0:00

Politics has never been stranger or more

0:03

online, which is why the Politics team

0:05

at Wired is making a new show

0:07

Wired Politics Lab. It's all about how

0:09

to navigate the endless stream of news

0:12

and information and what to look out

0:14

for. Each week on the show will

0:16

dig into Far Right Platform A I

0:19

chat bots, influence or campaigns and so

0:21

much more. Wired Politics Lab Largest Thursday,

0:23

April Eleven. Follow the show where ever

0:25

you get your podcasts. Hey

0:32

are I'm. Erin Haynes, the host

0:34

of The Amendment, a brand new weekly

0:36

podcast on Gender politics, some power brought

0:38

to you by The Nineteenth News and

0:41

Wonder Media Network. You've probably heard the

0:43

news that this election year, our democracy

0:45

is at stake. Only amendment I'm breaking

0:47

down with that actually means specifically for

0:50

the March Last Folks. Who depend on

0:52

democracy the most? This.

0:54

Is a show that daf pass the headlines

0:56

and gets clear on the unfinished. Work of

0:58

our democracy. Was. Into

1:01

the Moment Now wherever you get your

1:03

podcast. What?

1:06

Basically Op and zombies questions Now

1:08

is that they're geared toward been

1:10

an entire income But Investments: Harvard

1:12

Harris Poll. Sixty two percent

1:15

of Americans say. That. The

1:17

country. Is on the wrong track?

1:19

But. If I had shown you that

1:22

data for years back. It would

1:24

be nearly identical. But it would be flipped.

1:34

What? Could go right. I'm.

1:36

Zachary care about the founder of the

1:38

progress that worked. Join the as always

1:40

by Emma Var Valukas the Executive Director

1:42

of Yes You've got it. The progressed

1:44

our. And. This is our weekly podcast

1:46

where we look at what you go right as

1:48

opposed to what could go wrong which had a

1:50

look at what's going well in the world or

1:52

this which had to look at people that are.

1:55

Taking. a more nuanced

1:57

sophisticated com or saner

2:00

less outraged, less fearful, less

2:02

hysterical, less partisan, less

2:04

political, less dystopic, less dystopian

2:06

view of what is going on in

2:09

the world. And one of the

2:11

ways that we all assess what's going on

2:13

collectively is through this

2:15

very modern, modern as in the

2:17

past century, institution known as

2:19

polls, where a group of people go around

2:22

and ask another group of people what they

2:24

think of X. And polling has become one

2:27

of the tools that we

2:29

use to try to figure out

2:31

whatever we are as opposed to whatever

2:34

I am. So we're going to talk

2:36

today to someone who I think probably does a better

2:38

job given that much of that polling

2:40

or at least a portion of that polling

2:42

in a political election year is

2:44

driven entirely by horse race mentality. Who's going to

2:47

win? Who's not? Who's going to

2:49

get the most votes? Who isn't? So Emma, who are we going

2:51

to talk to today? Emma Bensky So today we're talking

2:53

to John Gerzweil. He's the CEO of

2:55

the Harris Poll and he's a pioneer

2:57

in the use of data to identify

2:59

a particular social change. And Harris Poll

3:01

does a lot of different kinds of

3:03

polling, in particular helping companies anticipate new

3:06

trends and demands, but also lots of

3:09

general polling about Americans, their mood, what

3:11

they care about, what they're looking at.

3:13

He has written for numerous different publications

3:15

and is also the author of a

3:17

couple books, among them the Athena Doctrine.

3:20

So let's go see what John has to say

3:22

about polls. Let's do it. Welcome,

3:25

John, to our podcast. Welcome to

3:28

What Could Go Right. I thought

3:30

it would be interesting. This

3:32

is a spontaneous thought and therefore

3:36

maybe much less interesting in retrospect that

3:38

it feels pungently in the moment. But

3:41

tell us about the history of the

3:43

Harris Poll. Like, how did it come

3:45

about? Who created it? Who was Harris?

3:47

What was his goals? Was it different

3:49

than Gallup or Pew or anything else?

3:51

John Gerstle Oh, that's an excellent question.

3:53

You'd have to go back 60 years,

3:55

but Lou Harris started the company up

3:57

in Rochester, New York. And

3:59

If you... Imagine that time these

4:01

were the giants of industry. You

4:04

had the Harris Poll, he had

4:06

Kodak. You. Had dust.

4:08

A. Few other companies have that El que they

4:11

were do is releasing things up state. But.

4:13

He had to sort of. Simple. Believes

4:16

that the public's voice mattered

4:18

and leadership. And and leaders need

4:20

to be held to account. That

4:22

is sort of. Mission was to try to. Bring.

4:24

The public's voice into the debate

4:26

on politics and and later in

4:29

the business. So he was John

4:31

Kennedy's pollster. A sort of how

4:33

he got started. And. Delta.

4:36

Really? Fascinating Polling Company.

4:39

That. By the time of his gas

4:41

in. Twenty Six T.

4:44

Harris sadly sat inside Nielsen and it

4:46

wasn't even Harris Poll anymore. They've taken

4:49

the name down and they. And

4:51

their wisdom they called it meals and

4:53

consumer insights. Were. Able to

4:55

acquire the company as part of our holding

4:57

company which is called Stigma Group. And.

5:00

They are spoken to. Came roaring back. So proud

5:02

of the work we do. So.

5:04

I fill it with. Polls. Are

5:06

the see. what they tell us

5:08

and brought into the public conversation lot

5:11

but I guess until two thousand and

5:13

sixteen I don't remember there being i

5:15

public conversation about. Polls. Themselves

5:17

Ryan Harris said south. Downfall.

5:20

Of the polls a moment. then. The

5:22

point where people can ask and I

5:24

do. You mean he saying what's the

5:27

point sell. Wanted. To give you

5:29

an opportunity to give up for

5:31

throated defense of Paul has. Got

5:34

it. So that's good. That's my job. Yeah, so.

5:37

The. Twenty Sixteen election was

5:39

probably the. Janet.

5:42

Jackson, Justin Timberlake that has

5:44

bestowed gray reference You know

5:46

where. Everything they could go wrong

5:48

went wrong. There. Were. A

5:51

myriad of reasons in retrospect that

5:53

have been widely reported, but I

5:55

think the real important things to

5:57

think about with. When

5:59

polling. Goes bad is there are a lot

6:01

of really bad boy firms and you can

6:03

see even if you cast for to the

6:06

Well in that instance. and twenty sixteen. You.

6:08

Had obviously Trump voters wildly

6:10

under measured, right? They didn't

6:12

wait or samples right? Be.

6:15

Made simple mistake slight not ever seen

6:17

in that many from voters people in.

6:20

And rural parts of the country went

6:22

online and a word available for online

6:24

polling. So simple things like that. Then.

6:26

It was obviously response bias. And.

6:28

There's a lot of different biases to go into

6:30

polling, but. Are responding bias?

6:33

Could. Be one to all kinds

6:35

of supervisors, but one of them is like

6:37

ability. And. So that would create shy.

6:40

From. Voters when things were looking out

6:42

in the future for. This

6:44

election is not shy trump voters

6:46

necessarily that may be side biden

6:48

voters. So. People that

6:50

I'm not really say that their opinions but.

6:52

Might. Show up felt point is incredibly difficult,

6:55

but the people they get it right we

6:57

like to think we're part of that. We

6:59

were very accurate on the election. Last.

7:01

Time and as where many other pulsars for.

7:03

You have to have the right resources. He

7:06

can't wing it. To be honest, it's

7:08

not a good sport to be in. See.

7:10

Mention that Lou hours initially found that

7:12

accompany him was Kennedy's pollster and after

7:14

that I lose. A little confused at

7:17

the. Party affiliation part

7:19

of post organizations you see

7:21

like. Stanley. Greenberg was, you

7:23

know, Clinton was a democratic pollster and

7:25

the New Franklin's is a republican pollster.

7:28

And I would think that from

7:30

a political calculus their zero parties and

7:32

gain. From. Having

7:35

a partisan read of what people might

7:37

do in the future meaning. It.

7:39

Isn't everybody interest in actually figure out

7:41

where people's ideas are and then either

7:44

trying to save that org or gain

7:46

that accordingly Says the whole republican vs.

7:48

dumber have whole I do find confusing.

7:50

I don't find it confusing of if

7:52

you want to have a data point

7:54

for an opinion columnist. See.

