Tom Bonier: Deciphering Voter Data, Pt. 1

Sea Change Radio

There’s a lot riding on the upcoming presidential election: reproductive freedom, climate change, healthcare, Supreme Court appointments, just to name a few. But no matter what issue is at the top of your list, the decision that Americans will be making over the next six weeks will have a lasting effect for decades to come. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Democratic strategist and data analyst Tom Bonier about the presidential election. In the first half of our two-part discussion, we look beyond the polls, as Bonier explains other elements that measure voter intensity, examine the lingering impact of the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and dig into voter registration data in key states like Pennsylvania and Florida.

Narrator| 00:02 – This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I’m Alex Wise.

Tom Bonier (TB) | 00:17 – In any given moment, most Americans aren’t worried about their right to an abortion, but if you ask them what question is a deal breaker for them, that’s just not negotiable. It’s number one by far.

Narrator | 00:32 – There’s a lot riding on the upcoming presidential election: reproductive freedom, climate change, healthcare, Supreme Court appointments, just to name a few. But no matter what issue is at the top of your list, the decision that Americans will be making over the next six weeks will have a lasting effect for decades to come. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Democratic strategist and data analyst Tom Bonier about the presidential election. In the first half of our two-part discussion, we look beyond the polls, as Bonier explains other elements that measure voter intensity, examine the lingering impact of the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and dig into voter registration data in key states like Pennsylvania and Florida.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:33 – I’m joined now on Sea Change Radio by Tom Bonier. Tom is a democratic strategist and data analyst, and he’s with the Tara Group and TargetSmart. Tom, welcome to Sea Change. Radio,

Tom Bonier (TB) | 01:46 – It’s great to be here.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:47 – I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time. I’ve followed your work for many years. I know that being liberal in 2024 means constantly being afraid, but I find your words to be reassuring in these very murky times. The data that you work with is pointing in encouraging ways for you. Why can that dispel some of the fears that so many liberals are feeling since 2016, really…

Tom Bonier (TB) | 02:15 – Yeah. And, and, and I’ll include myself in the we all of that. I think if, if you don’t have some amount of fear, uh, given the stakes, you probably aren’t paying close enough attention. But as you said, for me, I find solace in data and that goes above and beyond polling. I think most people focus on polling, and as we know, polling, is not always the most reliable indicator of which way the political winds might be blowing. And so what I tend to focus on is more individual level data that focuses on actions people are taking. So that’s generally new voter registrations. It’s election result, in the lead up to an election that might be primary election results. It could be special elections. And then, you know, the other sort of campaign-related information, how they’re raising money. The numbers of activists and volunteers we’re just looking for signs of energy and enthusiasm. We know that the one big part of the equation, of determining who’s likely to win an election, is turnout to state the obvious. It’s turnout and persuasion polls give us a pretty good sense of persuasion and all of that other data gives us a much clearer sense of engagement and turnout.

AW | 03:32 – But as you’ve said, polls don’t tell us who’s going to vote, and you call it measures of intensity. Why don’t you spell that out for our listeners if you can.

TB | 03:42 – Yeah, and so to even just to drill down on that point, that polls don’t tell us, uh, who’s going to vote. We’re in this period in the election where almost every poll is applying what they call a likely voter screen or a likely voter model. And really all that is, is the pollster’s best estimate. I was going to say guess, but I’ll be charitable and say estimate of what the electorate’s going to look like. And that’s really hard, uh, to get right, because you have to really nail the turnout in terms of women versus men, older versus younger by race, ethnicity, party, uh, ID ideology. There’s a lot of things you have to get right? It’s hard. And so what’s the best place to look for that? Well, it’s, it’s data that frankly, the pollsters don’t have access to. And so, um, you know, again, that’s where it gets to the sort of individual actions that people are taking – whether it’s voting, registering to vote, going out and working for a campaign donating. And so, you know, especially in, in the context of this year and in the 2022 elections, we’ve had some analysis that’s been a bit against the grain. And the reason is because we’ve been looking at data that others haven’t been. And in this case in this year, it’s just seeing voter registration numbers that frankly paint a more positive picture for Democrats than the polls do.

