Lynda Woolard 0:07
Welcome to Louisiana Lefty, a podcast about politics and community in Louisiana where we make the case that the health of the state requires a strong progressive movement, fueled by the critical work of organizing on the ground. Our goal is to democratize information, demystify party politics, and empower you to join the mission because victory for Louisiana requires you.

Lynda Woolard 0:32
On this week’s episode, Pollster Jennifer Johnson and I discuss how to think about polls, how to use data to inform campaign work, and what the numbers can tell us about the possibilities for Louisiana progressives.

Lynda Woolard 0:49
Jennifer Johnson! Thank you for joining me on Louisiana Lefty today.

Jennifer Johnson 0:54
Thank you.

Lynda Woolard 0:56
So, Jennifer, you’re a pollster, who I met at the Louisiana Democratic Party Women’s Conference in Alexandria in 2015 when, of course, John Bel Edwards was running for governor. And you joined that conference via either Zoom or something very like Zoom. I remember it seeming very futuristic.

Jennifer Johnson 1:17
Yeah, no one had really done it at that time. We did like two tech rehearsals and all these funny things. And it’s crazy to think now we just do that without blinking an eye.

Lynda Woolard 1:29
So, one of the side effects of the pandemic is that we’ve missed the opportunity to meet for lunch and strategize every so often. So, I’ve really missed that. I just wanted to say that, but I want you to tell us a little bit more of your bio, a mini-bio, and specifically, I want to know what your political origin story is. What’s your entry point into politics? And how did you get involved in polling?

Jennifer Johnson 1:56
Yeah, it’s sort of a funny story. Politics always interested me even as a kid. I volunteered on campaigns in high school and worked on campaigns in the summers during college. The first kind of big campaign I worked on was Lynn Yeakel’s US Senate race in 1992 in Pennsylvania. And I went back to school for senior year, was a political science major, and had to take a polling requirement class. And I remember sitting in the class, and I was sitting next to my housemate Hope. And I looked at her and said, “I really like this. I think I’d like to do this for a job.” And she said to me, “Are you blanking crazy.” Because she was not a fan of the class. And I just really liked it. You know, I’ve always loved math, and I’ve loved politics and government and political science. And it was a thing that tied those two things together. And so, I blindly applied for jobs at polling firms fresh out of school. This was 1993, so you went to the, you know, resource library that listed businesses, and you still had to get nice paper and print your resume and your letter on the nice paper. And I probably sent them to, you know, 20 to 30 Democratic polling firms in Washington D.C. And I was fortunate enough to, that August, get hired by one is an entry-level research assistant. And through various name changes, that is the place that I still work and now own. I had great mentors, former business owners, who really taught me the business from the ground up, and I’ve been here for 28 years. So, it’s kind of an uncommon path. I don’t know anybody else I graduated from college with who has had only one workplace. But I’m very fortunate and very lucky. And I really like what I do.

Lynda Woolard 3:46
That’s, particularly in politics, people are changing jobs all the time.

Jennifer Johnson 3:51
All the time.

Lynda Woolard 3:52
Well, that’s amazing. So I believe you’ve made this point, but you only work with Democrats, correct?

Jennifer Johnson 3:58
I do. I also do work for a lot of non-political entities, you know, healthcare, educational institutions, cultural institutions, nonprofits, businesses, but in the political space, I work for Democratic candidates and causes.

Lynda Woolard 4:14
And what’s the name of your company, again?

Jennifer Johnson 4:16
It’s LJR Custom Strategies.

Lynda Woolard 4:19
I want to frame this conversation with a couple of our mottos that I think are instructive. As a pollster, I’ve heard you often say that the data will set you free. And I take that very much to heart. As a campaigner, I follow the theorem that the only poll that matters is election day because every poll is simply a snapshot of a day, and a lot can happen over the course of a campaign. Yeah, so I contacted you shortly after election day of the last presidential election, and I actually asked you then to do this podcast because I wanted to get someone to speak to polls that knows more about them than I do. People had started to ask me after the election: why were the polls so wrong? And we’ve heard that in 2016 and 2020. What do you say to that?