7:56

what your poll to come to a foregone

7:58

conclusion and you know x percentage of Americans

8:01

are pro-life, so therefore we should be pro-life

8:03

or pro-abortion. But I don't understand that part

8:05

of it, right? Because you kind of want

8:07

to know what people are thinking regardless of

8:09

which side you're on and act accordingly, don't

8:11

you? Yeah. So the cynical side of that

8:13

is there are many left-leaning or right-leaning political

8:16

firms that will make a lot of

8:18

money putting out their own polls. They're

8:20

going to whip up their constituents, create

8:23

fundraising, create political action

8:25

committees, and there's business in there

8:27

and advantage. But we don't look at it

8:29

that way with my folks. I've spent most

8:31

of my life out of New York. I was born

8:34

in Montana. I've lived in the Midwest for half my

8:36

life. We try to get

8:38

a very well-represented group of researchers

8:41

that sort of represent the country. In fact, we're

8:43

highly virtual, so we've got people all over the

8:46

country and we just try to encourage them

8:48

to be empires and see both things

8:50

because that's what's exciting, right? You've got

8:52

to be able to look at any type

8:54

of an issue and be able to argue it from

8:56

both sides. How confident are

8:58

you that the polls are

9:00

reflecting the reality of what's

9:03

going to happen a few months from now, even? Well,

9:07

polls are first of all a snapshot in time

9:09

as of today. They're not

9:11

actually the best predictive tools. It

9:14

takes an analysis of what's going to happen, what

9:16

you think's going to happen. But

9:19

the dual nature of what voters

9:21

think is really what makes

9:23

American democracy so effective

9:25

and what makes elections so

9:27

unpredictable. So, John, I'm

9:30

wondering if you could maybe

9:32

the SparkNotes version of this, because I imagine there's

9:34

a lot of ways to get into it, but

9:37

tell us what makes for a good poll. Because

9:39

a lot of the time, we'll see polls online

9:41

and people will say, oh, it wasn't a good

9:43

poll. It had a sample size of X. I'm

9:45

like, okay, but what is a good sample size?

9:47

I didn't go to university for this.

9:49

Someone's got to at least give

9:52

us the basics. A good sample

9:54

size is everyone. Everyone is a good

9:56

sample size. I should poll all of

9:58

us all the time with 100. percent response

10:00

rate. You got to know it. Look,

10:02

there are lots of things you kind of

10:05

have to avoid. There's things, it's phenomenons that

10:07

are called river sampling, which

10:09

is the way that you collect your sample is

10:11

related to different sorts of online promotions

10:14

and motivations to get people to become

10:16

respondents. So we work with a lot

10:18

of different panels. We have really sophisticated

10:21

fraud protection. So you're just

10:23

looking for things like reaching people

10:25

where they are. So in

10:27

some instances, they don't have broadband access. You've got

10:29

to be able to weight your sample so that

10:31

you're getting the right people

10:33

to represent the total population of the

10:36

country. We do typically like

10:38

2000 is sort of a

10:40

base size for us to be statistically

10:42

accurate. And that's sort of in line

10:44

with most notable pollsters research standards. But

10:47

I think, you know, the more interesting question in

10:50

all this is, Zachary,

10:52

kind of your point, how do you

10:54

write an interesting question? Right? Because

10:57

you can write questions, we call them

10:59

carrots or ice cream questions, you know,

11:01

so I can say, you know,

11:04

Zachary, do you want like carrots or ice cream and

11:06

most people in the country are going to sell take

11:08

ice cream, right? So whenever I see

11:10

anything is get 90% agreement in

11:13

this country, you know that it's not

11:15

a good question. It doesn't have tension.

11:17

It doesn't have trade offs. And it

11:19

doesn't go deeper to sort of find insights. The

11:22

kind of stuff we're proud of, it's

11:24

just things that shed light on culture.

11:26

And one of the ones I was

11:28

really proud of recently, we actually uncovered

11:30

that grandmothers, that grannies were kind of

11:33

the hidden engine of the economic recovery.

11:36

And the way we figured that out was

11:39

we found that two thirds of

11:41

working parents that were

11:43

holding their jobs said that they

11:45

relied on a grandparent for caregiving,

11:49

right? And 20%

11:51

of those working parents said they would have lost

11:53

their job without that support. So

11:55

suddenly, you just saw this really interesting thing that

11:57

I don't think I'd really thought of is

11:59

like... how important the support structures are

12:02

for working parents, especially working women

12:05

in America and the role the Grammys play.

12:07

So, that's what we're trying to do. You just

12:09

try to go seek out the kind

12:11

of untold stories and think like a journalist

12:13

when you're kind of going after these types

12:15

of polling questions. Did you

12:17

call the poll the Granny Economy? Dang

12:19

it, we should have. I can't remember.

12:22

We gave it to Fortune and they wrote something

12:24

clever about it. That's where my

12:26

talent stopped as a researcher. So,

12:29

on this thing, so let's say you do a poll, you define

12:31

your 2000 set geographically,

12:34

demographically, race, gender, urban,

12:36

rural, etc. And

12:38

you get a perfectly worded question. But

12:41

doesn't then the problem become in

12:43

today's particular world, I'm sure

12:45

I am not alone in that if I

12:47

got a number these days from a number,

12:49

an exchange I don't recognize, I'm highly

12:52

unlikely to pick up the phone. I doubt

12:55

I would call you back if you left me

12:57

a message. Those people who do online

12:59

samples, which I guess for a while was

13:01

morning consult or others, it's selective as in,

13:04

are you interested proactively on your

13:06

own, unpulled, are you interested in

13:08

pushing your information out there?

13:10

And that's a whole other question. Who will

13:13

do that voluntarily? I don't

13:16

have a landline or do have a landline, but I

13:18

think it goes automatically to my soul. So,

13:20

basically, how do you reach people and how do you

13:22

get them to answer the phone in

13:24

order to even do a survey today? Yeah,

13:27

so we're not doing telephone polling because you're

13:29

right, nobody picks that up. We haven't

13:31

done that for ages. I mean, there's some

13:33

very rare instances where we'll still use the

13:36

phone. We're online, but we're working with panel

13:38

providers. And so what we're

13:40

doing is we're actually getting access to fresh

13:43

respondents that have been brought in

13:45

to do a poll around

13:47

a specific topic. They would have to

13:49

have knowledge of the topic, they'd have

13:51

to have knowledge of the brand. I

13:54

should say also, by the way, we're not a

13:56

heavy duty political firm. We have a Harvard Harris

13:58

poll that we do every month. to sort of

14:00

track the mood of the country. But most

14:03

of this work is done for brands, for

14:05

marketing. So I'm trying to get people's opinions

14:07

on various topics. So no, it's 100% a

14:10

lot. Do you do the Harvard Harris

14:12

with the same methodology? Harvard Harris

14:14

is done with the Harvard Harris

14:16

Bowl through our political firm in

14:18

DC. Yeah, called Harris X. Me,

14:20

you don't do phone. It's so

14:22

online. It's still online. Yeah. And

14:25

the difference in it is it's American voters.

14:28

It's not Americans at large. When you get

14:30

to American voters, you find that they're much

14:32

more engaged in politics and they've got stronger

14:34

opinions than the rest of us here in

14:36

the country. And just one more on

14:38

that. Do you worry about if brands

14:41

are providing panels for pay that

14:43

... Well, I guess the pay doesn't really matter, right? I mean, it's

14:45

a nominal amount for people's time. Legitimate

14:47

exchange of time for a ... I

14:50

mean, these are modest side patterns, right? It's usually 100

14:52

bucks, 150, 200 bucks. It's interesting that we don't do

14:54

that for politics, right? It's just something that we don't

14:56

do, right? We don't think it should be done. We

14:59

don't think you should pay for political opinion. Do you

15:01

know why that is or how that came to be?

15:04

Oh, I think it's just the desire to want to keep

15:06

the political process and the process

15:08

of trying to understand voter opinions without

15:10

any sort of commercial incentive. Again, as

15:12

I say, a majority of my work

15:14

is all done in corporate business side

15:16

and people are quite happy to offer

15:18

their opinions. What you've got to do

15:21

is be very careful that you're not

15:24

getting professional respondents, people that a panel

15:26

provider is bringing back in over time.

