Real-time data reveal Americans’ infrastructure sentiment, key insights for public affairs campaigns

President Biden’s infrastructure plan includes billions to modernize traditional infrastructures like roads and bridges, but it also allocates billions to expand broadband access, care for the elderly and disabled, Veterans Affairs upgrades, and other niche goals like improving water infrastructure for drinking water. The president has proposed businesses largely pay for the bill, mainly through raising the recently lowered corporate tax rate to 28%. This is not your average “transportation” package that just deals with roads and bridges. The surprise plan could have enormous political and economic impact and is worthy of your attention, but before trying to engage Americans to support or oppose the plan, you must first understand where infrastructure sentiment stands.

At Resonate, we understand the world of public affairs and what our clients face. On any given day, a multi-trillion-dollar proposal can drop, with far-reaching consequences across industries and sectors. The AI-driven Resonate Ignite Platform™ lets public affairs campaigns immediately identify, understand, and target Americans online across thousands of niche policy positions, at unrivaled scale.

For example, if we focus on Biden’s plan, we can instantly model out a national or local audience based on the specific transportation infrastructure improvements they want to see in their own communities, or learn how certain audiences feel about raising the corporate tax rate, expanding the social safety net to account to address Biden’s “crisis of care,” or even water access issues.

Our real-time insights cover this mixed bag of a bill – in addition to thousands of other issues. But how do we do it?

In ongoing survey waves throughout the year, Resonate continuously asks voters where they stand on a broad range of the most current proposals and regulations industries are facing. These questions are included in the nation’s largest independent voter research study, along with questions related to personal values, motivations, voter activity, and more. We then marry the survey results with tens of billions of daily online behavioral and contextual data points— using cutting-edge machine learning to uncover these insights on over 200 million online Americans. This enables us to build issue-based audiences for research and instant, precise digital targeting and measurement.

Our methodology eliminates the need for campaigns to invest in expensive and labor-intensive field research to build policy-focused audiences from scratch.

Sentiment on traditional infrastructure – Americans want better roads

When it comes to traditional infrastructure priorities, Americans by and large want to see improvements in road maintenance and repair in their own communities. The second priority is improving local bridges.

Source: The Resonate Ignite Platform™

While the bill has largely been criticized for proposing to fund non-traditional forms of infrastructure, campaigns supporting the bill should heavily emphasize that this bill does in fact allocate $620 billion to modernize traditional infrastructure like roads and bridges, the largest portion of the bill. These are the transportation priorities of most Americans.

Who is the transportation voter?

Yes, there are voters who will vote based on a candidate’s transportation policy and actions. In fact, there are over 18 million of them. They are largely high-earning, educated, male Democrats.

How we built this audience in the Resonate Ignite Platform™

In the 2020 election, 64% of transportation voters broke for Biden. As you would imagine, this audience is composed of heavy travelers, both domestic and international.

Index indicates how likely this audience is to possess a trait, or attribute, as compared to the baseline of U.S. online registered voters, with 100 representing average.
Percent Composition is the distribution, or proportion, of those in an audience who have that specific trait.
Source: The Resonate Ignite Platform™

On social media, you’ll find these traveling voters on LinkedIn and they’re most likely getting their news from CNBC. Learn a little more about them below.

Source: The Resonate Ignite Platform™

Sentiment on non-traditional infrastructure – which Americans want to expand broadband?

The Resonate Ignite Platform™ shows there are roughly 58 million registered voters who are advocates for expanding broadband, or high-speed internet access, a key component of Biden’s infrastructure proposals. The majority of these broadband advocates are again highly educated, high-earning Democrats, but 28% are Republicans, with the rest identifying as Independents.

Another top societal/charitable issue for these broadband advocates is conserving water availability. Compared to the average voter, they are 80% more likely to care about improving water access and infrastructure, another key component of Biden’s plan along with improving broadband access. They are also 41% more likely to care about poverty, explaining their desire to expand broadband services and water access to communities in need.

Index indicates how likely this audience is to possess a trait, or attribute, as compared to the baseline of U.S. online registered voters, with 100 representing average.
Percent Composition is the distribution, or proportion, of those in an audience who have that specific trait.
Source: The Resonate Ignite Platform™

Sentiment toward funding infrastructure with corporate taxes – which Americans oppose raising the rate?

Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% to help fund his $2.3 trillion infrastructure price tag. He won’t be able to do that without hearing pushback from some of the 100 million registered voters who believe the corporate tax rate should be maintained or decreased. Resonate data show that comparatively, about 80 million voters want to see an increase in the current corporate tax rate.

The Resonate Ignite Platform™ shows the majority of registered voters believe the corporate tax rate should stay the same or even drop down – including both republicans and democrats. This is a critical insight for Biden and Democrat campaigns as they negotiate a reasonable corporate tax rate to help fund the infrastructure package. This group of pro-business tax advocates also highly values bipartisanship, something the transportation bills of the past have largely enjoyed.

Index indicates how likely this audience is to possess a trait, or attribute, as compared to the baseline of U.S. online registered voters, with 100 representing average.
Percent Composition is the distribution, or proportion, of those in an audience who have that specific trait.
Source: The Resonate Ignite Platform™

The segments analyzed above are just a few of the thousands of micro-segmented public affairs audiences that we can help you analyze and target immediately.

What are your top issues? Where do you need to build support? We are here to help.

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