Jennifer Johnson 5:12
Yeah, I think there are a few things going on. And this is something that other pollsters and I have talked about. There was an email going around among some five, six, seven of us shortly after election day. And that’s some Republicans and some Democrats and folks that have partnered on different things over the years and that kind of thing. And I think, like so many things that have happened in the past four years, there was kind of an escalation in some minor issues in polling that became major issues in polling. And, you know, also, it’s really important to remember that every poll has a margin of error. Every poll has a level of uncertainty. And that’s easy to forget or not know if you’re not in the industry, if that’s not something that you do. So just as a baseline, I think that’s an important fact that anybody who’s looking at any poll should know. But then beyond that, there’s really two factors of late that are challenges for pollsters and also challenges for people who listen to and look to polling results to inform them. And that’s, you know, at the highest level ever, there was a significant group of people who did not feel comfortable sharing their voter preference for president. It was highly focused in the kind of white, upscale, suburban women cohort of voters. And they were going to vote for Donald Trump. And they were embarrassed to tell people be that an independent pollster, their friend in the grocery store, or anything in between. You and I have talked about this. And to me, if you have that sort of trepidation about sharing, that should kind of drive home that maybe you’re not voting for the person that you should. But clearly, that was not the case. And so that certainly skewed results. The other thing is, there’s this group, and I borrow this term from a prominent Republican pollster who shared it with me. He calls them poll deniers. And we’ve heard so many people say, you know, don’t listen to the polls. The polls are a hoax. Fake news. That’s fake polling. They use the polls to try to manipulate what you do. Which, I can’t speak to others, but, that never crossed my mind. The data, as you said, will set you free. The data is the data. And sometimes it’s good news for your client or candidate, and sometimes it’s bad news. But the data is exactly data. But these folks who don’t even participate, you know, won’t even take the call, or if they take the call, they immediately hang up, that percentage has grown. You know, margin of error always accounted for some people just not being willing to talk to pollsters, but this distrust of institutions, this distrust of polling, this distrust of public polls and the media, which are very closely linked together, has had a further impact. I still think polls are extremely valuable. You know, the public polls, you have to look at through a certain lens. And then, I can talk more about this, but what I do is primarily internal polling for candidates. And that’s not something that’s shared with, you know, the news media or anyone else. I’m a strategist for them. And so, what I’m doing is a different kind of polling that’s not just: “Who are you going to vote for? Thank you. Goodbye.” That really helps people build their campaign out.

Lynda Woolard 8:48
Right, so were the polls wrong or were people just looking at that data incorrectly?

Jennifer Johnson 8:54
I would say, some of both. You know, whenever you don’t know what the electorate is going to look like, you can’t guarantee that your poll is completely accurate. But I also think people need more education about the levels of uncertainty around polling, and that that would help them understand what they’re really looking at, and that it is not, you know, to a 10th of a percent an accurate assessment of what the outcome will be.

Lynda Woolard 9:24
And those poll deniers you were talking about. Do they tend to vote Republican?

Jennifer Johnson 9:30
So yes, I think recently poll deniers do tend to be Republican. I think that’s kind of the brand that the president and his party have led, but long term and in the past, I’m sure we could find situations where that was the case among Democrats as well.

Lynda Woolard 9:48
Okay. And it’s probably more important to really look at for a presidential election, a state-by-state poll rather than the national polls.

Jennifer Johnson 9:57
Yeah, the national polls are sexy. You know, it’s this head-to-head matchup that everybody can kind of understand. But as we all know, it’s meaningless when it comes to who’s actually going to be elected. And in some cases, you can win one and not the other. We’ve seen that obviously. So, I think people want this very easy to understand very quick snapshot to give them a sense of what’s happening. And it would really be better if they took the time to look at more specific data. I understand that’s not, you know, everyone’s top priority, and they don’t have time to do that, but if you really want a clear picture, you do need to take a little bit of a deeper dive into what’s out there.

Lynda Woolard 10:41
I’ve heard you say, national polling is just a fun fact.

Jennifer Johnson 10:44
Yeah. And it’s interesting. And I check them out too when they first come out in the morning, or at the end of the day, or when there’s a new one, or when you go to the place, and they amalgamate all of them and build out the charts. I find it really interesting and fascinating to track as well. But I just don’t think it’s a great predictor of election outcomes.

Lynda Woolard 11:06
Very good. And what do you think besides these poll deniers, what has undermined the public’s faith in polls?

Jennifer Johnson 11:12
I think the same thing that’s undermined the public’s faith in so many institutions and facts. And, you know, I hold Donald Trump very accountable for a lot of the distrust that’s out there. And I think I’m the type of person who, because I like data so well, has always had sort of a, I would say, healthy distrust or healthy questioning attitude of when people just say something. You know, show me where that came from, show me the data, show me the background, show me the resources that you used to get there. But the shift that has occurred in the last, I’d say, four to five years now of just overall distrust in things that I can certainly say never crossed my mind to question before. That sort of attitude is beyond the healthy distrust, I think, that would be a good place for the country to be. And I think pollsters are an easy target. And people like to say, well, the polls were wrong. And that’s sort of the excuse for things, but there’s a lot of ways that information can be manipulated and shared beyond the polling that really can skew everything.

