Opposition must shed it’s perception as whiners to win upcoming election

Frank Luntz, the American pollster, pitched up on RTE One’s The Week in Politics programme last night, to take the political focus group — famously described by Bill Clinton as “a bunch of bull” — to a new and exciting level.

Thirty two floating voters, identified by Red C, some of whom voted for the current government at the last general election, some against, some not at all, were brought to an RTE studio, where, for the guts of four hours, Luntz beat political opinions out of them.

Luntz doesn’t take “Don’t know” for an answer. When one woman didn’t have an opinion on a question he’d asked, he barracked her in a way which stunned and mortified her, leaving the rest of the group in no doubt that they were there to deliver instant feedback, not sit in silent reflection.

This early bullying (whatever about its morals) was effective in moving the participants a quantum leap away from the traditional focus group, which, as Joe Klein pointed out in Politics Lost, tends to become a civics class with participants “reluctant to seem mean-spirited or prejudiced in front of people they don’t know.”

On the other hand, forcing everybody to have immediate strong opinions arguably skewed last night’s end results. When people are forced to have opinions about a politician they don’t know very well, they tend to produce negative opinions. So, while instantly recognisable figures like Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams and Pat Rabbitte tended to be viewed fairly positively last night, the lesser-known Enda Kenny was viewed negatively.

The large quota of “Don’t knows” which characterise his opinion poll ratings turned into negatives in this form of “research.”

Luntz moved on to showing clips of speeches made by our political leaders, having issued participants with a dial-o-meter, a gadget with one round control the user can turn right (if they like what the speaker is saying) or left (if they hate it). Luntz tested everyone’s competence with the technology by delivering a cleverly-crafted mini-speech, which included crowd-pleasing references to long-term thinking and crowd-infuriating promises to increase tax.

In another room, watching on monitors, were Sean O’Rourke and three commentators: Ivan Yates, former Fine Gael TD, who now owns more than forty betting shops, Noel Whelan, former Fianna Fáil executive, lawyer and author of countless books on Ireland’s political process, and me. As Luntz did his mock-speech, the aggregated responses from the dial-o-meters were shown onscreen in two lines: one green, representing those who had, last time around, voted FF/PD and one purple, standing for those who had voted for other parties or none.

Participants were drilled to react constantly, immediately, to every word.

They were not to wait until the end of a sentence. Gut reaction was what he was after, and gut reaction was what he was going to get.

But — and it’s a big but — gut reaction is just one of the myriad ways human beings respond to external stimulus. We also respond by absorbing and reflecting. The dial-o-meter, as used by Luntz, precludes any but reflex response, which, inevitably, means that what it finds out is grievously shallow. American use proves that if you want the dials to move to approval position, all you have to do is mention Abraham Lincoln’s name. They’ll move to rejection the moment you say anything negative.

Especially, as demonstrated by Luntz, if you promise to increase taxes.

One American commentator has described this process as “computerised hokum.”

Inevitably, Luntz disagrees. With considerable hostility, he disagrees.

When, in the course of filming last night’s programme, I queried an aspect of the process, he told the rest of the group I was “Over-thinking.”

Continuing to over-think quietly to myself, I watched as he played a clip of the Taoiseach’s most recent Árd Fheis speech. The green line indicating government-favourers and the purple line of the opposition started together at 50 on a 90 point grid. As Bertie got going, both lines moved up a bit, then dropped. Dropped again. Dropped again. In the discussion afterwards, both sides indicated they felt somewhat less warmly towards the Taoiseach.

Luntz then showed a clip of Enda Kenny giving his most recent Árd Fheis speech.

Because the group hadn’t been warm to Kenny in earlier discussion, it might have been expected that the two lines representing their views would have started at 50 and immediately dropped. In fact, the reverse happened.

To varying degrees, both lines rose and rose, until, at one point in the speech, they went over 80. Directly afterwards, the group said they felt markedly better about Kenny than they had beforehand.

Then came Pat Rabbitte, about whom the group had felt fairly warm before the clips were shown. As with Kenny, the lines rose, the purple one representing floating voters with a bias towards the opposition eventually bumping off the scale.

The Taoiseach’s ratings dropped mainly because his speech did the classic too-long-in-government-seeking-re-election thing of reminding listeners of all he had done for them. Every Government party insists on listing how they have delivered on promises made at the beginning of their tenure, how much money has gone into each area and what the outcome has been. It never works.

The Taoiseach’s speech writers, having loaded the speech with references to structures and statistics: how many more beds had gone into the health service and how many more procedures had been delivered to patients, must have been chastened to see the lines indicating audience interest drop like steps of stairs. (The Taoiseach’s discomfort with what he was reading and the SpeechCue technology from which he was reading it didn’t help, either). In contrast, Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte’s speeches were interesting, vivid, well-delivered and — significantly — made the group like each of them more than they had at the outset.

One conclusion to be drawn is that good speech writing and speaker-coaching are hugely important, if one short clip of a passionately-delivered memorable oration can so change the attitudes of a group.

Another conclusion is that the Government is more electorally vulnerable than people think. (Michael McDowell came off worse on the dial-o-meters than Bertie Ahern did). The second conclusion is invalid. What Luntz did last night was akin to assessing someone’s tap-dancing potential by watching them walking on their hands. It assessed the Taoiseach-potential of men based on the kind of communication they’re most rarely seen to do.

It’s on the appearances beamed into everybody’s home every day that viewers base their attitudes to politicians, not the appearances that happen — and are widely ignored — once a year. The two opposition leaders, together with Trevor Sargent, are seen virtually every day in footage from the Dáil showing them asking questions of the Taoiseach, and, as part of that process, bitching about some aspect of Government policy or delivery on policy. Viewers, accordingly, view them as whiners who never say anything positive.

Getting around that problem won’t be easy for Rabbitte and Kenny, coming up to the election.

But they HAVE to get around it if they’re to have any realistic hope of power.