messaging: i’m obsessed.

Went to a really interesting event this morning at the Economic Policy Institute on “Engaging Younger Voters on Social Security.” I learned so much about the Social Security program, what it stands for and how it works. I’m pretty much an expert now; watch for a new post on IWPR’s Social Security Media Watch Project blog summarizing the event and what it meant to me. In the meantime, check out “A Young Person’s Guide to Social Security,” co-written by one of the panelists, Kathryn Edwards, who was an extremely impressive economic policy researcher (and probably like three years older than me, sigh). Her guide, and her effective way of framing Social Security as relevant to young people, was totally inspiring. Seriously, check it out.

But this post isn’t about Social Security itself. It’s about how fascinated I was by one of the other panelists’ presentations. Celinda Lake is a hugely established Democratic strategist, advisor and pollster who recently conducted a study on younger voters’ feelings about Social Security with her group Lake Research Partners.

While most advocates believe younger voters have little investment or interest in Social Security, Lake’s survey surprisingly found that voters under 30 are almost as likely as retirees to value Social Security. She speculated that this result is related to the youngest working generation’s difficulty in finding work in a struggling economy throughout their early careers. They realize the necessity of a safety net, a retirement insurance program that helps them rest assured they’ll be able to maintain a stable lifestyle as they age.

The most interesting part of Lake’s survey to me were her results on which messages in favor of strengthening Social Security were most effective for younger voters. Some of her findings:

• Younger voters responded well to the framing of Social Security as a “promise” made to all generations to provide a basic and reliable retirement
• Younger voters overwhelmingly sided with a candidate who would close the Social Security payroll tax loophole (it exempts those making over $106,800 from paying Social Security taxes on their income above that threshold) over a candidate who wants to raise the retirement age to 69 and make other cuts to Social Security
• A whopping 73% of voters surveyed found the following statement to represent their views extremely well: “Social Security money belongs to the people who have worked hard all their lives and contributed to the program, not to the government. We must protect Social Security from cuts that will hurt beneficiaries, we cannot let Congress try to use Social Security as a piggy bank.”
• Other successful messaging themes: Congress should have other priorities, like regulating Wall Street; Congress should try revenue increases rather than entitlement cuts; cutting Social Security is a broken promise; the government should prioritize paying back the$2.6 trillion it took from the Social Security trust fund, just like it prioritized bailing out Wall Street

This survey was interesting to me mostly because I kept thinking about my experiences volunteering with Planned Parenthood in grassroots activism efforts like phone banking and canvassing. At all of these events I’ve been handed a list of “talking points” instructing me how to frame my viewpoint most effectively to voters. I always knew these talking points were researched by some outside consulting group that probably conducted focus groups and phone surveys, but the event this morning was my first detailed view of this type of research.

Planned Parenthood has been very effective in framing its recent right-wing attacks as attacks on family planning services, necessary for everyone, as opposed to a dialogue about the morality of abortion. Polls have shown that Americans understand Planned Parenthood’s services are primarily focused on unplanned pregnancy prevention and education, and they reject efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. Reading about this successful messaging is why I wasn’t too surprised to see that Planned Parenthood’s most recent campaign is in favor of eliminating co-pays for birth control (sign the petition!) under the new health reform guidelines. What a great strategy – Planned Parenthood realized the dialogue about its services had turned in its favor, and decided it was the right time to go for it with another push in favor of protecting reproductive health.

Love it! This type of messaging/strategic communications research is really interesting to me. I’m known to be a person who loves to talk about feminism to, say, my random beer pong partner on a Friday night in a way that’s simple and identifiable. As a peer educator, I love experimenting with how to best help participants understand the culture of violence and get inspired to take action to help change it. I’m hoping to do a little investigating as to how I could possibly translate those small-scale interactions to my career.

Again, every day I’m amazed at how much I’m learning about myself and my future in this city.