Can Dems Sweep the 2024 Elections?

Speaker 1 October brings it all.

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Speaker 14 Make this Thanksgiving one to remember it with the original turducken, the viral pie cake in with decadent layers of cake and pie, and more.

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Speaker 15 Welcome to another special episode of Pod Safe America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
This is the second of four bonus pods I'll be hosting on Sundays in the lead up to the election.

Speaker 15 If you like these episodes, I highly recommend you sign up to get my subscriber show Polar Coaster by subscribing to friendsofthepod at crooked.com slash friends or through the Apple podcast feed.

Speaker 15 It's where we really dig deep into polling and it's a great way to support crooked media. And we have a 25% off discount for annual subscriptions right now.

Speaker 15 In today's episode, I'll be talking to Amy Walter.

Speaker 15 one of the smartest people I know in politics, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report and host of her own podcast, The Odd Years, about the state of the House and Senate races and Democrats' chances of of winning a trifecta in this election.

Speaker 15 Amy Walter, welcome to Pod Save America. How are you?

Speaker 14 Thank you. I'm pretty good.

Speaker 14 I'm still here. So really that's the goal.
That is the goal that I am upright and, you know, just trying to pace myself.

Speaker 15 While we have you on, I want to talk about the presidential race, but also the Senate and the House, something both of all three of which you're an expert in. Let's start with the presidential.

Speaker 15 Three weeks ago or so, Democrats were feeling ecstatic. They were feeling confident.
Over the last week or so, the Democrats have gotten anxious.

Speaker 15 This is the face we get in every year. Have you seen anything in what you've seen in the race and the polling and the people you're talking to that would justify the vibe shift among Democrats?

Speaker 14 Yeah, Dan, it's a really good question. And I

Speaker 14 dug into this myself because

Speaker 14 I always wonder, all right, how much of this is real and how much of this is just sort of a mood that's not backed up by actual data.

Speaker 14 And so if you look at the national average, like things haven't moved that much. They're moving around the edges.

Speaker 14 At the state level, I think the reason for the frustration, depression, whatever you want to call it, anxiety among Democrats is that you could see, and if you go to the 538 site, which does a great job with this, right, because they have the trend line, and

Speaker 14 you,

Speaker 14 as well as many of the folks in your business, in our business, appreciate a good trend line, right?

Speaker 14 And what you can see, though it is a very small trend line, but that the peak for Harris was basically, not surprisingly, close to the end of September, right? That was after she had.

Speaker 14 the strong debate performance. You had the DNC that went really well.
The waltz rollout went well, right? Like that was, I would say, peak for Harris. And since then, it's kind of gone down.

Speaker 14 And so instead of being ahead in a state like Michigan by an average of two points, she's now ahead by nine-tenths of a point, right? Or one point.

Speaker 14 So we're really talking about movement of a point or a half a point in most of those battleground states. But as you know,

Speaker 14 half a point or a point is the difference between winning and losing in these states. So it seems

Speaker 14 there is some reason to, again, if you're just looking at the poll averages, to say, well, boy, was that a peak? Did she peak too early? That's the thing Democrats also love to talk about. Oh,

Speaker 14 we peaked too early. We need to peak at the election.

Speaker 14 But

Speaker 14 it's also a sign that, you know, coalescing the base has gotten her to a certain place, but it's not getting her as far as she needs to to win this thing outright.

Speaker 14 The other thing I noticed, and we noticed this in our own data as well as just looking at all of those national

Speaker 14 the network polls that came out last weekend, that her slipping is with independent voters.

Speaker 14 And so, you know, that's something to keep aware of. But again, we're talking about

Speaker 14 a movement of half a point to a point. So freak out about that as you will.
Yeah,

Speaker 15 exactly.

Speaker 15 Choose your level of panic based on that information.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 15 It's so hard because we've never seen a race this close in all the states.

Speaker 14 That's right.

Speaker 15 It's just usually the margins are a little bit larger and usually they're larger in some states and maybe narrow in just the tipping point state, for instance.

Speaker 15 But here, it's all seven and nationally are within the margin of error. So it's so hard to separate real movement

Speaker 14 from statistical noise from noise. And then right.

Speaker 14 And from what is to me, it kind of comes back to, all right, well, how likely do you think these people who are answering the polls or who we're waiting the polls to are going to show up right and that's where we really get into the the

Speaker 14 difficult um prediction part because

Speaker 14 you know we all talk about it comes down it all comes down to turnout but

Speaker 14 nobody really knows what that's going to look like.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And you, you know, as part of your quick political report, Swing State Polling Project, you had an analysis that showed that Kamala Harris is doing much better with highly engaged voters and that Trump is depending on low to mid-propensity rates.

Speaker 15 Can you talk a little bit about what you guys found out?

Speaker 14 Yeah, yeah. Thanks for bringing that up.
Right. We did this project.
We've had three different polls.

Speaker 14 We're doing them with BSG, the Benitson Strategy Group, Democratic polling firm, and GS Strategy Group, which is a Republican firm.

Speaker 14 And these guys have been fantastic partners, in part because they both work in states that are purple or sometimes in states that aren't friendly to their side. So they appreciate a real swing state.

Speaker 14 But what we did is we broke up the overall electorate in those seven states into basically three buckets. One being people who show up in every, who've shown up in the last four elections.

Speaker 14 And what we know about people who show up in election after election is they're going to show up in this election, right?

Speaker 14 If you voted in four out of of the last four elections, there's a 90 plus percent chance you're showing up in this election, as long as you're physically able to do so.

Speaker 14 The next, and by the way, that group of voters, that's somewhere around 60% of the electorate, right? So they're the biggest share, but

Speaker 14 just over a majority. Then another 30-ish percent fall into the category.
They voted in anywhere from one to three of the last four elections.

