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Reaching out to Poli-fluentials

Thu, October 18th, 2007 by Susan Berger | 1 comment

The other day I went to the unveiling of a new study on “Poli-Fluentials”, conducted by IPDI (the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet) at GW University. The goal is to identify “The New Political Kingmakers” (that’s the subtitle of the report) and provide insight as to how to find them to ask for their help in influencing elections. 720 Strategies is a co-sponsor of the study, as we’re always looking for better ways to help our clients find and mobilize supporters.

The survey was sent to registered voters, and those that were returned are more likely to be people interested in politics than not. Many of the demographic characteristics of the respondents still need to be analyzed. But even so, some interesting findings came out of the study.

The main part of the survey was intended to identify people in the sample who are “Poli-Fluentials”, that is both “politicals,” meaning active in election politics, and also “influentials,” specifically those active in various activities associated with issue advocacy. Of the respondents, 20% were declared “Poli-Fluential”, although that is likely much higher than in the general public.

More interesting are some of the characteristics. Because of the non-representative sample I won’t quote percentages here, but some of the hypotheses could be food for thought in our work. Poli-Fluentials are in every age group, but at least in this sample were more likely to be 46 to 65. They tend to be highly educated and affluent (and yes, these two things are logically correlated with each other.)  They also tend to be early technology adopters. Again, no surprises there.

Another part of the study, conducted by FAS Research, made other types of distinctions.  First, FAS Research defines “Hubs” – those who have political networks of 30 or more people. Poli-Fluentials tend to be Hubs more often than others. Makes sense. But the next part is interesting. Poli-Fluential Hubs are most likely to have most or all of their political network in a homogenous community of like-minded and highly partisan people. So they tend to be what are called “Community Hubs.”

Generally speaking, influencing Poli-Fluentials accomplishes the goal of mobilizing a particular group. But since they tend to be highly partisan, either they would be natural supporters, in which case the Poli-Fluential is useful only to cement the group’s loyalty and support, or they would tend to be in opposition, in which case no member of the group is going to change their minds.

FAS points out that other people – politicals, influencials, and people who are neither are more likely to be “Bridging Hubs”, defined as people with a large but diverse network. In fact, these are the folks to whom we need to reach out to expand the universe of supporters for a particular candidate or cause. And these are the people we did not identify in this study.

Mobilizing natural supporters is what’s needed for our work in issue advocacy, where the primary goal is to help clients find and activate natural supporters of the cause or position.  In elections, though, the winning game is to influence the undecided. And Poli-Fluentials won’t help much here.

But if you want to go out looking for Poli-Fluentials, how do you find them? That was the most important question asked in the session. Initial demographic analysis showed no reliable way to do so. One of the panelists, Hal Malchow of MSHC Partners, observed that especially in the context of elections they tend to be early seekers of information.

This study has a lot of potential to help guide political outreach, and especially for the issue advocacy space where we spend much of our time. But much more needs to be done. And as co-sponsors of the study, we at 720 Strategies look forward to getting our copy of the base data to see what we can mine from it that’s even more relevant to our specific clients’ needs.

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