Very Early Predictions for the 2028 Presidential Primary

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Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Jessica Tarlove, and I'm very excited to have Kristen Soltis-Anderson with me today.

She's a Republican pollster and opinion columnist at the New York Times contributing.

Always love to see it.

And I want to talk about your piece from the summer off the top.

Also a political commentator and just a lovely person.

Thanks for coming on.

Oh, thank you for having me, Jessica.

No, it's a pleasure.

And I feel like I haven't professionally seen you in a long time.

So this is exciting for me.

I want to start with your great piece in the Times from late August called Politicians Are Polarized, American Voters, Not So Much.

For folks who haven't read it, can you walk us through the data kind of underpinning your conclusions and, you know, what you were saying?

Sure.

So a couple of years ago, I got asked a really interesting question, which was, you know, what does the American center actually look like?

Are voters really as polarized as we think, or is there a space in the middle that is being underserved?

And at the time, the assumption was that the underserved middle kind of looked like a fiscally conservative, but maybe more socially progressive audience.

And then a political scientist named Lee Drutman did a study where he asked people a couple of questions about their social views, a couple of questions about their economic views, and sort of plotted out where people fell on, you know, a social conservatism axis and then an economic conservatism axis.

And really found that there are a lot of Americans that don't take all of column A and all of column B.

But to the extent that there are people who are heterodox, they're picking a little bit from both sides, they actually tend to be more socially conservative, but fiscally progressive, as in they're really alarmed about things like immigration.

They maybe have more conservative views on things like crime, race, gender.

But they are not interested in tax cuts for billionaires.

They're not interested in slashing the federal government.

They very much think that social safety net programs are important.

And so coming out of that research, I wanted to, at my firm, Echelon Insights, do a similar study.

And so, over the last couple of years, we've been asking a battery of questions, nine questions that are economic, nine that are social.

And we keep finding the same thing: that not only is there this big group in the center that sort of leans slightly more conservative on some social issues, but more open to a robust role for the federal government.

But that group is actually growing by about two points every year that we've done this study.

Now, the reason why I think this is so interesting is if you look at the number of our respondents who are on like the far right or the far left, it's pretty small.

It's only about, you know, 13%

in either of those categories.

And that feels so different compared to what you see when you look at any data about how Congress behaves, where there's almost no cross-partisan voting, everybody's really in lockstep.

You don't find a ton of members of Congress these days who embrace the idea that they are 70% aligned with conservatives, but 30% aligned with maybe the more, you know, moderate or liberal folks on other issues.

Like you just don't find that in elected office.

And it's so different from voters who lots of them are choosing a little from column A and a little from column B.

Yeah.

I mean, not only do you not find a lot of them, when you do find them, they're being primaried because they've committed the cardinal sin of actually appealing to purple people, right?

Like folks who do want a little of both parties.

Yes.

And so we took our data and we did a cluster analysis that kind of put people into different political tribes.

And we found that on the right, especially, the voters with the highest turnout propensity, the folks that are the most likely to be there in a primary, are absolutely the ones who sort of fall into that hard right quadrant or cluster.

They are the ones who they are pretty down the down, straight down the row, conservative on everything and pretty strongly so.

Democrats don't have that dynamic quite as much.

It's interesting that actually some of the highest propensity to turnout Democrats are not their furthest left folks.

Like there are lots of folks who are far to the left who are very loud online, but that is not the same as the folks who are the most reliable voters in a Democratic primary.

And so I think that's part of why, you know, Republicans in the 2010s went through this era of like candidates coming out of primaries that were like, you know, a bit out there,

where for Democrats, that has not up till this point been as much of a question.

You know, you look at the 2020 primary where you had most of the candidates running aggressively to the left and you had Joe Biden who kind of wasn't.

And it turned out that your median Democratic primary voter was in support of him that year.

So there is

the primary electorate challenge is especially acute on the Republican side in terms of them being like pretty ideologically all in one camp and there not being as much wiggle room in a primary.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm obviously as a partisan myself on the left, you know, thinking about the 2028 primary and how many very good analysts, especially in the polling space, like the Nate Silvers of the World and Galen Druk are talking about AOC as the one who could emerge from our primary, that we might not see that tack to the center that we did in 2020.

What do you think about those assessments?

So I actually do think that there is a combination of kind of populist rhetoric and media savvy that does have the potential to be really salient.

