A Navigator Poll found a six-point increase in the number of Republicans and Independents who believe Trump should be charged with a crime after being informed of the revelations from the Committee.
I know,I know. It should be 90%. But 6 points is pretty significant considering this country’s polarization.
Dan Pfeiffer has some ideas about why:
But there is a lesson to take away from the Committee’s success that can be applied to communications more broadly. From the prominent role Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger played, to the array of video clips from card-carrying members of MAGA nation, to the choice of conservative witnesses like Judge Luttig and Brad Raffensperger, the Committee is employing a very specific and smart strategy
They are using “trusted voices” to communicate with the target audience — victims of the Right Wing disinformation system. The Committee’s strategy is a model for Democrats as they seek to persuade voters who moved away from us since 2020.
Trust and Identity
In the (very) old world, journalistic institutions and prominent media members were broadly trusted. Most people would take anything the New York Times wrote or CNN broadcast to the bank. The media had an imprimatur of trust and knowledge. Network anchors like Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw were titanic figures with massive influence on public opinion.
Some refer to this period as the Broadcast Era of Communications. Politicians informed the press, and the press informed the public.
That is no longer the case. That world is over, and that model is deader than a doornail (whatever that means). Trust in the media is at an all-time low.
The public is inherently skeptical of information from the media and downright distrustful of any information that comes from someone from the other party. People are desperately looking for someone or something they can trust. And trust is directly tied to identity — is this someone I know? Is this person part of one of my identity groups (my party, my profession, my part of the country, etc.)? To put a finer point on it, if you want to convince Republicans that Trump is guilty or the election is legitimate, you should use Republican voices to do so.
This approach probably makes intuitive sense to you, but there is evidence to back it up as well.
First, in a 2021 study, the American Press Institute ran a series of experiments showing participants articles shared by people they trusted and others shared by people they distrusted. Some of the articles were from credible media outlets like the Associated Press. Others were completely made up and filled with factual errors.
The sharer tends to have a greater significance on attitudes than the news organization that reported the article in the first place. The reporting source still matters, according to the experiment, just not as much as who shared the article. For instance, when the story is passed on by a trusted figure and the article is attributed to The AP, 52 percent of people think the article got the facts right. When the article is still attributed to The AP but the person passing it on is less trusted, only 32 percent say the facts were right.”
Second, Stanford researchers recently showed videos of people endorsing the integrity of the election to 2100 Republican voters. The folks who saw footage of Republicans like George W. Bush, Bill Barr, and Susan Collins were five points more likely to believe the election was legitimate than those shown videos of Democrats. While these effects may be minuscule, we live in a highly polarized, narrowly divided political environment. Even small movements in public opinion can be decisive.
He suggests that Democrats keep this in mind as they try to bring back some of the GOP and Independent voters who voted for Biden in 2020. I would just say to remember that this has very limited utility. You cannot expect more than a handful to be susceptible to this because tribal loyalty is everything to the GOP these days. It takes a special person to break out of that. But you have to try.And maybe “trusted voices” might just be a better strategy than”sell-out your princples.” Dems ought to give it a try.