This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
John Anzalone is the founding partner of Impact Research, one of the nation’s top public opinion research and consulting firms. Anzalone was the chief polling agent for President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, and also served on the campaigns of President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Anzalone frequently advises governors and members of Congress on campaign strategy and messaging, and regularly polls for the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The HPR sat down with Anzalone to discuss his career, the state of polling, and the 2024 election.
Harvard Political Review: According to Brookings and the Harvard Institute of Politics, young voters played a critical role in helping Democrats win key contests in the 2022 midterms and combating the predicted red wave. What strategies are the Democratic Party using this election cycle to mobilize young voters, especially in swing states and in critical contests?
John Anzalone: I think this is going to be a really important year for young voters. Months ago, we had two 80-year-old men running for president, and the enthusiasm for young people to get involved was incredibly low. I think that our big worry at the time was that young people were just going to sit on the couch or vote for a third party. We’ve just seen an amazing turnaround in enthusiasm with young people, to where, not only did they move from third party to Kamala, but people who were going to sit it out are now going to vote.
I think that one of the biggest priorities for Democrats in general — whether in Senate races and congressional races — but Kamala Harris’s campaign especially, is that you have to expand the map. When you win a race by 45,000 votes in three states like Biden did, or you lose a race by 75,000 votes in three states like Hillary did, everything’s on the margin. Young people aren’t any more important than older people since you’ve got to get everyone, but rarely is there an expansion universe. So you have to persuade that small universe of swing voters. We know that it’s a sliver, but we also know that 53% of young people participated in the election in 2020. Imagine if you can raise that by a few points. I think it’s about expansion, you know, as well as the last remaining persuadables and young people. If they could get turnout to 55% or 57%, it would be a huge gain for Democrats overall.
HPR: When you say expansion, does that mean putting forth candidates that aren’t 80-year-olds, or is it about ideology?
JA: I think it’s both. One of my most popular candidates is Gretchen Whitmer. She has a certain special sauce that I haven’t seen in politics — a connection with voters that is incredibly unique. And she has this ability to communicate a really digestible message, especially on reproductive rights, childcare, things like that.
She gets a hell of a lot done. We kid around that her ideology is to “get s— done.” I sent her this modern art and it says, “get s— done.” That’s what’s important to her. I think you put those three things together, and you see young people like to be involved with her, whether it’s at a political level, national, or state level. I think all those things matter. If you have people who look and sound like you, you tend to have a different connection. I think that that becomes really important.
HPR: Sunbelt states, where Latino voters make up a crucial voting block, could become critical to the Harris campaign strategy. How are shifts in Latino vote shaping democratic strategy? What are the differences in the block compared to past election cycles?
JA: I think one of the things that is missed in the Latino vote is that the Latino vote is not monolithic. I’ve seen plenty of focus groups where voters are not saying, “I’m Latino.” They are saying “I’m Mexican, I’m Venezuelan, I’m Haitian.” So nationality is much more important under the umbrella of being Latino, and I think we forget that.
Latinos also assimilate at a very high rate. My parents were Sicilian — they had broken English. And my parents just wanted to be American. It didn’t take too long before, basically, they were just American, except for the last name. I think that you’re seeing that we forget the assimilation process of Latino Americans into communities. It doesn’t take much more than one generation for the next generation to just want to be American. They start acting like just any other voter, right. They’re not monolithic, and it depends on where they are regionally.
They’re also the fastest growing universe of Protestant, Pentecostal, and Evangelicals. Once a Latino goes from being a Catholic to being Evangelical Pentecostal, they’re Republican. There’s a lot of dynamics going on with the Latino community that you just have to analyze a little differently than just say “Latinos should be democratic, we shouldn’t be losing them.” Well, we may be just losing them on cultural things as they assimilate into a community.
You can look to Democratic parts of Michigan. My father, who was a truck driver and a teamster, was a Democrat. A lot of my uncles were Democrats, and now they’re Republicans. There was that evolution, and there will be an evolution within the Hispanic community. It depends on where you are geographically, along with your age and your gender. Why are male Latinos much more Republican than female? Well, that same dynamic is happening in the Caucasian community, and the same dynamics happen in the Black community, right? So we like to, you know, think that everything is simplistic, and it’s complicated.
HPR: As a pollster, what goes into predicting the next big voting block or demographic shift?
JA: I don’t know if we predict. I think that pollsters are in the business of listening, and we can see trends early in their phase or their evolution. That’s different from predicting. Everyone wants to make us prognosticators, and our main job within political campaigns is actually message development, targeting, and making a campaign more efficient with resource development and allocation. You can see trends like the movement of Latinos away from the Democratic Party. I think that trend continues. I don’t think it continues because of what we’re doing wrong, I think that there’s, again, you know, assimilation, cultural, geographic reasons.
Similarly, we’ve lost ground with African Americans. There’s 10% of African Americans in any poll, probably, who are Evangelical and Pentecostal, who have a problem with abortion or gay rights. So you can see why we lose some African Americans just for religious reasons, but we never talk about that. Now I think that the movement with younger male African Americans and their attraction to Trump is a whole different ball game that doesn’t have anything to do with religion or, you know, morals or whatever. I mean, that is a psychology that can be dissected in many ways. Is it an alpha male thing? Is it a strength thing? There’s a lot of dynamics going at play.
HPR: Why did you decide to be a Harvard IOP fellow? What makes you so excited about this opportunity?
JA: One of them is personal and emotional. I’m just like a low-income kid whose dad was a disabled trucker and mom was a switchboard operator. This is all just kind of unreal. I was a free lunch kid. The experience of me being here from where I came is a little emotional, it’s almost overwhelming. My wife and I moved up here, we got our two dogs here, and we’re going to immerse ourselves in Harvard.
The second part, I think, is more important, which is that there are rarely times in your life when you’re my age — I’m 60 — where you get an experience to learn and give back. I didn’t want to do this in the spring, where the elections would be over and then we were just looking back. I wanted to experience this with students in real time during the last two months of an election. We’re gonna ride the wave together. I have a big polling firm with around 50 employees. My partners are part of the polling team for Harris. We do every major state for senate and governor. I get data every day. And I can’t share that data, but I can’t unlearn what I have in my head. I’m going to be able to give back some of what I’m learning, what I’ve learned and experienced, and what I know day to day, and I’m just going get so much from the students in that two-way back-and-forth.
HPR: There are many students at Harvard interested in doing polling or working with political campaigns. How would you suggest getting involved?
JA: You’ve got to get in the game. My son graduated in May and drove to Raleigh, and he’s working on the campaign, grinding it seven days a week at an entry level. You have got to get in the game. Go and experience a campaign on the ground somewhere in America. I don’t care whether it’s a legislative race or a mayor’s race or a congressional race or a Senate race or a presidential race, but go in and experience it and earn your keep at the ground level. You’ll never, ever regret it. It’s the best. So much f— fun.