Speaker 14 And then the final bucket, which is the smallest bucket, are people who said they've registered since 2022. So they weren't able to vote in any of those four elections.
Now,

Speaker 14 the one consistent from May through this last poll we did in September is those most engaged voters were voting for the Democrat, whether that's Biden or Harris, by four points.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 that goes to kind of the makeup of that electorate, which we know is it's an older group. It is whiter than average, right? It's less diverse than the overall electorate.
And

Speaker 14 it's probably going to be more college educated than the overall electorate.

Speaker 14 And these are the voters that are propelling and have propelled Democrats to success in 2018, in 2020, but certainly most, I think,

Speaker 14 most notably in 2022.

Speaker 14 And if those were the only voters that turned out in this election, that would be pretty good news for Kamala Harris to be ahead by four points in the battleground states, right?

Speaker 14 This isn't nationally, this is a battleground state.

Speaker 14 But then you put in those low propensity voters and Trump has about a seven-point lead with those voters. His lead among them has varied between five and ten points.

Speaker 14 And those voters, again, not surprisingly, younger.

Speaker 14 They are going to

Speaker 14 identify more as independent, more diverse in terms of the electorate. And what's funny, Dan, is when you and I came up in politics, we would look at that group of voters.

Speaker 14 We'd say younger, more diverse.

Speaker 14 Those are Democrats. You just need to get them out to vote.

Speaker 14 Right now, they're leaning more to Trump. Now, I don't know.
I think a big piece of his success has been

Speaker 14 from

Speaker 14 the very beginning, from 2016, 2016 is turning out people who are not traditional voters right people who are either tuned out of politics or who are really cynical about politics

Speaker 14 and so if we think about all right what is what's motivating those voters and how does Harris sort of chop into that group of voters, you know, some of them are going to be motivated

Speaker 14 by

Speaker 14 something that she does or says that also feels like it's different, like she is going after the status quo as well, that she's skeptical of,

Speaker 14 you know, a lot of the institutions out there.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 so her message, when I see her message on things like,

Speaker 14 you know, We're taking on price gouging, we're taking on big pharma, right? It is aimed at a lot of the voters out there who are in that camp of, yeah, I'm the little guy.

Speaker 14 I'm getting picked on by the big guy.

Speaker 14 Where Trump wins them over, of course, is by saying, I am the great disruptor.

Speaker 14 I'm not beholden to anyone or anything. I am unlike any other politician.
And that makes me able to do things that no other politician's been able to do.

Speaker 15 It's very interesting you say, like, the reversal in the parties.

Speaker 15 I had, I was interviewing, which is an awkward experience for me, but I was interviewing David Pluff last week, and he was making his case about it.

Speaker 15 And it is like an out-of-body experience because that was the Obama coalition.

Speaker 15 That was the argument against Obama's electability, both in the primaries and the general was relying on all these young people. Young people never vote.
Then they turn out.

Speaker 15 But what is interesting, though, is like we knew that challenge and we built a campaign to account for that, a massive volunteer-driven fear organization.

Speaker 15 We had, you know, we had organized everywhere. And the Trump folks are taking a very very different approach.

Speaker 14 That's right.

Speaker 15 They don't have a traditional fear organization. They've outsourced it to Elon Musk and others.
I'm sure you're hearing plenty of concerns, as everyone does from Republicans about the status of that.

Speaker 14 What have you heard? That's right.

Speaker 14 You know, I do hear that.

Speaker 14 It's not as loud as, say, it was in 2020 when there was a lot of hand-wringing about the fact that Trump was actively discouraging people from doing mail-in voting.

Speaker 14 You know, I would talk to folks in Pennsylvania who were are like,

Speaker 14 you know, we, the mail-in vote piece, we're trying to put a mail-in vote program in place, but we are getting pushback from the very people who are supposed to be helping us institute it because Trump told them that it was

Speaker 14 it was rigged, right? So they are now doing

Speaker 14 more of a, and outside groups are doing more of a mail-in process with their voters. Now, does that mean they're picking up those low-propensity voters with the mail-in program? I don't know.

Speaker 14 That is a very, very good question.

Speaker 14 And, you know, it also comes back to, look, how much do you believe that

Speaker 14 the reason that,

Speaker 14 say, Trump did better in 2020 than many expected was because they did doors

Speaker 14 and traditional field and Democrats did not. I don't know.

Speaker 14 I mean, I'm not here to say that field doesn't matter or that all those people who are working really hard on both sides, on the ground, going to doors,

Speaker 14 that it doesn't make a difference.

Speaker 14 What I wonder, though, is whether what Trump has shown time and time again is his ability to infiltrate into areas of the electorate that nobody else can, no traditional politician can, is what allows him to get turnout among voters even without the quote-unquote traditional field programs.

Speaker 14 Aaron Powell,

Speaker 15 it's really interesting because in 16 and 20, well, 16 in particular, his turnout, sort of his turnout boost was primarily among white, non-college educated, primarily rural voters, who are who are profiled, they come from Republican parts of the country.

Speaker 15 They profile as Republican. They had just not.
There were people who found Mitt Romney to be not someone who could speak to them and Trump could.

Speaker 15 We can probably spend six years trying to understand why that is, but that is is the case. Here, he's trying to do something a little bit different:

Speaker 15 he's trying to get people who

Speaker 15 are come from Democratic parts of the country in some cases who

Speaker 15 have agree with Democrats on some issues to do it. So, it's just interesting.
We're obviously not going to be able to do it.

Speaker 14 It's really, I know it. And this is the really fascinating question, right? Which is, I mean, if you, I was just looking through

Speaker 14 today

Speaker 14 the support that Trump is getting from

Speaker 14 black voters, right? And,

Speaker 14 you know, he's getting somewhere like

Speaker 14 20% of black men. Now, that's nationally.
I don't know, you know, you'd have to get into some of the crosstabs of these other polls to see how he's doing in states like Georgia, et cetera.

Speaker 14 But essentially, what the polls seem to be telling us, and the reason that Trump is doing better in Georgia, let's say, than in Pennsylvania or in Wisconsin is that exact thing, Dan, is that he's doing that much better with black voters.

Speaker 14 And I would assume that it's going to be with black men.

Speaker 14 The thing that I keep coming back to, and I know your conversation with David Plough kind of centered on this too, is this idea of, you know, looking at Trump's vote share rather than focusing on the margin.

Speaker 14 So

Speaker 14 I was just looking at, for example,

Speaker 14 the Pew Poll out from early October. And if you look at the support that Donald Trump is getting from, say,

Speaker 14 men under 50, okay, in 2020, Biden won those voters by 10, men under 50.

Speaker 14 And right now, Trump is only losing them by one. So that's, you know, a nine-point swing.
But if you look just at the share of the vote that Trump is getting from those voters, it's not any different.

Speaker 14 I can't remember the exact number.

Speaker 14 Let's call it 39%.

Speaker 14 Okay. And now he's getting 40% of those voters.

Speaker 14 So what you have is a whole chunk of younger voters who are sitting out there who are not committed to Trump, but they're not giving their votes to Harris yet either.

Speaker 14 And that goes to this point about who would you rather be in this scenario?

Speaker 14 Would you rather be the Harris campaign who's basically then, it seems like their challenge is is getting those voters to come out for them rather than sitting at home, instead of worrying about whether those voters are going to actually go to Donald Trump.

Speaker 14 In other words, he is looking stronger with those voters in part because Harris's numbers look that much weaker than where Biden was at the end of 2020.

Speaker 14 And so that's the thing that I keep sort of grappling with to your point about like, well, what does this really, really look like? And how many of these people actually

Speaker 14 do come out and go to the polls? So I think there is a real underperformance

Speaker 14 for Harris at this moment. But what we don't know is if that's going to result in an overperformance at the end of the day by Trump.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's, it is, it's, this is such a confusing election in so many ways.

Speaker 15 But one of the ways is that I think in order to adjust for the anti-Trump polling error last time is everyone is trying to, most, I would say most people are trying to model their, the, their vision of the 2024 electorate based on the 2020 electorate.

Speaker 14 Right. Exactly.

Speaker 15 We're getting to the very esoteric debate about whether you weight your poll based on

Speaker 14 the past how people voted voted in 2020.

Speaker 15 And that that could be right. That could be wrong.
But that was in itself a black swan election because of the pandemic

Speaker 15 and the the changes in voting behavior. Turnout was so high.
And so it's just the margins and the vote share in how this actually looks. There is this feeling.

Speaker 15 And I've never seen an election where so few people are confident in saying anything about what could possibly happen because

Speaker 15 we're all just, we're on a very, we're on a very rickety ledge with how we're looking at it. It's possible that how we're thinking about it.

Speaker 15 And how we're, and it's been so long, like even 16 was a very bizarre election too, low turnout relative, huge third third-party participation that tilted these states.

Speaker 15 Then you have 2020 and now here we are with a new brand new candidate who started four months ago.

Speaker 15 There's never been a less known candidate. Exactly.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 And we've never had, we've had, we have an election where, again,

Speaker 14 you and I, growing up in politics, you always say, well, all right, what's a presidential election about? Do you want to stay the course or do you want to go in a different direction?

Speaker 14 And what's fascinating about this election is we have the guy who is the challenger, challenger, so the different direction, is the semi-incumbent, right?

Speaker 14 People, this is not brand new to anybody about what direction he wants to go in and what it would be like to have a term with him in office. And then you have Harris, who's also new.

Speaker 14 As you said, people don't, there's still a lot to fill in about her, and yet she's the incumbent and having to defend the status quo. So you can't really put either one of them cleanly into that.

Speaker 14 I'm I'm the change candidate. They are both trying to grab onto that.

Speaker 14 And then they both have their past, their past votes, their past behaviors that are tethering them to this idea that they're really not change.

Speaker 14 So I think that's what's also hard about it. Because you're right.

Speaker 14 If you were in a cave, Dan, for the last 10 years.

Speaker 14 Or maybe let's not call it a cave. Let's say you were just in a luxurious, wonderful place for 10 years.
You knew nothing about our politics.

Speaker 14 The last campaign you did was 2008, and you came out and you said, and I told you there's an incumbent president not running again, but with an approval rating in the 40s, and we're coming off really high inflationary period where people are still pretty frustrated about the state of the economy.

Speaker 14 Oh, and 70% of people think the country's headed in the wrong direction. Do you think that incumbent party would win? You'd be like, probably not.
I mean, I'd rather be the out party.

Speaker 15 Right. If that was a poli-sci 101 test and you wrote yes, the incumbent party would win, you would fail.
And I think that's just an

Speaker 15 no one knows what's going to happen, but there is this, you can hear it in some of the critiques that's happening. Like, this is a race that Kamala Harris should be running away with.

Speaker 15 Now, put aside, that bespeaks a real misunderstanding of how polarization works and how the electoral college works. But even then, on paper,

Speaker 15 this is Trump's election to lose.

Speaker 14 That's right. Just based on

Speaker 15 everything right there. And she's being asked to do something

Speaker 15 unprecedented to go from a standing start to running against not just some random schmo nominated by the republican iowa caucus but by the former incumbent president of the united states running again and so it's just i think our every a lot of sort of the

Speaker 15 the framework of analysis that's come to this election i think is off because trump is such a unique figure but when you do the fundamentals and it's interesting because so the fundamentals of the political environment massively favor trump for all the reasons you said.

