We're back with another round of Echo projects. This is a dynamic product that can go into the field for a national project talking to Trump voters across the country the same day it digs deep into a Governor's race in Wisconsin.
That flexibility is the whole idea. Write a script in the morning, read answers that afternoon. A newsroom can source real people in volume inside a deadline. A campaign can find out how an ad landed while there's still time to pull it. An advocacy group can take the temperature of a district the week a bill moves. And because the moderators are AI driven, running a dozen at once takes no more effort than running one.
Trump voters, 25 states, in their own words
We wanted to hear from Republican men who voted for Trump, and not a handful of them in one metro area. We fielded in two waves, a national list in mid September and a Michigan list the following week, with the same five questions both times.
Ninety men who told us they'd voted for Trump answered, spread across 25 states. All 90 graded his performance, 82 went on to the economy question, 69 to the midterms, and 61 to where they get their news.
They didn't agree. Supporters pointed to the border, deportations, and America First, and several called him the best president of their lifetime. A large middle still prefers him to the alternative but is tired of the rhetoric and the personal fights. A third group used almost the same language about broken promises, and nearly all of them dated the shift to the Iran war.
Prices were the exception. Every camp raised groceries, gas, and housing, including the men who'd just finished saying he's doing a phenomenal job. They want costs handled first.
Check out the feature of our research in Bloomberg!
Wisconsin, overnight
Wisconsin was a different ask. One state, one race, fast. We ran six questions on the governor's race between David Crowley and Tom Tiffany, including one about the data centers being debated in communities around the state.
115 people gave substantive answers and 82 went through all six questions, a 71 percent completion rate on a six question battery. That's our highest of the cycle, and the field was essentially finished inside a day.
The data center question turned out to be the interesting one. Forty six of the 82 said the community affected should be the one to decide, and we heard it from people leaning both ways. Nobody credited either campaign with the position. One respondent said flat out that neither candidate was offering it. Trump wasn't in the script anywhere either, and 38 people brought him up anyway.
Why it works
The follow ups key off what each person actually said instead of a fixed branch, so the conversation goes where the respondent takes it. And we're not limited to whoever can give up a Tuesday night and drive to a facility. Respondents match back to the voter file, so we know who answered without having to ask them.
The conversational format also turns up things a questionnaire wouldn't. In the project featured in Bloomberg , about half the men who reached the last question said they'd be open to talking with a reporter, most of them asking to be texted first.
The same deliverables, every time
Like every Echo project, both of these shipped with a one page summary, a deep dive memo, a full verbatim spreadsheet, and response maps.
Want your own Echo project?
We're deploying new projects every day, from testing creative to getting a read on a race that moved overnight. If you'd like to field your own, we'd love to talk.
Reach out anytime at ken@pantheoninsight.com.
Click here to download the Nationwide One-Pager
Click here to download the Nationwide Memo