How Jobs-To-Be-Done Taught Me Why People Are Voting For Trump.
3 hours of raw, empathetic, apathetic, at times vulgar conversations with 6 Trump supporters.
Understanding how voters decide in this presidential election has been difficult. Like many millennials, I get my news shared to me through my newsfeed in the form of friend’s commentary or article links.
Frequently they read like this…
The Facebook responses to these ‘help me understand people like you’ inquiries that I see are largely good natured. I have decent friends. I’ll admit I have the same fundamental question. What interests me is the Facebook replies in these dialogues tend to be lengthy, pompous and well thought out for those that do share.
But in my experience developing products, when people make choices, it’s largely emotional and at unpredictable times….coming at a struggling moment. The remaining time after is usually spent finding ways to rationally justify the choices we’ve already made.
So on this last Sunday before election I decided to put a framework we’ve been experimenting with to understand decision moments called Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) to the test. To try and help me, possibly you, get a grip on when and why people make their decision to vote for Trump.
Wait, Why Jobs-To-Be-Done? It’s simple premise in product innovation thinking is that we don’t just buy things, we ‘hire’ products to accomplish a specific job for us. A job we believe will help us make progress in our life.
Well….same holds for elections. We’re ‘hiring’ a president. We each conceive some and it’s a set of emotional forces that tip us to making a decision at some point.
JTBD teaches us how to uncover these moments in time where people made decisions. It reveals to us what forces worked together and against each other in that moment that caused our action. These forces… anxieties, habits, desires for something better (Push factors) & attractions to the chosen candidate (pull factors)…are actually behind our buying(voting) decisions.
So Sunday Afternoon I picked up one of my favorite tools to get ahold of any type of American at any moment (Amazon’s Mechanical Turk), posed as an unbiased “Non-Partisan Think Tank” (when looking for clean user research data, it’s important to appear unbiased in the eyes of your interviewee), and offered $6 apiece for soon to be Trump voters to call and chat me up for 15–20 minutes.
Woa.
The next 3 hours & half a dozen conversation were the most raw, empathetic, apathetic, at times vulgar conversations I’ve had with Trump supporters.
To uncover these struggling moments when an American REALLY makes their decision who they are voting for is the key to understanding the WHY in their voting decision. This happens over time. Working the conversation backward from the current moment to the decision to vote Trump, to the moment they actively considered Trump, to even their first thought of voting for Trump.
A JTBD interview for a presidential candidate generally went like this.
Why go through the timeline?
The magic in the timeline is that you uncover the anxieties / habits / attractions and desires that actually pushed them to their decision at the moment they made it. Getting people to talk from that moment uncovers the most untainted view of how they actually made their decision.
So let’s meet Alex. A well educated African American woman & registered democrat in Vermont. Voting for Donald Trump. Interesting.
Referencing the FORCES diagram above….for Alex to make a choice to vote Trump for president… the Pull of the new solution (Donald Trump for President) and external push factors (things in her world that aren’t the way she wants them.) MUST be stronger than her anxieties of The Donald, and the Tug of Habit (voting Democrat in the past).
Her talk on policy and rights over the first 5 minute conversation was well reasoned. Alex is smart. She’s able to articulate like I’ve seen written on Facebook posts. If I left the interview based on what she thinks now I would have just listed those and been done with it.
But when I worked backward on her timeline event by event, a different story emerged.
When we got to “Actively Considering Trump” moment, it came from the second debate. An extremely strong Anxiety for Hillary emerged.
“When listening to Hillary talk it was just words, it was all practiced and pre-planned. Unity and blah blah blah.” “It was her tone of voice, she seemed so snobby.” “I can’t give my vote to someone like this….”
That.Was.It.
She was already done with Hillary.
Going further back on her timeline she recalled watching clips from the first debate. She ended up bashing Trump. “This guy is really good at saying a lot of things without saying anything…I remember listening and thinking ‘oh god what is going on’”, “I didn’t have much of an opinion of her[Hillary] at that point.”
Still considering 3rd party candidates, ‘Decision Moment’ for Trump didn’t come until weeks later for her.
“About 1 week ago. I was on the phone with my mom…She asked me if I’m voting for Hillary. I said I’m voting for Donald Trump…and it surprised me that I said that….I guess I am..She was pretty flabbergasted when I said that.”
