Our proprietary voter research actively identifies niche audiences on both sides of the gun debate. Leveraging first-party voter survey data on gun issues, paired with survey respondents’ online behavior, we’re able to immediately build, analyze, and target audiences that are not readily available through traditional research and models.
For this analysis, we look at our real-time data on two microsegments of Americans:
- Registered voters who voted for Biden in 2020 and are gun owners
- Registered Republicans who support enacting gun control legislation
Insights on gun owners who voted for President Biden
Our AI-driven models identified an online audience of 25.4 million registered voters who voted for President Biden and are also gun owners. Maybe this has something to do with the President’s claim that he in fact owns a 20- and 12-gauge shotgun… 230 years after the second amendment was ratified, and the President himself still owns a couple shotguns!
When looking at the audience of gun owners who backed Biden, we want to see how they differ from your average Democrat, so we used the average registered Democratic voter as a comparative baseline.
What’s interesting about these Biden-backing gun owners is their party affiliation breakdown. While the majority are Democrats, a good amount self-identify as Republicans and almost a quarter are Independents.
Source: the Resonate Ignite Platform™
Differing from the average Democrat, this audience is equal parts male and female, with the majority aged between 35-54 years old.
Now, how about the values and psychological drivers that are most important to our gun-owning Biden supporters? These attributes are the “why” behind their decisions – including policy preferences.
Source: the Resonate Ignite Platform™
The values tell a story of someone who prides themselves as a responsible gun owner. These voters most value safety in their country, community, and family and they are driven by proving their competencies and trustworthiness.
Learn more about the Resonate Human Element and how we uncover deep insights at the individual level.
How are Biden- and Trump-supporting gun owners most different?
We then looked at what policy issues most resonate with this audience, but instead of using registered Democrats as the comparative baseline, we flipped it to use gun owners who voted for Trump.
The data show one of the most fundamental differences between our two gun-owning audiences are their positions on abortion policy. Gun owners who broke for Biden are nearly 70% more likely to support pro-choice policies than gun owners who voted for Trump. The data also suggest that the Biden group regularly engages on pro-choice issues.
Source: the Resonate Ignite Platform™
Some other key differences between these two audiences surfaced when looking at the most important societal and charitable issues. When compared to the gun-owning Trump audience, the Biden gun group significantly over-indexes on their concern for the environmental and poverty issues.
Source: the Resonate Ignite Platform™
What about Republicans who support enacting gun control legislation, who are they?
Our models found an online audience of 13 million Republicans who want to see gun control legislation enacted.
Source: the Resonate Ignite Platform™
When compared to your average Republican, this audience is consistent with gender and age. However, we did see some spikes in household income and education levels amongst Republicans who support more gun laws.
Source: the Resonate Ignite Platform™
What’s interesting is that when we looked at the key differences in societal and charitable priorities, we again saw noticeable differences in feelings related to climate change and poverty.
Like we saw when comparing gun owners who voted for Biden to the gun owners who voted for Trump, we see that Republicans who support enacting gun control massively over index on concern for climate change and poverty when compared to the average Republican.
Source: the Resonate Ignite Platform™
These data points are an example of how online behavior can uncover unique differences between similar voter audiences that traditional models could miss. In this case, the data show that passions around climate change and poverty issues are a consistent differentiator when contrasting two different, yet similar audiences that are considered more traditional, conservative-leaning.
Lastly, let’s look at the differences between the values and drivers of our two Republican groups. Not surprising given the climate change insight above, “caring for nature” was a top value the Republican gun control group over-indexed for. Other key themes were accepting those who are different, peer recognition, and creativity.
Source: the Resonate Ignite Platform™
Which audiences does your campaign need to understand better and target?
The segments analyzed above are just a few of the thousands of micro-segmented public affairs audiences that we can help you analyze, better understand, segment and target immediately for the most effective, personalized 1:1 messaging opportunities. And by the way, cookie deprecation isn’t changing that.
What are your top issues? What audiences sympathetic to your cause do you need to reach, educate, and drive to action? Where do you need to build support?
Resonate is here to help you reach your goals. Request a demo or give us a call at 855.855.4320.