AW | 05:10 – And that goes back to your work in 2022 as well, where so many were calling for a red wave and your data didn’t point to that. Why don’t you unpack that if you can?

TB | 05:20 – Yeah. So, you know, you think about that election, one of the things that’s, this is not revolutionary, but um, when we look at any election, we want to view it in the context of prior elections, knowing that there’s no perfect parallel. No two elections are exactly alike, but they establish sort of boundaries, uh, that you can plot any given election or the data you’re seeing within those boundaries. And so we had two red wave elections not long before 2010 and 2014 as midterm red wave elections where Republicans did very well. We know what they look like, we see what voter registration looks like, we see what turnout looks like in special elections in primaries. So you’re right, while the polling, to some extent was suggesting a red wave election, certainly almost universally the punditry was, was predicting a red wave election.

AW | 06:11 – Because that was just what everyone expected happens then every time there’s a midterm.

TB | 06:17 – Exactly.

AW | 06:18 – It’s the party that’s not in power gets to just whip everybody’s butt.

TB | 06:22 – Exactly. Yeah. They use the term, a lot of these media, political data analysts use the term fundamentals as sort of a catchall, nebulous notion that can throw in anything that they think probably is impactful. And, and so yeah, to your point in this case it was, well, historically the party who’s not in the White House just does really well in those midterm elections. So they said, well, of course it’s going to happen. Because it always happens. And we looked at the data and we said, well, look, Democrats are out registering Republicans. And this was, this was all post dos, right? I mean, in my mind.

AW | 06:59 – When was that? Like May of 2022?

TB | 07:01 – It was leaked in May, uh, and then it actually was handed down June 24th, 2022.

AW | 07:07 – And, and what, what were you seeing in trend wise from the registration state by state that really kind of stood out to you, Tom?

TB | 07:15 – Well, what stood out to me was primarily gender gaps, gender and age. And there really was this sort of pre and post Dobbs moment in politics. So we were still very much in that. I think a lot of folks haven’t internalized yet, which is, uh, everything changed. Everything changed, and you saw it in the data. Best example I can give you, the first test of the post Dobbs landscape was a primary election they had in Kansas, or it was on the August ballot. So time, not many people are going to vote, right? Um, it was sort of handpicked by anti-abortion rights, uh, forces to be favorable to them, uh, to put this constitutional amendment on the ballot to remove abortion rights protections from the Kansas constitution. And we looked at the voter registration data between Dobbs and their voter registration deadline. So it’s three week period, and we found that 70% of the new registrants were women. That to me, was the first and clearest possible sign that the landscape had absolutely changed, number one. And then number two to your broader question, that this is not what a red wave election looks like. You don’t see 70% of new registrants. It’s really weird to see, uh, the gender gaps and new voter registrations be much above 52 or 53% one way or another. When you see it, 70%, it tells you this is different. We don’t have a precedent for this, but if you’re expecting a red wave election, you’re almost certainly going to be wrong.

AW | 08:50 – Now, let’s fast forward to 2024 when we’re not seeing that same kind of outlier from historical patterns. In terms of voter registration, there’s enthusiasm and the Democrats have been registering more voters than Republicans, but there are, uh, abortion is on some very important swing state ballots as well, namely Florida and Arizona. And we don’t really know how that’s going to affect the race for the White House. But those people who registered in 2022 are probably going to vote again. One could assume correct.