Speaker 15 You can put aside the fact that unemployment is at a historic low, but

Speaker 15 because of inflation, because of Biden's approval rating, because of the wrong direction number. But the fundamentals of her candidacy favor her, right? She's more popular.

Speaker 15 And in general, in a normal world, she's significantly more popular. You would say undecided spread for the better liked candidate.
You would say she has, who has more money?

Speaker 15 who has a better campaign and a better organization. So it is like these two big, you know, these, these two forces going against each other, right?

Speaker 15 Between the political environment for Trump and the candidacy and the candidate skills for her.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 14 And that and that makes right that makes it all the harder to figure out where these last batch of people who are not yet committed to voting slash committed to a candidate are going to, you know, what is it that's going to push those voters over the edge?

Speaker 14 And,

Speaker 14 you know, again, in the old days, you'd say, well, there's going to be, you know, what is it? What are we, what's the issue environment going into the last three weeks of this election?

Speaker 14 Again, and who is that going to favor? So,

Speaker 14 I mean, there's a lot that's happened, Dan. We've had two assassination attempts on one candidate.
We have a growing war in the Middle East.

Speaker 14 We've got,

Speaker 14 you know, let's see, major disasters, natural disasters in North Carolina and Florida.

Speaker 14 None of those things alone are making much of a dent in terms of the race, in terms of just the overall polling, or the sense that, oh, this is a political environment that is going to be beneficial to one candidate or the other.

Speaker 15 There's so much conversation about the October surprise. What's the October surprise to me? Maybe we already had it when we had two hurricanes on the first week of October.

Speaker 15 But what's different now is not only

Speaker 15 do we have this small group of voters going to have this election, but

Speaker 15 the media environment is so different now.

Speaker 15 Like I think all the time about 2004 and the last weekend when that audio tape of bin Laden came out and leading every newspaper, every news story was about bin Laden pledging to attack America again.

Speaker 15 And I don't know whether John Kerry would have won if that had not come out, but that definitely puts in people's head an issue environment that Saber Fox.

Speaker 14 This is a security election. Exactly.

Speaker 15 Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 October brings it all.

Speaker 2 Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.

Speaker 4 At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all.

Speaker 5 Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 6 Total Wine and More is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 7 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore.

Speaker 9 Curbside pickup pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 11 See TotalWine.com for details.

Speaker 12 Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.

Speaker 13 Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 14 This podcast is sponsored by Goldbelly, shipping America's most iconic foods nationwide.

Speaker 14 Make this Thanksgiving one to remember with the original turd ducket, the viral pie cake in with decadent layers of cake and pie, and more.

Speaker 14 Plus, Black Friday is the perfect time to pre-order unique gifts they'll rave about for years. Use promo code GIFT for 20% off your first order on Goldbelly.com.

Speaker 14 Goldbelly, America's Best Foods, delivered.

Speaker 14 This podcast is sponsored by Goldbelly, shipping America's most iconic foods nationwide.

Speaker 14 Make this Thanksgiving one to remember with the original Turducken, the viral pie cake-in with decadent layers of cake and pie, and more.

Speaker 14 Plus, Black Friday is the perfect time to pre-order unique gifts they'll rave about for years. Use promo code GIFT for 20% off your first order on goldbelly.com.

Speaker 14 Goldbelly, America's best foods delivered.

Speaker 15 Let's move into the Senate.

Speaker 15 The narrative is that the Democratic chance of holding the Senate has gone way down.

Speaker 15 This was spurred in large part by your publication, the Cook Political Report, moving John Tester from a toss-up race to a lean Republican race. How do you see the overall Senate map right now?

Speaker 15 And I assume you agree with that assessment about what you're talking about.

Speaker 14 It is. You know, look, this was always going to be a challenging map for Democrats.
We've known that since the very beginning of the cycle.

Speaker 14 So holding on to three red states in a presidential year is tough. Tester's challenge in Montana is even a little bit harder than, say,

Speaker 14 Sherrod Brown's challenge in Ohio because Trump is going to win the state of Montana by probably twice as much as he will win Ohio.

Speaker 14 So for Tester to win, he's going to need to get, you know, one in five Trump voters or something like that.

Speaker 14 I think there was a time, again, going back, I feel like this old person now back in my day, but,

Speaker 14 you know, where Montana was a more parochial place and where you could be a Max Baucus,

Speaker 14 a John Tester, where you are a Montana Democrat. You are distinguished by people in that state from national Democrats, in part because of your voting record, but also how you look and act, right?

Speaker 14 The farmer and the buzz cut and the whole deal, which in an era of...

Speaker 14 more nationalized politics and in a state that is growing really, really quickly.

Speaker 14 I think the number now is only half the people who are in Montana right now were actually born there.

Speaker 14 And so that makes it really hard for Tester to outrun the national environment like he was able to do in previous years.

Speaker 14 I think the remarkable thing to watch, though, is how well Sherrod Brown has been holding on in a state that Trump's probably going to carry by 10 points.

Speaker 14 And I think some of that is Brown's own brand.

Speaker 14 But

Speaker 14 the fact that he has been able to outspend and, in fact, went on the air early, and his Republican opponent was dark for a good chunk of the summer, allowing Brown to really control the narrative around this race.

Speaker 14 Now, at the end of the day, Moreno may be able to just count on a strong Trump performance to pull him up over the line. So it's not as dangerous to

Speaker 14 be trailing an incumbent like Moreno is right now or be tied with an incumbent as it would be in a purple state or a bluer state. But so you put those three states in

Speaker 14 really dangerous territory. That means that Democrats are going to have to find two states.

