Intellicast S6E25 – The Intensity Factor with Jeremy Zogby of John Zogby Strategies

Welcome back to Intellicast! On today’s episode, we are joined by Jeremy Zogby, the managing partner of John Zogby Strategies to talk about the current state of America, polling, and we even get a sneak peek into some results from their own proprietary research.  Hang in there too, it is a long one, but an awesome one.

Kicking off the episode, Brian Lamar and Producer Brian get Jeremy’s take on the current state of America and what historical analogies may exist for our current times. Jeremy talks about how 10 to 15 years ago we saw the simultaneous rise of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street; two movements that could be considered on the far ends of each political spectrum. One led to the rise of Bernie Sanders and the other MAGA and Trump.  He discussed how we almost saw a face-off between the two populus factions of the parties. In the end, he shows how populism is here to stay.

This opening conversation leads to a question about whether we were on the same path around 2000 but got a national reset on divisiveness because of 9/11. This leads Jeremy to discuss the trends in the media and their impact on the political landscape.

We pivot a bit in the next segment and talk to Jeremy about what he is seeing right now in polling in terms of the presidential nomination on both sides. Jeremy starts out by letting everyone know that polling is not predicting anything at this point. The predictions really come in the last week of a presidential campaign after there have been months of monitoring the landscape and data collection; that is when they will make a prediction. Right now, it is way too early to predict anything. Instead of giving any predictions, Jeremy talks about how right now it is much more establishment versus anti-establishment on both sides, with anti-establishment leading in many cases.

Jeremy then gives us some insights into the types of polling work he is doing right now.  It includes the standard race studies, as well as work for some candidates, and some public opinion studies on some issues he feels will be factors in the 2024 election. Jeremy then gets into the different tiers of issues. Tier one is the economy/inflation, and tier 2 issues right now are guns, crime, and the southern border. This leads to Jeremy talking about the intensity factor of issues and how it can impact voting.

In the next segment, Jeremy gives the guys a preview into what the next 6 months look like at John Zogby Strategies in terms of polling and other projects. Jeremy talks about how they will be tracking the entire national election as they work for the Kennedy campaign.

The last discussion leads Jeremy to talk about some proprietary research findings he has collected, that at the time of the recording, had not been released yet. First up from the national survey of likely voters, Jeremy discusses results around the question asking respondents if national news reports the facts, leaving our important information, distorting the facts, or not sure. We talk about the results and how a majority either feel it distorts facts or leaves out important information. Similar results were found when talking about local news. The key takeaway Jeremy found was that there is a high level of distrust right now with the media. 

We pivot about and then talk about the findings from an AI question – Do you believe AI is generating the news online? Jeremy’s study found that a fifth of voters already believe that AI is generating a lot of the news with another 50% saying a little.

We then move on to feelings people have about their local community.  We start the discussion with the findings around how much faith respondents have in their county sheriff. Jeremy’s study found only 25% say they have a great deal. Producer Brian brought up an embarrassing fact that he couldn’t name his county sheriff. The results made both Brian Lamar and Producer Brian a bit sad because the results thus far showed how much distrust in institutions people have right now.

In the final segment, Jeremy tries to reinstall the guy’s faith with some additional findings that show people trust local government institutions, like school boards.  He also leaves the guys with some inspiration about our generation fixing the problems for our kids’ generation.

This episode flew by when we recorded it because it was so interesting – hopefully, it flew by for you too!

Thanks for tuning in!

You can connect with Jeremy on LinkedIn here.

You can also check out the John Zogby Strategies website here.

To listen to Jeremy’s podcast, The Zogby Report, click here.

Watch our most recent webinar, Dangers to Trackers in the Age of Aggregation, on demand here.

Download our new whitepaper, Strategic Sample Blending: The Premier Methodology for Tracking Studies! You can download your free copy here.

EMI’s annual report on the sample industry, The Sample Landscape: 2023 Edition, is now available!  Get your copy here.

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