AE Blog

Without question, the 2008 presidential election has been extraordinarily fascinating from a social values research perspective. The sheer volume of public and private polling, the insertion of complex reactions about race, gender and age, the long primary fight, and the creation of a very different electoral map has made this race important fascinating to watch from a social values perspective.

Barack Obama's candidacy results in a set of issues around race, multiculturalism, and comfort with change that challenge a lot of the earlier assumptions about America, the electorate, and the political parties. As the political class has done since polling began, there has been a number of attempts to identify the key demographic groups that will decide the election. But few have been able to paint a robust picture of the segment, or segments, of the electorate that will decide the election. It's simply not accurate to say that Barack Obama has a problem with white voters, or older voters, or independent voters. Some whites, seniors and independents are less likely to support Obama, but there are an awful lot of enthusiastic white, senior and independent Obama supporters as well.

American Environics has conducted some fascinating research to attempt to identify the important swing segments in the 2008 election based not on demographics, but on social values. Using our social values research methodology, we've done both quantitative and qualitative research to understand the underlying worldviews of these voters, and how their conscious and unconscious reasoning drives their decision making on the presidential race.

We're in the process of analyzing the data and will have the results of the research available soon. So stay tuned to the blog where we'll release our unique findings.