We are pioneering a new field of Political Brand ScienceTM.
Polls measure direction, but they often miss the energy underneath it. America can look almost evenly divided in political preference while being anything but evenly divided in the energy behind the vote.
The Political Brand Institute measures not only which way Americans lean, but how strongly they feel, why they are moving and what the Democratic and Republican brands mean to them.
USA Wave 1 premieres Monday 26 October 2026, 8:11pm EDT
5,000 Americans.Two political brands.One brand new way of looking at the midterms.
Independent research. No party. No candidate. No agenda.
Polls can be accurate close to an election, but they often miss the longer-term attitudinal shifts that help predict voter behaviour.
01
Political preference can look settled while intensity of feeling tells a different story. Two people can express the same political preference while holding it with completely different levels of conviction. That intensity is what shows up as turnout, and it behaves differently to enthusiasm.
02
Party preference measures support at the top end of the scale, but it’s important to look beyond this to understand both brand push and brand pull.
03
Voting is not just rational. It’s highly emotional and driven by brand personality and social identity drivers, which explains more about which way people are intending to vote.
04
Weighting sharpens a poll’s headline numbers, but it reduces sensitivity in the middle of the electorate - the part that so often decides the outcome.
THE BRAND SCIENCE BEHIND POLITICS
People don’t experience political parties as policy documents. Over time, parties accumulate memories, associations, expectations, emotions and personalities. That’s what brands do.
01
A commercial brand holds the accumulated value of future purchasing behaviour. A political brand holds accumulated value that can influence future political choice.
02
A brand is more than a product, service or political party. People experience it as though it has human characteristics: strong or weak, caring or cold, modern or dated, trustworthy or untrustworthy.
03
Brands can attract, repel or leave people indifferent. Political Brand EnergyTM seeks to quantify the strength of that attraction or rejection.
INITIAL WAVE 1 FINDINGS
Our first national study reveals patterns that aren’t always obvious in conventional political measures.
FINDING 01
Political preference can appear closely divided while the intensity of feeling underneath it tells a different story.
FINDING 02
In Wave 1, negative political sentiment carries different intensity from positive sentiment. Preference alone doesn’t reveal that difference.
FINDING 03
Our research finds important differences in the movement and intensity of political attitudes among men and women.
FINDING 04
Americans don’t experience political parties simply as collections of policies. They attach human characteristics, emotions and expectations to them.
WAVE 1 LAUNCH VIDEO
USA Wave 1 Premiere
Monday 26 October 2026
8:11pm EDT
In the launch video, PBI founder Peter Drinkwater explores what 5,000 Americans told us about the Democratic and Republican brands: their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, drivers and the political energy sitting underneath conventional preference.
All profits from Political Brand Institute go to the Rebecca Rebuild Institute, helping inform people how to rebuild their optimal health once they are in remission. rebeccarebuild.org