Lynda Woolard 12:31
And people expect more from polling than it can really–

Jennifer Johnson 12:35
Well, yes, people certainly expect it to be able to show you more and to be exactly right. And, you know, it’s just, for all the reasons that we’ve talked about: margin of error, people not participating, people not telling you honestly what’s happening. You account for all that, and you really think about it, but at the same time, it again has its limitations. And honestly, that’s why I don’t really choose to do a lot of public polling. I think those who do understand those limitations. Could they be communicated a little better to help people understand? I think yes. I think that’s something that our industry should and could do. But it’s really why I focus on the internal work because I like the strategy piece. I like the figuring out the path to victory piece more than being a, you know, prognosticator or a future predictor.

Lynda Woolard 13:25
Okay, so that’s, I guess, what we’ll get into then. Your focus is more on local races and down-ballot races at least, right?

Jennifer Johnson 13:34
Yeah, I’ve done some US Senate work. I’ve done a lot of congressional work, but of late, I’ve done mostly statewide, state senate, state house, and then local, so city council, county executive, those kinds of races.

Lynda Woolard 13:46
And so, should those candidates think about fundraising for polls or include that in their budgets when they’re planning their campaign strategies?

Jennifer Johnson 13:57
I mean, if they can afford it, and they have the budget, absolutely. You know, polling typically I say should be about 10% of your budget. And even a very simple, you know, straightforward kind of quick poll with live callers, which is what I do, we don’t do the push button polls, is going to cost $5,000. So if you’re looking at a campaign with a budget of under $50,000, no. You probably should not do a poll. It would be great if you could. I wish it were cheaper, and we could give those services to everybody, but that’s kind of the threshold to me to consider a poll. But I do think, you know, if you ask any state legislative, city council, school board candidate who’s able to do one if they get the bang for their buck from it. If it’s done by a good pollster, I think they’re going to absolutely say yes. Because it just tells them so much about the full composition of the district in which they are running instead of just the folks they hear from who love them or who have a bone to pick with them and not really hearing from the folks kind of in the middle.

Lynda Woolard 15:10
So from your perspective, the work you do is less about fortune telling about an election and more about strategy. So, what are the things you can strategize from a poll?

Jennifer Johnson 15:21
Sure. So, you’re absolutely right. In a lot of these races that I’ve just been talking about, the winner on the head-to-head is often undecided. The biggest percentage of voters don’t know. It’s quite likely you might have 35% for one candidate, 20% for another candidate, and 45% undecided. So, how would you predict that? You can’t. So, what we do is really look at those undecided voters, test messages, platforms, ideas, themes that our candidate wants to share and work on in the legislature or whatever office they’re seeking and then see what moves those undecideds. So, at the beginning of the poll, they don’t know who they’re going to vote for, and at the end of the poll, they’re going to vote for Lynda Woolard. So then we go and look at who are those people who moved. And you know, was it because of what she said about education? Is it because of what she said about creating jobs? Is it because of what she said about her healthcare stance? And then we can really help that candidate focus on talking about the right things and also to the right people. So, it’s really about messaging and targeting and figuring out how to move voters so that you can build that 50% plus one coalition.

Lynda Woolard 17:05
And then what about focus groups. We hear about them a lot. And so, is that something candidates should concern themselves with?

Jennifer Johnson 17:13
I mean, focus groups are wonderful, but for the types of races that I do, they tend to be a luxury item. They’re more expensive. Just one focus group is often more expensive than a poll. And it doesn’t give you that statistically reliable read of the whole district that you’re looking to represent. You know, there’s no way with just one focus group with eight to ten people you can get to that level of extrapolation, let’s say. Now, for a large-scale campaign, for US Senate, for congress where it is extra valuable to be able to hear your voters speak in their own words before you start communicating with them. Absolutely. Focus groups are a very valuable tool. But they’re, I would say, a pricey tool and certainly, for a campaign that’s having to decide between doing a poll or focus group, I would always recommend a poll.

Lynda Woolard 18:13
What makes a focus group so expensive?

