Apparently last week was a slow enough news cycle for Nielsen and the few remaining organizations that still value what they might have to offer to have created both the opportunity for and this resulting story authored by MediaPost veteran Joe Mandese:
If the race for the White House was one of Donald Trump’s reality TV shows, he’d be losing by a metric that has historically mattered most to him. No, not just his weird obsession with crowd sizes, but by one of the most important currencies in the ad industry: Nielsen ratings.
It’s well-known by now that the Democratic National Convention attracted 15% more Americans than the Republican National Convention, but a special Nielsen analysis conducted for MediaPost reveals a Democratic advantage in an even more vital geographic segment: the seven so-called swing states that are expected to determine the electoral outcome, deciding who actually gets elected: Trump, or Kamala Harris.
And there it is in black and white–well, red and blue. And Mandese created yet another opportunity for Nielsen’s headline-hungry keeper of specialized data he of what has now become the monthly drumbeat for those with YouTube stock to celebrate, THE GAUGE, to now add political pundit to his resume:
When you look at this data, I don’t think 1% or 2% is statistically significant. That’s virtually a dead heat,” explains Nielsen Senior Vice President-Product Strategy & Thought Leadership Brian Fuhrer, who conducted the analysis (see details at bottom) and says that, to the best of his knowledge, it is the first time Nielsen has ever released swing-state ratings data publicly.
“What leapt out to me,” he continues, “was Georgia, and obviously total U.S., but also Pennsylvania and Arizona. I don’t think those percentages are nothing.”
Just think. Per Nielsen, four years removed from the 11,780 votes that a certain orange-hued “physically fit” candidate obsessed over, now he and the Dinish DeSouza-run mules now may have to find as many as 263,368 this time around. Good luck with that, MTG and team.
Obviously, that specific number isn’t accurate. If indeed Nielsen is accurately representing Georgia’s actual population via its national sample, then really those acolytes need only be concerned with 1260 households across the entire state. And at the moment, while there are numerous demographic balances that those participating households are supplying, who and how they are voting to lead the free world isn’t one of them.
But given that those households are supplying other age/sex characteristics and are passively voting for their choices in television viewing, it would be quite easy for Nielsen to proactively integrate political party affiliation into its sample households.
Which means on a night like tonight, with another massive audience guaranteed to watch, it would be fascinating and newsworthy to look at that crucial swing state data in an even more controlled environment that merely who chose to watch–or hate-watch, in some cases–a four-night spectacle filled with celebrities.
And as Mandese even conceded, while his impetus for getting Nielsen into this discussion was what he saw as a problem, the Nielsen numbers merely corroborated the findings of other research companies who have ties into both politics and media:
While Nielsen ratings likely have not been used as a voter intent signal in the past, MediaPost requested this data because in recent years, conventional political polling data has proven increasingly less reliable due to respondent biases and other factors.
In terms of conventional political polling, Ipsos’ election tracking team began segmenting polling for the seven swing states months ago, and its most recent poll, conducted just after Harris and Tim Walz were nominated for the Democratic ticket, showed a small advantage for the Democrats in the swing states, albeit a less than statistically significant one (see below).
So if Nielsen is as credible as anyone else spewing out data, and ultimately determines the fates of an awful lot of us already, then why not consider letting their panel determines who runs the country?
You could eliminate the whole need for lines. You could assure that voting occurs in a shorter window of time–possibly even just that day. That should pacify a whole lot of complainers and deniers.
Preposterous, you say? One person, one vote? C’mon. The Nielsen methodology is the inverse, but identical to, the electoral college. Nielsen assigns projected values for each “vote” they get from a panel member. The electoral college takes the popular vote and reduces it to a unilateral assignment of Electoral College votes.
The entire reason for swing state focus is a result of that reality. Anyone who lives in a state like mine knows darn well the value of my vote is completely meaningless. One huge reason why I’m still undecided.
It could also give some real national relevance and attention to the select few who know the Nielsen panel first-hand and knows where they live. The 1984 made-for-Showtime movie THE RATINGS GAME revolved around this and showed how relevant an otherwise forgotten schlub played by Danny DeVito could become. (As a pay cable network that at the time didn’t care about or require ratings, they were the ideal outlet).
Well, you know I’ve long been considered his doppelganger. Especially when I had some hair.
So maybe, just maybe, Brian, you might want to consider borrowing a page from the plot. And I dare say on castability alone I’d be an ideal ally for your efforts.
Until next time…