Yes, she has Anxieties about Trump that appear serious.
“He sounds sexist, he sounds racist, he sounds xenophobic, his character is not great, it really isn’t. He’s not someone I’d want to have a conversation with or would want to be around me….”
But they don’t outweigh what PUSHED her away & Pull factors for hiring Trump when we uncovered the WHY ‘Practice’, ‘Preplanned’ & ‘snobbery’ that actually mattered.
Then there was Sean. A white, gay, registered democrat living 30 minutes north of NYC that voted Obama. Twice. This year, Sean is voting Trump.
Very interesting. A switch in choosing a product (or candidate) is valuable to uncover because you get to see how the motivation changes and the moments when they do.
Obama to Sean was “Marriage Equality”. Trump to Sean is “Personal Safety”, a sentiment that he echoed from his first sentences all the way back to his ‘First Thought’ of Voting for Trump.
JTBD interview didn’t uncover any different WHY than he was preaching when he first got on the call. But it did uncover the catalyst moment when the forces that mattered for his vote tipped, and WHY that happened.
As we dug deep to the ‘First Thought’ moments, choosing Trump led us to the Paris Terror attacks. Sean’s switching moment came when he began to fear for his own safety and an abrasive approach by Trump was satisfying.
Yes. These moments.
“I watched Hillary and Bern be calm. Trump was the only one to be too hard on the extremists.” “..I don’t remember what Hillary said, Hillary wasn’t willing to say radical Islamic terrorist”
Which led to what really mattered for Sean. “The Muslim ban, I want that…They serve to help me by making me safer…physically and mentally safer”
ok.
“I think it’s time as voters that we become more self-centered”
ok.
And Before the Paris attacks? Before that first thought?
“I had a negative impression of him before that” “He said there should be traditional marriage, cheated on every woman”
But now he feels unsafe. He was pushed to look for comforting.
“It [the muslim ban] doesn’t bother me, I have nothing to lose for that.”
It was a single defining issue without regard for others or it’s effect on the greater system. It satisfy’s Sean’s emotional concern for safety. He’s struggling to feel safe and little else matters until he does. He’s hiring Trump.
My most straight forward conversation?
Tess, A late 40’s married woman from Missouri. who wanted “Any other Republican on the ticket besides Trump.”
She was full of ‘Anxiety’ choosing Trump
“No political history…no long term commitment to anything on a political basis…no public service….I have no idea what to expect”
Most surprisingly there was a LOT of “Pull” for Clinton from Tess.
“I could watch the president [Hillary] interact with foreign dignitaries without putting their foot in their mouth”, “ I do admire Clinton b/c she’s a statesman..Trump can’t hold himself calmly”
At one point as she speaks to me, I visualize her lips turning up with a slight smile as she’s talking.“Having a woman as president would be a huge, huge deal.”
But none of these were strong enough to displace her HABIT (Belief).
“I disagree with democratic contraception believes”
Or her Anxiety of the Alternative
“would future supreme court nominees appointed by Clinton further erode some of the constitutional safe guards.”
Simple.
It was clear Tess had chosen long before the race began. Her existing Habits(beliefs) and anxieties of hiring Hillary for president were too strong even for all the Push & Pull Factors that drew Hillary towards her.
SO, DID I LEARN ANYTHING FROM THESE 3 HOURS OF DIALOGUE WITH TRUMP VOTERS?
Uncovering struggling moments where a voting decision was made was so valuable because of how simple in nature the catalyst event was, but how intricate and unique maze of emotional anxieties and attractions had bottled up behind it.
From these conversations,
I learned my newsfeed (and I) would be hard pressed to bring forth the authentic WHY most votes are cast from a Facebook dialogue. Asking for justification now instead of the moment the choice was made gives different stories of their struggles that led to their vote.
I saw a lot of apathy for the greater public, but I also revealed my own apathy the last few months for my fellow Americans struggles.
I had cared more to blame ‘How could you vote for that character’ than understand what really drove them to hire Donald Trump for president.
The struggling moments in the choice for a candidate are very real.
They are uniquely human.
As we say in product development…spend 90% of time truly understanding the customer(voter) and the problem. From there an effective solution will be immeasurably more clear.
I hope we can seek approaches that bring truer understanding as we look for ways to move forward, together, after election day.