Speaker 14 Or if we just say Montana is the only one that flips, they've got to pick up one state and Harris win the presidency in order to hold the Senate.

Speaker 14 And if we look at the map, we see Texas coming in there. Nebraska has been quite the surprise, even though he is not technically a Democrat.

Speaker 14 He's an independent who hasn't said who he's going to caucus with. But it would

Speaker 14 definitely make the politics of the Senate even more interesting. Should you have another independent in there? But

Speaker 14 look, I think Colin Al Red has run a very, very strong race in Texas, Texas, driven in part by the fact that it is, as we've seen since 2018, if you're a Democrat running against Ted Cruz, you can raise a lot of money.

Speaker 14 Ted Cruz raises you a lot of money

Speaker 14 just out of, you know, sheer spite, people like to donate to people running against Cruz.

Speaker 14 People they generally don't like. Generally don't like.
Right, exactly. So it's, it's, it's, it's,

Speaker 14 you know, Alred, I'm not taking anything away from him, but if you're running against Ted Cruz, there's a lot of money sitting out there from people who just don't like Ted Cruz.

Speaker 14 But that's still a tough, that's a tough haul to get from,

Speaker 14 you know, 46, 47% as a Democrat to 50 in the state of Texas. Every 1%

Speaker 14 is just brutal.

Speaker 15 And it's going to depend a lot on what happens with a Latino vote, right? Are we snapping back some to where we were before 2020? Are we staying at 2020? And is there erosion?

Speaker 15 Back in my day, it was Texas is on its inexorable path to be a blue state because of the margins Obama and then Hillary were getting with Latino voters. Then that changed after 2020.

Speaker 15 And now we are in a much different place. Would you have a feel for Nebraska? I've never seen

Speaker 15 a race for people. There's been such conflicting polling.
And like there are some polls that show it incredibly close.

Speaker 15 I've seen polls that, not the highest of quality polls, I'll make that have shown, uh, uh, that have shown the Democrat, shown Dan Osborne ahead, seen polls that have shown huge leads for Fisher.

Speaker 15 I think you guys have Fisher as a lean Republican, or is that right?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I think

Speaker 14 we have it in likely

Speaker 14 now. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14 Um, and uh,

Speaker 14 this feels in some ways, it feels somewhat familiar. We've seen this in other plains states.

Speaker 14 We saw it in Kansas, right, with Pat Roberts, where an independent candidate who was really a Democrat, but Brandon is an independent.

Speaker 14 It got very close until it wasn't close at all.

Speaker 14 And so there's a formula here for a Republican to, you know, you just have to make the case that this person who calls themselves an independent is actually aligned with the Democrat, make it a national partisan race, and you pull out a win.

Speaker 14 I think Osborne has been successful for a couple of reasons. The first is he just doesn't look or act like your typical politician.
The fact that he's not aligned with the party, I think, helps.

Speaker 14 He's a former labor leader and has a good story to tell. And Fisher, I think, is not as particularly well-known and not well-defined in that state.
So he kind of snuck up on her. It's hard to sneak up

Speaker 14 on a senator, right? I've got six years to prepare for this thing. It's hard to sneak up on anybody in politics these days, but he did just that.

Speaker 14 And so,

Speaker 14 you know, look, at the end of the day, it is still Nebraska. But the fact that this race is where it is.
It's also notable that his last name is Osborne. Now,

Speaker 14 you may remember there was a very famous football coach named Tom Osborne, the football coach for the University of Nebraska, who he had an E at the end of his name.

Speaker 14 This Osborne does not, who was also a member of Congress. So the name Osborne in Nebraska actually a, it's a good name, it's a good brand to have.

Speaker 14 So I don't know how much of it he's, he's benefit how much he's benefiting there, but it is, it is clear that he's, he's picking up some level of support from people who are also voting for Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 14 The kinds of people who I think would say,

Speaker 14 yeah, I like Donald Trump because he shakes it up and he's not one of the insiders. This guy seems like a not insider-y kind of guy to me, too.

Speaker 14 And she's part of the system and the part of the establishment, so to speak. So

Speaker 14 yeah, every year you've got one of these races. There's usually one in the house too, where an incumbent that nobody was paying attention to all of a sudden looks

Speaker 14 like they are in a lot of trouble. And, you know, the money is starting to flow to her, but he's been able to raise an incredible amount of money.

Speaker 14 And this is where the nationalization of politics actually helps candidates because a candidate in Nebraska is now able to raise money from people around the country in a way you couldn't back in the pre,

Speaker 14 you know, pre-internet, pre-yeah.

Speaker 15 There's no grassroots money for a Nebraska Senate candidate. You're just counting on

Speaker 15 PACs to decide whether your side was going to be the

Speaker 14 right part. It's going to be exactly.

Speaker 15 So let's talk about the House.

Speaker 15 In all the various models I've seen, Democrats have a slight or slight favorites to take the House. I think I find the House fascinating because

Speaker 15 we talked, we spent some time talking about the red states there, but the Senate map mostly overlays over the presidential map.

Speaker 15 And so the same trends are affecting Kamala Harris in Wisconsin or affecting Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. Same thing for Bob Casey and Kamala's Pennsylvania.
So there's a lot of that.

Speaker 15 The House is very different.

Speaker 15 There are obviously some battleground House districts in Pennsylvania and states like that, but it's really going to be decided in New York and California, two states which kind of underperformed in 2022.

Speaker 15 What do you guys think in the House?

Speaker 14 Well,

Speaker 14 I'm really glad you brought up New York and California because the one thing we're noticing in both of those states, which you're right, if you look at,

Speaker 14 if I told you that, look, Democrats' chances run through California and New York in a presidential year, normally you'd say, well, that's great for Democrats because those are two great states for us.

