Obama and Romney Promoters By Income and Employment

In my previous two posts, I examined the Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for President Obama and Mitt Romney and the issues that their Promoters care about.

In this post, I examine the percentage of U.S. consumers that are Promoters (likely to recommend the candidate to their friends or relatives) of the candidates based on their annual income levels and their current employment status. As you can see in the infographic below:

• Obama has the largest advantage with consumers making less than $25,000 per year and the smallest lead with consumers making between $75,000 and $100,000 per year
• Romney’s support increases with income level
• Both of the candidates have their strongest support from high-income consumers
• Obama has the largest advantage with students and the smallest lead with unemployed consumers

The bottom line: Obama’s strongest base are low income consumers and students

Issues That Separate Obama and Romney Promoters

In my previous post, I examined the Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for President Obama and Mitt Romney. The research, which is based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers in August, showed that Obama scored higher than Romney. Both candidates, however, have very low NPS (-57% for Romney and -33% for Obama).

In this post, I’m examining the issues that U.S. citizens care about, honing in on the differences between Obama and Romney promoters (consumers that are likely to recommend the candidate to their friends or relatives). We asked consumers about 11 different issues. As you can see in the infographic below:

• The most important issue for both Obama and Romney promoters is improving the U.S. economy and the bottom issue is the candidates’ religious views.
• Romney promoters view eight of the 11 issues as being more important than do Obama promoters; the only exceptions are the candidate’s positions on healthcare, gay marriage and abortion rights.
• The three issues that Romney promoters are more likely to see as important than Obama promoters are their position on U.S. relations with Israel (+26), their position on international terrorism (+16), and their religious views (+9).
• More consumers prefer Obama’s position across all of the issues, which is not surprising considering that Obama has a larger number of promoters.
• Consumers show the largest preference for Obama’s vision for the future of the U.S. and his position on healthcare (42%).
• Consumers show the largest preference for Romney for his plans to improve the U.S. economy (33%) and his position on healthcare (32%).
• U.S. consumers have the least preference when it comes to the candidates’ religious views.
• Obama supporters show more preference for Obama’s views than Romney’s promoters do for his views in 10 of the 11 issues; the only exception is their position on U.S. relations with Israel.
• Obama promoters show the largest preference gap when it comes to the candidates’ positions on abortion rights (+12) and gay rights (+10).

The bottom line: Consumers really care about the economy and a vision for the future

It’s Time To Talk About Net Promoter

The annual Net Promoter Conference is this week in New York. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend due to some client projects. But I still want to weigh-in on Net Promoter, since I get a lot of questions on the topic.

Here are answers to some of the basic Net Promoter questions:

• What is the Net Promoter Score (NPS)? Using a survey question like “How likely are you to recommend <COMPANY> to a friend and colleague?” respondents are categorized as “Promoters,” “Detractors,” or “Passives.” The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.
• Is NPS a good thing? Yes, if used correctly. No, if used incorrectly.
• Is NPS really “The Ultimate Question?” No, it’s only one customer input of many that are needed in a Voice of the Customer (VoC)  program.
• What is the biggest problem in Net Promoter programs? Companies focus on the “metric” instead of the improvement process fueled by the metric.
• What is the big change in Net Promoter? Companies have focused primarily on eliminating “Detractors” but more companies are looking at creating and empowering “Promoters.”

Here are some posts about Net Promoter (and more broadly around VoC programs) that you may want to read:

• My Closing Thoughts On Net Promoter
• “LIRM” More About Net Promoter vs. Satisfaction
• 16 Voice Of The Customer Recommendations
• Six Trends Reshape Voice Of The Customer Programs
• Fred Reichheld Gives A Net Promoter Update
• Intuit’s Brad Smith Shares Customer Experience Insights
• What Is The Perfect Customer Experience?
• Net Promoter And Satisfaction Battle For King Of The Ring

The bottom line: It’s time to start creating Promoters.