Session 5- Communicating On The Environment.mp3

[00:00:04] Hi, guys. This is Morgan Pannell, again with EDF Action Campaign Academy. Welcome to our fifth session communicating on the environment. Here to speak on that is Andrew Baumann from the Global Strategies Group. And you take it away.

[00:00:19] Thanks, Morgan. So, as Morgan mentioned, I'm Andrew Bauman. I'm a senior vise president with Global Strategy Group. I've been a pollster for over a decade now working for progressive candidates and advocacy groups across the country. And one of the things I've had the fortune of doing over that long period of time is doing a lot of work with EDF and other conservation groups around climate, energy and environmental and conservation issues and in particular, messaging, trying to understand people's and voters views towards these issues and how we can use these issues to help win campaigns. So I'm going to be talking a little bit today about that kind of thing and some of the work that I and others have done over the years. So I tried during my screen here and see if it's how well it works. So before we get into some of the work that I and others have done on polling on these issues, I just thought I said take a few minutes to talk about polling generally and how it's useful for campaigns like yours. Obviously, I'm a biased source of information because I make my living doing polls. But, you know, in my view and I think this is shared by most in the campaign world older, an invaluable tool to help campaign deliver their message and specifically how to target their message. And really the the you know, the reason you use you do any kind of research and specifically specifically polling, it is because that does that provide it provides the basis of an informed plan for all aspects of the campaign. Most importantly, if you the most important uses in targeting not only targeting resources to make sure you're spending your, you know, finite and limited campaign resources in the best way possible, but in targeting, messaging, making, you're sure you're saying the right thing to the right people to deliver maximum effect and maximum votes for your campaign.

[00:02:09] So what are some of the questions that strategic polling at price answers? First of all, Keith Stansell, who's most likely to win the election, not necessarily where the candidates stand now, but that's important. But in polling, we always like to stimulate stimulate a race and sort of play out how we think the race is going to go by. By providing the messaging we expect our site to use in the messaging, we expect the other side to use them to understand, you know, what our chances are. How likely are we to win? And in particular, how likely are we to win? You could do a or do you what would you be doing or do X or do Y? And then the guy at the campaign to do those. We use the polling to understand how voters knew the candidate. Both are our candidate and our opponent. And to understand what to talk about when it comes to candidates, how do we introduce our candidate to a voter in terms of their profile and biography? What it will and what about their background? Do we want to emphasize what's less important? Well, you're going to understand our biggest vulnerability. That's often an overlooked part of campaign polling. We want to understand not only what we talk about, but we want to understand what the other side like we're going to talk about in particular when they come after us and then be ready to respond to those things that we know could hurt us if we leave them. Lincoln responded on the other side. We want to know how to how do we attack our opponent? Obviously, we all wish that campaigns could be positive or one more positive. But we know that they are on our way and we know that sometimes our opponents have real, you know, real issue problems that deserve to be critiqued and that that's the way to win elections. So how do we set up those critiques? How do we set up the contrast between our positive message and what's problematic about the other side? We're going to talk about that when it comes to the environment, energy, climate in a second. And also, you know, what issues are most important to voters? What what's the most salient thing? What do they care about? And therefore, what should we be talking about? And then there's the sort of finger strategic point. But you also use the polling to figure out the pack, the tactical points, who are the key targets, target voters. What is the coalition that gets us to a winning number? Is a suburban women. Is it non college men? Is it Hispanics who are the ones that we need to talk to? The most important for us to talk to and what should we be saying to them? And based on that, how should we allocate our resources? Should we be using mail or TV or cable or digital polling gives a road map to all of those things. It is specific thing that that is probably the the the basis or the centerpiece of most of our polling and what I'm going to talk to you a lot about today. That is, not surprisingly, in assessing what different messages that we want to talk about or may want to talk about are the most powerful. What to say, how to say it. You know, what kind of language to use and who to say it to. And what we're gonna be talking today is the result of a lot of message testing on the environment and conservation issues. You're going to see how this kind of polling that we do see what the end product is when we're talking about a specific issue.

