Conclave, The Six Triple Eight, Spiderman: Beyond the Spider-Verse, and The Accountant 2 are four very different movies. But according to new research, they all tell stories that push viewers to be more pro-democracy — just for four distinct audiences.
This new report from Democracy 2076 and Harmony Labs — “The Power of Story to Grow Democracy” — shows how different audiences are moved by different kinds of stories, and it argues that pro-democracy groups should expand the stories they’re telling if they want to persuade as many people as possible. It’s vitally important that we apply this same argument to political campaigns, too.
Democrats have to tell a wider range of stories if we’re really going to meet people where they are and bring them to our side.
Let’s break down how that works (warning, lots of charts incoming).
The report categorizes people into one of our audiences, each with a different core value:
People Power values community.
If You Say So values autonomy. (I don’t love this name, but they’re an important audience, so I’ll mostly refer to them as the “autonomy” group below.)
Tough Cookies value order.
Don’t Tread on Me values authority.
Based on those values, audiences are drawn to different kinds of stories — not just at the movies but in their politics and their worldview — and identify with different theories of change.
People Power wants to see an “inside transformer” improve systems from within.
If You Say So favors an “outside transformer” who changes a system in order to include and benefit more people.
Tough Cookies identify with “insider restorers” who fight corruption from within.
Don’t Tread On Me prefers an “outside restorer” who takes on the system to root out problem.
From there, the researchers show that people in the same demographic group tend to cluster in the same audience quadrant, whether you sort by race, age, politics, and more.
Intuitively, it makes sense that people of different political persuasions fit into these audience and narrative buckets, too. What else were the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential campaigns if not “Insider Transformer” Democrats vs. the “Outsider Restorer” Republican? Where things get interesting, though, is when you look at independents and low-propensity voters.
Those two critical audiences are looking for a different story entirely: independents and low-propensity voters both land in the top-right quadrant that values autonomy. What they want is an “Outside Transformer” — someone who’s coming from outside the system, but who’s focused on evolving things for the better instead of restoring them to an exclusionary past. (Does “Hope and Change” sound familiar to anyone here?)
The swing voters who decide our elections are looking for heroes like Miles Morales from the Spider-Verse or Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender, but too often Democrats are only offering up The West Wing. We have to change that.
Interestingly, this research also found that autonomy audiences had the lowest sense of personal agency but the best ability to imagine a better future for all people. Someone who’s able to offer a positive vision of the future and tell stories that actually empower independents and low-propensity voters to action people to action could wield real power here.
This isn’t to say that Democrats should abandon the stories that motivate our core voters. Instead, it’s an invitation to expand the kinds of stories we tell. We’ve got plenty of Ted Lasso candidates to spare, who’s going to be our Katniss and Peeta?
Reads Worth Your Time
What happened when Kansas tried a version of Trump’s SAVE Act? Chaos (USA Today)
“A federal judge ruled that the state law was unconstitutional and violated federal election laws designed to protect people from being disenfranchised, or unfairly denied the ability to vote. By then, though, the damage had been done. At least 31,000 people were barred from registering to vote, according to the judge’s findings, including in a key statewide election in 2014 in which incumbent Republican Gov. Sam Brownback narrowly defeated Democrat Paul Davis.”
King of Illinois: Pritzker swings Senate race as he targets Trump (POLITICO)
“Gov. JB Pritzker emerged as the kingmaker in deep-blue Illinois after pouring millions of dollars and staking his political reputation to deliver his hand-picked Senate candidate a primary victory on Tuesday. The result strengthens Pritzker’s standing within his party at a critical moment, as he prepares for a November gubernatorial campaign for his third term and looks ahead to a potential presidential run in 2028.”
The Women Leaving the New Right (New York Magazine)
“In the Trump era, many young women — like the giddily foulmouthed MAGA influencers and inauguration attendees depicted in this magazine at the start of Trump’s second term (see: “The Cruel Kids Table”) — were attracted to the New Right because it felt less constrained, stuffy, and dogmatic than the left. Perhaps it was. A little sexism was a small price to pay for entry to a party without woke scolds policing the playlist. … Now, a growing group of right-wing women — both prominent personalities and loyal foot soldiers — are waking up to find their inclusion in the MAGA movement was contingent. Sexism wasn’t merely the price of entry; it was the theme of the party.”
Gen Z men are Obama-pilled (The Up and Up)
“The simplest explanation is not that Gen Z men are secretly more liberal than they appear, or that they’ve suddenly rejected anti-establishment politics altogether. It’s that Obama no longer reads to them as “the establishment.” Instead, he represents something that feels largely absent from public life today — political leadership without chaos, and masculinity that isn’t performative. … What draws them to Obama is less of an ideological shift and more of a longing for a long-lost, coherent kind of masculine authority.”
Good Posts
Boulder City Council candidate Max Lord explains why rent won’t come down.
U.S. Representative Summer Lee recaps a sham committee hearing with Pam Bondi.
Georgia State Representatives Akbar Ali and Stacey Evans killed a bad bill.
North Carolina State Representative Vernetta Alston and staffer Laura Burns held a yard sale because the state still doesn’t have a budget.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore brought even more college mascots to the State House to kick off March Madness as a follow-up from his 2025 viral video.
Cool Tools
Want to dive even deeper into questions about audiences, values, and the stories that move them? Harmony Lab’s Narrative Observatory is the place for you!
The site doubles down on the four audience types with data on how different demographics of people are distributed across the audiences, where they live, what media they’re watching, and more — all through the lens of helping practitioners address different social issues. There’s even a quiz to see which audience category you (or the people you’re trying to reach) best fit into!