Voices of Underheard Virginia Voters
In 2025, in the lead-up to the Virginia gubernatorial election, a research team set out to hear from voters whose perspectives might otherwise go unheard. This medley features Latino residents on fear, family, and daily life.
42 Virginians participated in recorded small-group conversations as part of this pilot. What they shared was organized into six themes: Intense Vulnerability, Values, AI and Social Media, Virginia Issues, Distrust, and National Divides. Explore the voices and stories behind each one.
Professional recruiters identified 20 hard-to-reach Virginians: registered voters who weren’t deeply partisan, weren’t sure who to vote for, and relied on social media and YouTube as their source of news.
The Process
A moderator led four two-hour online small-group conversations. Participants were then trained to host their own follow-up conversations with friends, extending the research into their own trusted networks. In total, 42 Virginians participated in the pilot.
Those conversations were recorded and uploaded to Cortico’s platform, where the research team used a human-led, AI-supported process to surface themes and patterns across the full collection
What Emerged
What surfaced across the conversations was emotional more than political. Participants described a pervasive sense of vulnerability — financial, physical, social. Distrust ran deep, aimed at corporations, politicians, and institutions broadly. Many had tuned out of political discourse not out of apathy but out of self-protection, overwhelmed by the volume and hostility of public life.
For the research team, small-group recorded conversations offered a fuller picture of how people are actually experiencing the moment. It’s a model they will continue to build on.
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