TB | 09:27 – Yes. The only reason I hesitate on that, because historically the best predictor of someone voting is them having voted before. And if you voted in a lower turnout election, you are almost certain to vote in a subsequent higher turnout election. So the midterm elections in 2022 are lower turnout than the presidential, uh, elections, which are really the peak of the turnout cycle. The only reason I hesitate is because that same example I mentioned in Kansas, we saw this surge of women registering to vote, especially younger women, like women under the age of 25. They actually voted in that August election at a really unreal turnout rate, that a higher turnout rate than all men, regardless of age in Kansas, that hasn’t happened before. Probably won’t happen again. But many of them actually didn’t come back out in November for the November election because abortion wasn’t on the ballot and because there they weren’t, and this is my sense of this, that the campaigns and Democrats in general weren’t able to draw a connection between how would be, how would a vote in this governor’s race have any impact on abortion rights? They’d already voted on it. And so I think until Vice President Harris took over at the top of the ticket this year, I think you were seeing some of that effect still kind of lingering for Democrats because we actually saw lower registration and intensity numbers among these same groups up until July 21st when the candidate change happened. So, you know, up to that point I look at and say, well, sure, the states that you mentioned, Florida and Arizona, I would expect to see much higher turnout from Democrats in general, especially from women and younger women. But in other states, question is, will they draw that connection? But what we’re seeing in the data now suggests that there’s sort of just this national organic across the board intensity and enthusiasm connected to Vice President Harris’s candidacy that I believe is an extension of this Dobbs effect. It’s people now drawing the connection project 2025 is likely a big part of that too, the Republican plan that would implement a national federal abortion ban. But there’s a lot going on in this, for sure.

(Music Break) | 11:53

AW | 12:51 – This is Alex Wise on Sea Change Radio, and I’m speaking to democratic strategist Tom Bonier. And we saw in the debate, Tom, when Kamala Harris really turned the entire momentum of that contest was when she started speaking about abortion. She spoke from the heart, she used concrete examples, and I just read that approximately a third of women in this country have had an abortion. And that’s not an insignificant number, especially when you consider that if you’re the mother of somebody, you might not have had that abortion, but your daughter had that abortion. You want her to be safe. So there’s a huge percentage of people who are directly affected by this issue. So how does that play into your measures of intensity? That’s a tough thing to kind of derive. We have ground game, we have campaigning, you have all these other things that are not part of the polls, but how do you put them into your methodology?

TB | 13:47 -First of all, you’re right. In watching the debate, I certainly agree where there was, it was early on in the debate and was very much a turning point because at that, up to that point, the vice president seemed a little bit, almost too rehearsed and was seemingly reciting talking points. And then to have that opportunity very early on to do what we haven’t seen anyone really do yet, which is confront the architect of the Dobbs decision to his face and to, and to confront him with the reality, because he has been trying very actively to sell this idea that Dobbs was actually a good thing and that people like it.

AW | 14:24 – Everybody wanted it, he said .

TB | 14:25 – Yeah, , that’s right, that I’m just going to let the states decide. And not dealing with the reality that, you know, we have a very undemocratic process and most states don’t actually have the ability for voters to decide because they don’t have ballot initiatives. And even those that do, it’s not always easy to qualify. And Republicans are trying to block it in those states as well. And so to see her confront him in a way that hasn’t been done before, you know, we actually saw this in the data where we have a, a system that, uh, people are probably familiar with websites like vote.org, that people can go to check their voter registration or actually register to vote that website and many others hit our database. And so we can see if there’s an interest spiking in people registering to vote in real time. And we saw that right in that point in the debate and then moving forward.

AW | 15:20 – And I imagine afterwards when Taylor Swift used that link as well.

TB | 15:25 – That was the big spike . I mean the, the, the first spike in the debate was, was big. The Taylor Swift spike was even bigger. Uh, yeah, absolutely. And so, yeah, to me that reinforces the notion that what we have been seeing, that the increases in voter registration that we have been seeing primarily among, or, or at least overwhelmingly among women, younger voters and voters of color, that it is very much connected to. Look, it’s complex and voters hold many issues in their hearts and minds at one time, but that abortion rights is leading the way for many people. As you said that it’s something that, look, this is a, a rabbit hole we don’t need to go down to, but just very quickly, there’s been a lot of bad polling on this issue in 2022. There’s this polling where you ask people, it’s my least favorite question in polls, they’ll ask you, what is your most important issue to your vote? And they said, well, look, people care more about inflation and the economy than they do about abortion rights. Well, it’s just a bad question. In any given moment, most Americans aren’t worried about their right to an abortion, but if you ask them what question is a deal-breaker for them, that’s just not negotiable. It’s number one by far. Uh, and that’s what we were seeing in that data. I think that’s one of the reasons you saw this increase of, of interest during and after the debate. And I think that’s going to just grow and continue through election day, not just in those states that you mentioned with the ballot initiatives, but across the country, one of the biggest, uh, increases in registration we saw in looking around the country was in Louisiana, just by no means a competitive state, but it’s a state that has been hit incredibly hard by the Dobbs decision. Anyone residing in that state who is seeking to get any level of abortion related care would have to travel hundreds of miles, several hundred miles to get that care. So it’s not a surprise to see people reacting as such, even in these deep red states.

