I am (co-)writing a book!

[Pollster]

I'm excited to share (finally) that I'll be working with three other pollsters (my close friend who is a Republican, a fellow Democrat who I don't particularly care for, and an academic pollster who we have not selected/hired yet) - as well as one Democratic and one Republican ad maker who will likely make a smaller contribution - to write a book!

The subject of the book as we outlined it is going to be "candidate quality" particularly over the last 10-15 years, how it has become an asymmetrical and systemic partisan problem, case studies for how it has been both effectively neutralized and exploited in the past, the necessary circumstances required for it to play a decisive role in electoral outcomes, and (of course) what makes a good candidate versus a bad candidate and the nuances that exist in that space.

In true "book about American politics" fashion, it will likely wind up being about other things as well.

I'm really excited to get to work on this. You might have noticed I've been posting more frequently about this exact topic in recent weeks as we neared approval to begin writing and began collecting research. I wanted to open this thread to be a place for folks to share interesting thoughts and findings that they've come to on their own on this topic - we are open to considering and further researching every lede there is on this very expansive, largely subjective, and incredibly understudied phenomenon. The project is obviously intended to be bipartisan and I welcome input from everybody on this forum.

My close Republican pollster friend peruses this forum but doesn't post (and regularly mocks me for my tendency to write essays here with excessive use of parentheses) and has already given me permission to write "As discussed on the TalkElections forum on Dave Liep's Election Atlas website..." as many times as needed

We will obviously explore the stark (and growing) differences in priorities between core Republican primary voters and the rest of the electorate, but will also explore core Democratic primary voters' mentalities and the way that party organizations and leadership have cultivated them. We've been given a relatively large research budget for this project and are currently sketching out both extensive polling and focus group plans.

To address the obvious questions:
-The book stipulations are the same as the ones that guide my posting here - we are allowed to speak in broad generalities about data/findings and can reference specific clients we have/had so long as we do not publish proprietary information that they paid for and now own.

-I am fiercely protective of my anonymity on this forum and am well aware that associating myself with this project will, eventually, make that anonymity more difficult to maintain. I've made peace with that.

-This will be a very long project as all of us obviously have a full client load going into 2024.

-The other Democratic pollster doesn't care much for me either.

[Torie]

Good luck. My perception is that politicians of both parties are having increasing difficulty in managing their bases, although that is more obvious in the GOP. But a Dem politician told me that if he got one more check list of demands he had to hew to, he would throw up on it.

And who in their right mind would want to subject themselves to all this grief, and debase themselves as they pander, and pay tons of money to brand themselves, if they weren't attention whores with some screws loose?

[ProudModerate2]

Sounds interesting, and exactly like something our group would be interested in reading.
Make sure you tell us when it is done, and how/where we can find it when released.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

As a fellow writer, I wish you well!

[Joseph Cao]

My close Republican pollster friend peruses this forum but doesn't post (and regularly mocks me for my tendency to write essays here with excessive use of parentheses) and has already given me permission to write "As discussed on the TalkElections forum on Dave Liep's Election Atlas website..." as many times as needed

If it's not called Atlas Forum, we riot.

Seriously, best of luck! This sounds like an excellent read and it's great to see other posters working on stuff of this caliber.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

This is exciting!

The subject of the book as we outlined it is going to be "candidate quality" particularly over the last 10-15 years, how it has become an asymmetrical and systemic partisan problem, case studies for how it has been both effectively neutralized and exploited in the past, the necessary circumstances required for it to play a decisive role in electoral outcomes, and (of course) what makes a good candidate versus a bad candidate and the nuances that exist in that space.

Do you have any priors for what some of your main findings might be? Or findings you already may have based on preliminary data?

I'm really excited to get to work on this. You might have noticed I've been posting more frequently about this exact topic in recent weeks as we neared approval to begin writing and began collecting research. I wanted to open this thread to be a place for folks to share interesting thoughts and findings that they've come to on their own on this topic - we are open to considering and further researching every lede there is on this very expansive, largely subjective, and incredibly understudied phenomenon. The project is obviously intended to be bipartisan and I welcome input from everybody on this forum.

If it is useful at all, I have a background and research experience in data science. If you are in need of extra data analysts please feel free to reach out - I've always been interested in data science for politics.

[Pollster]

If it is useful at all, I have a background and research experience in data science. If you are in need of extra data analysts please feel free to reach out - I've always been interested in data science for politics.

Thank you for asking - unfortunately we all have research teams in place. But if this is something you're interested in there are countless opportunities to be had both in polling and in other fields. Happy to help point you in those directions.