Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan used a focus group of 110 women who “despise” President Trump to try and gauge female voters in the heavily Democratic state — and his plan succeeded.
Local exit polls show that Hogan bagged 50 percent of the vote among women in Maryland, as opposed to his Democratic opponent Ben Jealous, who received 48 percent, according to The Baltimore Sun.
Hogan’s campaign spoke to reporters this week about the numbers and described how the focus group played a role in their decisive victory over the former head of the NAACP.
“We used a panel of 110 women who liked the governor, despised Trump and were undecided about the race,” explained campaign manager Jim Barnett. “We talked to them over and over during the course of the campaign to see how they were reacting to advertising and how their attitudes were changing.”
Some of the questions that were asked pertained to television ads and public incidents involving the candidates, including one where Jealous cursed at a Washington Post reporter during a press conference.
“That incident dominated what they thought about Ben Jealous,” Barnett said, according to the Sun. “Even down to our final polling, it kept coming up.”
Hogan’s team would often incorporate certain words or phrases — such as “educational inequality” — into their ads after hearing them uttered by women in the focus group.
“We were all nervous that women would say, ‘Gee I like Hogan a lot but, man, I hate Donald Trump and I’m not voting for any Republicans this year,’” recalled political strategist Russ Schriefer, referring to the focus group as the campaign’s “canary in the coal mine.”
“We wanted to engage with a group of voters who were most likely to have that sentiment,” he said. “Most focus groups are too small. We wanted a larger one. I always felt if we were getting three out of 10 of them we were doing OK. They liked the fact he cut tolls. They liked the fact he wasn’t raising taxes.”
Barnett noted how officials also analyzed Census and voter data to establish profiles on swing voters — so they could bombard them with ads.
“We modeled out the electorate,” he said.
