Survey finds turnout gaps, message trade-offs in Prop M post-election analysis

Discovery Works Collaborative presented a detailed voter analysis and 300-sample multimodal survey to the Maplewood City Council, highlighting turnout disparities and the messaging levers that most influenced support for a proposed municipal facilities bond.

Presenter Chris Tennell said the firm modeled responses demographically and reported a 5.5% margin of error for the sample; he described three voter archetypes that over- and under-perform in city elections. Tennell said the over-performing voter tends to be Republican, 65 or older and college-educated, while a frequent voter is typically a 35–49-year-old female Democrat with a bachelor’s degree and household income above $100,000. He showed that Ward 3 was the most supportive ward (about 57.9% in the referenced election), Ward 2 the least.

Tennell also walked through message-testing: statements framed as protecting property values or describing a modest household cost (e.g., “$3 a week”) produced meaningful increases in expressed support, while direct references to police facility improvements were less consistently persuasive across segments. He emphasized that too much technical or financial detail can confuse voters and recommended concise, research-based messaging as a home base for communications. "If you make a voter do math, you're gonna lose," he said. The report included raw response breakdowns by ward and by priority ratings for various facility improvements, which council members said they will use to inform next steps.