Political campaigns have a nasty tendency to profile voters. Live in a rural coal town serviced by a Walmart, and you’re a Republican. If it’s a woodsy suburb with a Target megastore, you’re a Democrat.
But now pollster John Zogby, who long ago found innovative ways to look at voter and consumer groups beyond old labels and stereotypes, has come up with a new filter that is already being adopted by companies and campaigns eager to expand their message.
He calls it “tribal analytics,” and in a new book details the differences between American tribes and areas where they make “tribal border crossings” that can be valuable for politicians.
In We Are Many, We Are One: Neo-Tribes and Tribal Analytics in 21st Century America, Zogby says that America is no longer divided along racial, religious or ethnic lines, but instead can be grouped based on their values attributes.
Consider former President Bill Clinton, impeached for lying about having sex in the Oval Office with an intern, but also a Bible-quoting Southern churchgoer. Zogby says Clinton shows how hard it is to compartmentalize people, and he would make the ex-president a crossover between two of his new categories, “Happy Hedonist” and “God Squad.”
Quoting Dick Morris, Zogby tells Secrets that the one-time Clinton pollster “once wrote about ‘Saturday night Bill, and Sunday morning Bill.’ So ‘Happy Hedonists’ are Saturday night Bill, and ‘God Squad’ are Sunday morning Bill. It’s so vital that we not pigeonhole people into narrow little egg cartons, narrow little sections. They are much more multi-dimensional.”
His book includes 11 different categories and was researched over several years with the help of his sons, also in the analytics business. What was new was instead of just asking polling questions, he allowed some 8,000 to pick which tribes they think they affiliate with and what drives their membership.
For each of the 11 groups, Zogby details their politics, habits, world outlook and even favored places to shop that will help campaigns craft a message that has crossover appeal.
“You shouldn’t always go for the easier slot and assume, for example, ‘This is what blacks think,'” says Zogby.
“It is no longer about where people are born or where they live. It is more about who they are, how they see themselves, and with whom they choose to identify,” he writes in his book.
For Zogby, who co-authors the weekly Obama report card for the online Washington Secrets, the book is his latest bid to help campaigns and companies figure out what America is.
“Personally, I like being a thought leader. It’s something I’ve aspired to for almost two decades,” he says. “I always knew that you could only carry accuracy and polling so far. I wanted to be the guy who made sense out of the numbers and defined who we are because I think there’s a hunger for that.
“But, also I want to enable to fellow professionals to look at the right things.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