[00:05:12] And this lie just shows you the sort of typical structure for a political survey. Those that are not not not sound familiar with it. So we usually start out up here in the top left. You see the screen. This is what we do to make sure we're talking to the right people, make sure we're talking to people aged 18 and over who are registered. Make sure that we're talking to people that are likely to vote in the upcoming election. And we don't rely only on those questions. We also target this based on the voter files that we would be calling people that we know based on previous electoral vote history we think are likely to vote in whatever kind of election we're trying to figure out. Then we would ask them questions about the general political environment in the country or the community or the state going in the right direction or the wrong track. We ask a battery, a favor, ability, questions about important people, the candidate, other people in the state, the governor, Donald Trump, whoever is interesting to us. How do voters feel about each of those people or groups or or or ideas? We can do. We could ask this about Planned Parenthood or the NRA or about Obamacare or the Republican tax bill. We've done all those kinds of things favor building, battery batteries using. And then the most important issue, we can either give voters a list of different issues health care, the economy, education done and ask them to pick their top one or two choices, or sometimes we'll do it in an open ended format where we don't give a list that we just ask voters. What, in your opinion, is the most important thing to see what they volunteer? And that can be a very useful way to sort of understand what really is on their mind without any problems. Then we usually at the initial ballot. Here you see this was a take it from the race we did last year or excuse me in 2015. Look, when the election was between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, then we would usually give candidate profiles. These are three, four line profiles, maybe half a paragraph to a paragraph long describing the candidate. Usually these are more biographical, but sometimes they have issue based thing in them and sometimes they're you know, we have different framing and we might test two different versions for our candidate to understand version A or version B is more powerful and then we react to vote. And that's where we see a version. A version D works better. You know, we may start out, for instance, say a forty five, forty five. So when we use Virgin A, we get up to 50 percent of the vote. Whereas with version B we stay at 45 percent. So therefore we our recommendation is the fine as in your intro ad you something like version X. Then we get in a more sort of more specific message testing and here. Here's where we do positive or negative battery of different messages. So it might be a message about health care, one on climate, one on clean energy, one on gun, one on taxes, and they can be positive or negative depending on what we're trying to do. And we usually do message testing from both sides, understanding what works best for us and what works best for the other side. Then we react the vote one more time to see sort of how that moves the vote over the course of the survey. And we even see it for votes to figure out our target. We try to figure out who is with us on all of the votes against us and all of those. Those are voters that, you know, there's going to be there in their camps and they're not moving. But who are the swing voters that move around or undecided? Those. Probably the most important for us to talk to that we identify which demographics are those and that provide targeting information for the campaigns that we work on. Then obviously the candidates really want to ask demographic questions. We can answer those targeting question what gender, age, race, education, those kind of things. To make sure that we know who we're talking to and who we want to talk to you in a camp. So with that, let me get to current with our current and recent views on climate, clean energy and the environment, just to set the stage for the messaging advice I'm going to give you in a little bit. This is some data from a survey we did a year, a year and a half ago that I think actually we did for EDF. We end this is the result of a favor ability battery, which is something I just talked about. We asked, do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of the following thing and when to talk about a few different things that are on the slide? First of all, this isn't surprising, but it's important to know clean energy like wind and solar are extremely popular, 82 percent favorable versus 8 percent unfavorable for a net plus seventy four rating. That's the number on the right side here. That's the favorable might minus unfavorable ratings for each of these by far. And the highest thing in the survey and we see this in all of our our survey. People love clean energy. They love wind and they love solar. I want to contrast that with down near the bottom. Fossil fuels like coal, oil and coal used me. That's thirty nine favorable, 40 unfavorable for a minus one. That's not very good. Certainly not compared to clean energy. But I do want to note that it's not very negative either. Kind of a mediocre rating. We're gonna get into this in a little bit. While people love clean energy and they think we should use more of it and they think we should use less fossil fuel oil and coal. They don't hate oil and coal. There's much more intensity of support to move towards clean energy rather than talking about moving away from fossil fuels like oil and coal. And obviously, you can work them together. But as I'll talk about a little bit later, the next thing we don't want to use is just talking about getting away from oil and coal or attacking politicians that love oil and coal. You always need to pair that with the fact that we want to move towards clean energy. And our opponents are are undermining that effort by opposing policies for clean energy. Couple of other things that are important here. The EPA, 55 percent favorable, 27 percent unfavorable, plus 28 not as popular as clean energy, but those are still some really good numbers. And I think that's one of the things that is most, most misunderstood or an assumption that is most incorrect around the political world is the idea that EPA is some kind of boogey man. I think both the other side anti and conservative and anti environment for politicians and even some on our side who are pro environment make this assumption that the EPA is the unpopular