15:29

You've got to watch out for all kinds of

15:31

sophisticated fraud. So there's a time delay in

15:33

answering an online question. You can see if

15:35

somebody's just going through and ticking a box

15:38

versus someone that's really thinking through

15:40

and you statistically measure those averages.

15:43

Try to make sure that the actual question's been

15:46

thought through and answered based on the style of

15:48

question. A lot of different things sort

15:50

of go into it and then you end up with

15:52

a margin of error 2.5%. The important

15:54

thing is you ask those questions lots of

15:56

different ways and you go back and you

15:59

maybe keep trending. a question. One of

16:01

the things that guys we've done since the

16:03

beginning of COVID was just

16:06

measure basic questions every week

16:08

in America about America. And so

16:10

we kind of call it our America

16:12

this week report that we put

16:14

out every week on LinkedIn. But

16:16

it's just looking at questions like, I

16:19

feel secure in my job, or I

16:21

feel my health isn't at risk, or I

16:23

feel the economy is trending in the

16:25

right direction. And so that's the

16:27

easiest way to try to understand if you're

16:29

sort of in the ballpark on your questions

16:32

or if you've got anomalies. So given

16:34

that you have these weekly polls,

16:37

what is the mood of America right

16:39

now? Because I keep hearing

16:41

the same stuff over and ever again that people

16:43

are pissed off about inflation and everyone feels

16:45

that it's a fractured society. But maybe that's what

16:47

you're hearing too, but I would love to hear some other stuff. Well,

16:50

yeah, I mean, I got two great stats for

16:52

you. And so this is from last

16:55

week, 69% of Americans

16:57

say the current chaos

16:59

happening today makes me optimistic something

17:01

might change. And 73% of

17:04

Americans say they are concerned that nothing will change.

17:07

So there's your answer.

17:09

No, seriously, it's a

17:12

real interesting time. And I could give you this.

17:14

This is just my chart. It looks like an

17:16

EKG, right? This is our weekly

17:18

tracking sort of different things in what

17:20

we call the poly crisis. And I

17:23

think what's fascinating about today's times is

17:25

this has been a period

17:27

in American history that we're living through that's sort

17:30

of not unlike the depression,

17:33

right? Where you had four sustained years or

17:35

World War Two, where there

17:37

is just been four straight years of just

17:39

new crisis sort of coming one after the

17:42

other. And obviously, when COVID to the economy

17:44

to the banking crisis to

17:46

Ukraine to solvency of US

17:48

banks, it just seems like there's something that's

17:51

coming sort of every week. And

17:53

I think that's important to understand right now.

17:55

The big optimistic side I kind of see

17:57

on this is that I'm with the first

17:59

stat. that something's going to change because

18:02

things have been so bad

18:04

and so sort of down for

18:06

so long. This is a time

18:08

of reappraisal and we see it in our data.

18:11

Seven in 10 Americans believe society

18:13

needs a complete overhaul to

18:16

make significant change. I've got all kinds

18:18

of data about Gen Z. We

18:20

call them Genzilla but we think Gen Z is

18:22

going to move into an activist sort

18:25

of position in the coming years

18:27

based on the financial situations they find

18:29

themselves in the war that they have

18:31

with old people. I mean, 71% told

18:34

us last week that they think

18:36

older generations are short-term thinkers

18:38

exploiting next generation's future. Obviously, only

18:40

31% of boomers agreed with that.

18:42

That's a good line. Gee. I

18:45

mean, yeah, the 69% who, as you say,

18:47

think that things are so bad that therefore

18:49

they believe that will create change for the

18:52

better. It's a little like Herb Stein's old

18:54

adage of something cannot go on forever, it

18:56

will stop, right? So that it's

18:58

the, if it can't continue, it won't, which almost

19:00

seems like a syllogism and yet has a certain

19:02

truth to it. I do wonder about this. And

19:05

I don't know if you've asked any of

19:08

these questions at a granular level, just trying

19:10

to get people's attitudes about if confronted with

19:12

data or statistics that

19:15

suggest that their views or beliefs are

19:17

at least disconnected from the data doesn't

19:19

mean that therefore they're wrong. Do

19:21

people ever seemingly reconsider

19:23

their views or beliefs or no?

19:27

Rarely do they reconsider their

19:29

beliefs, but they're happy to

19:31

sort of live in their own opinions.

19:34

We're seeing that right now with immigration.

19:36

It's the largest, single biggest issue in

19:38

the country as of this past month.

19:40

And a lot of that, if you

19:42

actually ask people, have you witnessed

19:44

the immigration problem where you live, you're

19:46

going to get far fewer people that

19:48

can actually really say that with certainty,

19:50

with observation. But it's like all

19:53

other types of perceptions that exist in

19:55

American culture, perceptions of crime, perceptions

19:58

of definitely immigration. those things

20:00

just become sort of self-fulfilling prophecies.

20:03

We did a poll with The Guardian

20:05

last summer when Biden was

20:08

sort of at his lowest, not getting

20:10

credit for anything. And everybody was

20:12

so completely dour. I guess

20:14

it was in the fall. A bunch

20:16

of questions that basically every American flunked

20:18

the quiz to. We asked questions like,

20:20

is the economy shrinking or growing? And

20:23

the majority of Americans thought it was shrinking when

20:25

it wasn't. We asked if the

20:27

GDP was up or down, which again, they got

20:29

it wrong. We asked if the S&P was up

20:31

or down and they had to filter to know

20:34

the S&P. And then we asked

20:36

about inflation. We asked that one really pointedly.

20:38

We said, is unemployment at record highs or

20:40

record lows? And 62% said it's

20:42

at record highs. So

20:44

it just shows you facts are facts. And that's

20:47

probably why my favorite polling fact is that 52%

20:50

of voters say they rarely believe

20:52

political poll results. So

20:54

you're dealing with a difficult business, but what

20:57

becomes more important

21:00

than sort of the anomalies is

21:02

the underlying questions of why, like

21:04

why people are thinking

21:06

the way they are. And I think that's

21:09

the start of where things get

21:11

really interesting. Like I said about this

21:13

Genzilla, we started to weave

21:15

and see a theme of

21:17

activism in a lot of the things

21:20

that young people were telling us. Feeling

21:22

that older people won't get out of

21:24

the way, feeling that capitalism

21:26

isn't working for them, feeling that

21:28

they're starting behind financially. Each

21:31

and every poll, all these different projects, you

21:33

start to see these patterns and

21:35

that starts to become the thing that I think is more

21:37

meaningful. So I'm curious to hear

21:40

if you want to elucidate some

21:42

of the whys for us on that that

21:44

you see as far as Gen Z. I

21:46

do have kind of a halfway question

21:48

before that, which is going

21:51

back to our conversation about how

21:53

poll questions are phrased, something like

21:56

whatever percentage of it was of Gen Z that think

21:59

the older generations are at work. term thinkers. Like I'm

22:01

thinking about how I would answer that question, right? Like

22:03

I don't walk around thinking that the older generations are

22:05

short term thinkers, but if someone put that question in

22:07

front of me in a poll and was like, do

22:09

you think that they are? I'd be like, I don't

22:11

know. Yeah, probably maybe climate change,

22:13

I guess. You know, that would be the thinking. That

22:16

doesn't necessarily mean that I have like

22:18

a really strong belief about that. So

22:20

yeah, thoughts on that. Yeah. So

22:23

again, it's just looking at the

22:25

patterns. First of all, just not

22:27

asking leading questions, right? And

22:29

again, trying to ask questions that involve

22:32

trade offs, personal trade offs,

22:35

you know, so it's like, would you want

22:38

more of something and would you give up

22:40

something in return? And so

22:43

I guess that becomes a really important thing.

22:45

But we also have to try

22:47

to go find when people are sort of not really

22:50

asking the questions the right way. And a great

22:52

example of that is we just asked this real

22:54

simple question, because there's

22:57

all this political toxicity right now. So

22:59

we just asked Americans in your opinion,

23:01

which of the following words are more likely

23:03

to bring people together or divide

23:06

them? And right

23:08

off the bat, DEI was alienating

23:10

by 38% of Americans,

23:13

including 47% of Republicans. Now

23:18

only 27% of Democrats, there was

23:20

like a 20% split. In

23:22

short, it's just become sort of a

23:24

politically toxic word. Well, we went back

23:26

and we started talking and we worked

23:28

with the Black Economic Alliance.