Jennifer Johnson 18:17
You have to pay the people to come. They tend to only feel comfortable coming if it’s in a traditional focus group facility, which costs quite a bit to rent for the evening. And that would be, you know, a boardroom with a two-way mirror where the clients can sit behind the mirror and observe the proceedings. You need to record it so that you can go back and listen and make sure you know that you captured everything accurately. And just all of those encumbrances of that. And often there’s travel costs involved to bring the moderator, which, in my case, would be me. Other consultants, you know, other people working on the campaign. So, it adds up really quickly if you’re doing a traditional focus group. We’ve tried to do them in more informal settings, you know, in a room at the library or different things, and it’s honestly hard to get people to come to those. They tend to be a little skeptical about the whole process. And I understand that. And then if that doesn’t work, there’s lost time, there’s lost money, there’s lost effort. So, they are a bit of a challenge. And of course, then you overlay COVID with all of this, and, you know, I have not done focus groups in person since a few weeks before the pandemic hit. One way we replaced them is with what we call in-depth interviews, where we just speak one-on-one with folks for, you know, usually 20 to 30 minutes and have a series of questions that we ask them. And that gives us that same qualitative data still getting to hear people react to things and share things in their own words.

Lynda Woolard 20:13
Well, and I guess you really couldn’t do focus groups in a rural area because you’re not going to have the kind of facility you would need to do a focus group. So, you’re really kind of having to either get people to travel to where you’re hosting the event, or you’re only using people within the area where you can find that kind of facility.

Jennifer Johnson 20:33
Yeah, they can be done. And you know, I don’t know this, but I would certainly think that the presidential campaigns are doing that kind of thing. A lot of the states that are more rural, some of the suburban and urban focus group facilities have an arrangement with a town bank or community center or somewhere where they do remote focus groups. They’ll send out their folks. They don’t necessarily have the room with the mirror, but they’ll set up a closed-circuit cameras situation. And so, it can be done. And of course, if you offer people enough money, they will travel quite far to participate. But I mean, you can get up to where a single focus group costs $15,000, $18,000. And if you need to do that, it could be money very well spent, but sometimes that’s a heck of a poll for that kind of money.

Lynda Woolard 21:33
Okay, okay. So who uses focus groups the most? What are they most effective for?

Jennifer Johnson 21:39
Yeah, really, a congressional race, I think, or higher up the ballot. And I would say also, maybe a mayor or something of that nature.

Lynda Woolard 22:58
So, how does misinformation and disinformation affect your work? I’m thinking specifically about how Fox News impacts the way people think or about how Facebook is a big spreader of misinformation, and actually, you know, Facebook gets better engagement from false information. That’s more lucrative to them. So, I’m just wondering how that comes back in polling or your conversations with people?

Jennifer Johnson 23:28
Yeah. So, misinformation and disinformation is interesting because my job is to gauge what people think and know or think they know. And it’s as valuable to know that they believe a piece of disinformation is true as it is to gauge their true and accurate opinion on all of the work.

Lynda Woolard 25:16
We’ve talked in the past about a lot of this disinformation starting around the time of the Obama campaign and those whispers that Obama’s a Muslim or even the birth certificate issue, you know, the birther stuff. That really has taken hold. And some of those people will never be moved from that. Is it just a matter of polling and finding what percent are never going to be moved from those rigid ideas? Or how do you handle it?

Jennifer Johnson 25:49
Yeah, I think that’s valuable information, right?

Lynda Woolard 28:50
Okay, so when you spoke at the women’s conference, you gave a data point that has stuck with me ever since that only 17% of registered Democrats statewide identify as liberal.

Jennifer Johnson 29:33
Sure. So that, as you said, when we started was in 2015, which is a while ago, and so I haven’t done a statewide poll Louisiana super recently.

Lynda Woolard 33:29
It’s really good data. And I think it’s really important as we do our organizing work to think about those numbers.

Jennifer Johnson 33:50
Absolutely.

Lynda Woolard 33:50
I would not have guessed there were liberal Republicans.

Jennifer Johnson 33:55
Yeah, 5%. So, you know.

Lynda Woolard 33:58
Small number, but that’s fascinating.

Lynda Woolard 34:51
What role does religion play in the state demographics?

Jennifer Johnson 34:51
Yeah, I think it ties into the data that we were just talking about in part.

Lynda Woolard 36:51
So, a lot has been made about Democratic registration numbers going down.

Jennifer Johnson 37:04
I think that’s part of it.

Lynda Woolard 37:52
Okay. And I imagine jungle primaries are rough on pollsters.

Jennifer Johnson 38:04
It’s really hard because what we need to do is take a snapshot of what election day is going to look like.

Lynda Woolard 39:18
And that can make for a pretty long poll?

Jennifer Johnson 39:21
Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because that $5,000 poll that I mentioned for a candidate kind of as a threshold, if you have to spend three minutes of it just reading the names of the candidates running for office, it’s going to take away from our ability to test messages and ask demographic questions.

