SCOWIS Opposition Message Test

Grow Progress ran a Rapid Message Test of the official campaign ads from Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel. This test was run in under 24 hours, on January 29th, 2025 with 800 participants in Wisconsin. A few results stood out that are relevant to this Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

 

Net Effects of Messages

 

When looking at these test results, we see that a plurality of respondents in our control group (respondents who don’t receive any sort of positive or negative messaging) are undecided on who to vote for (46%). Those who did pick one of the candidates are almost evenly split between voting Crawford (28%) or Schimel (25%). The “baseline: 3%” in the graph above indicates that Crawford is 3% ahead of Schimel. 

Looking at the net effect of the messages, which accounts for both the movement towards Crawford and away from Schimel, two clear conclusions come from the test results: 1) The opposition message is quite effective at increasing support for Schimel – though notably almost entirely from the undecided camp and 2) The Crawford – Never message not only negates the effect of the opposition message, but increases support even further for Crawford. This means that people who see Schimel’s ad and then Crawford’s attack ad against Schimel are more likely to support Crawford than people who see no messaging at all. Crawford – Common Sense, on the other hand, effectively neutralizes the opposition, but does not cause an increase in support over the baseline.

As seen above, there are still many undecided voters who are up for grabs. Message testing will help identify which messages to (1) most increase favorability and vote choice for Susan Crawford, (2) most effectively neutralize Brad Schimel’s ads, and (3) are least likely to to cause backlash and reduce favorability amongst specific demographics of voters.