23:32

And we thought that the way that

23:34

questions mask is highly simplistic, right? And

23:36

what we figured out is that DEI,

23:38

like ESG, these have just

23:40

become dog whistles, right? When you hear those,

23:42

you actually don't think like a human being,

23:44

you think like a voter, and

23:47

you kind of go into your own

23:49

political ideology around these words because you've

23:51

sort of been trained that these are bad words

23:53

or good words. We just went and asked the questions

23:56

in an entirely different way. And we asked

23:58

Americans around. corporate

24:00

diversity and whether that was a good thing or

24:03

a bad thing, is it related to them? Did

24:06

they think that corporations would be

24:08

better at customer service if they were diverse? They

24:11

think they'd be more profitable for shareholders.

24:13

Do they think that reflecting the diversity

24:15

of American population was going to make

24:17

for better products and better services? And

24:20

we have high support for corporate

24:22

DEI. They actually think it makes stronger

24:24

companies. But the questions aren't asked

24:27

that way, right? When the news cycle hits,

24:29

it's like DEI is a bad

24:31

term. So everything has got new ones

24:33

in it. Hey,

24:43

everybody. I'm Scott Schaeffer. And I'm Marisa

24:45

Lagos. We're the host of Political Breakdown,

24:47

a show that pulls back the curtain

24:49

on the people and forces driving politics

24:51

in the Golden State from KQED in

24:53

San Francisco. And

24:55

now ahead of the 2024 election, we

24:58

are bringing you even more, more

25:00

conversations with the top movers and

25:02

shakers at the state capital and

25:04

in national politics. But the dyslexia

25:06

was the greatest gift that ever happened to

25:09

me. Nothing was wrote, nothing was linear. I

25:11

had to work around things, work differently, see

25:13

the world differently. And I say that to

25:15

young people and say, know how important your

25:18

participation is. And I think it's the time

25:20

for this generation to put forward new voices.

25:23

More reporting with analysis. It's

25:25

been a very good session for organized labor, but

25:27

hot labor summer. Hot labor summer, it's turning out

25:29

to be a nice fall as well. More

25:32

politics with personality. That's what election

25:34

day meant our life. We

25:36

hear that. Political breakdown daily.

25:39

Every weekday, we'll break down what's happening

25:41

and why it matters with news

25:43

that informs, surprises and maybe even

25:46

inspires you. Political breakdown goes daily

25:48

starting January 8th. They

26:00

say you should learn something new every day.

26:02

It's good advice, but with so much to do in

26:05

your daily life, how are you gonna make the time

26:07

to learn and stay curious about our world? Well,

26:10

with everything everywhere daily, you can

26:12

easily make that goal an actual reality.

26:15

Everything Ever Daily is one of the world's

26:17

most popular daily education podcasts and a top

26:19

three history podcast. In about

26:21

10 minutes, you can learn something new every

26:23

day. The show covers history,

26:25

science, geography, mathematics, and technology, as well

26:28

as biographies from some of the world's

26:30

most interesting people. Fans

26:32

of the show are so passionate that you don't

26:34

work to join the Completionist Club, the

26:36

group of dedicated listeners who have listened to

26:39

every single one of the show's more than

26:41

a thousand and counting episodes. All

26:43

the episodes are informative, interesting, and best

26:45

of all, always under 15 minutes. So

26:48

go ahead, learn something new every single

26:51

day with everything everywhere daily. Find

26:53

it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you

26:55

get your podcasts. The

27:01

lack of zero sum questions is a really good one,

27:03

is a way of getting about it. I mean, one

27:05

of my bugaboos is

27:08

knee-jerk anti-GMO reactions, where people don't entirely

27:10

know what it is that they are

27:12

opposing when they're opposing GMO, as in

27:14

like what that really means in a

27:17

fundamental sense, even though huge majorities, and

27:19

certainly Western Europe and urban

27:21

America would be against GMO, but if they were

27:23

asked the question, would

27:25

you support the growing and the isolation of

27:27

certain plant strains that are far

27:29

less water intensive and don't require insecticides or

27:31

pesticides? You'd have a very different response, right?

27:34

It's kind of the same question. One

27:36

of my favorite, the zero sum ones, right, which is

27:38

the famous 2015 poll, or something like 35%,

27:42

or 30-something percent of presumptive Trump voters

27:45

were in favor of bombing Agrabah, which

27:47

is the name of the kingdom in

27:49

Aladdin, a fictional kingdom in Aladdin. This

27:53

is not a bacrifal, you remember this, this actually was a

27:55

polling question, so I wanted to get an attitude. But of

27:57

course, when asked, you know, do you want to bomb a

27:59

country? country that you think may be a vague threat, sounds

28:02

like a threat, without any trade-offs, right? Would

28:04

you send your children to die to prevent

28:06

Agrabah from doing whatever? It's a very

28:08

different question than... Exactly. Do

28:11

you support the bombing of Agrabah? That's a classic.

28:13

That's correct. Public policy polling got 30%

28:15

of Republicans and 19% of Democrats to say they support bombing, well, Agrabah. Yes,

28:18

Volume Millennials, that Agrabah. The older Princess Jasmine of

28:20

the street, that's a legend. After

28:22

the news broke, headlines largely

28:27

focused on

28:29

the Republican respondents

28:32

in the polls, which kind of misses the

28:34

sizable percentage of the other side of the

28:37

aisle. In corporate land, right?

28:39

The separate from, do you

28:42

like strawberry vanilla, yuho, versus

28:45

more caffeinated Mountain Dew? Do you find that

28:47

there's sort of company data

28:49

about consumer behavior that would be

28:51

more useful if it were far

28:53

more in the public realm? Because

28:56

really, a lot of companies want their

28:58

product data and their corporate data to be their

29:00

own. Yeah. Go a bit deeper on

29:02

that. What are you thinking? CompanyX is

29:04

finding something vital about their consumer

29:06

base. Could that information have constructive

29:08

public good applications rather than it

29:11

simply being kept by a company

29:13

for its own ability

29:15

to sell its particular product? A

29:17

lot of what is changing

29:20

today is the kind

29:22

of new style corporate advertising, which

29:25

is finding your own

29:27

platforms and releasing your own research.

29:29

And one that comes to mind, it's

29:31

a client we worked with that's Google, but we

29:34

found in this study a really

29:36

fascinating stat that

29:38

72% of global executives

29:41

would admit to greenwashing and they admit

29:43

that other people do it. And it's

29:46

because they don't have metrics,

29:48

like all the metrics are squishy, all

29:51

the standards, and it actually

29:53

exposed a problem. And they thought, this is a

29:55

really great thing we should put out. And

29:58

so we put it out and it spurred on. a

30:00

significant amount of debate,

30:02

but that's a topic that is important to

30:04

Google and they said, yeah, let's let it

30:06

fly. Was there ever a

30:08

time where what you expected to find

30:10

as an answer was just like completely

30:12

the opposite? Totally. One of

30:15

my favorite ones this past year was

30:17

we do a corporate reputation survey. It's

30:19

consumer-based. It's Main Street. So instead of

30:21

asking elites, we just ask ordinary Americans

30:23

to buy products and services. What are

30:25

their favorite companies, which companies you admire

30:27

the most and there's sort of different

30:29

dimensions that make the ranking, but it's

30:32

really revolves around character, trust and ethics

30:35

are sort of the big drivers. And

30:38

number one was Patagonia

30:40

and number five out

30:42

of the top 100 was Chick-fil-A. No,

30:45

really? And this

30:47

is all Americans, right? Really?

30:49

And so I'm trying

30:52

first of all to imagine these

30:54

two companies like at the

30:56

same corporate picnic and I'm just

30:58

fascinated why all Americans

31:01

would like rate those

31:03

two companies because their ideologies are

31:05

so completely different. And what comes

31:08

out in the data that's actually

31:10

really, I think, encouraging is

31:13

that people didn't agree with

31:15

their platforms, but they respected

31:17

them for upholding their values,

31:19

for sort of walking their talk. And I

31:21

kind of looked at it as an opportunity

31:23

for a conversation between these two

31:26

bipolar sides because we

31:29

have another Harris data right now, all

31:31

the toxic politics that have kind of

31:33

tinged AB InBev or Disney or Target,

31:35

other companies that got caught up in

31:37

a lot of this political toxicity. These

31:40

two companies actually are liked by

31:42

both Republicans and Democrats because they're

31:45

just true to their values and

31:47

they don't flip flop and they don't change positions.

