Voter Stories – Why They Matter and How to Understand Them

An innovative survey gathered not just data from voters but also the stories that shape their views of where they live. Tim Herrmann and Imogen Learmonth explain why collecting these narratives can help policymakers to understand why people are in favor of certain kinds of change and why this is vital for a strong mandate to implement a political vision.

“Germany is losing its diversity, culture, and openness as it becomes increasingly grey”, says the woman in a dejected voice. Still, she does not give up: “Life here is stable, even if it lacks the Dolce Vita factor. There are many issues that need to be addressed: the school system, kindergartens, the shortage of skilled workers, and much more.”

The woman, let’s call her Sandra, took part in a large-scale survey that we at Mandate Research ran in late 2025 in the course of our quarterly multi-national survey program. It was a special edition because it was about stories, about narratives that people in the UK, Sweden, Germany, Spain, or France believed in, the tales they told about what it is like to live in their country.

A survey with a twist

Normally in such a tracker survey, you would ask the questions we are used to seeing in public opinion polling: “On a scale of 1-5, how convincing do you think XYZ is?” “How well do you think ABC are doing their jobs?” This time, we did something different. We set up the survey so that we could literally listen to thousands of people like Sandra – with the help of (you guessed it!) AI. The digital chat assistant led interviews with participants who had agreed to take part in a novel second part of an otherwise typical survey: participants could answer our questions by speaking aloud, as if they were talking to a real-life interviewer. The voice of the voter – literally – made audible!

From this, hundreds of hours of material emerged. As it turns out, many people had been waiting for the opportunity to tell their country’s story in their own words. We analyzed these tales through a storytelling framework used by Hollywood filmmakers to structure storylines – the “Pixar method”. Our analytical result: a number of distinct narratives that define groups of people in the respective countries. For the first time, we were able to describe audiences not according to age, gender, or employment status, but according to the narratives through which they perceive and filter their reality and the political debate. Where are we? How did we get here? Where do we want to go from here? Who’s the hero of our story? Who’s the villain? Where does the story start, and where might it end?

Data stories

From a purely technical perspective, this project managed to combine the benefits of both quantitative and qualitative research. It offered the depth of qualitative research that you would normally only get from very small focus groups with extensive human moderation, but at a representative scale. We made this attempt because we believe that there is more to data than numbers and bar charts. Data tells us stories about people, stories by people, stories that politicians and decision-makers need to understand if they want to understand their audience.

Building the bridge between people and politics – this is what we believe data is about. When politicians seek a political mandate, they must first make a clear proposal that resonates with their audience. If they want to earn a mandate to implement their plans, they must stand in an election and win with a campaign. But getting elected is not where the work ends – it’s where it begins.

The voters’ decision also expresses a mandate, and it is not necessarily identical to the one that politicians asked for. The mandate given by the voter is a flexible, amorphous thing that changes over time in all sorts of ways. It is the job of the politician to find the ‘best fit’ line through all these different mandates – even those of people who did not vote for them – without compromising the story that got them elected. As political professionals here at Mandate, it is our job to help them with this. Understanding what voters really mean when they say they feel a certain way or want a certain thing is crucial. Data, collected and interpreted in the right way, can help with this understanding.

Changing the record

Data will also help you save money, energy, and time. Working in politics, you quickly learn that good communication that wins people’s hearts and minds is a lot of work! The ironic thing is, so is bad communication. People can work equally passionately, budgets can be equally big in campaigns that soar as in those that tank. Sometimes, campaigns and comms are just missing a certain spark.

Most of the time, in our experience, this is grounded in weak messages fuelled by wrong assumptions about people’s questions and problems. When politicians don’t understand their mandate or are not able to tell a story about what they propose, there is no way for them to deliver on it and build a political foundation for their projects. No amount of money, no tactical instrument or tool can compensate for a poor message.

Progressives cannot afford to communicate with weak messages anymore. Communication campaigns that miss their goals or misunderstand their audiences have become a threat to democracy. At Mandate, we’re all about changing this by listening to voters like Sandra and making sure their voices are heard in politics. This research, we hope, will allow politicians and societal leaders to align with the stories that people already tell themselves, showing them that they listen and understand. Eventually, the goal must be to regain Sandra’s trust – and become the heroes in a new, more optimistic story.