and our candidate shouldn't support it. We should be worried when we get attack on it. With the exception of a very few places in Appalachia. For instance, the heavily heavy coal places. That's just not true. Even in more rural places, they're not. You know, it's not the coal belt. EPA is quite popular and extremely popular in the suburbs. So, you know, except for very specific circumstances, it's really not a problem to be in favor of the EPA and in favor of the EPA setting stricter safeguards. You know, you see that below the EPA environmental standards. Forty nine to 22. When we talk about safeguards, give me a forty nine and twenty two. We're talking about them as regulations, 48 to twenty. That's a little stronger when you talk about safeguards rather than regulations. But either way, they're popular. So this idea that environmental regulations are on their face unpopular is just not true. People actually think you do need environmental regulation. And when you get to specific ones like the Clean Air and Water Act that you see up top, those are overwhelmingly supported. Those are very, very cherished safeguards on efforts to undermine them, as we've seen a second, are very, very unpopular. Moving to the next slide. This was a question we asked a couple of years ago when we gave a list of priorities and we asked voters to rate them on a zero to 10 scale. If you made 1 to 10 scale on how important they were, how much you prioritize those 10 minutes. If their top priority. Everything that's out there, then things close to that were a high priority and one meant not a priority at all. And you can see the things that pop here in terms of the most important priorities. Where you think the contamination of our land and water. Protecting the quality of the air we breathe. We see that time and time again. Clean air and clean water are just fundamental concepts that all almost all Americans want. Really, without a lot of artists in our demographic, just different. Those are really important right below them transitioning towards renewable energy. Forty one percent rate is a top already 9 or 10. Then another 45 percent rate at high. And I just mentioned this before and this is sort of another data of data point on that. People love the idea of transitioning towards renewable energy. He looked down at the bottom, transitioning away from fossil fuels. That's still popular. We've still got more than 70 percent rating at a six or above on a priority versus just 5 percent thing, not a priority. People want to do it. They want to can transition move away from fossil fuels. But it's only about half got half the intensity of moving towards renewable energy. And I just wanted to mention that again. You know, the idea of going towards renewable energy, a positive message around that is stronger than a negative message around getting away from fossil fuels, although it's always a good thing to combine. Another thing to point out here is also sort of down near the bottom. Combating climate change and I'm going to get into this into a second, but really that, you know, climate change is a much more polarizing issue than clean energy and just does not have the same kind of broad support. So even though a policy may both achieve moving toward noble energy and combating climate change, you know, the reason that voters would want to do it much more often is for the renewable energy benefit. Not necessarily. What are the climate benefits? They're going to talk about that a little bit more than. Getting into the climate specifically, this is some data from Gallup polling and what they have done over the years that they have. They have asked a series of four questions on climate and they group people into three different groups depending on their answers on those questions. There are concerned believers. These are people that are sort of answering the climate on all four. They think climate change is happening. They think it's the. They think it's a really big issue. They they support taking action. These are folks in blue here. They're the cool skeptic. They are consistently not concerned there. There is this sense of a global warming, warming, warming science. They don't think it's important. They don't think we should take action. And then there's a mixed model, which is the gray bar. Then there are those are folks who are sort of mixed on these questions. They're not, you know, consistently denying climate. You know, they think maybe it's real, but they're not sure how important it is. It's not one of their top priorities. And this is showing the data over time going back about 10 years, actually. And so what you can see here is the blue bar and unfortunately think the axes accidentally got taken off that chart. This chart. So I apologize for it. But the blue bar is near its highest point that it's ever been, which is good. The bad thing is that you can't see this here, but I will tell you that it's currently only at about 50 percent. So even though, you know, we're higher than we then, only 50 percent of Americans are concerned. Believer and you've gotten a blow. Much fewer of them are cool skeptics. But you got folks in the middle, too. So it's not like there's an overwhelming majority just yearning for climate action. Unfortunate. On the next slide, it shows that the current data for the same question by different demographic and what I wanted to show you here is how polarizing this issue. It didn't used to be this way ten years ago. You'll recall in two thousand and eight. John McCain, the Republican nominee, was the sponsor of a cap and trade program and ran on tackling climate change. It was not nearly as polarized, but after President Obama was election was elected, sort of the conservative anti environmental side of thing. That side of the aisle decided to make this a litmus test and to try to use a political cudgel. And they had a lot of success in convincing their base voters that climate change, you know, was right. And you can see that here. Now, 81 percent of Democrats are concerned believers, but just 17 percent of Republicans are. And almost half of Republicans are getting cool skeptics. And this really gets the idea that, you know, that that climate change is very polarized and it's really only the progressive base that is really concerned about it. Independents, not surprisingly, in the middle. And then the other demographic differences here are kind of what you'd expect. Women are more concerned than men. College graduates are significantly more concerned about climate than non college. And younger voters much more concerned about it than older voters.