Speaker 14 Certainly we'll have higher turnout than we did in 2022, which was a weird year. And you have an unpopular governor in New York and a not very inspired top-of-the-ticket race in California.

Speaker 14 And so we had really low turnout.

Speaker 14 At the same time, we're seeing, at least right now, that there's still some sign that that Republican, I don't know if I would call it momentum, but Republican success in New York and California wasn't just about low turnout in 2022.

Speaker 14 This is especially true if you're looking at the districts that Democrats need to pick off in California, where you have a significant Latino population. It goes back to that question of how well will

Speaker 14 Trump and Republicans do with Latino voters in a presidential election cycle compared to, say, an off-year.

Speaker 14 Again,

Speaker 14 in the not so distant past, you would say, oh, if it's an overwhelmingly Latino district, it will perform better for Democrats in a presidential year than in a midterm year, but you can't take that to the bank now, not certainly with where we've seen some of these trends with Latino voters going.

Speaker 14 And in New York, you know,

Speaker 14 the

Speaker 14 redrawing of the map that Democrats did didn't really do much to harm Republicans.

Speaker 14 It shored up a couple of their Democrats, which, you know, playing defense is important too. But,

Speaker 14 you know, there still are signs that Long Island and some of the places in upstate slash Hudson Valley are just not, they're not going to perform as well for Harris as they did for Biden.

Speaker 14 At least they're not right now. Again, it doesn't mean Harris loses these places.
It's just that instead of winning them by 10 or 12, it's

Speaker 14 six or four.

Speaker 14 And that means that these

Speaker 14 challengers, you know, they have a bit of a head, of a tailwind, but not as strong of a tailwind as you would expect.

Speaker 14 To me, it's also like,

Speaker 14 you know, you've got some quirky races in there, too. We've got

Speaker 14 Democrats holding on in red places, and they look pretty strong now. Marcy Kaptur in Toledo, who was supposed to be a Democratic

Speaker 14 coast. Yes, absolutely.
They drew her a terrible district and she's still holding on. And you've got

Speaker 14 in the Lehigh Valley, Matt Cartwright.

Speaker 14 In another district that has shifted dramatically to the right, he's still holding on.

Speaker 14 Jared Golden, I haven't seen any data up there recently, but up in Maine. So the incumbent Democrats in those red districts are holding on too.

Speaker 14 And so to me, it's really where Democrats are defending some of these open seats, like in Michigan. Yeah,

Speaker 14 those are those two slotkin, the slotkin seat and the

Speaker 14 Kildie seat up there, those are going to be critically important.

Speaker 14 Abigail Spanberger's district in Virginia. Normally, these races, the closest races all break one way.

Speaker 14 So you see our toss-up category, usually, I think we have 24 in there, and usually 70% of the races would go one direction or the other. So that still may happen in this case.

Speaker 14 But you're right, they're all in different areas. So you could see something like, yeah, the New York races go one way, the California races go one way, but North Carolina and

Speaker 14 Ohio and Michigan go a different way.

Speaker 14 So it makes for a really,

Speaker 14 really

Speaker 14 close, close call on who has an advantage here.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 if

Speaker 14 these things play out the way they have in recent years, where the top of the ticket is as

Speaker 14 important

Speaker 14 as the,

Speaker 14 it's not more important, but it is incredibly important to what happens below,

Speaker 14 you know, on the races below it, you know, outrunning your presidential nominee becomes really challenging.

Speaker 15 And it's interesting because in the Senate, in a lot of the races, you're seeing semi-democratic candidates outrun Harris. Now, I think that's narrowed some.

Speaker 15 In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in particular.

Speaker 15 And I think there's kind of unique situations in Arizona.

Speaker 14 Arizona and Nevada. In particular.

Speaker 15 And Nevada. And a little bit in Michigan, I think.

Speaker 15 Because Mike Rogers is not, he has some challenges in reinventing himself as a Trump Republican.

Speaker 15 CNN contributor to Trump Republican is a tough pivot over the course of a couple of years with a way station and living in Florida, I think, to get there. But you're seeing them come together.

Speaker 15 And so I guess you would say the more most likely scenario is the winner of the presidential wins the House as well. That's probably what you would expect.

Speaker 14 That's what we have seen forever and ever and ever.

Speaker 14 But wouldn't this be the right year for that to be upended?

Speaker 14 And so

Speaker 14 we have a whole bunch of this has never happened before scenarios that could happen, which is a double flip, right? The Senate and the House going different ways.

Speaker 14 You could see that the presidential goes one way and the House goes the other, which, again, haven't seen, haven't seen.

Speaker 14 I think the last time the House flipped control in a presidential year was in the 1950s. So Eisenhower was president, the last time that happened.

Speaker 14 I think the one thing we can feel somewhat confident in is that we're not going to get an answer on election night or the day after the election or maybe two days after the election.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it could be weeks, frankly, as it was in 2018. Yeah.

Speaker 14 And then if it's really close, then we're going to have recounts and yeah, and on top of recounts. So that should be quite something.

Speaker 15 Well, I think it's a great place to leave it there. Amy, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 14 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 15 Always smarter after I hear you, after I, after I read you or hear you talk.

Speaker 14 Oh, you're so nice. Thank you.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 15 Good luck for these last two and a half weeks here.

Speaker 14 Thanks. You too.

Speaker 15 Let's take a short break, but before we do, I have an ask. If you're listening to this podcast, you're already supporting the work we do here at Crooked Media.
So thank you for that.

Speaker 15 As you may have heard, we're currently offering 25% off annual subscriptions to Friends of the Pod.

Speaker 15 Here's why you should sign up. Crooked's mission is to create a space for honest conversations about news, politics, and the world around us.