31:49

They don't virtue serve. They just are who they

31:51

are. It's an interesting kind of

31:54

point because there seems to be this

31:56

time right now where trust

31:58

is so low. and expectations

32:00

are so low among the American public

32:02

for a candidate or even a company

32:05

that when you are just old-fashioned,

32:08

you can be relied on even if we don't agree

32:10

with you. Thought that was really kind of hopeful. So

32:13

it definitely wasn't that so many Republicans were

32:15

pro-Chik-fil-A. Like it was that sort of

32:17

equal amounts of both Democrats and Republicans.

32:20

Because when I was in university, it was social suicide

32:22

eat at Chick-fil-A. There was one Chick-fil-A

32:24

at the food court. You did not

32:26

wait in line for Chick-fil-A, if you

32:28

wanted to have friends. Yeah, I'm looking

32:30

at the data right now. So Chick-fil-A

32:32

was number five among GOP. The GOP

32:34

also had Patagonia number three. Ten.

32:37

Which is really interesting, and it cuts

32:39

across rural and urban. Democrats are less

32:42

forgiving of Chick-fil-A. They're more, they have

32:44

them up much further down the rankings.

32:47

But it's just fascinating that, I'm just gonna hold

32:49

this up for you guys. I know this

32:51

is bad, bad form. We'll try to

32:53

explain this for audio. So this is

32:56

Chick-fil-A and Patagonia, and

32:58

how they just effortlessly surf across

33:01

sort of different political parties, different

33:03

ideologies. So they're kind of highlighted.

33:06

And you can just see they're top

33:08

10 with everybody. Part of that is

33:11

the Democrat issue with Chick-fil-A is the

33:13

corporate supportive conservative causes, religious causes. In

33:16

terms of employee satisfaction, Chick-fil-A is off the

33:18

charts. It's only off the charts compared to

33:21

mass employers of minimum

33:23

wage or entry level workers, compared to Walmart or

33:25

the rest. So the Walmart's improved mightily over, I

33:27

think over the past 10 years. Walmart's interesting to

33:29

come up. I don't know where they show up

33:31

in your top 100, but they would've

33:33

been way, way, way down 20 years ago, and

33:36

I think they're probably upper quadrant now. Is

33:38

that right? Do you know offhand where Walmart

33:40

is? That's right, yeah. They've improved significantly over

33:42

the last 10 years. Simply by paying attention

33:44

to their workers. I mean, Walmart's cynically

33:46

at one point, right, is that if you don't pay your

33:48

workers enough money to shop

33:51

at the stores that they're working at, particularly for Walmart, so

33:53

it has like a million and a half employees, you've actually,

33:55

you're losing their customer base. You might as well pay them

33:58

enough to at least buy your own stuff. Chick-fil-A

34:00

is very, very high. So it

34:02

was Patagonia on obviously different metrics

34:04

than college lunchroom,

34:07

right? You talk about Emma. Because no

34:09

one's thinking that about are they treating

34:11

their employees well, but it's hundreds of

34:13

thousands. I don't know what the

34:15

number is. Emma talked about and asked about the

34:17

people are pissed off and feeling negative about all

34:19

sorts of things, direction of the country, economic

34:22

security, immigration, kind of down the list.

34:25

There's nothing other than the 69% who feel that

34:28

things are sufficiently bad, but therefore I think are

34:30

likely to get better, which is a

34:32

form of optimism, but it is an optimism informed

34:35

by pessimism. Is there anything in the polling over the

34:38

past 20 years that would give you any sense as

34:40

to why of this progression?

34:42

I mean, I don't know. Maybe

34:44

in 2019, do you recall people probably were

34:46

feeling okay about the economy. It's been a

34:48

long time before people in any

34:50

significant numbers felt good about the direction

34:52

of the country, right? I mean, that's...

34:55

It's been way better than it is now, but it

34:57

hasn't been good for the past 15, 20 years. No,

35:00

that's right. And those, Zachary, have

35:03

moved lockstep with our growing

35:05

political divide. What basically happens

35:07

on these questions now is

35:10

that they're highly geared toward

35:12

being anti-incumbent. So, in

35:14

this month's Harvard Harris poll, 62% of

35:18

Americans say that the

35:20

country is on the wrong

35:22

track and that includes 32% then saying

35:24

it's on the right track. But

35:27

if I hadn't shown you that data four

35:29

years back, it would be

35:31

nearly identical, but it would be flipped

35:34

where Democrats would say it's on

35:36

the wrong track. So it's high Republican numbers

35:38

that are creating that. You

35:41

only have 18% of Republicans saying the country's

35:43

on the right track and 55%

35:45

of Democrats. So

35:47

that's the biggest issue. I think it's

35:49

less accurate rather than ask the big

35:52

macro questions because you're going to get

35:54

this political tinge response. So

35:57

give an example, right now, 60% of Americans...

36:00

Americans say the economy is on the

36:02

wrong track versus 34%

36:04

rather say it's on the right track.

36:07

But when you ask people how do

36:09

they feel about their own personal financial

36:11

situation, right? So we're taking

36:13

that out of that voter mentality. It's

36:16

at 28% improving and 27% just as well off.

36:20

So you put those two together, now suddenly you've got more

36:22

than 50% of the country, 55% and

36:26

now say the economy is looking better. Exactly to

36:28

your point earlier, you know, about how you frame

36:30

a question and how you ask it, the

36:32

more personal you can be in

36:34

these questions and the less kind

36:36

of vague and macro and political, the better

36:39

answers you're going to get. We do see

36:41

a lot of hope on the economy and

36:43

who knows, it's way too early right now to

36:46

be projectable in terms of the election.

36:49

That's another really important thing. I just

36:51

made your caveat polling is only as

36:53

good as right now, right? Polling

36:55

doesn't tell you the future and doesn't often

36:57

do a good job of even telling you

36:59

the present sometimes. But in this instance, what

37:01

we're seeing is some really

37:03

nice upticks in people's

37:06

confidence on economy. We

37:08

just released a survey with Axios, we

37:10

call Axios hair spool vibes and

37:13

two thirds of Americans think 2024 are going to

37:15

be better than 2023. Yeah,

37:18

there's always a bit of a

37:20

lag, right? Between the actual economic numbers and how

37:23

people feel about them. That reminded me to ask

37:25

you previously why you

37:28

said there might be signs that there is a secret

37:30

Biden voter out there in the way that there

37:32

used to be a secret Trump voter. Well, there's

37:34

a couple things that are a little concerning

37:37

in the polling as we

37:39

kind of think about moving forward

37:41

to the election. A

37:44

couple things that we're seeing happening, one

37:46

is demographic shifts and voting patterns among

37:48

black, Latino and Asian communities towards

37:51

Republican candidates. That needs

37:53

to make sure that the pollsters sort of go that

37:55

way. But when you get into

37:57

those biases, this sort of Biden

38:00

voter is just what

38:02

happens when there's all this speculation

38:05

of all this criticism of Biden

38:07

being too old and too

38:09

out of touch. There's so

38:11

many other issues that still might bring

38:13

people to the polling booths, right? It's

38:15

obviously abortion at Roe v. Wade. It's,

38:18

you know, immigration. It's the

38:20

economy. So one of

38:22

the places we're really interested in is

38:24

like, are these left leaning younger demographics

38:27

that are being highly critical of Biden

38:29

right now on Gaza and Israel? Are

38:32

they going to sort of, you know, when Trump then,

38:34

which is like galvanize these voters and get

38:36

them there and the pollsters aren't going to pick it up.

38:47

This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

38:48

This episode is brought to you

38:51

by Shopify. Forget the frustration of

38:53

picking commerce platforms when you switch

38:55

or business to shopify. The global

38:58

commerce platform that super as you're

39:00

selling where ever you sell with

39:02

Shopify. Kill Harness the same intuitive

39:05

features, trusted apps and powerful analytics

39:07

used by the world's leading brands.

39:10

Sign up today for your one

39:12

dollar per month trial period at

39:14

shopify.com/tech all lower. That's shopify.com/ Tech.

39:19

So I want to hit it back to something

39:21

you said before about your, your bot problem or

39:23

making sure that the person who's answering your online

39:25

question is a person. I've tried

39:27

to avoid asking questions about AI just

39:30

because everybody seems to be

39:32

intentionally asking questions about AI in areas where

39:34

it really doesn't apply and it's

39:36

completely speculative. But

39:39

certainly in the polling world

39:41

of trying to gain things

39:43

from essentially online presences,

39:46

that will be an issue or certainly

39:48

a priority is an issue for you.