[00:17:10] On this next slide, though, this is from a recent survey we did in which we asked the port proposition for a US setting a binding goal to, quote, transition completely away from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas and all of our energy needs from renewable sources like wind and solar by the year 2050. But that's a very ambitious goal. 100 percent renewables by 2050, whereas previously you thought overall 48 percent of voters were concerned believers on climate. This very aggressive renewable energy goal. 84 percent of Americans support the goal. And you can see the differences by party are much less pronounced yet. Ninety three percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans quaintness. Again, you have women more supportive than than men. By a little bit younger voters more supportive than older by a little bit. Not really much difference by education, which is different from the climate slide I just showed. So just much but much less, much less polarizing politically and demographically to support clean energy versus supporting climate action.

[00:18:16] And you know, I talked a little bit earlier about the idea of clean air, clean, one of the very popular and I think, you know, one of the debates that always gets framed around or at least the other side and the environment, politicians always try to frame this as a choice between the environment and the economy.

[00:18:32] This is from some polling we did a few years ago. But I see numbers that are very similar to this. More recently, the voters rejected the idea that we have to choose between them. And if they do choose, they often and in fact, they do. Sorry. Let me take that back. They reject that. We have to choose because they think that actually having stricter state standards and take those and the environment will actually be a job creator, not a job destroyer. So what we did in this survey is we asked two pairs of statement and we said we're ready for voters and said, which of these is closer to your own view, even if neither is exactly right. And the first state first pair was it is possible to protect our air quality and public health and have a strong economy with good jobs at the same time. You don't have to choose one over the other persons from the other side. Creating more environmental regulations will increase costs, hurt our economic recovery, and destroy jobs. We have to prioritize between the environment and the economy. And you can see by a 50 point margin, 52 points actually. Seventy three to twenty one photo shows the first one. We don't have to. And then we also asked Mr. Franklin, safeguards against pollution will create more jobs because it will encourage innovation and investment in new technology versus creating new environmental regulations would destroy jobs by increasing costs and making American businesses less competitive. And this one by a two to one margin, 60 to 31 votes, said strengthening safeguards will actually create jobs because it will encourage innovation and investments in technology. This is really important. We should never buy into the other side to play and we have to because we don't. And voters understand that we go. We should always push back on any kind of attempt to put it into that. That is the basis. What are some of the things that we found? And this is based on polling we've done over the last five, six years. What should how should we be talking when we're talking the Court of Clean Energy and Climate Power policies? So there are sort of four things for sort of overall automatic messages that have come out in all of our research in terms of how to talk about clean energy or pro climate policies. The first is to aggressively stress that the that these kind of policies will actually save you money in the long run. Invariably the biggest Achilles heel. These policies have the idea that it's raise electricity bills and cost people money. There's going to be a big energy tax, the hidden energy tax. That's what the other side always said. And I used to be like five, five, six years ago in which when we would try to argue that you're moving your net renewable energy would save you money in the long term. People didn't buy. So we had to make the argument that, yeah, it's going to cost you a little more money, but it's worth it. But that changed dramatically in the last five or six years. That's renewables have gotten cheaper. People understand that. And now they're very open to arguments that the policies are going to save them money in the long term. They still think it might cost a little more in the short term, but in the long term, you know, once that infrastructure is built. Now, after all, the wind in the sun is great. And quite importantly, in our modeling regression modeling has shown that the long term costs are much more important to voters in the short term cost. So it's OK if the voters think it's going to cost them a little more in the short term, if they also believe, you know, in the long term it's going to save them money. And one important point here is that that this is not something that voters think of, not, you know, unaided, but they totally believe the the argument that in the long term, renewable energy will save them money, both by reducing electricity bills and by reducing health care costs because of cleaner air. And as you may know, there's a Stanford study that came out a few years ago that tried to estimate what it would be. And it is estimated that the average family, if the American used 100 percent with 100 percent renewables, would save over eventually save over a thousand dollars a year in health care and energy. And that fact is a very powerful one. We have