Last week, Mayor Bloomberg’s aides told the Times about the newfangled psychological portraits the campaign developed—using expensive polling techniques—of voters to better target his message, including such heretofore unlabeled demos as fans (“Fearful and Anxious New Yorkers”) and “Middle Middles.” We filed a FOIA request to get the rest:
Double-Wides.
Generally over 40 and concentrated in the Upper West Side and Park Slope, they are that subset of voters who find themselves the relatively new parents of twins. According to unnamed sources in the Bloomberg camp, initial questioning showed that, like all parents, Double-wides were concerned with improving the quality of public education and enhancing playground security. But they were also extremely vocal about the easing of the social stigma surrounding corporal punishment.
No Tony No Justice League.
This group was spawned in musical-theater chat rooms, united by their conviction that their hero, Kristin Chenoweth, was robbed of her rightful reward for her remarkable performance in Wicked (and don’t even get them started on the criminal lack of acknowledgments for that concert version of Candide, a production she carried, thank you very much!). These voters were targeted at a Bloomberg lunchtime rally in Duffy Square, during which lethally adorable coloratura Chenoweth kicked the shit out of Broadway parvenue Idina Menzel.
Metropolitan Diarists.
Voters who find themselves witnesses to the daily interactions at the Zabar’s fish counter, aboard the crosstown bus at East 86th Street, with saucy-yet-harmless subway panhandlers, and of precocious children who can identify a Velázquez at 50 feet but have never tasted domestic chocolate. Bloomberg promised a tax credit for twee self-expression.
Zagatistas.
Voters who find the city “buzzy,” “neighborhoody,” and “vibrant” but also “pricey,” “cramped,” and “trendier-than-thou.”