39:50

What do you see going forward about

39:52

your ability to authenticate a human

39:55

in your responses? Yeah, no, that's going

39:57

to be a significant issue and we're

39:59

working. And right now, it takes

40:01

our fraud protection up

40:03

another level and match AI with AI to

40:05

make sure that we've got a personal identification,

40:08

whether it's a web address or other firm

40:10

to make sure that we're not getting bought

40:12

it. And this is going to be a

40:14

massive, massive issue with

40:16

identification. I think the

40:18

thing that we're doing on the positive side,

40:21

we just launched a product we call

40:23

Quest DIY, which is sort of do-it-yourself

40:25

sort of polling, where you can kind

40:27

of create your own surveys. It's like

40:30

a survey monkey, but it's AI driven.

40:33

And the cool thing about it is it allows you

40:35

to sort of get your polling

40:37

questions going and you

40:39

get improvements. So, you get suggestions from AI

40:42

to sort of help make them stronger. And

40:44

look, the way I think about all this stuff, it's

40:46

kindling with. It's just a great

40:48

way. It's not the answer.

40:50

It's not the fact. It's not the creative

40:53

insight. It's not the big idea, I don't

40:55

think, not yet anyway. But it's

40:57

sure a great start. And so,

40:59

if you've got thoughts and ideas, if you're trying

41:01

to write a poll, this is an incredibly great

41:03

way for us to use it. And

41:05

we're seeing a lot of progress of

41:07

it in our business. Yeah, maybe elaborate

41:09

on that for a moment, because I know there

41:12

was an attempt a bunch of years ago, especially

41:14

a bunch of Argentine economists. And after

41:16

the collecting government data about inflation and

41:18

other things became so politicized, it was

41:20

a bunch of MIT people. They found

41:22

a way to just sort of scrape

41:24

data from prices that were posted online

41:27

as a proxy way of you

41:29

can't collect official inflation statistics because there's enough

41:32

price data out there that if you could find

41:34

a program that would scrape the data, you'd essentially

41:36

come up with a very accurate read. Is there

41:38

a polling equivalent, meaning if you can't, or

41:41

maybe juxtaposed to it, where you

41:44

have a question and there's so much

41:46

between whether Reddit and message

41:48

boards and all the stuff out

41:51

there that you could essentially use

41:53

algorithms and AI tools to collate

41:55

existing online data to get at

41:57

some of the same answers?

42:00

Absolutely, Zachary. And we are right

42:03

now working on a project to take

42:05

our 60 years of Harris

42:07

Pole archives of our surveys and

42:10

try to do exactly that. Because

42:13

we've got just wonderful treasure

42:15

trove of data on

42:18

major social issues in America, right?

42:21

Gun control, racism and

42:23

equality, freedom of choice

42:25

versus pro-life, pro-choice.

42:28

And we're just interested to try to go back

42:30

and use that to try to understand how

42:32

the social attitudes have changed. And right

42:35

now, it's all sitting on like PDFs

42:37

of old surveys that were done

42:39

on paper in the 60s. I'm really

42:41

excited by that because I think it could really provide

42:44

incredible... And we're not the only ones doing

42:46

it obviously, but just incredible insights

42:48

that might help us make stronger, smarter polling

42:50

questions in the future. Could you

42:52

scrape how Zachary is asking from external data?

42:54

So not data that you've already pulled for

42:57

internally, but like he's saying from Reddit or

42:59

TikTok comments or something like that, or is

43:01

it just completely not hygienic in a way

43:03

as far as data goes? We're not

43:05

doing that per se, we have companies

43:07

like in our larger group that are

43:09

looking at those projects. I mean, I

43:12

think the big important thing is

43:14

how you train your language learning

43:16

models on the right data, so you obviously

43:18

have garbage in, garbage out and you don't

43:20

have bias and you don't have

43:23

something that comes in that really as you

43:25

say sort of taints your data stream.

43:27

And like we're going to have to just for that

43:29

even go to this Harris thing because of the way

43:31

that they asked polling questions in the 60s. I mean,

43:33

some of them guys are like cringe-worthy, right?

43:37

So that's always going to be a problem.

43:39

But like you

43:41

said with your example with Argentinian

43:43

inflation, that's just

43:45

a really interesting way to have sort of

43:48

behavioral data versus just

43:50

stated data. Right. Have

43:53

you been able to discern... One thing

43:55

I've noticed is particularly pronounced

43:57

really over the past decade, probably. it's

44:00

been true for longer is

44:02

the disjuncture, you mentioned this about immigration,

44:04

that a lot of people don't have direct

44:07

experience of whatever the immigration problem is, but

44:09

because it's constantly out there as a problem,

44:11

they've internalized it as an act of concern.

44:14

I'm not saying it isn't, I'm just saying it's

44:17

a difference between personal experience and public

44:19

perception or public awareness. There's always been

44:21

a disjuncture between, let's say, how people

44:23

feel about Congress and how they feel

44:25

about their congressperson, or how they feel

44:27

about schools and how they feel about

44:29

the particular school their children are at,

44:31

or how they feel about the economy

44:33

versus how they feel about their particular

44:35

business. Has that split gotten

44:37

wider? Meaning, there's just a lot of

44:40

people will say that their families are

44:42

fine, their kids' school is okay, their

44:44

job is decent, their employment

44:46

level, they feel okay about X,

44:49

Y, and Z, but they dislike

44:51

or distrust the general version of

44:53

the same specific. Yes, I

44:55

mean, everything generally is

44:58

trusted more at the local level. And

45:01

as you expand out, it's mistrusted when it

45:03

goes macro. That's for

45:05

the news media, that's for politicians,

45:07

that's for government agencies.

45:10

I mean, it's really fascinating that

45:12

local, like if we're going to get anything done in

45:14

this country, like you're going to have to do a grassroots

45:17

up because that's where the

45:19

trust is. I think that that's really

45:22

interesting and particularly like when we get to

45:25

the macro news, we just did a poll

45:28

on misinformation and we found that 62% of

45:30

Americans, they're cutting

45:33

back on their news consumption in

45:35

order to protect their mental health. And

45:38

so it's just that the national

45:40

news media has just become so tainted

45:44

with perceptions of bias that it's not

45:46

only an echo chamber, it's now a public health

45:49

crisis. And that's the same

45:51

with government. So I don't

45:53

know if that answers your question, but definitely

45:55

it's what we're seeing in our patterns. Emma

45:57

did a piece early on in the Progress Network about

45:59

how... how to read the news without losing your

46:01

mind, kind of apropos the, you know, how do

46:03

you actually digest the news without

46:06

going insane or driving yourself crazy as the

46:08

case may be. So kind of very

46:10

much in this line of most people's

46:12

response to that is to simply tune

46:14

out, right? Because there's no, they don't,

46:17

because they haven't read Emma's guides to the,

46:21

guides to the dispossessed of how to

46:23

digest it and stay okay with it.

46:25

It's sort of an all or nothing

46:27

approach. It's either overindulgence or abstinence. I

46:30

got to read your post, Emma. Sounds great. I'll

46:32

send it along. I'm working on a book on it too. So. Oh,

46:35

nice. Awesome. I think as

46:37

the perceptions of bias is a huge thing. And

46:39

I think it's also just a feeling of helplessness

46:42

because we're just inundated with so much news that

46:44

we have absolutely no control over from places that

46:46

50 years ago, we wouldn't

46:48

even have seen in our lives, you know? So

46:51

I think that does a decent amount

46:53

of making people feel. As

46:56

you're saying, maybe great about my personal life, about

46:58

the world, I feel constantly terrible.

47:01

I'm really interested in the rise and fall of

47:03

company reputations. 15 years ago, Google,

47:06

Facebook, I don't know

47:08

about Amazon, but so, you know, Google, Facebook,

47:10

Apple were seen as good companies

47:12

by people, right? There was a high

47:14

degree of trust since, I

47:16

remember this at the time of the financial crisis, right? In 2008,

47:18

2009, if you'd ask people which

47:21

companies that were most negative about it,

47:23

they would have listed Goldman Sachs, Bank

47:25

of America, a series of financial institutions.

