Cygnal Pulse Podcast

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Cygnal's John Rogers, Director of Client Strategy, and Noah Wyhof-Rudnick, Director of Sampling & Innovation, share their insights from Cygnal’s April National Poll. Together, they dive deep into the most important trends concerning this recently conducted survey, and how those are shaping up the current electoral environment. Listen now and discover what k...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent are joined by Dr. Peter Wish, a campaign coach and strategist to political candidates, and author of the book, “The Candidate’s 7 Deadly Sins: Using Emotional Optics to Turn Political Vices into Virtues." Together, they dive into the voter’s psychology, taking a close look to the major role that emotion plays when the time comes to vote.

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Cygnal's Brock McCleary, VP of Polling, and Noah Wyhof-Rudnick, Director of Sampling & Innovation, share their insights from Cygnal’s March National Poll. Together, they dive deep into the most important trends concerning this recently conducted survey, and how those are shaping up the current electoral environment.

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent share their table with Cygnal’s analyst and data scientist James Shirley, together with Tab Berg, a consultant based in California and Founder/President of TABCommunications, Inc. Jointly, they dive deep into Predictive Analytics – what is it, how does it work, in which cases is it more useful than standard poling, and how we can expect it t...

On this episode of the Pulse Pod, Brent and Chris are joined by Cygnal’s experienced pollster and VP Brock McCleary to discuss the upcoming elections and touching on some major issues, including the current political environment (which is favorable towards Republicans), consequences of COVID policies, and shifting demographic trends.

On this first Pulse Pod episode of 2022, Chris and Brent premiere the new podcast's round table format. This time, they are joined by Chris Lane and John Rogers, two Cygnal team pollsters. They discuss the current general election macro environment, inflation concerns, and key demographics of voters moving into midterm season.

On this week’s episode of the Cygnal Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent share a preview for next year, as the current format of the podcast is being updated, moving from its usual intro + interview structure to a new style that will include some round table discussions and the sharing of very unique data collected by Cygnal’s own DIT. Also, Cygnal’s data scientist Noah Rudnick talks in detail about the me...

On this week’s episode of the Cygnal Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss the burst of optimism among Republicans stemming from the Virginia race. Yet, the two reiterate the importance of how different federal elections are from smaller campaigns that focus on local issues. Simplistic messaging stood out as the winning strategy in Youngkin’s victory. On another note, an original process of daily tra...

On this week’s episode of the Cygnal Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss the importance of storytelling when aiming to On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss different types of survey responses. This year shows a particularly high rate of over-response among Republicans, meaning they want their voices to be heard when it comes to certain topics and issues. However, experie...

On this week’s episode of the Cygnal Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss the importance of storytelling when aiming to convey a political message. It’s not enough to say the right words and have the right points – you have to give people something to connect to from an emotional side. On another note, the most recent data thrown by the District & Issue Tracker (DIT) reveals a significant degradatio...

On this week’s episode of the Cygnal Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss some surprising data revealed by the District Issue Tracker. In only one month, “Recovering from Covid” went from the 8th most important priority for voters all the way to the 2nd most important priority, above other major social and economic concerns. This new context brings up a brand new challenge for campaigns: having to f...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss the movement of some minority voter groups such as Cubans, Venezuelans, and Vietnamese trending towards Republicans. Having their own set of ideals and beliefs originated from their unique experience both in the US and in their native countries, it seems that issues such as immigration and other social measures are not as important t...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss political psychology and the major impact that understanding voter’s emotions can have on campaigns. Given the fact that people make decisions based on the feelings they have rather than on well-reasoned arguments, the better the candidates can understand their voters’ emotions, the better they can communicate and build trust with vo...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris Lane, Director of Client Strategy, and Brent discuss the results of the first DIT subscription service survey. While some social matters like critical race theory drew a lower number than expected, pocketbook-related issues such as inflation and the overall development of the economy appear to be at the very core of average American citizens’ concerns...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss the brand new DIT subscription service. This exciting tool developed by Cygnal’s data science team is designed to help campaigns at every level understand their districts, their voters, and their issues better, providing consistent real time data concerning the most important topics among a certain community. The District Issue Track...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Brent and John Rogers, one of Cygnal’s Directors of Client Strategy, talk about “Coming out of COVID” and the impact it is going to have on politics. They discuss a recent Cygnal poll showing the consequences of politicians violating their own restrictions. This poll revealed that Governor Whitmer's image has gone down several points after going into a bar...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss the results of our latest national poll for a look into the 22 cycle and what it holds for candidates and campaigns. As the COVID pandemic starts to fade into the background, new trends in the data are beginning to emerge. Brent breaks it all down for us at the top of the episode. Our guest this week on the Cygnal Pulse Pod (Ep. 26)...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris Kratzer talks with Jeff Lewis, another one of our newest Directors of Client Strategy. Jeff describes the interesting path that led him to politics, a path that he never really expected to take, and how despite leaving politics a few times, he just keeps coming back. We are thrilled his path has led him to Cygnal. Our guest this week on the Cygnal Pul...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Brent and Chris Lane, one of our newest Directors of Client Strategy, discuss Chris' early political experiences in Massachusetts and his later collaborations in some remarkable campaigns, including Scott Brown for US senate and Charlie Baker's run for Governor for the second time. Chris shares some great advice for candidates running in particularly tough...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent discuss the key takeaways from a recent Cygnal poll of likely voters in Florida. They overwhelmingly approve of Governor DeSantis’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine distribution and they do not trust the media to report it fairly. Also – Floridians love Publix. Who doesn’t? Our guest this week on the Cygnal Pulse Pod (Ep. 23) is...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod, Chris and Brent talk about what they do outside of Cygnal and politics and the importance of being well-rounded. Yes, they do have personal lives! It’s important to have a variety of interests and hobbies. What we do outside of work can be beneficial not only in our personal lives but also in our professional ones. Our guest this week on the Cygnal Pulse Po...

On this week’s episode of the Pulse Pod and Chris and Brent begin with a discussion on campaigns and digital targeting. How can they reach and persuade the right people? Cygnal has developed a digital profiling tool that can help. Our guest this week on the Cygnal Pulse Pod (Ep. 21) is Nicole Schlinger. Nicole got her start in politics as the Finance Director of the Republican Party of Iowa and sh...

It’s the 20th episode of the Pulse Pod and we kick it off with Chris Kratzer, Vice-President Research & Analysis, and Brent discussing Cygnal’s values. Developed by Brent when Cygnal was created, they are truly the foundation of our company. They aren’t just ideas, they motivate and inspire us and are embodied by all of our employees. Our guest this week on the Cygnal Pulse Pod (Ep. 20) is Sean Sp...

Cygnal’s Director of Research & Analysis, Victoria Waddail, joins Brent to kick off this episode. Victoria joined Cygnal along with the team from Harper Polling in September. They discuss how Republicans can get back on track in rebuilding the Republican coalition – It comes down to principles. Our guest this week on the Cygnal Pulse Pod (Ep. 19) is Wesley Donehue, CEO of Push Digital. A difficult...