Election analysts have long talked about low-information voters or low-engagement voters … terms that smack of criticism and even elitism.

Yes, it’s easy for some of us to be surprised by what others don’t know or pay attention to. Many Americans seem unaware of, even uninterested in, basic facts and ideas that others find critical to making sensible political judgements. A Washington Post piece from last year (Aaron Blake, “The incredible low-information voter,” 6/12/24) points out several examples — e.g., half of Americans believed that unemployment was at a 50-year high, when actually we’ve been in a historically low stretch.

There’s no reason to believe this “low-information” dynamic will go away soon. If anything, it’s likely to keep increasing. Instead of complaining, moralizing and fretting about the phenomenon and its implications, we’d be better off acknowledging it, understanding it, and treating it as the reality we operate in, not a surprising exception or afterthought.

One thing we can do is start thinking of these Americans as “Distressed Voters.” The fact is, they are probably the majority of voters, while it is well-informed voters who are the exception. Distressed Voters are not in a position to focus on political news for any number of legitimate and overlapping reasons:

• too worried about their own serious economic challenges
• working too many hours
• too upset and pessimistic about the lack of solutions coming from government
• feeling too powerless to make a difference
• believing that the voting system itself is basically a sham, etc.

Many people and groups are working to address the conditions that create this sad situation, but it will take major changes in our economy and society before the basic dynamics can turn around.

In the meantime, how do communicators deal with the increasing prevalence of the Distressed Voter?

Most obviously, we should assume voters know essentially NOTHING about candidates beyond the simplest handful of associations, if that. The simple fact that Donald Trump is more famous than Kamala Harris probably played a significant role in his victory. Everyone has heard of him — and according to a Yahoo/YouGov poll, there is surprisingly low awareness of his various indictments. Celebrity has always helped win elections, and maybe even more so now, with Distressed (i.e. most) Voters unlikely to research people or events.

If a candidate has any hope of getting a message out to Distressed Voters, that message will need to be very simple and very responsive to voters’ priorities. That is, a message must be EXTREMELY clear and easy to understand, and must also OBVIOUSLY respond to (not ignore or downplay) voters’ distress.

In a recent New Yorker piece (How much do Democrats need to change? 12/30/24), Peter Slevin talks about yard-sign messages like “Trump Low Prices, Kamala High Prices.” The message is both simpler and (seemingly) more concretely and directly responsive to Distressed Voters’ concerns than what the Harris campaign offered. Slevin also quotes a summary of the situation from a Democrat in Wisconsin: Though Trump “was peddling snake oil … at least somebody was offering [voters] something, and they bought it.”

To summarize: At the national level, a super famous candidate offered super simple (easy to express in large print on a yard sign) and super responsive messages, while a slightly less famous candidate offered less simple and less obviously responsive messages.

This (simplistic) analysis certainly doesn’t cover all the important dynamics from the election. But based on Topos research experience, it does reflect a set of basic dynamics that Democrats ignore at their peril. Their genuine medicine had better sound at least as simple, concrete and effective to Distressed Voters as the opponents’ snake oil.

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This article was cross-posted here from Joe Grady’s Medium Blog [Link]

Photo credit: iStock.com/MassimoGiachetti