47:28

And now today, I don't

47:30

know if you're finding this, but I think the

47:33

things that most people are agitated by are big

47:35

tech companies of one form or another. We're

47:38

recording this, by the way, during

47:40

the week when the House of Representatives passed its

47:44

first effective step toward banning TikTok,

47:46

which may be an anti-Chinese move,

47:48

but it also has a degree

47:50

of just generalized social media. These

47:52

companies are bad companies doing bad things. Do you have

47:55

a sense of why that is? Or is that too

47:57

just another one of the press, the

47:59

PR go. worse and then people's attitudes followed

48:01

or do people's attitudes get worse and then

48:03

the PR followed? I think it's

48:06

a little bit more the latter but we have

48:08

seen over the last five to seven

48:10

years in our reputation surveys,

48:12

the Axios, Harris, Paul 100, that

48:15

tech is sort of bifurcated into two

48:17

camps, sort of good tech and bad

48:19

tech and so I'm generally

48:21

speaking but the good tech are tech

48:24

companies that make things. So

48:26

you know Samsung, some electronics,

48:29

Microsoft, but if

48:31

you're a social media company, you're at the

48:33

bottom of our survey. If you're TikTok, if

48:35

you're meta, you know if you're

48:37

I just Instagram rolls up

48:39

under meta but those companies are sort

48:41

of seen as harmful to society and

48:44

not being productive as

48:46

it were. The other really interesting thing

48:48

that's happened, again my low-tech way

48:50

I'll show you but we tracked 15 years

48:52

of Harris data looking

48:55

at companies that had had a

48:57

huge crisis. So this

48:59

has got BP, Wells

49:01

Fargo, Volkswagen, Chipotle with

49:04

E. coli and

49:06

generally what ended up happening is they all

49:08

basically had a U-shaped recovery, right? They had

49:10

a crisis and their reputations came

49:12

back. So they're all kind of back to the same

49:15

place they were but the

49:17

new thing we're seeing is a bell-shaped

49:19

crisis which here we

49:21

have Disney, AB InBev and notably

49:24

meta. And meta has

49:26

the longest timeline but what

49:28

you might be able to see in my wonky

49:31

chart here is that meta

49:33

hasn't recovered and the

49:35

reason these companies are all facing these

49:37

elshid crisis where their reputations haven't come

49:39

back is they fragmented between

49:42

Democrats and Republicans. So they've

49:44

entered a new territory, a political

49:46

territory where for one

49:48

reason or another or you know with Disney

49:50

it was the don't say gay bill with meta

49:53

it was being perceived as sort

49:55

of anti-republican in Cambridge Analytica. ABI

49:58

was obviously last year with Bud Light. you just

50:00

end up in a potentially

50:03

a longer term crisis because you just

50:05

alienated half your audience by

50:07

sort of challenging them on a political level which

50:09

nobody wants to be challenged on here just want

50:11

to have a beer. Interesting.

50:15

Well John I think we are at our time but

50:18

I really want to thank you for the

50:20

conversation kind of wide ranging from tech to

50:22

consumer to politics. I urge everyone

50:24

is listening that the weekly what's the exact name

50:27

of the weekly surveys so people could look it

50:29

up. America this week it's

50:31

under my name John Gerzmo from the Harris

50:33

Poll at LinkedIn. I would definitely

50:36

check that out it's a really really good

50:38

snapshot of just attitudes writ large and obviously

50:40

looking at it not just

50:42

week to week but over time is particularly

50:44

helpful just to see some sense of trends

50:46

but really appreciate the

50:48

time definitely appreciate the work and the

50:50

data and we'll see how this year

50:53

plays out and public attitudes in both

50:55

tech regulation and political

50:58

outcomes and whether

51:00

or not sentiment matches reality. Really

51:02

enjoyed it guys thank you. Thanks

51:04

John. Well

51:07

that was a fun one for us data

51:09

nerds here at the Progress Network. There's

51:11

an interesting little tidbit at the end

51:13

there that polarization has come for company

51:16

crises right like I had even forgotten

51:18

that Wells Fargo had a crisis completely

51:20

forgotten about BP until he mentioned it.

51:23

But I guess nowadays once you

51:25

go down you stay down.

51:28

Although the fact that you'd forgotten about BP whoever

51:31

is you know listening if BP's

51:33

crisis PR team stumbles

51:35

upon this episode they'll be.

51:38

My friend is advertiser then that's probably why

51:40

so like my most recent reference point doesn't

51:42

have to do with the oil slicked pelicans

51:44

and so on and so forth. Good

51:47

for BP not good for us. This

51:49

constant disjunction between personal attitudes local attitudes

51:51

person like your your sense of how

51:53

your own life is doing versus the

51:56

sense of the collective and the degree to

51:58

which the skew is personal. positive,

52:00

collective negative, the generalizable statement

52:03

that tends to be the

52:05

case. And that's an even

52:07

more stirring

52:10

indication of most of people's experience of a

52:13

collective reality is filtered through whatever we call

52:15

the news and or social media, right? Because

52:17

we don't have a direct experience of it.

52:20

We only have the experience of what we

52:22

hear online or see online or read. And

52:24

so our sense of reality

52:26

beyond our immediate is shaped

52:28

intimately by a few

52:31

types of medium, but not our own senses

52:33

and not our own life experience. And

52:36

if that's largely being told in

52:39

the negative, it's likely that we're going to have

52:41

a negative perception, right? Yeah, I was

52:43

thinking about that as we were discussing that,

52:45

that the ideal situation would be that we

52:47

feel positive about our personal situations and we

52:49

feel positive about the collective, right? Right. So

52:51

we're not in the ideal, but I'd rather

52:54

have a situation that we have now that

52:56

a situation in which you feel really negative

52:58

about your personal situation, because that likely means

53:00

that there are real reasons for that and

53:02

feel positive about the collective, which would just

53:04

be like a delusion that would

53:06

be just as harmful, right than the one that

53:09

we have now. But actually, I think I'm saying

53:11

I think it would be more harmful than the

53:13

one that we have now. I'm kind of pulling

53:15

for the at least in our personal lives, we're

53:18

doing kind of swell and that might affect the

53:20

intensity of how negatively we think of the

53:22

collective. And the one exception, which we didn't talk

53:24

about with him is, of course, people do, at

53:26

least in the United States, feel economically insecure by

53:28

large measures. And that's a very personal one, meaning

53:31

do you personally feel economically insecure? Do you have

53:33

enough money to meet a crisis of one from

53:35

another? And the answer is largely no. So

53:38

those are personal ones about one's experience of

53:40

what's going on economically. And I do think

53:42

that those have a high degree

53:44

of legitimacy. What's interesting

53:46

is, it's not entirely clear, or

53:48

rather it's not clear at all, that

53:50

one's ability to do that 30 or 40 or 50 years ago

53:54

was any better. What clearly has changed is

53:57

that your expectation that it not be as

53:59

bad. has risen, meaning a

54:01

tenable level of insecurity in 1970 is

54:04

not a tenable level of insecurity in

54:06

2024, if you are your average citizen.

54:08

Yeah, and what's really interesting to me about

54:10

this is that people now are starting to

54:13

bring up the economic insecurity of Gen Z,

54:15

but it's actually a repeat of the

54:17

pattern that we saw with millennials, I

54:19

think. I don't think things have materially

54:22

deteriorated between Gen Z and millennials that

54:24

much. And there was a very long

54:26

time that millennials were saying that were

54:28

economically insecure, and there were reasons for

54:30

that, and that wasn't illegitimate. But now

54:32

it shows that millennials have

54:34

caught up wealth-wise with other

54:36

generations where they were at this age

54:39

and in fact, surpassed them. So there

54:41

actually is some economic data that

54:43

says that, in fact, we are in

54:46

a better position than we were previously.

54:48

And I think that some of the

54:50

insecurity, particularly around the younger generations, just has to do

54:52

with the fact that you're young, you're not making that

54:54

much money, a lot of people have college loans, but

54:56

that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way forever.

54:59

Yeah, I mean, it's hard for me to believe this now, but

55:01

the onset of the 2008-2009 financial crisis

55:05

is 16 years ago, or

55:07

15 and a half years ago. And if

55:10

you were a millennial who's kind of first brush

55:13

with the external world was that

55:15

crisis, that's certainly going to inform

55:17

your attitudes for a whole bunch of years, because it was a

55:19

bad couple of years and it took a long time for things

55:22

to quote unquote normalize. The other range to

55:24

think about John and Harris Poll is, at least

55:27

in the private realm, they've kind

55:29

of gone around the whole issue of how do

55:31

you reach people, like simply paying for panels, which

55:35

remains a problem with political polling, right?

