Katz Radio, Nielsen Partner On "The Local Vote 2016"

Katz Radio Group has announced it has commissioned Nielsen Audio to conduct research on the local political media landscape during the primary election season, from February to April 2016.

“The Local Vote 2016” is a 12-week effort designed to capture Americans’ most current political viewpoints and voting preferences within 10 individual states, two weeks prior to key primary elections – delivering unprecedented insights and value to political advertisers’ radio campaigns during a crucial decision-making time for voters. The first release of data covers three Super Tuesday states – Colorado, Texas and Virginia. Highlights include:

Roughly a third of all registered voters in Colorado, Texas and Virginia are still open to be influenced by political messaging. These individuals comprise the “Opportunity Vote” – registered voters who are voting in their Democratic or Republican primary but are still undecided on a candidate OR registered voters who have not yet decided if they will vote.

Radio leads all other media in reaching the critical “Opportunity Vote” in Colorado, Texas and Virginia (93.2%), followed by broadcast television (89.9%), cable TV (89.8%), the internet via computer (87.8%) and mobile internet (64.4%).

One in three Opportunity Voters invest more time listening to radio than watching television. On average, these voters listen to nearly 2 hours of radio daily (1:52), while watching less than 1 hour of TV (:52).

In the world of audio choices, registered voters are 5X more likely to agree that radio is an appropriate place for political advertising than Pandora (32% agreement v 7%).
Multiple Radio formats (not just News/Talk/Sports) offer a high density, political target audience for campaigns.

The study draws upon Nielsen’s rich, representative sample of local citizens who are currently part of the Scarborough Research Panel. Katz Radio Group strategically selected the states in the study which are expected to have a high incidence of competitive races across several categories:
Presidential, Gubernatorial, Senate and Congressional, and include Colorado, Texas, Virginia, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Katz will release four comprehensive reports over a 12-week period, which will include statewide, market-level and station-specific findings and infographics that are designed to help advertisers more effectively build campaigns and reach their target audiences.

“Katz’s ‘Local Vote’ initiative was developed precisely for political advertisers who are seeking new insight into affecting voting outcomes at the local and national level. The power of Nielsen’s Scarborough and Voter Ratings data combined with Katz’s access to 239 million radio listeners provides the granular targeting they need at broadcast scale,” said Stacey Schulman, EVP of Strategy, Analytics and Research for Katz Media Group. “With $6 billion expected to be spent this election year, political campaigns will benefit from the ability to tie voter opinions close to the primary dates to a rich, respondent-level database of media behaviors."