seen that that the Stanford brand is strong. It's not viewed as an elitist brand. People believe it and people believe that thousand dollar number. So that is a great proof point to make the argument that, you know, moving to renewable energy and an acting pro climate policies are going to save us money in the long term. On the economic front, I just mentioned that we should never see the economic debate set aside. We should make the argument that clean energy is going to be an economic booster. But one of the things that I think of some folks on our side get really focused on is they keep it focused very much on just jobs and specifically green jobs. I'll get to that in a second. One of the first things I always tell folks on when it comes to environmental and energy messaging is never use the term green jobs. Nobody has any idea what that means. They think it maybe means people that pick up their recycling or something else. But, you know, when we get into this kind of message that renewable energy needs green jobs, we're really not going to voters where they waste where they are. And in fact, we want a broader economic message. We talked about how moving to clean energy is going to, you know, boost innovation and the economy broadly. It's not just jobs, it's innovation. That revelation revolutionizes industries create new businesses. That's an important part, especially when talking to sort of center right voters drive economic growth. And yes, it also is going to create hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs that can't be can't be shipped overseas. But it's important to have all of that. I would note that both these messages and we've done a lot of work looking at all sort of base voters and centrist voters among center right voters. So you know that they're not hardcore Republicans. They're independents. For the moderate Republicans are oftentimes a very key constituency in elections. But also in policy debates, these two economic messages are really, really crucial because for them, that's what they care about the most. The other three messages. This one at the top is actually often one of the core messages around these policies. The health benefits of reduced pollution and a message around this that really focuses on specific pollutants and disease. So the idea here is that banks encouraging this shift to clean energy policies are going to sharply reduce toxic pollutants like carbon, mercury and sulfur dioxide. That it's important actually to use these actual names and doesn't have to be these three. One of them. Don't know what we will know exactly what they are. But if you thought of any nasty sounding pollutant, it's a stronger message and then bringing it to bringing in doctors. They say that this will dramatically reduce rates of heart disease, asthma, a good even even cancer, especially for children. And again, mentioning the specific diseases, you don't need all of them. You just do at rest for disease and heart disease. That would be fine, but some combination of them makes it stronger. And then looking at the case in two years doesn't hurt either. And then sort of related. Is underscoring a message to underscore the obligation we have to future generations to act now. When it comes to climate change and clean energy, you know, there's less left. Voters are less certain that that is going to impact them now, but they're significantly concerned what's going to happen to their kids down the road. So I'm not sure. It argues that we have an obligation to do something now that we don't leave our kids and kids and grandkids. A planet that's damage and polluted resonates really strongly. And both of these messages work generally across the political spectrum, but especially for our base. They are the things that really get them riled up. But it's not like we can't use them for swing voters either. So how about when we're going up against opponents that are anti, anti environment, how do we critique them and their agenda? Well, the core thing we want to use there is that these politicians are selling out our children's future for the benefit of their corporate donors. They'll get to that generate generational obligation that we just talked about. We want to really emphasize the fealty that these politicians have to corporate polluters. You know, voters really very much believe that these anti environmental politicians are bought and paid for by big oil companies. And in explaining that, you know, using proof points to back that up is great, but it's not enough just to leave it there. You've got to link that back to how it impacts regular people. So that means that these that that your opponent is helping these central interests boost their own profits at the expense of the health and health of our families and children, not just that they're helping these big oil companies boost their own profits. That's bad. But linking it back to what that means for families and children is critical. And much like we just talked about how we want to message about deficit, you know, how our actions are going to reduce specific pollutants having taking on our opponents, but the opposite works very well. And again, you want to be specific here. I showed you before how popular the Clean Air and Water Act they were going after politicians who are trying to undermine or eliminate safeguards like the Clean Air and Water Act that protect our health and instead allow power plants you unlimited amounts of toxic pollution like mercury, arsenic, sulfur dioxide in our air and water. Go after them. Quit making our air dirty, making our water dirty and undermining our health by undermining these safeguards and allowing more toxic pollution.

