This begins a three-part blog post exploring how to use digital media to change minds in a political context.    I have spent nearly a professional lifetime trying to understand how people make political decisions and how to affect that process.  Even that topic gets messy – are we exploring how people make decisions about political issues OR are we exploring how people make decisions about who they are going to vote for or against or even vote?  But before we get to that, we must first look at how people form opinions about political matters.

POLITICAL BELIEFS, VALUES, ATTITUDES

As always, a couple of definitions:

Beliefs – Ideas you hold to be true or false, closely held.  What are your expectations of Life?

Values – what is important to you, tend to be guiding principles in life (freedom, cooperation, honesty, competitiveness, order)

Attitudes / Opinions   – Preference based on beliefs and attitudes.  Can and often contradict each other, can be loosely held.

• Behavior – how you act
• Affect – how you feel
• Cognitive – how you think

Identity – A bundle of beliefs, values and opinions – How we recognize and present ourself.

A BLANK SLATE

As we know, human behavior is extremely messy and trying to untangle causality in politics is a messy game.  BUT, imagine for a moment, that you are a blank slate, and you have zero opinions about politics.  None.  Nada.    Say you are a new-born or woke up from a nasty bump to the head.

FACTORS OF BELIEFS, VALUES, AND OPINIONS FORMATIONS

As you move through your remaining time on earth, people, places, and things begin to act on you.  All of these factors begin to form your basic beliefs, values, and opinions.

Some of these things are:

• Genetics
• Parents
• Friends
• Peers
• Workplace peers
• Race / Culture
• Societal norms
• Siblings
• Teachers
• Media – Entertainment
• Media – News
• Church / Religion
• First Hand Experiences
• Events
• Political parties
• Political leaders
• Political elite
• Media superstars
• Experts
• Neighbors
• Advertisements
• Economic Position
• Etc, etc, etc

I think the key to understanding these influences is understanding the context and the relative strength each of these factors could have in a specific setting – and the mix is always changing.

Take genetics for example.  There are studies (using twins) that show meaningful correlations between genetics and politics.  Your personality type (OCEAN) will influence how you take in information.  These genetics are steady through life, but with effort or under difference context (stress), the amount genetics contribute to political attitudes and opinions is in flux.  There is evidence that genetics don’t contribute much to ideological preferences but can shape how strongly one believes and the degree they are open to reconsider political opinions.

We could do a factor analysis, but with any human behavior, it is just easier to say – at different times in your journey, you will weight different things differently.  When you are a child, you may mimic your parents’ politics.  When you are a teenager, you may do everything possible to reject your parents’ politics.   When you are a young adult, you may reconcile those two competing forces.  So, as they say in grad school – context matters.

PEERS AND EVENTS

I believe for the most part the two most important factors are the people you surround yourself with and events.

As we age and as these factors act upon us, we begin to make decisions on who we spend time with.  Our peers matter.  Peer pressure is a real thing, and for the most part, we choose our peers.   We choose a church, we choose friends, we choose business partners, workplaces, etc.   We choose these peers often because they are similar to us.   There is some causality discussion here – do we pick our peers because they are like us OR do we pick our peers and become more like them.  Regardless, once we pick, it is difficult to overestimate the effects our peers have on our thoughts and behaviors.

This also points to the critical effect of “elite opinion makers”.  I know elite is a bad word, but it matters a lot.  Once we choose our peers and respect a peer groups’ leadership, we often look to cues from them – especially on topics ones doesn’t care about or know much about and doesn’t want or need to invest a lot of time into.    In politics, the most recent example is foreign policy.  Most people don’t care to invest a lot of time into the complexities of foreign policy.  A large and significant portion of people will very easily adopt the foreign policy of their leaders.   A recent example is political opinions towards Russia.   The change in Republican voters’ views of Putin since Trump’s rise is remarkable.

In addition, as we move through life’s journey, external events often outside our control happen to us.  If these events’ effects are large enough, it can provide a shock to our system – a shock large enough to reconsider fundamental beliefs.  The example of my lifetime is 9/11.  That single event and its after-shocks caused a lot of people to reconsider their beliefs – people enlisted to fight terror, people became doves or hawks, people knew people in those buildings and realized how fragile life is and made fundamental changes to their beliefs, values, opinions, and behaviors.

Other examples of events can be the unexpected death of someone or a trauma.