AW | 17:30 – And, and I agree that data that about a abortion, where does it rank on your list of priorities? Uh, I have an unscientific theory on why they might ask that. If you do door to door canvassing, one of the first things you do is you’re trying to warm up the person you’re talking to, and you say you want to listen. So you say, what, what’s important to you? You know, you try to That’s right. Let them be in control of the conversation. So that’s a canvasser who’s trying to influence your opinion and warm up to, but a pollster has to do the same thing if they want a recipient to cooperate with them. Does that make sense?

TB | 18:06 – No, that absolutely does make sense. And I had the opportunity to sit on a discussion panel at the Reproductive Freedom for All Conference, a few days ago. And, and I sat with two genius women pollsters, who have done a lot of great work on this. One of them is the one who raised the notion that I mentioned a moment ago in terms of, in terms of abortion rights being a, a deal breaker and asking it that way. The other, uh, pollster mentioned a really interesting framework, that I had not heard before, which is if you asked women specifically what was the most important issue for them, they would answer it the same way that you just said it. It’s like, just sort of a warmup. And you’re gonna, if you ask if money is important to you, people are going to say, yes, money is important to them. Uh, but if you reframe the question and said, what issue do you think is most important to women? Bri large, it was by far the number one issue because there’s this sense of association and something bigger there and looking out for others, and that maybe that individual personally is not immediately that moment worried, or it’s not their top number one issue that they’re thinking about this afternoon. How can I get an abortion? But when you talk about women in general, yeah, it’s number one.

AW | 19:23 – And I think the media tends to put that issue into a little box, which is unfortunate. I think Tim Walz has been very effective making this a more universal issue. Men are affected by abortion rights as well, and we care about personal freedom, and we care about the opposite sex, or we should care about the opposite sex just as much as our own. So it’s, it’s silly in a lot of ways that we push men out of the equation when it comes to this issue.

TB | 19:53 -There are so many different ways that voters approach this issue, which is I think why you’ve seen such a strong reaction going back to that Kansas election as the first post Dobbs, uh, ballot initiative or constitutional amendment vote. What I was struck by among, you know, many things in the data was that we estimate that about 30% of registered Republicans in Kansas voted against the amendment. Well, the no vote was the pro-abortion rights position. And, to me, that reinforces your point, that there are so many, it, for many, it’s just an issue of personal freedom and discomfort with the federal government coming in and this case, the Supreme Court coming in and taking away a freedom that has existed for half a century at that point.

AW | 20:41 – And it exists in almost every other country.

TB | 20:44 – Absolutely. It is an economic issue. It’s an issue that resonates with many people in many different ways. And that’s why, you know, again, in Florida, which has become in some ways more challenging for Democrats in recent election cycles, um, it’s the reason why the, the Abortion Rights amendment there, the pro-abortion rights position is expected to clear well over 60% of the vote. So the same theory playing out in different ways. We’re seeing all of the data pointed in one direction since the Dobbs decision.

AW | 21:23 – And speaking of Florida, there’s also this cannabis legalization amendment on the ballot in Florida as well, and those are deep pocketed interests. Do you think that could account for a a percent or two in not aligning with what the polling data shows there, which is a lean to the red? I think Florida’s much more of a tossup than the polling indicates.

TB | 21:47 – I agree. I couldn’t agree more. We saw this exact ballot combination last year in Ohio where they had an abortion rights amendment and a cannabis legalization, and actually the cannabis amendment outperformed in actual votes. The abortion Rights Amendment, it was by less than a percent, it was a fraction of a percent, but it actually ran slightly ahead. You get, you know, one group that has become slightly more problematic for Democrats, uh, in, in the last three to four years is younger white men. And the cannabis issue is one where, um, you know, they’re very much aligned with Democrats on that position. And I, you know, it, it, it’s not the most partisan issue. You’ve seen Donald Trump try to hedge his bets on that and say he supports it just like he did with the Abortion Rights Amendment, where originally he said he would be voting one way in Florida, and then he changed his mind a few days later and said he’d be voting the other way. But I do believe that particular combination of amendments being on the ballot is about as powerful as you can get in terms of reshaping the electorate in unexpected ways.