[00:27:27] Then a couple other, you know, underneath the corporate and we just talk about a couple for specific things that can be used in different circumstance. First of all, particularly the West, you know, public lands are a cherished treasure and are usually properly and I. Any ideas? Privatize them or undermine them, you know, under, you know, eliminating the mind of that nation as president Trump and thinking have suggested are very, very unpopular. So, you know, hitting our opponents and highlighting how they're threatening, again, the ability of our children to enjoy our outdoor heritage. That's a strong critique of their agenda as well. As I mentioned before, we don't want to simply attack these anti environmental politicians. For instance, we wanted to double down on fossil fuels like oil and coal. You know, giving them more subsidies or whatever. You know, that in and of itself, it's not popular, but that's not really the strongest attack. So when you link that to how they voted or supported action to end incentives for clean energy or undermine clean energy, then you've got stuff that they're trying to get billions more in tax breaks that the oil companies. At the same time, they're trying to end support and incentive for clean energy. That's a powerful message. And, you know, in certain places, in particular, white collar suburban districts with those kind of voters, the idea the politicians are putting ideology and politics ahead of science, that that resonates a lot. You know, that that you know and does that go? Now, as I mentioned before, climate change in and of itself isn't the most salient issue or a salient issue to use attacking these kind of politicians. But when they insist it's a hoax. You know, at the same time with the military and math that say it's a threat to our country, that's taking it a step too far. So when you combine that with unison efforts by some politicians to muzzle scientists and prevent science using science and in decisions about clean air and water, as is going on right now, obviously with with Pruitt, that is an attack that that works quite well. We sort of much more white collar, our more educated, higher income suburban voters, that this is one that doesn't play as well with blue collar voters in more rural areas. So I'd put it that on the sidelines there. But suburban places, definitely something to add to their quiver. And so just a couple views and don'ts with the annual. First of all, always bring your impact, your messages back to how these issues impact regular people. At the end of the day, people want to know you know about them. How does it impact them? They don't keep a high level, get it back. You know what? How it can impact you. Specific specific safeguards like the Clean Air and Water Act. Pacific name. Polluted mercury. Arsenic. Sulfur dioxide. Specific health impact. Asthma and less crazy heart disease. Cancer. Scare people and with good reason. Talk about how we had a moral obligation to future generations and to our kids and grandkids. We want to aggressively stress the clean energy will state regular families is money. In the long term, we should never let the other side get away on unimpeded with trying to argue that a race is going to cost money because it's not. The voters will believe it. It's not in the long term. We're talking about public land. We want to focus on protecting the legacy of our outdoor heritage for future generations. And then language arguing that, quote, wild is not for sale to the highest bidder. Also really worth. You know, we want to talk about how scientists even say EPA scientists could be deciding what kinds of state like we need, not Washington politicians. And you can always get in there. We're in the pocket of corporate polluters with white collar voters, as I just mentioned. We want to highlight how anti environment politicians, ideology, ownership of health science. And we want to focus more on economic arguments, the center right voters and more on health legacy and climate arguments with the progressive. What don't we want to do? We don't want to ever see the economic debate to anti environment politicians. You don't ever want to use the term clean green jobs. I mentioned that before. Voters have no idea what that means. I'll give you some language you can use. Second, don't be afraid to endorse ambitious clean energy targets. Voters believe 100 percent renewable by 2050 is totally doable. The only thing that's holding us back are, look, a lack of political will by politicians bought and paid for by the energy company. There's no reason we can embrace that. We don't want to focus only on an environmental politician CO2 to fossil fuels always just juxtapose this with their opposition to clean energy. They don't want to limit the economic message of just jobs. You want it to be broader about innovation, business, economic growth and jobs. Don't be afraid to support aggressive climate action. I mean, generally, that's not going to hurt you. But say don't focus the message entirely on climate. We want to you know, I'm asking you not not not to take these policies for the sake of climate. We want to see these policies because of what the benefits bring when it comes to clean energy and clean air, clean water, healthier families, a thriving economy, innovation, lower energy price.

