Hearts, Not Minds

The Georgia focus group was an example of this art form at its most useful. Its fruits are not always so easy to pluck, and it is easy to misinterpret a group's comments, or be baffled by them. A bad leader can ruin a focus group. So can one or more ornery participants who try to dominate the proceedings. Often it is difficult to understand what is really important in a focus group discussion, and what is just noise.

This year, Peter Hart is using focus groups to try to understand the presidential campaign as it unfolds. He has conducted five already and plans five more, all for the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. The latest was held Tuesday night in York, Pa., and it will be broadcast at 8 tonight on C-SPAN.

There was no red-telephone moment on Tuesday night, but there was plenty of emotion. Hart conducted the focus group at a market research firm, in a room surrounded by see-through mirrors. Several reporters watched through the glass.

The 12 participants (who were paid $100 each for their time) comprised six Democrats, two independents who leaned Democratic, two Republicans and two pure independents. None of the 12 supported Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22; seven voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton. One of Hart's principal interests was to learn how those Clinton supporters felt about Obama.

But before he could get to that question he tapped into strong feelings about the state of the country and the Bush administration. No one in the group had anything good to say about the state of the nation. Only three had anything kind to say about President Bush.

Several participants made clear their own difficult circumstances. Michelle Bell, 38, an employee of Verizon and single mother of two, complained that she got no help from anyone. "Even though I do work full time, trying to take care of the house, pay the mortgage, I have no money. I live paycheck to paycheck. But I still can't get reduced lunch for my kids at school. I think it's a bit ridiculous when there's people out there that don't work, and they're getting welfare and food stamps, and what am I getting? Nothing." A Democrat, she voted for Bush in 2004 and was leaning toward Obama.

Hart was impressed by the comments of two other women who voted for Bush in 2004 but seemed open to voting for Obama in November, a 32-year-old Republican homemaker and churchgoer named Jannell Mader, and Sheryl Randoll, an independent, 51-year-old pharmaceutical saleswoman with a history of voting for Republicans.

"I have two sons in college and one who's a senior in high school," said Randoll. "I can plod along and make it on my own, but I really don't see it for them. I mean, if college is costing $50,000 a year and all of the things that go along with that, I don't see them being even as successful as I was, and I'm not even as successful as my father was. . . . I'm a single mom taking care of three kids. . . . I'm thinking we do need change. I'm not certain that either one of the candidates is going to bring the changes that we need, but we certainly need change to make it better for them."

"I am registered as a Republican and considered myself as a Republican up until this president," said Mader, who announced at one point that she admired Mike Huckabee. "Now I'm like, I don't know what I am. . . . I think that for most of my life my decisions have been made based on morals and family values and that whole belief system that I've had instilled in me since birth. And now all of a sudden our country is like turned upside down with all these economic issues that I haven't encountered in my lifetime and it's really making me second-guess, you know, voting for those ideals instead of voting for other issues that need to be dealt with."

"If I were John McCain," Hart said on the morning after the focus group, "I'd be exceptionally nervous" after hearing these women's comments. "Those two people are terrible news for McCain.

"He's already looking at a deficit of 10 or 12 points in party ID," Hart said, referring to the gap between voters who identify themselves as Democrats or leaning toward Democrats and Republicans in this year's opinion polls. If McCain doesn't have traditional Republican voters like Mader and Randoll "locked up in early June -- that is exceptionally important."

Hart saw another reason for McCain to be anxious -- five of the seven Democrats who voted for Clinton in the primary were already comfortable with Obama as their candidate. Hart had deliberately excluded people who had voted for Obama to make it easier for the Clinton supporters to speak their minds. In states like Pennsylvania, McCain must attract many non-Republican votes to win, and his campaign has already targeted Democrats who supported Clinton.