(Music Break) | 23:52

AW | 24:13 – This is Alex Wise on Seat Change Radio, and I’m speaking to Democratic strategist Tom Bonier. Tom, maybe you can decipher for me a piece that I saw on CNN Harry Enten was doing this piece about voter registration in Pennsylvania, and the math didn’t add up to me. I’m not a data scientist. You are. He was explaining how Democrats are not piling on the new voter registration the way they had been in 2020. There was a positive 500,000 or so Democratic Edge in 2020, and now it was like 128,000. If my memory serves me correct. Republicans have made up huge ground, is what he was saying, but there was a lot more to that story, I think. And was he pushing the horse race of all of this? What have you seen in Pennsylvania in terms of voter registration and why was that CNN piece deceptive?

TB | 25:05 – Yeah, and he certainly was pushing the horse race, and he’s not alone. There are a lot of people that have been sharing this analysis, and it’s not just in Pennsylvania. People have been talking out in North Carolina, Florida elsewhere, and it’s based on a deeply flawed analysis. The simplest way I can put it, and then I’ll explain a little bit more length, is they’re missing the unaffiliated voters, uh, in this analysis. And here’s the, the, the, the, the simple way that describe the trend. We’ve seen what has happened to the Republican party under Donald Trump. It has become this cult of personality. And so if you are a Trump supporter, you are going to register as a Republican, period. It’s a loyalty thing. Whereas on the Democratic side, there’s not that same sort of notion. It doesn’t mean that they’re less loyal or less avid supporters of the top of the ticket. But when you look at Gen Z, especially, so the youngest chunk of the electorate.

AW | 26:07 – That’s age 18 to 30?

TB | 26:08 – Yeah. About that.

AW | 26:10 – They like to think of themselves as much more open-minded.

TB | 26:12 – Yes, open-minded, independent in a lot of ways. They are. And what we’ve seen is when you look, when you ask them the question, uh, with which party do you identify Democrat or Republican, they overwhelmingly say, independent. We’re independent. But when you look at how they vote, they overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates. And you know, I think every generation you have that to some extent. You just have that more with Gen Z. And so what’s being framed as a great increase in Republican registrations isn’t, I actually just looked at this just before our conversation. Uh, I looked at this in North Carolina because someone had mentioned this and said, well, Republicans are really gaining in registrations over the last four years. Well, four years ago in North Carolina, Republicans were 30% of all registered voters. Now they’re 29.8% . So they actually haven’t came, they’ve dropped a little bit. Why have they dropped? Because there’s just this increase of unaffiliated voters, or e each state calls it something different. Uh, but it’s those who are not affiliating with any party. So, you know, look, that would be very bad news for Democrats if those unaffiliated voters weren’t also voting overwhelmingly democratic. But they are. Certainly, that could change at any point, but it’s really a misleading statistic. It’s disappointing and frustrating to me that those in the media, you know, Harry Enten’s a smart guy, uh, and he knows data as well as anyone. I have to believe that he has some sense of what he’s doing here. But, but again, a lot of times in the mainstream media, we see this, this sort of tendency to try to, uh, push things back to the middle. And, you know, you want people to believe that it’s a 50/50 coin toss in any presidential race. And that’s certainly what we’re seeing now.

Narrator | 27:58 – Tune in next week to the second half of our discussion with Tom Bonier.

Narrator | 28:17 – You’ve been listening to Sea Change Radio. Our intro music is by Sanford Lewis, and our outro music is by Alex Wise. Additional music by Lettuce, Bob Marley and The Whalers and Eric Clapton. To read a transcript of this show, go to Sea Change Radio dot com stream, or download the show, or subscribe to our podcast on our site, or visit our archives to hear from Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gavin Newsom, Stewart Brand, and many others, and tune in to see Change Radio next week as we continue making connections for sustainability. For Sea Change Radio, I’m Alex Wise.