Ashley Lopez

Right.

So NPR is partnering with Engageus and Sego, which are messaging experts and market researchers.

And a big part of what they do is just try to figure out why people feel the way they feel about something.

And Rich Tao at Engageus, who came to NPR with this passion project of his, partners with a media company to get a sense of what swing voters in swing states are thinking about when it comes to the news.

And I mean, there's a couple reasons of why this is super helpful to political reporters like Mara and I. For one, you know,

We don't really know sometimes like what news and what messages get to voters.

And that is a big part of what this discussion is.

It's like, what news are you hearing and how are you hearing it?

Where are you getting your information from?

Another piece of this is like, you know, from the perspective of a political reporter, you know, when you go out into the campaign trail, meet voters, like the way you're meeting voters, like there are people you just don't get to.

And so if you think of things like political rallies, canvassing, political events of any kind, those are already people who are either

In a camp or pretty close to being solidly in a camp.

And these are voters that are not in camps and they're pretty persuadable, which is also a part of the electorate that is harder to find.

So we are hearing straight from the horse's mouth, not just that they approve or disapprove something, but why.

Yeah.

Most people that you meet are in a camp.

They are either Republican or Democrat.

And as time has gone on in the past couple of decades, people have been more staunchly in one group or the other.

But the people who are most politically important, like the people who really swing elections, are some of these persuadable, independent or swing voters.

Now, I want to be clear, like not all swing voters are independents in the group that we talked to, for example.