Lynda Woolard 40:00
You get your data through phone banking, correct?

Jennifer Johnson 40:04
Yes.

Lynda Woolard 40:13
And these are paid phone bankers, right?

Jennifer Johnson 40:16
Yeah.

Lynda Woolard 40:23
And what are some of the skill sets that you look for when you’re hiring a phone banker?

Jennifer Johnson 40:28
Yeah, so we actually have a phone bank that we use, so I don’t hire the actual individual callers.

Lynda Woolard 42:00
Typically, how many times would they have to call a voter back to actually get them on the phone?

Jennifer Johnson 42:06
Yeah, so that’s another thing that they’re extremely talented at.

Lynda Woolard 42:56
Oh, wow.

Jennifer Johnson 42:57
I have asked other pollsters if their phone banks had this happen.

Lynda Woolard 43:37
So some things that campaigns talk about with polls.

Jennifer Johnson 43:49
Yeah.

Lynda Woolard 44:33
Wow. And just to clarify, you say auto-dial, but it’s still a live person.

Jennifer Johnson 44:38
It’s still a human.

Lynda Woolard 44:56
Well, look, for those of us who phonebank for campaigns, we do know the difference.

Jennifer Johnson 45:17
We don’t really have a major issue with that.

Lynda Woolard 46:07
Do you try because you assume or data predicts that more older voters will vote in an election, so do you try to call more older voters? Or how do you handle that?

Jennifer Johnson 46:20
Yeah, let me back up a step because I think that’ll help answer this question and just give people a little more insight in general.

Lynda Woolard 47:58
Okay. And you mentioned weighting polls, and I’ve certainly heard campaigns talk a lot about that, where they’re, oh, well, that poll is not weighted.

Jennifer Johnson 48:08
Thinking back to what I was just talking about, we have a sense of what we expect the age, and race, and gender distribution to be?

Lynda Woolard 49:38
There’s a big debate on whether Democrats should focus on voter registration and turning out low propensity voters or should spend time trying to persuade rural white voters.

Jennifer Johnson 50:01
I would say that it will be very challenging in the short term to bring rural white Democrats back to the party.

Lynda Woolard 51:13
So for local candidates, the answer is it matters where you are.

Jennifer Johnson 52:39
Yeah, absolutely.

Lynda Woolard 54:21
And those of us who know how well field works, the direct voter contact through door knocks, phone calls, texts, etc.

Jennifer Johnson 54:53
Not even, shouldn’t even take up your polling budget, which would be 10% of your full budget.

Lynda Woolard 55:26
Which would be a lot cheaper than–

Jennifer Johnson 55:28
A lot cheaper, a lot less stressful on you and your family and your friends.

Lynda Woolard 55:40
And Jennifer, are there a lot of women in your field?

Jennifer Johnson 55:44
There are not a whole lot.

Lynda Woolard 56:15
What, what does it take to get more women in these spots?

Jennifer Johnson 56:19
I wish I knew.

Lynda Woolard 57:54
I love that story.

Lynda Woolard 58:55
What do you think is the biggest opportunity for Louisiana progressives?

Jennifer Johnson 59:00
Well, certainly none of us are in any way happy with what has happened in the world and the challenges that people have faced.

Lynda Woolard 1:00:40
People may actually be excited to get canvassers knocking on their doors.

Jennifer Johnson 1:00:45
Yeah or just go to a community meeting and hear about what this local, you know, their local Democrats are doing.

Lynda Woolard 1:01:18
Very good.

Lynda Woolard 1:01:39
Do you have a favorite superhero?

Jennifer Johnson 1:01:59
I mean, I was a huge Wonder Woman fan as a child.

Lynda Woolard 1:02:08
How would people connect to you if they wanted to connect to your work?

Jennifer Johnson 1:02:33
So, I’ll post it in the podcast notes, but what’s the website?

Jennifer Johnson 1:02:38
www.ljrcustomstrategies.com

Lynda Woolard 1:02:44
Very good.

Jennifer Johnson 1:03:04
Thank you for asking me. It’s been my pleasure.

Lynda Woolard 1:03:07
Thank you for listening to Louisiana Lefty. Please subscribe to our podcast and then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can connect with Jennifer Johnson’s work by visiting ljrcustomstrategies.com. Thanks to Ben Collinsworth for producing Louisiana Lefty, Jennifer Pack of Black Cat studios for our Super Lefty artwork, and Thousand $ Car for allowing us to use their Swamp Pop classic “Security Guard” as our Louisiana Lefty theme song