Speaker 15 And no matter who wins in 2024, we'll remain committed to that mission. To put it simply, building the shows and initiatives we envision for 2025 requires people, time, and resources.

Speaker 15 Signing up for an annual membership to our subscription service is the best way to support us as we make shows and launch new projects. The 25% discount on new annual subscriptions is an amazing deal.

Speaker 15 But more importantly, your subscription powers the work we do on our shows and through Votesave America. So please help us build a strong, progressive, independent media.

Speaker 15 Head to crooked.com/slash friends or to the Apple Podcast feed to learn more.

Speaker 1 October brings it all.

Speaker 2 Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.

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Speaker 16 The holidays have never been easier.

Speaker 15 Now I'm joined by Polar Coasters producer Caroline Reston to answer your questions from our subscriber Discord. Caroline, take it away.

Speaker 17 Dan, I'm happy to be here on Pod Save. I was told by Elijah to downplay my banter by 50%.
So if you guys want to. I mean, you know what that means?

Speaker 15 I want you to double your banter. Do not.
Elijah's just trying to stem everyone's growth here because he likes to be the Pod Save American producer celebrity.

Speaker 17 He does, and I get it.

Speaker 15 Fame is a toxic drug, so I get it.

Speaker 17 Okay, so we have a few questions here from the Discord. The first one we got asked many, many times.
So I'm eagerly awaiting your answer. CNN was reporting on record early voting in Georgia.

Speaker 17 And Dan, you previously have talked about that the more people that vote, the better it probably is for Trump. What are these early voting numbers saying?

Speaker 15 Do not read anything into this.

Speaker 15 Early vote is, we spend a lot of time trying to parse early vote numbers and it tells us very little because this could mean really high turnout or it could mean that a lot of people who had previously voted on election day have decided that for the purposes of convenience to vote early vote.

Speaker 15 So you're not adding any new voters. The turnout may not necessarily be any higher.
You're just shifting from election day voters to early voters.

Speaker 15 Also, how enthusiastic people are, they will often just vote on the first day. As early vote and vote in mail becomes more normalized in this country, you're going to have more people doing that.

Speaker 15 It could tell us something great. It could tell us something terrible.
We just don't know.

Speaker 15 Over the course of time, the campaigns will be able to analyze, take the number who voted, run it through their database and determine whether these are just typical voters who were going to vote anyway and now they're voting early.

Speaker 15 Are they new voters, people who we did not think were going to vote? Are they low propensity voters that we were hoping to get to the polls?

Speaker 15 But based on what we know right now, you can't really read into it one thing, good or bad.

Speaker 17 Great answer to that question. We don't know, but don't freak out.
Here's another question. I saw that Republicans have completely outpaced Democrats in voter registration in swing states.

Speaker 17 How much should we be worried about this? How much is it due to people changing their registration to match their 2020 preferences versus a legitimate operation to recruit more Republicans?

Speaker 15 It is something to worry about. Now, I would state that for a long time, people

Speaker 15 don't change their voter registration. And they,

Speaker 15 so you, they may have registered as a Democrat when Bill Clinton was president, and they've been voting Republican ever since, but they've remained a Democrat because they don't vote in primaries.

Speaker 15 And so there's no point in change of registration.

Speaker 15 You will often see in an election where there's no primary on one side and a presidential primary on the other, the side having the presidential primary will usually gain registrance because people will register.

Speaker 15 to participate in the primary through the registered independents who have always voted Republican, maybe even a few Democrats who registered Republicans to vote in that primary.

Speaker 15 And so, look, we do want to have more registered voters. Democrats for a long time had a huge edge.
That edge was larger than our typical edge in statewide races.

Speaker 15 So there were some people who were registered as Democrats, but voting as Republicans, but it's not as bad as it sounds.

Speaker 15 But in general, you want to be gaining more registrance, not losing your advantage.

Speaker 17 Okay, people are asking very extensive questions on this Discord, which is great, but reading these are quite a mouthful.

Speaker 15 That's why you should subscribe to Friends of the Pot and join the Discord because there's some really smart people asking smart questions.

Speaker 17 You really are. Okay, Should the Democrats prioritize energizing their base rather than focusing heavily on swing voters?

Speaker 15 This is how the press portrays swing voters. Like

Speaker 15 the avatar of the swing voter in traditional political media narratives is

Speaker 15 usually a white man or woman. in their 40s to 50s in Wisconsin.

Speaker 15 They go to a diner, they print out the white papers of the Republicans and the white papers of the Democrats, and they go through them to see whose policies would benefit them more.

Speaker 15 And that's not what that's not those those are there are some voters like that that are definitely I don't know about the printing out of things anymore but there are people choosing between Trump and Harris like that does exist.

Speaker 15 But the largest swath of quote-unquote swing voters or persuasion targets are people choosing between your candidate and the couch.

Speaker 15 People who like, who don't like Donald Trump, they kind of like Kamal Harris, but they don't know if politics works for them. And so that is who both campaigns are actually focusing on.

Speaker 15 Trump is not focusing on his base. He's actually there to the extent they have any sort of GO TV operation.

Speaker 15 It is to try to get low-engagement voters, people who profile as Republican, but do not typically vote.

Speaker 15 And those could be young men are a huge part, including black and Latina men are a huge part of Trump's target there. Democrats have a much wider swath of voters that we're going to do that with.

Speaker 15 Also includes young voters, men and women, people who haven't, have never voted before, who were trying to get registered. And so the idea that

Speaker 15 swing voters and the base are these two entirely different things, I think think is a misnomer born of some pretty lazy political writing over the years.

Speaker 17 Dan, if my memory serves me well, you once said that donating to campaigns directly is more impactful than donating to PACs.

Speaker 17 Explain further.

