John Frank: Political labels often more strategy than ideology

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) – Socialist. MAGA. Radical. Far right. Extremist.

WEAU political analyst John Frank says Wisconsin voters should expect political labels to remain a major part of campaign messaging heading toward the November election.

But he says those words may tell voters less about what candidates actually believe than campaigns want them to think.

“If you want to pull a number out of the air, I’d probably say about 70% of it’s posturing and about 30% of it’s descriptive,” Frank said when WEAU asked how much of today’s political labeling reflects ideology and how much is campaign strategy.

That matters in an election year when candidates are competing not only to explain their own positions, but to define their opponents before their opponents can define themselves.

Frank said candidates should be cautious about applying broad ideological labels even to themselves.

“You need to get out there and say, this is what I stand for. This is who I am,” Frank said. “But you’ve got to be careful when you define yourself not to choose kind of one of those trendy labels because it can be misconstrued.”

Pew finds more than simply left and right

New research from the Pew Research Center offers evidence for why fitting Americans into simple political categories can be difficult.

Pew’s 2026 Political Typology divides the American public into nine groups based on responses to 30 questions about government, economics, immigration, elected officials and other political and social values.

The groups are based on beliefs and values rather than simply party affiliation. Pew says the result is a political landscape with significantly more complexity than a red-versus-blue division would suggest.

The nine groups and their shares of U.S. adults are:

Leftward Progressives — 7%Loyal Liberals — 11%Left-Out Left — 12%Order and Opportunity Left — 18%Tuned-Out Middle — 9%Pragmatic and Polite Right — 11%Unconventional Right — 12%Faith First Conservatives — 12%No Apologies Right — 9%

Pew surveyed 10,357 U.S. adults in November 2025 for the typology and supplemented that work with additional surveys through April 2026.

The divisions exist inside both major political coalitions.

For example, Pew describes its Pragmatic and Polite Right group as economically conservative while also more concerned about inequality and more supportive of some corporate tax increases than groups farther to its right.

On the left, Pew says the Order and Opportunity Left leans Democratic but includes substantially more mixed views on crime, immigration and other issues than the most progressive Democratic-oriented groups.

In other words, Republican and Democrat may describe voting coalitions.

They do not necessarily describe identical sets of beliefs.

Why campaigns use labels

Frank said some political terms are particularly useful to campaigns because of the reaction they are intended to create.

“The ones that are intended to stick rather than the ones that resonate are anything that’s matched up with the word extreme,” Frank said.

He cited descriptions such as “MAGA extremist” as examples of language designed to produce an emotional response.

Other terms that more precisely describe policies or political philosophies, he said, may provide voters with more useful information.

Frank said political labels become especially effective when they act as shortcuts.

He believes voters do consider individual issues and policies, but said campaign labels can interfere with that process.

“The problem is labels are meant to short-circuit that,” Frank said.

He points to an information environment dominated by headlines and soundbites.

“We opt for convenience rather than depth,” Frank said.

A label can therefore allow a voter to believe he or she understands a candidate without examining the policies underneath it, he said.

One label can mean very different things

The word “socialism” provides one example of how political language can produce different reactions depending on who hears it.

Frank said the phrase “democratic socialism” can mean something very different to a younger voter than it does to someone who remembers the Cold War.

He said younger voters may associate democratic socialism with a contemporary political movement seeking greater government involvement in economic and social policy.

An older voter may instead associate socialism with historical systems in which governments centrally controlled economic resources and production.

“Somebody who’s over 50 reacts differently to that particular phrase, democratic socialism, than somebody under the age of 30,” Frank said.

Pew’s research illustrates how sharply reaction to the label can vary.

Nationally, 17% of Americans say they like politicians who identify as democratic socialists.

But among Pew’s Leftward Progressives, that rises to 66%. Among Loyal Liberals, it is 53%.

The same political term, in other words, does not necessarily communicate the same message to every voter.

Voters themselves do not always fit the labels

Pew’s research becomes particularly relevant when looking toward November.

Its July survey of registered voters found enormous differences among the nine typology groups in their congressional preferences.

Among the highly partisan groups, the results are predictable.

About 91% of No Apologies Right voters said they would support the Republican candidate for U.S. House, while 95% of Loyal Liberals said they would support the Democratic candidate.

But voters in the less ideologically consistent groups are considerably harder to place.

Among Pew’s Tuned-Out Middle, 34% said they would vote Democratic, 22% Republican and 43% either supported another candidate or were unsure. Pew cautions that the subgroup had a relatively small sample and a margin of error of plus or minus 10.1 percentage points.

That group is also politically unusual in other ways.

Pew says roughly half identify as moderate, but its members combine positions that cross familiar ideological lines. They tend to lean left on some economic questions while holding more conservative views on some social issues.

That helps explain why political labels can become both attractive to campaigns and potentially misleading to voters.

An issue that may cut across ideology

When WEAU asked Frank whether Wisconsin voters are responding primarily to ideology or to individual issues such as affordability, health care, immigration, abortion, tariffs and utility costs, he said the answer depends on the issue.

But he singled out one.

“I think there are some issues that transcend ideology,” Frank said. “A good example of this is affordability.”

Frank said affordability has two components: what goods and services cost, and how much money consumers have available to pay for them.

Candidates therefore have to address both the price of everyday necessities and how much money working Americans are able to keep, he said.

That is already visible in western Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District race.

WEAU recently asked Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke identical questions about affordability, immigration and data centers.

Both identified many of the same financial pressures — groceries, housing, gasoline and household expenses — while offering sharply different explanations for why those costs are high and what government should do about them.

Western Wisconsin across 19 counties, but Frank noted there are relatively few media markets serving that territory compared with other parts of the state. That means large campaign advertising budgets can become particularly visible to voters in places such as Eau Claire and La Crosse.

Millions involved in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District race

At the time of WEAU’s interview, Frank said Cooke and Van Orden had nearly $16 million between them.

“Cooke has $8.6 million in the bank and Van Orden has $7.5 million in the bank,” Frank said.

Frank said the candidates also rank among the nation’s top U.S. House candidates in money raised, putting Cooke at No. 17 and Van Orden at No. 23 among roughly 4,000 candidates listed by the campaign-finance source he was referencing.

“So there’s about $16 million that are going to be spent in the western part of the state on this particular race,” Frank said. “Are we going to see a lot of ads? You bet we are.”

Not all of that money will necessarily be spent on advertising or spent locally, and outside political groups can add millions more to the amount ultimately spent trying to influence the race.

But Frank’s larger point is that western Wisconsin voters should expect an intense campaign environment — and a significant amount of that advertising will be devoted to defining the two candidates.

That brings the discussion back to political labels.

With millions of dollars available for television, digital, mail and other campaign messaging, terms such as “radical,” “extremist” or other ideological descriptions can be repeated enough to become part of how voters identify a candidate — whether or not the label provides a complete picture of that candidate’s policies.

Looking past the political shorthand

Pew’s research does not suggest political parties or ideological differences have disappeared.

Quite the opposite.

Some of its groups are intensely partisan and ideologically consistent.

But the research also shows millions of Americans hold combinations of beliefs that do not fit comfortably into conventional liberal or conservative categories.

Frank says that makes examining policies particularly important as campaigns increasingly try to attach memorable labels to candidates.

His advice for candidates is also a useful guide for voters: focus less on the box and more on what is actually inside it.

“This is what I stand for,” Frank said candidates should tell voters.

For voters trying to navigate another election season filled with political shorthand, the question may be less about what a candidate is called — and more about what that candidate actually proposes to do.

John Frank: Political labels often more strategy than ideology

Tags: