A New Technology to Understand Voters

We set out with a goal to better understand what voters were thinking about the 2016 election. We wanted to have a conversation and not just look at survey data or analyze trending hashtags.

So that’s exactly what we did.

On the night of the January 17th democratic debate, we used Remesh to have a conversation with ~50 likely voters. The results were fascinating.

To view the full conversation, click here.

Who Participated?

The ~50 participants were comprised of mostly Democrats (68%) and Independents (27%) with just a few Republicans (5%). Candidate preferences for the democratic primary were split between Hillary Clinton (41%), Bernie Sanders (29%) and un-decided voters (35%).

A full breakdown of participants demographics can be seen here:

Interpreting The Results

While there is a stack of machine learning algorithms running under Remesh’s hood, understanding the results are easy.

For every question we asked during the conversation, Remesh gave us a list of possible answers ranked by how popular they are with the participants. Beyond the popularity score, we also got a consensus score which tells us how much the group agrees on the popularity score. Both scores are on a scale from zero (low) to 100 (high).

Note: If you imagined the distribution of the participants’ opinions as a bell curve, then popularity is like the mean and consensus is like the standard deviation.

Results

To start, here are a few high-level results, where the top answer did a good job of representing the entire group (popularity > 75, consensus  > 50).

Digging Deeper

Demographic filtering lets us take a single question and look at which answers are most popular for different segments of participants — such as Bernie supporters vs Hillary supports. 

In these answers, we found that voters main priorities are the economy, healthcare, and infrastructure. However, filtering the data based on who people plan on voting for surfaced further insights.

Hilary vs. Bernie
The most popular responses for Hillary supporters in response to "What do you think should be the top priority for the next president?" were infrastructure — including cyber security — and the economy.

The most popular responses for Bernie supporters for the same question were affordable healthcare and the environment.

Infrastructure was a shared theme between both groups.

The most popular response for undecided voters in response to that question was the economy. This issue was their top priority with extremely high consensus.

This indicates that nearly all undecided voters agreed that the economy was the highest priority.

Opinions on Issues of Race
Overall, there was a theme of finding ways to move towards economic and social equality. But digging deeper revealed a stark contrast between what Caucasian and African-American participants thought.

Most popular responses for Caucasian voters in response to "What steps should be taken to move us towards a more racially tolerant country?" involved making changes to the media and criminal justice system.

This implies that Caucasian voters think the system needs to change in order to end racism.

Most popular responses for African-American voters in response to this question involved changing what we talk about, and what we teach our kids. This implies African-American voters think that personal behaviors need to change in order to end racism.
 

Generational Segmentation
There was a wide range of answers and opinions about how America should deal with terrorism ranging from withdrawing from the Middle East to tackling economic issues. Strong differences of opinion were found among participants from different age groups.

The most popular responses among the youngest participants, age 18–24, implied they believe using diplomacy and withdrawing from the Middle East while maintaining military strength were the keys to dealing with terrorism.

Young adults, age 25–34, instead saw poverty and economic disparity as the root cause of terrorism. However, the second most popular response — collaboration with other countries is needed — shows a desire for diplomatic solutions.

Top responses from adults, age 35–49, indicate a belief that fast and decisive decisions which make use of our intelligence were the key to tackling terrorism. Perhaps, suggesting a desire for strong executive leadership.

Senior adults, age 50+, shared the view with young voters that diplomacy and military strength are key to tackling terrorism, though differed in their prioritizing of decisiveness, and the use of intelligence.

Want more?

• Click here to interact with the results from all 31 questions from this conversation.
  
  

Remesh’s interactive data dashboard was used to surface the insights presented in this conversation. Want to see it in action yourself? Give us a holler!