[00:32:25] So here's some language coming out. Don't use the terms climate pollution, global warming, pollution, carbon dioxide. Use the term carbon pollution. He doesn't want to call it pollution. And the term carbon pollution is stronger when you use the term climate pollution or global warming pollution. Again, that's polarizing. You're going to turn off center right voters when you use the term carbon pollution. Voters on our side understand you're talking about climate change. Voters sort of in the center. Right. Just hear the word pollution and they think that bad air pollution. I don't want that. And it doesn't sort of get us down that rabbit hole of. Politicized and polarized climate debate. The term green energy, an alternative energy, particularly green energy. That's a terrible term. Alternative energy isn't good either. Dad used the term clean energy or renewable energy. You want to use clean energy when you're focuses more on inherently are our health and renewable energy when you're focuses more on the economy and innovation. They have slightly different connotations to voters. Similarly, don't use the term green jobs. That's a clean energy jobs or renewable energy job.

[00:33:30] And in some other terms, instead of saying asthma, they asthma attack.

[00:33:35] Instead of saying regulations or rules, they safeguard instead of saying emissions, they pollution instead of saying the environment. They are land, air and water. Instead of saying environmental, they use the term conservation. They talk about federal rules or federal action. Talk about American rules and don't use it. You know, I use the term fossil fuel used in direct quote, direct quote unquote, dirty and outdated energy sources like coal and oil.

[00:34:01] So that I'm going to open it up to question.

[00:34:05] Trevor and I were going to ask you some questions about this stuff. Kind of following up and get your take on that. Do you think there's any way for candidates who want to talk about the environment, to talk about it and pretty much any kind of district?

[00:34:22] I think so. I mean, I think that there are a probably very few places where it's not the strongest thing to talk about, but pretty much everywhere in the country, you know, voters care about clean air and clean water and the health of their kids. You know, even in coal country, it's not like they they know the voters want their their kids drinking dirty water or or, you know, breathing dirty air. And we just did some work in Oklahoma last year, particularly around Prescott Pruitt in his record there. And that's obviously one of the most conservative places in the country and tout his record there as A.G., including allowing mercury pollution in the state's Great Lakes and streams. Rivers were overwhelmingly on, you know. So know even places like that, you know, places like that. And I don't want to focus on climate change. But you what do you want to talk about? Clean air and clean water. And you know, those places people want to see it moved to renewable energy. Maybe you focus a little bit less on moving away from oil and coal and focus more on moving to wind and solar. But voters want that.

[00:35:23] I know it's similar, no, you shared lots of terminology. Did you? Have you found that different terminology works across different regions in the country, though, in India still? Yeah. Did you. Did you notice any difference in region to region how people respond to different terms?

[00:35:41] Now, a lot of people want to use a pretty consistent leaving the region in the country. You want to be talking about clean energy or renewable energy rather than green energy. You want to be talking about safeguards rather than regulation. There's really not that big of a difference. I think, you know, maybe in certain Rust Belt states and places like that that are a little bit more economically sensitive. You might want to focus more on renewable energy and the economic benefits rather than clean energy and the health benefits. Really, as I said, let's take these thing. People are like clean air. So it's only thought at the margins that that where we would fit all really that. That's what these recommendations, I think, hold pretty much everywhere in the country.

[00:36:22] If you're a candidate and sort of being great on the environment is really core to your platform. But polling and public opinion research tell you that it's not the most salient concern, concern for your constituents. Is there a way to talk about the environment or linking back to it without ignoring some more big ticket items like health care or jobs?

[00:36:44] You know what, I think a lot of what we talk about here is talking about it in the economic brain. Never. Not only never seen that components, but going on on the offensive in it. It's different in different places, but particularly in the west, places that are very sunny or windy. But anywhere really talking about the economic benefits of renewable energy, particularly when you've got a good contrast with your opponent, is very strong. I mean, people want to move move to want to move to renewable energy. And really, what's going on here in the country right now with unemployment so low, it really is not about jobs anymore. It's about what kind of jobs and what that means. And that's why it's really important to sort of have that broader economic message. But renewable energy does that. People sort of people will get that renewable energy need all kinds of good jobs from sort of white collar engineering jobs, more blue collar construction jobs. You know, it's a good way to talk about the economy in a way that sort of fits with the environment. Then obviously the other other lane here is health. And I think the debate in the country now where health is more about health care costs than anything else in. And I mean, what we're seeing in every poll we do is the number one of the number one issue number one or two issues, health care cost. And people don't, you know, don't top of mind when we talk about renewable energy policy. The first thing that they don't think about is not, oh, that's going to reduce my health care costs. When you make the argument that this is going to mean, you know, it's going to save you a thousand dollars and not only energy, but health care costs in the long run. I mean, by riding clean air people not you know, you're supposed to be heat, not in my column. That makes so much sense, though. It doesn't. Not if we're going to replace talking about things like health insurance and prescription drugs. They can be a nice complimentary message. And this is one of the ways I'm going to help reduce your health care costs by giving you cleaner air.

