The election is a great example: Data is nothing without Storytelling

“The polls are dead. Long live the polls.”

If anyone needed proof of the importance of the power of storytelling over data, one only needs to look at the presidential competition currently underway in the USA

This week even the pollsters are hunting for narratives to explain their latest failed predications. This has been apparent since after the recent presidential debates where Trump’s favorite pollster, Rasmussen, has found Biden more favorable. Along with a CNN poll, Rasmussen cited issues such as Trump’s brush with COVID and then pointing fingers at Trump’s incoherent debate performances to back their predictions. Just now, pollster Nate Silver @NateSilver538 tweeted, “some of the perceptions were formulated because people were taking results in states like PA at face value.’

Data are qualitative or quantitative variables gathered for reference or analysis about anything and anyone. Data presentation requires using various graphical techniques, like graphs, charts, maps, and pictures, to aid audiences with comprehension and engagements about a subject.

In politics and business, much focus is put on data. Yet storytelling is more important than data.

I don’t say that to be controversial. It’s a simple fact of how our brains work.

Data is processed in the neocortex. We see pundits on tv, read campaign fliers, social media is awash with information on how much one candidate is ahead of the other. All this is received by our brain and processed at the neocortex into rationalizations and actions. Pollsters try and make predictions based on this. Yet one small flaw in a model can wreak havoc: a suboptimal sample size, an unrepresentative sample, a missed trend.

However, the neocortex isn’t the only brain system of which you need to be aware. There is also the limbic brain, which makes use of this information with stories and emotions. It is also here that we make critical decisions. This region of the brain is also where we process compassion, as Dacher Keltner writes in this piece.

Storytelling is a socio-cultural activity of sharing as a means of communication. It includes entertainment, education, and cultural preservation. And is delivered via improv, theatrics, and even the mini-performances we make daily in our own homes. Storytelling brings people together to share passions, fears, sadness, hardships, joys, and whichever milestones worthy of being told.

But more importantly, storytelling is a value problem. It’s about communicating value or data. It is the delivery vehicle, and the team with the best-tuned story machine will win.

In this election, both sides have powerful narratives and belief systems. Bother sides are teams that have coalesced to try and win. Both sides are down to razor-thin margins (one needs to look at a map of the USA by district... and then... scale for the population for the actual picture). In this case, how data is presented can result in feeding one narrative or another.

Whatever issues you have with the electoral college, that is the current playing field. As with previous election years, the data projections and processing of primary data and making forecasts didn’t pan out as predicted.

Participating in storytelling gives us opportunities to engage with others in a way that catches attention, builds credibility, and strengthens or challenges opinions and values. 

And as we like to say, “get attention, be heard, and sell more.”

People are more inclined to absorb messages and data conveyed by stories rather than facts and figures alone.

The numbers are numbers. There’s some pretty boring and frightening mathematics out there. And maths doesn’t come close to enjoying a delicious meal. Not for most regular human beings. As we learned from a very young age, it’s the JUICE that matters (or Halloween candy)! Statistical facts can be useful, yet it is the stories in which they are wrapped are remembered and shared. Let me cite the current US Presidential Elections where we are flooded with poll results everywhere. No matter who gets 270 or more, the Electoral College’s real election results could defy all the numerical figures from the polls.

Every marketer who has ever agonized about proving performance, let alone forecasting, and relying on data to try and define business can take a breath and relax.

You’re not alone in your suffering. Data alone is never enough. The stories we tell are pivotal. They are so powerful that they can transmit even bad data.

We need stories so badly that if we are given a statistic, we’ll make up a narrative to make sense of it. As Gloria Steinem said

““IF YOU HEAR A STATISTIC, YOU WILL MAKE UP A STORY TO GO WITH IT, BECAUSE OUR BRAINS ARE ORGANIZED ON NARRATIVE.”

Stories shape belief and can blow data away in the wind. Our realities are shaped by the stories we believe and narratives to which we subscribe.

Those best at shaping narratives hold power.

Two of the most prominent (and counter) meta-narratives in play in the USA right now are “Voter Suppression” and “Voter Fraud.” You don’t have to know, understand, or even care about the data behind these to get on-board with one of the narratives. Furthermore, the data doesn’t have to be good data to be believed. Because when you believe the narrative, your limbic brain picks a side and it’s game over. You can’t use data to convince someone their narrative is wrong. They will either reject it or find a way to justify it to fit their narrative. Win them over at a narrative level.

Telling stories is one of the most powerful means of influencing, teaching, and inspiring people to build connections (see Vanessa Boris, HBR)  .

Whatever meta-narrative(s) win this election, we know how fraught it is—an epic battle between narratives that have created a deep divide in the USA. Narratives are defined by the stories we tell, the stories we believe, and the stories upon which we act.

I’ll end on this—the boy who cried wolf.

When the villagers believed the boy’s story, they helped him. Time and again, they came to help and were faced with incorrect data (there was no wolf).

When they didn’t believe his stories anymore, it didn’t matter if the data changed. There was now a wolf, and it was eating the sheep and the boy! It was too late. The villagers now subscribed to a different narrative.

That boy is a liar and needs to be ignored, forever.

In the end, it was story that drove their behavior.