This site keeps me sane these days with its fact-based approach. I hate to feel manipulated. The mainstream media seems to practice selective phrasing in the interest of keeping the election as close as possible. If one candidate goes up too far in public opinion, they subtly alter how they tell the story to try to tilt the scales back to center and keep people tuned in to boosts ratings. What do you think?

Yes, I do have a partisan preference. The comments suggest that readers of the site break in the same direction. But I also think that a healthy form of bipartisanship can move policy forward. We haven’t had that for over a decade, in large part due to escalating tactics by the Republicans. I think there’s hope for next year for a more reasonable discussion. The place to start building that is the Senate.

I’d really like to see it playing in Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Nevada.

There’s something interesting buried in the report: keywords that the focus group associates with the ad. The word “skeptical” leapt out at me. It came up among Republicans far more than among Democrats or independents. This is interesting because of the idea of biased assimilation, which I’ve written about before. Basically, when confronted with a piece of disagreeable evidence, people tend to question it. This creates a situation where facts we like are more likely to stick with us.

It’s not surprising that Republicans don’t like tis ad. What’s interesting is that independents come up with the word far less often. This suggests the ad is indeed effective and gets into the heads of persuadables.

In general, I think that overcoming biased assimilation may be a central key to winning over independent voters. It’s related to the “wedge” concept that people like to talk about.