More Than Just Data: Political Relationships, New Guidelines, and a New WNBA
The world is filled with examples of following the crowd without thinking. I have ranted in the past about one of these examples which is one of my own personal pet peeves… the question, “Would you recommend this to a friend?” It is everywhere and even the “inventor” of this question feels that “It’s completely annoying. It’s inappropriate. It’s just silly,” I might have just hit peak frustration with this question when after canceling a booking for travel plans I was asked, “How likely are you to recommend [company] to a friend or colleague based on this interaction?”
It feels like the research community needs a PSA similar to the one around internet scams when they had people on a bus reading emails about a Nigerian prince and other popular scams from back in the day. There needs to be some thinking about how relevant a feedback question is and whether it makes sense in the real world. When was the last time you told a friend that they should use a specific company because the chatbot was easy to use when canceling a reservation?
The wisdom of the crowd can be a real, and positive, thing, however the stupidity of following the crowd is also real. Some of this is laziness, but a lot is based on the fact that rewards for thinking differently are not nearly worth the risk when compared to the likelihood that you will rarely get in trouble for doing what everyone else does. The classic adage is that “no one gets fired for hiring IBM”. But this is not a great excuse for organizations to not think through if a question even makes sense given the situation.
Unfortunately, this is not likely to change since there is a low likelihood that customers will not use a company again because of a dumb follow-up question, but that doesn’t mean that improvements shouldn’t be sought out. Ultimately making your customers feel that you are actually listening can go a long way. Thank you for reading my rant and there is an important question to ask everyone… how likely are you to recommend this newsletter to a friend?
As always, here are some of the data points that caught our eye this week.
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1)??? 3 v 8
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Last weekend, the Trendency team released our analysis on how the generic congressional race is being affected by the Presidential race and vice versa. Lots of interesting results to look at, especially when you look at the differences between age groups and gender. The difference in support levels on the congressional level between the various demographic groups are generally holding to the “normal” patterns with younger voters showing stronger support for the Democratic congressional candidate and that support dropping as you move up the age scale. For the Presidential race, the patterns are different than in the past.
Currently, Harris’ strongest support is among 65+ voters (51.49 average) with under 45 voters less than two points behind (49.99). For Trump, the highest support is from 45-64-year-olds (45.04) followed by older voters (42.29) and younger voters (41.03). One interesting thing is the difference between the different cohorts. Among the three age groups, the average absolute difference between each is 3.96 for Harris and 3.67 for Trump. On the congressional level, it’s 3.68 for Democrats and 4.8 for Republicans. When looking at the difference by gender, there is almost no difference when looking at the differences between men and women (8.66 absolute difference on the presidential level and 8.56 at the congressional level).
This is not to say that the gender gap is not important, but the dynamic shifts from previous elections seem to be more rooted in age than other demographics.
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2)??? 8 to 15
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Unless you are really into tech rules and regulations, the second draft of NIST’s guidelines on Digital Identity (aka passwords) probably didn’t catch your attention, but there were some interesting recommendations, many of which are based a little more on psychology than other factors. According to NIST, passwords should be 8 to 15 characters in length, but longer is fine. Where the more interesting recommendations come in are around what you should not do. You should not impose composition rules (requiring mixtures of letters, numbers, symbols, uppercase letters, etc.) and you should not require passwords to change periodically. These recommendations are based on the findings that these rules tend to make people reuse passwords and basically get lazy.
NIST is also recommending that “knowledge-based authentication” (what road did you live on, what was your first pet’s name, etc.) be sent to the trash bin. These rules are not binding or law, but recommendations. I wouldn’t hold your breath on your bank changing their rules anytime soon, but possibly helps in pushing back on some of the rules your IT department has in place? You can at least put them to sleep by having them read the NIST paper.
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3)??? 50-50
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The baseball season is wrapping up this weekend and, since the Red Sox were meh this year, that means I move to rooting for my second favorite team, aka whoever is playing against the Yankees. The WNBA is slightly ahead of baseball with the playoffs starting this week, after a record-breaking regular season that is sending the league in a totally new direction.
There was a lot of hype earlier this year with one of the most talented rookie classes coming into the league, from Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, and the hype was more than met. Clark continues to be a massive draw when it comes to viewers. This season 24 WNBA broadcasts had 1 million or more viewers and Clark played in? 21 of those games. For context, the last time any game topped a million viewers was in 2008.
But it wasn’t just TV viewership that jumped. The Fever (Clark’s team) led the league in attendance (17,035), a 300+% jump from last year (4,067). When the Fever played on the road, some home teams moved the games to NBA arenas to accommodate bigger crowds. Last Thursday, the Fever–Mystics matchup at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, drew 20,711 fans, the largest crowd ever for a WNBA game.
While Clark is clearly a big driver of these changes, it’s not just her. ESPN reported that TV audiences for WNBA regular-season games increased 170% over last year. Ion said viewership rose 133% and increased 181% for men aged 25 to 54. And the cherry on top… attendance for every team in the league grew by double digits.
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We hope you enjoyed this week’s edition and, as always, we look forward to your thoughts and hearing what stories caught your eye this week.