POLITICAL IDENTITIES

All these factors get wrapped up into identities.   These identities are clusters of beliefs, values, and opinions.  It is important to realize again, these identities are multiple – I am a husband, a dad, a brother, a son, a Republican, a pollster, a political consultant, a data nerd, a contrarian, a smartass – and under different circumstances I prioritize my identities – especially when under threat.

So, how do we affect this process of the formation of beliefs, values, opinions, behaviors, and identities?

One simple answer, get there first, early, or after a major event.

A more complex answer, know what level you are trying to change and the strength of it.  Trying to change a belief once formed is incredibly difficult.  Remember, a belief is how someone fundamentally understands how the universe / world works.    Opinions are more loosely held and often not that strong.    Understanding what you are trying to change is critical.

As a pollster, an interesting incident drove this home.  At the time my 15-year-old son received a call from a pollster.  For 20 minutes, I listened in amazement as he offered opinion after opinion about topics frankly, I am not sure he had ever thought about before – death penalty, government budgets, taxes.  He was earnest and sincere about his replies.   After the call, I asked him about the questions and his responses.   In our discussion he changed his mind multiple times, because he had never really thought about the issues his opinions were loosely held and malleable.

The other thing of note is once a person feels they have all of these aligned and pointed in the right direction – beliefs, values, opinions, and behaviors – a person will do almost anything to protect and maintain the alignment.  They become our identities – it is who we believe we are (or want to be)  at our core.

Once formed and if strongly held, changing any of it is very difficult.

DIGITAL MEDIA AND CHANGING MINDS

So, how can digital media be a part of this formation of beliefs, values, and attitudes formation?

• When people are searching for answers – be a resource.
• If you are working on an advocacy campaign, know the strength of attitudes on the subject. Are there contradictory opinions held?  How can you present an issue that aligns with values and beliefs?
• If you are working on an advocacy campaign, get their first. Speed matters.
• The number of different factors / inputs matter. Look for collaborations – we are looking not only for frequency of message but also coming from a variety of sources / channels.

 

CONCLUSION

A journey back to grad school:

• context matters,
• strength of beliefs, attitudes, and opinions matters and those are in state of constant flux,
• Alignment of all three matters, and
• Variety of sources matters.

And our biggest take away, once beliefs, values, and opinions become aligned, changing them becomes extremely difficult.

 

Next up…a look at sustaining beliefs, attitudes, and opinions and the actors who have a vested interest in doing so.

 

 

“How does one change someone’s mind?”

As in the past, some of the best blog topics come from friends via email. This question, “How does one change someone’s mind?” was asked in the context of the current COVID debate.  However, it spurred a much longer, deeper discussion about changing minds involving sketches and diagrams. I realized in this discussion, I have spent near professional life and grad school attempting to understand how people form and change their political opinions so that I may affect on their political behavior.   I find the topic compelling. Therefore, I thought I would turn that discussion into a more in-depth discussion of changing minds. I will break it up into a three part discussion:

1. How opinions are formed.
2. How opinions are maintained and reinforced.
3. How opinions change.

In those three topics – there is a lot of research to unpack, and I will do my best to do so.  I will also spend some time talking about the digital sphere and its effect on these three areas. I will also spend some time discussing the difference between changing someone’s opinions and changing their behavior(s). It should be interesting, and I welcome your feedback and questions.

My flirtation with Ranked Choice Voting has ended as many of my flirtations end: bewildered and alone with my thoughts.

As I disclosed early in the process, I went into this project thinking the United States isn’t ready for RCV, and this exercise and the recent stories from NYC confirm it.

exhibit A:

NYC Board of Elections throws mayoral primary into chaos by counting test ballots

Here is my working hypothesis, at this time, America’s Democracy is not strong enough to adopt Ranked Choice Voting.  It is too complex and that complexity invites doubts and questions.  Given that America can’t seem to handle counting first past the post ballots well, RCV is a ‘luxury’ that will do more harm than good.

ICE CREAM and RANKED CHOICE VOTING

This began as a simple weekend project.  Noting NYC was preparing the use RCV in their NYC Mayor’s race, we should practice polling and writing the code to tabulate / allocate the votes.

In theory, it should be easy.

1)  Test, does one “vote getter” receive more than 50% of the vote?  If so, declare winner, if not continue.

2)  Tabulate and rank vote getters.

3)  Eliminate lowest vote getter.

4)  Re-allocate votes of eliminated voter getter to next choice.

5)  Goto  Step 1.

Easy, right?