[00:38:30] I have. I have kind of a two part question. So we're talking to about candidates at every level of government. So how would you one how would you approach of paying for or paying for polls if you if your campaign doesn't have that much money and too, if you had maybe only enough money to run one round of polling when in the different stage of the campaign or when would you suggest doing that?

[00:39:02] Well, the unfortunate answer, the first thing is that good polling is not. You can get you know, you can get poll, a poll that sort of just the horse race and your race are relatively cheap and that's useful. But it really doesn't do all the things we talk about at the beginning of this presentation. And we do that all well, it's not the cheapest thing in the world. So what I recommend to folks like that is to try to pool resources, though. You know, if you're running for state legislature, are there five or 10 candidates that sort of share your views in your state? You can run a poll across this district or, you know, if you're running for city council, was there a slate you can pull on together sort of to sort of share costs and get broad message guidance across all those races? I think that's the that's the best way to try to do that. And in terms of your second part, your question, my view is always do it as late as possible and still be able to inform your pay communication at the end of the day. This is all about trying to give advice and guidance to what you're going to say on TV or in the mail or on digital or at the door. So, you know, you should always base your polling schedule based on your communication. So, you know, if you're going to go up on TV and on August 1st and you know that you're you know, you do a shoot on July 14th. Now you got the poll. You get the poll on appeal at the beginning of July or before, you know, to make sure you get the data back in time to read that.

[00:40:19] And the reason you want to do it later rather than sooner, in my view, and it depends on the circumstance. Certainly if you do it earlier, then you have more time to sort of base your your earned communications on on the poll. And that's great. But especially in this day and age where you don't know what Donald Trump's going to do one day, the next day, what's going to happen. You poll early and then something big happened and all of a sudden that the electoral landscape has changed. The data you have might not be relevant, but there might be something new that you didn't know is going to come up that will impact your race. And he didn't pull on it. So that's why I try to go later rather than earlier. But again, it sort of depends on the situation.

[00:40:57] So how would you suggest a candidate marriage? A more controversial issue like fracking when it seems to be a pretty even split in the district?

[00:41:08] On that kind of fishing gear, I mean, this is an area where if you if there is a controversial issue like this, this is something we're calling can really help, you know, try to try to understand exactly where your constituents, the voters are on this and what what kind of approaches will will will appeal to a broad swath of folks. So, you know, I think, first of all, you can afford it. That should be something that then you're your benchmark. Oh, you know, you have this specific issue that's controversial, really making sure you understand where voters are in the best way to talk about it. And one thing I think is important is I never advise a candidate. Know I never want to test something in a poll that my candidate doesn't believe or doesn't feel comfortable saying, go and, you know, you should never know, no matter how strong something is. The poll voters sniff out inauthenticity in a second. And, you know, they don't want somebody and I don't want to work with somebody that's going to go out and just say, what if the pollsters, they want to say, you know, we want to use the poll to help them talk about the things they believe in that are the strongest.

[00:42:02] So that's that's important. Side note here. Feeling like something like fracking, somebody can often, often be controversial, yet there can be a lot of content. What's controversial about fracking is whether or not, for instance, we should have a moratorium, that it was actually done a lot of work on this and that there's some folks that feel very strongly that we should end all fracking. But there's a lot of folks that think that the bridge too far. There's actually a really, really broad middle ground that thinks that we should have much stricter regulation. Think, though, you know, it might be your might be in on sort of, you know, less great ground, shakier ground out there calling for moratorium, even if that even if that's really where you are. Right. You know, one of the things when it comes to campaigning is that you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So instead of being out there calling for a ban on fracking, which maybe has 35, 40 percent support, I don't know. Call up the OP. They're calling for much stricter regulations on, you know, what, where where you can drill and what's there and disclosing the liquid and all those other kinds of things, which maybe has 75 percent. But you know, and do do what you can to push policies that are going to make things better rather than trying to reach too aggressively for things that could create a backlash.

[00:43:13] Never you have anything else.

[00:43:16] I don't think so this was super useful.