voters' views about Gaza. While certainly for some it was as simple as Harris/Biden = pro-genocide, for many more it was another example of how ...

This one's a bit different from our usual more nerdy (but hopefully accessible) focus. The discussion covers fighting in new terrain, how to escape ideological boxes, even Wicked. VERY worth your time. Links: 📺youtu.be/_fSvmlDWdKU 🍎 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…

Lots of discussion today about the DNC report/autopsy. If you want to know what went wrong in 2024 based on what voters thought, read ours. We integrated the most qualitative data of any research program we’re aware of, presumably a different focus than what’s in the DNC report.

And in our keystone Lake Research poll of voters who voted for Biden in 2020 and skipped 2024, with a slightly different version of the question, 72% of voters chose inequality-affordability as the bigger problem, and it was **77%-13%** in ‘24 battleground states.

When we gave voters a choice between the problem being a fraction of the 1% taking all the money vs whoever the right is blaming (wokeness, DEI, immigrants, trans people, etc), 64% to 36% choose the 1%, and even bigger margins with voters of color - and 38% of Trump voters!

These five signals are from the executive summary, which is a pretty good synopsis. If you’re strapped for time at least give that a read, it’s only two pages! (But check out the appendices too. How voters think is key, and Dems have more than 1.5x as many moderates as Rs!)