Yesterday’s interviews

Did another batch of interviews yesterday. I’m improving–or at least, I’m better at asking questions that elicit policy beliefs. One tactic I’ve found useful is to say “explain X to me the way that you’d explain it to a ten-year-old,” with X being the deficit, the ACA, etc. This framework encourages people to reveal the factual assumptions underlying their preferences rather than just stating their opinion.

But aside from the factual statements (which are, of course, the point of the interviews), it’s been fascinating hearing people articulate their (often conflicted) opinions.

One of my interviewees was a 24-year-old from Georgia, a high school graduate hoping to go to college once he saved enough money. He and his fiancée are both unemployed. He neither knew nor cared much about politics (“I don’t really have time for any of that”). Then I got to one of the big questions–“what’s your opinion on social welfare programs like food stamps?” He kicked off his reply by throwing out an enormous red flag: “Well, I don’t want to say anything racially incorrect… ” He went on to describe, as many other interviewees have, the “people he’s seen using food stamps with cars nicer than his” (other common descriptions include iPhones and manicures)*. But then he paused for a moment and said “But, you know, when you have so little, when you’re that poor, even just a little bit of status can make you feel you’re important–maybe you have to buy nicer clothes, just to cope.” He paused again. “So, I guess I can see it both ways.”

Note that it’s never just “a nice car” or “a nice manicure” or “a fancy phone.” It’s always phones and cars and manicures that are *nicer than mine.