April 2021 Memo – Numbers Driving the Narrative

98% – Census tracts nationwide with partisan segregation

• Americans are increasingly surrounding themselves with people who think – and vote – the same way they do.
• Factors like lifestyle, education, race, and income drive Democrats and Republicans to cluster near people of the same party. It doesn’t just apply to cities – but neighborhoods and streets, too.
• For 25 million voters, particularly Democrats in dense urban areas, only one of every ten encounters will be with a member of the opposite party.

WHAT IT MEANS: Polarization doesn’t just define our politics – it defines the way we live. Party realignment has shifted densely populated suburbs toward Democrats and working-class towns and rural areas toward Republicans, meaning partisan segregation is taking place even when people aren’t moving. All politics is local, and these patterns indicate a highly polarized environment for the foreseeable future.

83, 81% – Share of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, who believe COVID-19 continues to pose a serious threat to the U.S. economy

• These concerns reflect rare partisan agreement. Half of non-retired adults worry their long-term finances will be affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
• While President Joe Biden gets strong marks for his handling of the pandemic, voters are evenly split on whether the economy is on the right track or wrong track.
• Economic indicators are generally positive, but inflation will likely rise in the months ahead.

WHAT IT MEANS: This polling helps explain the strong support for the COVID-relief package and could create a favorable landscape for the president’s $2 trillion infrastructure package. However, Biden and Congressional Democrats will walk a fine line as they tackle an ambitious agenda that includes tax increases, a climate-focused infrastructure bill, and immigration. The President enjoys relatively strong approval ratings, but voters could turn quickly – on Biden or congressional Democrats – if they believe the party in power has put the country’s recovery at risk.

 42% – Year-over-year increase in new business applications since February 2020

• After plummeting last spring, business formation surged in the second half of 2020.
• A year removed from the last full month before the onset of the pandemic, business applications are still seeing significant year-over-year growth.
• Application data indicates that an unusually high number of applications are high-propensity businesses, which are typically associated with firm formation and hiring employees.

WHAT IT MEANS: Not all the news is bad. Parts of the economy are showing remarkable resiliency. While the pandemic upended the country for the better part of a year, there is at least one silver lining: a “once in a generation surge in startups.”

69% – Parents concerned their children are falling behind in school

• More parents are concerned about their children facing setbacks than they are about in-person learning leading to more COVID-19 outbreaks.
• Many parts of the country are on track to fully reopen businesses in the coming weeks, but it’s still uncertain whether schools will be fully open in the fall.
• The percentage of schools conducting full-time in-person learning reached a new high in March, but more than 40 percent of school districts are still remote or in classrooms part-time.

WHAT IT MEANS: The heavy lift of getting kids back in classrooms by the beginning of the next school year is a reminder that parents and policymakers alike will be dealing with pandemic-related challenges for months, and possibly years, to come. Public education could play a significant role in upcoming elections where school closures have been a top-of-mind issue, such as the New York mayoral race and the California gubernatorial recall.

32% – Drop in Fox News viewership since President Donald Trump left office

• The big three cable networks have all seen significant declines in viewership since January.
• The New York Times reports that the U.S. news media’s coverage of COVID-19 was significantly more negative than scientific journals and international news, with the study’s authors pointing to media outlets “giving the audience what it wants.”
• The media remains one of the least trusted institutions in America.

WHAT IT MEANS: The Trump presidency was a shot of adrenaline for traditional media and cable news, but it was only a near-term fix for organizations losing ground to insurgent partisan outlets, online news, and social media. Giving the audience what it wants might temporarily drive ratings and clicks, but it doesn’t solve the underlying challenge of restoring credibility.

100% – Yearly increase in mobile video consumption

• By 2022, online video will represent 82 percent of total internet traffic. YouTube is already the second most popular site on the internet after Google.
• Streaming platforms are more popular than ever. Many of them do not allow advertising, forcing companies to get creative in order to reach audiences that used to watch ads 30 seconds at a time.
• Broadcast television advertising declined 10 percent in 2020 while online video advertising increased by 12 percent.

WHAT IT MEANS: The information landscape continues to expand. Audiences are easier to reach but getting through to them is a different challenge to navigate. It’s more important than ever that advertisers understand who their audiences are and where to find them.