Using Earned Media to Get Progressive Ideas Into the Mainstream
Data for Progress has shown the popularity of progressive legislation like President Biden’s infrastructure and jobs package through widespread earned media attention. Our findings have been used by hundreds of trusted news organizations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, MSNBC, CNN, Forbes, The Daily Beast, Business Insider, The Hill, Slate, and Vox.
We’ve partnered extensively with Vox to show readers — and Biden staffers — that progressive ideas are popular. We regularly conduct polls in collaboration with Vox, one of the most influential media sites in the current administration. (Don’t believe us? Biden staffers are reportedly 37 times more likely than the average Twitter user to follow Vox). This relationship has resulted in dozens of pieces on important issues from antitrust to executive actions to going big on coronavirus relief.
Our analyses are regularly featured by Crooked Media and Pod Save America. Crooked has extensively covered Data for Progress polling on the For the People Act, the American Jobs Plan, and the American Families Plan — including an analysis by Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer on Pod Save America, one of the most-subscribed podcasts of the past few years. We also collaborated with Crooked to launch the Fuck Gerry(mandering) fund, which raised more than $1,000,000 for downballot candidates in races that are key to redistricting efforts.
We’ve driven the news on Biden’s stimulus proposals. Our American Jobs Plan polling with Invest in America was featured on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show. Top journalists including Jamelle Bouie and Eric Levitz have also made the case for ambitious stimulus using our findings.
Our polling showed the public that D.C. statehood is popular. While D.C. statehood is often thought of as a pet issue for Democratic elites, our polling found that it’s popular across the nation, with a 19-point margin of voter support — the highest level of support ever recorded. Our poll, given as an exclusive to CBS News, quickly went viral. It was picked up by Forbes, NPR, The Hill, WUSA, and Yahoo News.
When the mainstream media hammered Biden’s Afghanistan pullout, we showed that withdrawal was popular with voters. In April, when President Biden first announced his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and end America’s longest war, he was met with a +50-point margin of voters supporting the withdrawal. Months later, after a messy pullout process, pundits seemed to forget that wars are pretty unpopular with Americans — several weeks after the Taliban’s capture of Kabul, we showed that voters continued to support Biden’s withdrawal by a +26-point margin. This polling was covered by MSNBC, Politico, NBC News, and others.
Our maps displayed voter support for Build Back Better to millions of Americans. In May 2021, we released three maps showing that voters in ten key states support Biden’s American Rescue, Jobs, and Family Plans. These important findings reached more than 8 million readers — from New Hampshire’s WMUR to Arizona’s Tucson Weekly to Wisconsin’s WisPolitics and Milwaukee Community Journal — and more than 6 million radio listeners through SiriusXM Progress’ “The Dean Obeidallah Show.”
On average, we receive more than four times the media hits of comparable think tanks, an unmatched media advantage that allows us to show millions of Americans the popularity of progressive ideas — and helps combat harmful right-wing attacks by arming citizens with accurate and accessible information.