It has proven to be a challenge.

In part because I am not an expert.  In part because RCV has been implemented slightly differently in different jurisdictions.  In part because the press doesn’t understand or report the details past the superficial Steps 1-5.

Here are some of the challenges I ran into:

When presenting the ballot, which format do we use?  An array or multi-screen selection?  Both are used.  Do we program in error detection to stop people from making errors like repeating choices?  Paper ballots don’t, so we chose to allow people taking the poll to make errors.

When ranking, the first issue is write-ins.  Is ‘Peanut Butter Cup’ the same as ‘Peanutbutter Cup’?  We immediately have a classification issue.  I think best to avoid trying to interpret voter intent, so I ignored capitalization, but not spelling or spacing.  Not a huge deal, but a decision.

When ranking, how does one handle ties?  If three candidates / flavors are ranked and all tied – in what order does one eliminate the ties?  Turns out, my research showed there are three ways in use now.

In our case study, we had 219 respondents.  You can download the datafile here. Each respondent had up to 5 choices, each choice included the opportunity for a write in.  Some opted to make no choice or turned in a blank ballot.  Some used all 5 choices, some used 1 choice.  Some didn’t follow the rules and voted the same choice 5 times or repeated choices.

So essentially, we have a array of 219 rows x 5 choices.

When eliminating, how do we eliminate ?

For example, if we eliminate ‘Lemon’ in the first round, is ‘Lemon’ only eliminated for Round 1 OR is ‘Lemon’ eliminated from the entire array?  Meaning if ‘Lemon’ is eliminated in round 1, ‘Lemon’ is eliminated as a choice in all ballots in all subsequent rounds.

When spoiling a ballot, when do you spoil it and for how long?

I can write code in the beginning that can test for errors.  Did a voter rank ‘Lemon’ more than once?  If so, is the ballot spoiled at the beginning of counting completely – OR does it become spoiled at the time of counting the second erroneous “Lemon”?  Furthermore, if someone doesn’t follow the instructions in their 3rd ranking, is their ballot spoiled for all further counting?  or do we eliminate the error and move the the next ‘valid’ choice after the error?

If a choice is eliminated in a round and removes a ballot with an error, is the ballot still good? Do we ignore the error and keep the additional choices?

Say, a ranking of:

Butter Pecan, Lemon, Lemon, Chocolate, Vanilla.

Clearly this voter didn’t follow instructions.  They ranked Lemon twice.

If Lemon is eliminated in the very first round, does that allow become Butter Pecan, Chocolate, Vanilla and remain in the mix or do we throw it out at the beginning? Is the ballot spoiled or a vote for Chocolate?

Finally, how do we define WINNER? Do I use a fraction (any % over 50%) or whole numbers?  What is the denominator?  If a person’s ballot is exhausted, are they still counted in the denominator or are they now an under-vote?

It is exhausting. Can you imagine the Cyber Ninjas involved in this mess?

An Experiment in Ranked Choice Voting

So, here we go.  Here are my assumptions / decisions:

I erred on the side of trying to count votes.

I grouped write-ins only if they matched, but didn’t consider capitalization.

I did no error checking in the beginning, except for removing blank ballots.  They were undervotes and not counted in the calculations.

So, we began with 219 respondents.  Removing 11 blank ballots.  208 votes cast.  This is the first challenge, when testing if someone gets >50%, do we divide by 219 or 208?  In this case, I am using 208.

 Initial Tally – Rank Choice for Ice Cream

So let’s go through our steps?

Step 1 – Test, does one candidate have over 50%?

As we see, we have NA or blank at 5%. We will filter those out moving forward.
AND we have a 11 way tie for “last place”.

But no one flavor exceeds 50%.

However, if the denominator is 219, Mint Chocolate Chip is at 20%, if the denominator is 208, Mint Chocolate chip is 21%.  We will see, this becomes a bigger deal as ballots become exhausted.

Step 2 – Tabulate and Rank Candidates

See above.

Step 3 – eliminate lowest vote getter.

At this early stage, we have 11 vote getters tied for the lowest (all write ins).

In what order do we eliminate these and re-allocate votes?

In my case, I am going to randomize the bottom 11 and eliminate them – BUT this could have material effects later as we may see. Is random better than another way? I don’t know. But, would this lead to replication issues in some type of audit? Maybe.

