Posts by Brent

The Pulse Pod is Live!

Hosted by Cygnal’s CEO, Brent Buchanan, and VP of Research and Analysis, Chris Kratzer, the Cygnal Pulse Pod serves the purpose of entertaining and helping conservative politicos, operatives, and people who are just interested in politics learn more about polling and other aspects of campaigning.

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Voting in 2020 will be more emotional than previous elections. Here is how to connect.

Advertising. It has been around a long time. For centuries, ads have targeted our emotions in hopes of eliciting a response to products, services, and people. Promotional ads can be seen on Egyptian papyrus dating back thousands of years. Political ads were found within the ruins of Pompeii. Advertising is, and always will be, inescapable. […]

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Fundraising Drys Up, Campaigns Seek to Save Dollars On Strategies Needed To Win

As coronavirus continues to batter the U.S. economy and the public psyche, once- reliable political donors are pulling the reins on giving to campaigns. This jolt to funding has campaigns across the country struggling to raise the money needed for their election – especially down-ballot. Experts say the financial landscape will continue to look different […]

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Voting-By-Mail To Be Top Story in 2020 General Election

As we near the early months of summer, it is becoming more apparent each week that Vote-By-Mail (VBM) is going to play an unprecedented role in the 2020 General Election. Experts say that COVID-19 could remain a threat well into 2021 and that, while many Americans will feel comfortable voting at polling stations on Election […]

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Cygnal Grows Team to Serve Exploding Customer Base

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Cygnal today announced the addition of David Wolfson as Director of Client Strategy and Jacqueline Boggess as Director of Insights and Communications. Additionally, longtime Cygnal team member, Kay Aguilar, has taken on the additional responsibility of Culture Ambassador.  “With Kay’s promotion and the addition of these three new team members, Cygnal’s roster […]

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Voters Are People Too: The Importance of Human Connection in Crisis

Every election year, someone – actually most everyone – says: “This will be the most important election of our lifetime!” Well…2020 might actually be. While all of us practice social distancing and self-quarantine, we all wonder when this will be over. I guess that’s the toughest part about all of this: the uncertainty. It’s been […]

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P2P SMS Is Hot – But Not All Platforms Work the Same

The fastest expanding campaign technology last cycle was peer-to-peer text messaging, known as P2P or P2P SMS. Dozens of companies popped up offering the service with billions of messages sent. It has only expanded since then, and, much like IVR, has become a race to the bottom to see who can offer the lowest rate […]

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Combining Polling with Modeling to Drive Cost Savings

Toward the end of the 2018 election cycle, we had multiple clients and committees complain about the high cost of conducting both polling and predictive analytics (often known as – modeling or scoring). They wondered why these projects couldn’t be done at the same time. The cumulative results were great to have – thorough understanding […]

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What Does a Swing Voter Look Like?

With an extremely polarized political environment, it’s hard to believe anyone would be a swing voter – an individual who voted for one party in a certain election then another party in the next election. In the 2016 election, more counties switched from Obama to Trump than from Romney to Clinton in 2012. If you […]

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Thanks, FiveThirtyEight, for the #2 Ranking

Every year, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight releases its Pollster Ratings. As he recently opined, “Polls just had one of their best election cycles, ever — but challenges abound in the industry…” We agree! (And it’s not just because Cygnal was ranked the #1 most-accurate private pollster, we promise…) What excites us more is the fact that […]

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