We hear very little persuasion in political debate. In campaign advertisements, on political talk shows, or on social media, people shout at each other more often than they make a good case for others to change their minds on an issue. My colleague Jarrett Skorup explains why that is on this week’s Overton Window podcast.

One reason is that it’s hard to change people’s minds. You have to make arguments that appeal to your audience. That means knowing their values and what they’re interested in.

“You have to make arguments that try to fit where you think that audience is,” Skorup says, “People are convinced by arguments that fit their worldview and they’re not convinced by arguments that fit someone else’s worldview.”

You also have to say something that resonates with the person you’re trying to persuade.

“There’s a lot of talk in the marketing industry that people relate to stories and they don’t relate to hard facts,” Skorup says. “And I often push back on that. Budgets and facts and figures do contribute to emotion.” People are going to respond with emotion if their city council can’t make payroll, he points out.

“They might not understand what 30% pension debt means. But they do understand if their city can’t afford to cut the grass in its parks. A lot of my job is trying to take the facts and figures our policy people come up with and to translate them for regular people.”

While persuasion can be difficult, it is easier to animate people about things that they already believe.

“Political debates are a lot more about animating people on the issues that they care about,” Skorup says. “It’s less about bringing people over to your side and more about the intensity on both sides. For groups like ours, yes we care about changing people’s minds. I think regular people care about changing people’s minds. But for politicians, the number one goal is election. The economist Thomas Sowell said the number one goal of a politician is election and the number two goal is reelection. Everything after that is pretty far down the list.”

That is, the job of politicians is not to persuade people to change their minds. It is to get people to elect them. Or as political consultant Adrian Hemond put it on a previous episode, elections are how we keep score on issues.

“Politicians emphasize and promote the things they believe are more popular to whatever audience they are reaching for and downplaying the things that they’re doing that are more negative,” Skorup says.

Understanding whether an issue is inside or outside of the Overton Window is helpful in figuring out strategy. If it’s politically acceptable to lower taxes, politicians just need someone to help them respond to objections to lowering taxes. But if lowering taxes is well outside of the Overton Window, people need to be persuaded that it’s a good idea in the first place, because politicians won’t even bring it up.

Skorup talks about Michigan’s film incentive as an example, which lawmakers created in 2008 and ended in 2015. Two main arguments worked to change Republicans minds about the program. The first argument was about facts – showing that we spent a lot of money without creating many jobs. The second was about feelings – in this case, anger.

“[T]he film office gave a million dollars to Michael Moore to shoot a film here in Michigan,” Skorup says. “Republicans really do not like Michael Moore.” And Republicans controlled the Legislature at the time.

Persuasion is personal for Skorup. He first got interested in ideas by reading political commentary that intended to persuade. “My family got the Chicago Tribune every day, and I really enjoyed reading op-eds,” Skorup says. “They would have people like Thomas Sowell and George Will but also people on the left who were writing pieces that wanted to persuade you. And I think that doesn’t happen too often anymore. A lot of people just aren’t willing or able to think about the arguments that might persuade someone on the other side.”

Check out our conversation at the Overton Window podcast.

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