If you’ve spent any time watching Mornings with Maria or flipping through Fox Business in the last few years, you’ve definitely seen her. Lee Carter isn’t your typical talking head. She doesn't just shout talking points or recite dry data from a teleprompter. Instead, she’s usually sitting there with a bunch of colored lines dancing across the screen—what she calls "dial tests"—trying to explain why a certain politician just hit a home run or, more often, stepped in it.
Honestly, it’s a bit weird to call her a "pollster."
Most pollsters focus on the what—as in, "What percentage of people like this candidate?" Lee Carter focuses on the why. She’s the President of maslansky + partners, a language strategy firm where the motto is basically: It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. ## The Fox News Lee Carter Approach: Beyond the Spreadsheets
Most of the "experts" we see on TV are obsessed with the 1% margin of error. They treat voters like math problems. Carter treats them like people with messy, often contradictory emotions. This isn't just a gimmick she uses for Fox News segments; it’s a methodology that famously allowed her to predict the 2016 election results when almost every other "data scientist" in the country was busy measuring the drapes for a Clinton inauguration.
While others were looking at favorability ratings, Carter was looking at visceral, real-time reactions.
She uses "Instant Response" dial sessions. If you’ve never seen these, it’s kinda fascinating. A group of people—usually a mix of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—watch a clip and turn a dial up or down based on how they feel in the exact second a word is spoken.
Why "The Language of Affordability" Changed Everything
Look at 2025 and 2026. The political landscape shifted dramatically. Carter pointed out something most people missed: the transition from talking about "the economy" to talking about "affordability." It sounds like the same thing. It isn't.
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- The Economy: Sounds like GDP, stock markets, and things that happen in D.C.
- Affordability: Sounds like the price of eggs, the rent check, and the pit in your stomach at the gas station.
She argued on-air that Democrats started winning back ground because they finally stopped lecturing people about macroeconomics and started using "affordability" language. This kind of nuance is why she has staying power on a network that can sometimes be a revolving door of analysts.
Persuasion is a Science (and a Little Bit of Art)
Carter literally wrote the book on this. It’s called Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don't Seem to Matter.
It’s a gutsy title. In a world where we’re told "facts don't care about your feelings," Carter basically says: "Actually, feelings don't care about your facts."
She’s often called a "word geek," and for good reason. She’s spent decades advising Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits on how to talk to people without making them defensive. On Fox News, Lee Carter applies this to the "empathy chasm"—that massive gap where we stop seeing the other side as people and start seeing them as caricatures.
The 2016 "Career Bet"
One of the most famous stories about her involves election night 2016. She arrived at the Fox News studios and the atmosphere was basically "it's over." The exit polls were leaning heavily toward Hillary Clinton.
Carter looked at her own dial-test research. It showed something different. It showed a path for Trump through Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. A mentor actually texted her that night asking, "Are you willing to bet your career on this?"
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She said yes.
She wasn't being a partisan; she was trusting the dial lines. The dials showed that even people who didn't like Trump were responding to his messaging on trade and "forgotten" workers. They were hearing something the pollsters weren't even asking about.
Why She’s All Over Fox Business Right Now
If you're watching her in early 2026, she's focused heavily on the "MAHA" movement (Make America Healthy Again) and the strange new coalitions forming in US politics. She’s been a regular on The Bottom Line, often pointing out where the GOP is "missing the vote" by focusing on ideological labels like "socialist" or "fascist" instead of kitchen-table issues.
Her take? Labels are lazy. They don't persuade anyone. They just make the people who already agree with you cheer louder.
Real-World Examples of Her "Rules"
If you want to communicate like her, you have to follow a few of her core tenets:
- Empathy first: You can’t change a mind you don't understand.
- Visuals over Vocals: What people see on your face often overrides what comes out of your mouth.
- The "Why" Matters: If a line on a graph goes down, you have to know if it's because of the idea or just the word used to describe it.
The Reality of Being a "Neutral" in a Polarized World
Is she perfect? No. Some critics argue that dial testing can be a bit reactionary—that it measures "gut" reactions but not long-term deliberation. And being a Fox News regular naturally means half the country might dismiss her insights before she even opens her mouth.
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But Carter has appeared on MSNBC and Yahoo Finance too. She’s one of the few people who seems more interested in how the brain processes a sentence than in who wins the primary.
She’s also a mom and a business leader, often bringing those "real life" perspectives into her analysis. It makes her feel less like a political operative and more like that one friend who’s really good at reading the room.
How to Apply Lee Carter’s Messaging Secrets
You don't need a TV contract or a dial-test machine to use these insights. Whether you're trying to get a raise or just trying to survive Thanksgiving dinner without a screaming match, the "Carter Method" is pretty straightforward.
Stop lead-piping people with facts.
If someone is "entrenched," more data just makes them dig in deeper. Instead, try to find the "shared value." For example, instead of arguing about a specific policy, talk about the result you both want. If you both want "affordability," start there.
Actionable Steps for Better Communication:
- Audit your "Isms": Stop using labels. They are shortcuts that lead to dead ends.
- Listen for the "Ache": What is the person actually worried about? Usually, it's fear or a loss of control.
- Check your "What They Hear" filter: Before you hit send or open your mouth, ask: "If I hated me, how would I twist these words?"
Lee Carter’s presence on Fox News serves as a constant reminder that in politics, as in life, the person with the best data usually loses to the person with the best story. It’s not about being "fake"; it’s about being heard.
If you want to follow her latest work, she’s active on X (formerly Twitter) as @lh_carter and continues to head up maslansky + partners in New York. Watch her segments not for the political score-keeping, but for the masterclass in how language actually works in the wild.