So in this case, let’s say I eliminate ‘Tiger tail’ (whatever flavor that is…must be a radical socialist).  The voter’s second selection after Tiger Tail was “Mint Chocolate Chip” so I eliminate Tiger Tail, replace with MCC and goto step 1.

Step 1-2 – no change.

Step 3 – our next randomized selection to eliminate “New York Super Fudge Chunk”  Now this respondent, is completely dedicated to “New York Super Fudge Chunk”.  In fact so much so, they ranked it 5 times.  Their ballot is invalid. 

So, I spoil the ballot.  Ok.  Is the denominator 207 now?  Yes.  New York Super Fudge Chunk is now an ‘under vote’. 

There are no votes to re-allocate. 

Goto step 1…..

So, you can see we are making lots of “micro” steps.  If we do it this way, (which I did, we end up with over 50 rounds of voting). 

There is another way.  For example, we will eventually eliminate “Neapolitan” which isn’t even a ‘flavor’ – it’s three flavors dumped into a box for those who can’t make up their minds, but I am off track)  Once I eliminate “Neapolitan” should I remove it from the entire array OR do I just remove it for that round – allowing it to come back in later rounds if it is the next choice of a voter?  I don’t know the answer and need a collaborator in math.  I chose NOT to delete it from the entire array and go round by round, allowing for a come back. 

The ramification of this decision was an ebb and flow of “major” eliminations then a series of “clean” up rounds.  Each clean up round had randomization due to the ties. 

An Ending to Ranked Choice Voting

Using this method, we are well into 50 plus “rounds”.

Towards, the end, we end up with a three way race:

A death match between:

• Mint Chocolate Chip
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and
• Chocolate

At this point, we have 186 ballots still remaining that have not been “exhausted”  This means 219-186 = 33 ballots or 15% of ballots are no longer in play.  Whether error or dedication to third-party flavors, these ballots are now on the scrap bin.

In our case study, we eliminate Chocolate, and immediately have to do clean up.    Since I didn’t remove a flavor from the entire array and I am allowing comebacks – some Chocolate voters like “Birthday Cake”.  etc.

This is where my decision to allocate randomly could have an effect.   What vote pushes a candidate past 50%?

In our sample, we end up with

• Mint Chocolate Chip at 48%
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough at 45%.
• And a three way tie at the bottom of :Cookies and Cream, Neapolitan (not a flavor), and Strawberry.
• We also have Vanilla, Rocky Road, and chocolate chip in slightly more numbers.

I randomized, the bottom three for elimination.

ICE CREAM: RANK CHOICE VOTING

AND THE WINNER IS……

MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP!

 

In the end, of the 219 who turned in a ballot, 144 of them remained as non-exhausted or non-disqualified for a “rule” violation.   We lost one third of the ‘voters’.

However “51%” of the ballots choose Mint Chocolate Chip.

In the end, RCV remains confusing and complex.  The devil is in the details.

I am 100% positive that I have messed this up 10 different ways – yet I still declared a “winner.”

THAT, my friends, is the challenge.  As we have seen in New York – complexity can cast a shadow and lead to questions.    And that shadow leads to candidates and their teams casting doubts on the process.

How does that manifest itself?  Just like this statement from Adams in NYC:

CONCLUSION

The United States with its low trust in government and its institutions, is not ready for Ranked Choice Voting. 

RCV’s complexity and delays in counting could cast further doubts on the election process at a time when we just can’t afford it.

I look forward to your corrections, comments, because Lord knows, this is a mess.

I am frustrated.  What should have been an easy 1-2-3 project has turned into a mess.

It seems by offering people ranking, people are getting to the point of “throwing” away their votes – even may be enjoying it.

Just when I think we are making progress towards declaring a winner, the dreaded write-ins come into play AND we are losing people along the way with their votes becoming spoiled or exhausted.   We are at the point were we are exhausting ballots of those who picked 5 – and none of them are cracking the top 10.

Take for example this round, we eliminated “Pitstachio” (which is a damn fine flavor, sorry to see it go….) however, Pitaschio voters are a non-compromising bunch – writing in “Green Tea” and “Birthday Cake” (which had already been eliminated).

In attempting to code this, I seem to be spending an incredibly inordinate amount of time dealing with write ins and “exceptions”.  While this is not abnormal for coding, it is reducing my enthusiam…and we persist.

But really – damn it, I want to know the “answer” not continue to deal with Pistachio’s garbage.

I am at the point, were I am going to run the code and not paste each round.  Next post will declare the winner….

Stay tuned….