REBUILD DEMOCRACY

Conducted 2 focus groups on distrust among Diverse-Community Focused (10 participants from across America) and Alienated Populists (9 participants from across America); These two focus groups were conducted nationwide, one among Diverse Community Focused voters and one among Alienated Populist voters. All participants were screened to not be strong supporters of any presidential candidate. The groups were conducted on July 25 & 30, 2024. We then conducted an online randomized control trial of the US general population. The trial was conducted from August 30 - September 1, 2024. We sampled 6,404 adults, with 4,251 in our test groups and 2,153 in the control sample. The sample was stratified and weighted by gender, ethnicity, age, education, and urbanization to match census data. We tested four messages against a control to measure movement on convincing rating, favorability of a hypothetical messenger, trust in a hypothetical messenger, engagement, and mobilization. Through this randomized control trial, we identified messages raising alienated voters trust by +6.8 points, favorability by +9.3 points, engagement by +11.5 points. We then published an 6-page Trust Toolkit and 5-page Appendix and distributed it to media, civic groups, research groups.