Jim Talent for Senate

"American Viewpoint’s ability to go beyond the numbers helped my campaign build coalitions not only with core Republican voters, but with swing voters essential to winning an election in a battleground state like Missouri." (Senator Jim Talent, R-MO)

After difficult close losses for offices on Missouri’s statewide ticket in 2000, the 2002 Missouri US Senate race was the quintessential "battleground" race. Following the death of Mel Carnahan, Jean Carnahan was appointed to the Senate. In 2002, an election would be held to decide who would serve the remaining four years of the term.

Jim Talent had lost an extremely close race for Governor in 2000, losing by just over 21,000 votes. Talent decided early in 2001 to run for Senate and hired American Viewpoint to serve as pollsters and senior strategists to the campaign. What followed was anything but a "typical" Republican campaign.

Early polling in October 2001 showed the race to be extremely polarized by party affiliation, with only about 10% of the electorate undecided. With such a small pool of available voters over a year out from the election, messaging focusing on these swing groups would be essential.

By utilizing early focus groups to examine potential campaign themes and by conducting dial tests of mock-up advertising during the development stages, the Talent team was able to specifically tailor advertising to the key swing groups of moderates, women and seniors. In these early focus groups, it was apparent that the "sympathy factor" would still impact the votes of many of these voters, but that there was also an underlying resentment among some voters with the way Carnahan got into office.

In early 2002, American Viewpoint conducted an extensive benchmark survey that examined key accomplishments of Jim Talent, opposition research on Jean Carnahan and the potential damage of attacks on Talent. The conclusions from this benchmark helped the campaign decide to embark on a two-pronged message campaign, one for suburban St. Louis and Kansas City, and one for out-state Missouri. For example, while Carnahan’s vote against the confirmation of John Ashcroft for Attorney General was a strong vote motivator in the Springfield media market, data showed this issue cross-pressured support with suburban swing voters.

Throughout the campaign, monthly brushfires were conducted to track the progress. With these brushfires the Talent campaign was armed with current data to identify any potential problems developing with key voting blocs. In these brushfires we were also able to test paired statements that measured voters’ perceptions of both Talent’s and Carnahan’s positions on hotly debated issues such as homeland security, ANWR and a prescription drug plan.

The Talent campaign budgeted for a 5 week tracking program that later proved invaluable. Two significant campaign decisions were made from the tracking data. The first was decided after measuring how powerful attacks were from Carnahan and Democrat allies. It was clear in the data that attacks on Talent’s support of modernizing Social Security were cutting into his vote share, while attacks on various education stances were not. Armed with this information, the Talent campaign was able to decide to respond strongly to the Social Security accusations in paid media, while not devoting valuable campaign resources to the education hits.

Another turning point during tracking occurred about two weeks before Election Day. Both the Talent and Carnahan campaigns, along with both state parties and countless third party interest groups, were engaged in heavy contrast ads. In the tracking verbatim comments voters, were becoming disenchanted with both Talent and Carnahan due to what they thought was too negative of campaigning. This was also causing Talent’s unfavorable numbers to rapidly increase. While it is typical for this to be seen in the course of the campaign, it was rare to see this level of disenchantment. Moreover, we saw this perception of negativity among Talent’s GOP base. To ensure the heavy contrast would not suppress GOP voters, the Talent campaign made the difficult decision to run only positive ads for a 5 day period. We immediately saw Talent’s favorable ratings rise after this decision.

Senator Talent defeated Jean Carnahan 50% to 48%. "Talent’s win meant they (Republicans) didn’t have just the state; they had the Senate" (Time Magazine, November 18, 2002). There were a few key factors that led to his victory. Foremost, while Talent lost among women in his 2000 gubernatorial race by 14-points (43%-57%), he only had a 5-point deficit in 2002 (47%-52%). Secondly, in 2000 Talent garnered 56% of the vote in the Springfield media market, but improved his vote share to 60% in 2002. Also, improved turnout efforts from both the state and national parties help boost turnout out-state to help offset strong union efforts in St. Louis City and Kansas City.