Speaker 15 Yes, your memory does serve you well. And let me, I'll offer some context for that.
But the reason why donating to campaigns is more

Speaker 15 cost-efficient and effective than donating to PACs is when it comes to television ads, not digital ads, but television ads, the stations are required to offer the lowest available rate to the campaigns themselves, and they can gouge the living shit out of super PACs or any PAC, frankly.

Speaker 15 And so right now, based on what I've heard, a super PACs are spending five to six times the amount of money per commercial as the Harris and Trump campaigns or congressional and Senate campaigns are paying.

Speaker 15 And so when it comes to actual, they sort of campaigns like super PACs and others that are going to run ads on television, donating to the campaign is much more efficient.

Speaker 15 Now, there are a lot of great organizations, many of them we supported Votes Add America, who are PACs that do organizing, right?

Speaker 15 They're going, they're doing deep canvassing, they're registering voters, they're getting voters to the poll. And those groups pay the same amount of money as per,

Speaker 15 you know, whatever it is they're buying as the campaign does.

Speaker 15 But for the purpose of who's spending money on television, give your money to the campaign because that's you're going to get much more bang for your buck that way.

Speaker 17 Okay, Dan, another question.

Speaker 17 If you could design your ideal three-week out polling that doesn't already exist or isn't publicly shared, and your only budget and scale constraints are that you cannot collect info from any true swing state, what states would you be polling, and what measures and what differentials would you be watching with the greatest degree of interest?

Speaker 15 I mean, what a question. I'm going to simplify that question.

Speaker 14 Please do. Some.

Speaker 15 I think I would look at there are two states that are not getting a lot of polling that I would like to see poll because I think they tell us something about what could be happening nationally with certain groups.

Speaker 15 And so one of them is New Mexico. This is a state that was in play when Biden was the nominee, so much so that Trump was leading in some internal campaign polls in New Mexico.

Speaker 15 From the limited polling I've seen, it has reverted back to its relatively safe status

Speaker 15 from 2020 and before. But I'd like to know that for sure, like to see what's happening there.
So much of the election depends on whether Trump can get to 40% of the Latino vote.

Speaker 15 Looking at New Mexico would be a very interesting place to do that.

Speaker 15 And I think looking at the Latino vote in a state that's not seeing a ton of campaign ads would be helpful to give us some sort of hint in what's what's happening in other parts of the country, like California and New York, where you have huge swaths of Latino vote that are going to decide the house.

Speaker 15 Then, I want to, I'd like to see New Jersey. New Jersey is another state that

Speaker 15 moved towards

Speaker 15 the move towards Trump when Biden was the nominee. It's theoretically snapback.
There's almost no polling there. We have

Speaker 15 an important Senate race there where Andy Kim is running to take Bob Menendez's seat

Speaker 15 as Bob Menendez heads off to prison or wherever he's going. And

Speaker 15 in 2021, a Republican almost won the governorship there. A Republican former truck driver who had no money and

Speaker 15 ran no real campaign almost beat Governor Phil Murphy. And New York has moved a little to the right.
I'd like to see if that was happening in New Jersey as well.

Speaker 17 Interesting time for your last name to be Menendez.

Speaker 17 I had to get that into one episode of Pod Save America. Okay, Dan, last question, arguably the most important one.

Speaker 17 If you had to awkwardly sway on stage for 39 minutes, what song would you choose to dance to?

Speaker 15 I don't think I can answer this question. What?

Speaker 15 All of my dancing is awkwardly swaying. There's no other, there's no other for me.

Speaker 17 But what's your ideal song?

Speaker 15 My ideal song to

Speaker 15 sway to?

Speaker 17 Yeah, in front of a really big, awkward crowd.

Speaker 15 Is it gonna be the same song for 30 minutes or is it gonna be a genre of music?

Speaker 17 No, it has to.

Speaker 15 We're gonna put it on repeat. One song on repeat for 39 minutes.

Speaker 14 Huh.

Speaker 17 I would say Bohemian Bohemian Rhapsody because it's a long song. So you're only really getting it in like three times.

Speaker 15 I would say I prepared for the differential question.

Speaker 15 And the, what would my ideal poll be?

Speaker 15 I did not prepare for, and I would say in my defense, the actual question as submitted, although you edited it, was, Dan, if you had to awkwardly sway on stage to an ARIA.

Speaker 15 And I'm not sure I could name an ARIA. Ave Maria, I guess, because that's the one Trump did, but my ARIA knowledge is limited.

Speaker 17 Okay, I didn't know what that meant.

Speaker 17 So I just

Speaker 17 slided right.

Speaker 15 You can just take the questioner's questions and then change them to fit what you're interested in.

Speaker 17 I absolutely can. Okay, all too well, 10-minute version would be your Sway song.
Thanks so much for taking Discord questions. Thank you, Discord.

Speaker 15 That'll wrap up today's episode. Thank you to Amy Walter and to our subscribers for the great questions.
I'll be back in your feeds next Sunday with another one of these episodes.

Speaker 15 And if you're already a friend of the pod subscriber, I'll be on your feed again soon for a new episode of Polar Coaster. Thanks, everyone.

Speaker 18 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at cricket.com slash friends.

Speaker 18 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 18 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review to help boost this episode or spice up the group chat by sharing it with friends, family, or randos you want in on this conversation.

Speaker 18 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin.
Our associate producer is Faris Safari.

Speaker 18 Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 18 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 18 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 18 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavieve, and David Toltz.

Speaker 1 October brings it all. Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.

Speaker 3 At At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all.

Speaker 5 Mixing up something spooky?

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Speaker 7 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore.

Speaker 9 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 11 See TotalWine.com for details.

Speaker 12 Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.

Speaker 13 Drink responsibly. Be 21.

Speaker 14 Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.
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