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Science Quickly

Voters Are Seldom Swayed by Local Campaign Stops

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2016

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A survey during the 2012 election found that bus tours and visits to greasy spoons didn't do much to change voter opinions. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp.j. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.jp. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.6

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:39.2

Donald Trump hasn't been running the most traditional campaign,

0:42.9

and it's not just the unfiltered tweets.

0:45.1

He's neglecting campaigning full stop.

0:47.3

Thomas Wood, an assistant professor of political science at Ohio State.

0:50.9

He's at about half as many public events as his opponent. Wood's own campaign

0:55.6

experience was with the Romney Ryan ticket back in 2012. Every night, the campaign surveyed

1:00.6

thousands of voters, 64,000 overall, asking them how they felt about the politicians after a local

1:06.6

visit. That is, if the voters actually knew about the visit. Instead of seeing candidate X,

1:13.0

you know, visiting somewhere in Pensacola, they're now seeing candidate X visit somewhere in

1:16.8

their local market. And it's not really filtering through to that many folks that the visit was

1:22.2

there. You know, one event sort of looks like the other. They all sort of blend into each other.

1:25.9

It's sort of hard to really make it clear to the person who's just watching, like, the evening news that this was

1:31.2

a visit in your local marketplace. In other words, visits didn't even register for most locals

1:36.1

or those in adjacent markets. And the voters' opinions of the candidates went up just a measly

1:41.5

couple percent after local visits, before fading back to baseline

1:45.6

a few days later. So despite the huge investment of time and money, the local campaign stops

...

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