In this episode, Farrah Bostic is joined by messaging strategist, author, and Words to Win By host Anat Shenker-Osorio for a wide-ranging and incisive conversation about political communication, campaign strategy, and why so much of what the Democratic Party does feels like a missed opportunity.

Together, they explore:

• How Anat’s early fascination with language and justice led her to a career in cognitive linguistics and progressive messaging.
• Why most political message testing (RCTs, MaxDiff, etc.) fails to reflect how real people encounter campaigns — and what to do instead.
• The danger of focusing on persuasion over mobilization, and why “say what you’re for” is the most important rule in campaign comms.
• How Democrats lost their working-class identity, and why organizing — not polling — is the only way to win it back.
• The power of persuasion windows and how the left can seize — or squander — them.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone working in politics, messaging, organizing, or simply trying to make change in a noisy, distracted, and deeply unequal world.

🔗 Resources & Mentions:

• ASO Communications – Open-source messaging guides and research
• Words to Win By podcast
• Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense About the Economy
• Follow Anat on BlueSky and Substack

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📍 Produced by The Difference Engine

After a brief break, Cross Tabs returns with a must-hear conversation between host Farrah Bostic and journalist-pollster Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN’s Editor of Polling and Election Analytics. Ariel shares insights from over a decade of political polling and reporting, shedding light on how polls get designed, interpreted, and communicated—and why public opinion is more nuanced, contradictory, and dynamic than we often assume.

📌 Topic Highlights

• How polling serves as a form of large-scale journalism
• Question design, framing effects, and the limits of hypothetical polling
• Expressive responding and partisanship’s effect on perception
• The challenge of polling on emerging topics like AI and crypto
• Why polls often fail to capture what people mean when they talk about democracy, education, or trust in government
• What polling reveals—and obscures—about voter discontent with both parties

👤 About Our Guest

Ariel Edwards-Levy is the Editor of Polling and Election Analytics at CNN. Previously, she was a senior reporter and polling editor at HuffPost. She is a member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and was awarded the 2019 Carey McWilliams Award by the American Political Science Association for her journalistic contributions to understanding politics. You can follow her work (and jokes!) on Bluesky.

🔗 Mentioned Resources

• CNN Polling Hub: https://www.cnn.com/politics/polling-center
• CNN/SSRS polling report: "A record share of Americans want the government to get more done": https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/poll-government-done-party-trust
• The Breakthrough Project (CNN, Georgetown, Michigan, SSRS, Verasight): https://breakthrough.cnn.com
• Pew Research on AI: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/28/how-the-us-public-and-experts-view-artificial-intelligence
• Roper Center for Public Opinion Archives: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu
• Brian Schaffner’s research on expressive responding: https://sites.tufts.edu/brianschaffner/publications/

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