55:38

Because one of the hardest things now

55:40

for a lot of the pure political

55:42

pollsters is actually finding people to

55:44

answer the questions and not just online.

55:47

Like I guess Ugov does tens

55:49

of thousands of online surveys, but you never know how

55:52

representative those tens of thousands who are

55:55

answering those are. I'm still a little

55:57

bit unclear. Like I know that if you offer people...

56:00

I've read that opt-in online

56:02

surveys are notoriously unreliable because

56:04

they attract trolls, because who are

56:06

the people that are hanging around online?

56:09

It's the trolls, right? And that's why

56:11

you get really crazy numbers on some

56:13

polls. Like 30% of Americans are Holocaust

56:15

deniers, but like, in fact, they're not. So

56:18

I guess I still don't understand like

56:20

what the correct

56:22

way to attract someone online

56:24

is. So you like, you buy

56:26

a list off someone and you email them and you offer them 100

56:28

bucks, is that how they do it? I'm not sure.

56:31

And look, this is going to be the year of obsessive

56:33

following of polls politically. But

56:36

frankly, all that's going to matter is the polls in

56:38

like six states for the US presidential election. National

56:41

polling is going to make very little difference. It doesn't really

56:43

matter. Trump is 4%

56:45

ahead of Biden or Biden's 6% ahead

56:47

of Trump. It matters how either of them

56:49

are doing head to head in Georgia, Arizona,

56:52

Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Anyway, going

56:54

to be a fun year. Everyone should

56:56

check out the Harris Poll information. They're

56:58

one of the more, at least

57:01

I find one of the more insightful,

57:03

nuanced polling organizations because they're not driven

57:05

primarily by a news electoral cycle where

57:07

they're supposed to give some sort of

57:09

binary horse race. They're much more

57:11

in forward of polls about attitudes than they

57:14

are horse race polls. And I think they're

57:16

more interesting to read. So we turn to

57:18

our rapid fire things you should have

57:20

been paying attention to. Rapid fire positivity.

57:22

Yeah, let's do it. All right. So

57:25

let's take a look at some news that

57:27

probably went under most people's radar, starting with

57:30

the Caribbean island nation of Dominica. When's the

57:32

last time you heard a new thought of

57:34

them at the Caribbean island nation of Dominica?

57:36

They have overturned a ban on

57:38

consensual same-sex activity, good for them,

57:40

that has been on the books since British rule

57:43

in the 1800s. And

57:45

what's neat about this is that it's part

57:47

of a bigger trend with Caribbean nations in

57:49

the past few years. So Barbados, St. Kitts

57:51

and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, and a few

57:53

other countries have also overturned this ban. It's

57:56

not completely legal all over the Caribbean, but

57:58

it's kind of creepy. and trending that

58:01

way. So it's nice and safe. Yeah.

58:04

There's a lot actually truly going

58:06

on between Caribbean nations around sustainability

58:08

and environmental change. Island nations tend

58:10

to have a strong

58:13

self-interest in doing something about climate change

58:15

because of obviously rising sea levels and

58:18

dependency on tourism and the degree to

58:20

which those two things could

58:22

not easily coexist. So

58:25

these are countries that have not usually

58:27

received much particular attention in global affairs

58:29

but have become – we

58:31

once talked about American states as being incubators

58:35

and experiments of democracy. A lot of

58:37

these island nations have become oddly,

58:39

oddly in the sense of their history and

58:42

not oddly per se, creative

58:44

in the way in which

58:46

they're dealing with certain problems and progressive, small

58:49

p progressive, in how they come

58:51

up with solutions. Speaking

58:54

of that, on the sustainability line,

58:57

Ember just released their

58:59

global electricity review and

59:02

the world hit a pretty

59:04

big renewable energy marker last

59:06

year. 30% of the world's electricity

59:09

was produced by renewables last year, which is

59:11

honestly more than I would have expected. A

59:13

third. Not too shed. That is

59:15

a lot. They think that fossil fuel generation

59:17

will fall in 2024 and then really

59:19

start to decline post

59:21

2024. But I've been waiting around since

59:24

about 2022 to hit peak fossil fuels.

59:29

It's been kind of plateauing and people are wondering

59:31

when is that peak going to be and I'm

59:33

hoping it's going to be right now. Yeah,

59:36

I don't think we're getting to peak oil

59:38

consumption anytime soon. What's declining radically globally is

59:40

coal, oil, and natural gas. I think we're

59:43

not going to plateau quite yet.

59:45

I think a lot of that is coal is

59:47

the one that's shrinking

59:50

precipitously. Coal

59:52

is particularly dirty and natural gas

59:54

is far less so. So

59:57

moving on, last but not least. a

1:00:00

fun one. So we definitely talked about

1:00:02

this on the podcast, the Herculan AIM

1:00:04

Scrolls that were decoded in this challenge

1:00:06

called the Vesuvius Challenge, and the winning

1:00:08

team used AI to figure out

1:00:11

what was written on these scrolls that they

1:00:13

haven't been able to unroll for, I think,

1:00:16

centuries now. I think they were discovered in the 1800s

1:00:18

because they're essentially like

1:00:20

calcified by lava. Now

1:00:22

that they figured out a technology to

1:00:25

read what's on the inside of the

1:00:27

scrolls without physically unrolling them, they're discovering

1:00:29

all sorts of fun things. One

1:00:31

of them is the exact location of Plato's burial

1:00:33

place. They didn't know exactly where he was buried.

1:00:36

And they also found this fun fact that apparently

1:00:39

there was a slave woman that was playing

1:00:41

the flute for him on his deathbed. And

1:00:44

he said while running a high fever

1:00:46

and actively dying that she had a

1:00:48

scant sense of rhythm. So that was

1:00:50

just Plato's last words. Wow.

1:00:53

Yeah. Kind of like bitchy

1:00:55

at the end, you know? Like here he is. But

1:00:58

the math. All he can do.

1:01:00

Yeah, that's just amazing. But whatever. It's

1:01:02

very cool. I mean, it's definitely very cool what

1:01:04

we can discover. And I wonder if this will

1:01:06

lead to a whole slew

1:01:09

of both new data, a way

1:01:11

of like ruins and rocks and some

1:01:13

writing. But it's a

1:01:15

lot of piecing together little fragments.

1:01:18

And you know, the idea that

1:01:20

this can unlock more texts

1:01:23

and that that can enrich our

1:01:25

sense of what happened thousands of years ago

1:01:27

is a really cool idea. Yeah,

1:01:29

I think there's going to be a lot

1:01:31

of like, we thought this, but really this

1:01:33

because there's, it was one of the biggest

1:01:35

libraries at that time. So there's an enormous

1:01:38

amount of information to be discovered. Stay

1:01:40

tuned. Yeah.

1:01:43

So that's it for today. Hopefully one of

1:01:45

those things got you into a better

1:01:47

mood from all the doom scrolling that we normally do.

1:01:50

So please send us your comments.

1:01:53

Send us your tired, you're hungry. No, we are

1:01:56

not. We are not MLAs and or the Statue of

1:01:58

Liberty, but we are what could go wrong. right

1:02:01

and much like Emma Lazarus and the

1:02:03

Statue of Liberty, we want to welcome

1:02:05

hopes and dreams and possibilities. So if

1:02:07

you have those and you want those

1:02:09

to be examined more, send us your

1:02:12

ideas. If you think that we are

1:02:14

glossing over things that we should focus

1:02:16

on more intently, send us those as

1:02:18

well. And thank you for listening. We

1:02:20

will be back with you next week.

1:02:22

Thank you, Emma. Emma Lazarus Thanks,

1:02:24

everyone. Thanks, everyone. What

1:02:27

Could Go Right is produced by

1:02:29

The Podglamorant, executive produced by Jeff

1:02:31

Umbro, marketing by The Podglamorant. To

1:02:34

find out more about What Could

1:02:36

Go Right, The Progress Network, or

1:02:38

to subscribe to the What Could

1:02:40

Go Right newsletter, visit theprogressnetwork.org.

1:02:44

Thanks for listening.