And it is obviously the case that while Republicans have been the ones where our primary electorate is more sort of consumed by, you know, folks who are more conservative, that dynamic absolutely could crop up on the Democratic side this time around.

We are seeing, you know, I see in things like the shutdown, a lot of interesting, you know,

photo negative parallels from the Tea Party era of the GOP when Republicans were the ones saying, let's shut down the government until we get what we want.

And so there's a chance that that dynamic could change.

So I am still of the mind that somebody like AOC

could win, but I don't think it's because she's really far out there on the left.

I think it's because she's pretty media savvy and she's good at talking sort of, she has a good like populist tone.

And I think that goes a long way.

Definitely.

I'm curious what you think.

I'm going out of order of the things that I wanted to ask you, but now I'm focused on 2028.

Taking into account, you know, what you're seeing in your results and kind of the vibes right now from the Republican Party, what do you think 2028 looks like for them?

Now, I'm caveating, let's say Donald Trump is not running for his

unprecedented third term.

Well, I shouldn't say unprecedented, illegal third term, since we used to say it's okay.

But, you know, I've been feeling

like J.D.

Vance, you know, obviously they are apparent, but that it's not a done deal, that Amarco Rubio wouldn't be interested or that someone like a Pete Hegset might be interested in trying to get in an unopen primary.

I think that to the extent Republicans get toward the end of Trump 2.0 and feel at least somewhat happy with what they've gotten, I think it'd be very, very, very challenging for someone to successfully challenge J.D.

Vance.

I think that he has his finger on the pulse of what that activist base really wants in a way that very few other figures do.

I don't think that anybody owns Trump space the way Donald Trump does.

And I think a lot of people who have tried to claim they can have often failed.

But I think back a lot to that vice presidential debate where it was J.D.

Vance versus Tim Walls.

And it was obviously very polarizing.

Like I, you know, watching all my social media feeds, like everybody obviously thinks their own side won.

But the extent to which I saw so many conservatives saying, finally, someone who is articulating all of these things that Trump has kind of been saying sometimes inartistically, but like J.D.

Vance is sort of doing it in a smoother way.

And he has continued to try to be that person, lockstep with Trump, never diverging from him, but also, I think, trying to communicate in a slightly different fashion in a way that has seemed to resonate.

And we see this in my data when I ask Republicans, who do you think will win the primary?

I mean, J.D.

Vance is so much further out there, certainly more so than like on the Democratic side, Kamala Harris is right now,

which is not to say that he couldn't be challenged.

It's also the case that if you get past this midterm, if the midterm goes very badly for Republicans, and if for whatever reason, Republican voters sort of conclude that maybe Trump 2.0 was not all that they had hoped it would be, and they, for whatever reason, are looking to turn the page, then seeing somebody else emerge is possible.

But right now, Republicans are rock solid for Trump.

They like what they're seeing.

Even as they have anxieties around things like cost of living, they still think he's doing all the stuff that we wanted.

And so it's hard right now to envision somebody making a break from that in a big way and succeeding in a primary.

Yeah.

So you're saying Chris Christie doesn't have a chance in 2020.

I think in a Republican primary, he would meet significant challenges.

Yes.

I want to talk about.

shutdown dynamics and that kind of rock-solid support of Trump, because obviously you've seen his ratings on things like the economy, even on immigration go down substantially, but that dissatisfaction has not transferred into support for Democrats, at least as a party.

I mean, I think they're up on the generic ballot, kind of between three and six points, depending on which pollster you're looking at.

So, what do you think is like the state of play at the moment?

Yeah, right now,

I think that Democrats are experiencing a lot of what Republicans experienced in the 2010s.

So, when I talk about the shutdown being this like reverse photo negative and this dynamic of

your party feels powerless, it feels leaderless, and you want to strike a blow.

You want to say, we've put up a win.

Look, we proved we fought.

That feels very much like the dynamic that a Chuck Schumer or a Hakeem Jeffries is facing right now.

And it's very similar to what.

John Boehner faced, you know, over a decade ago.

In the 2010s, Republicans tended to trail Democrats on the question of, you know, which party do you feel favorable towards?

And a lot of that was because Republicans hated their own party.

People who identified as Republicans would say, well, I'm a Republican, but I'm unfavorable to the Republican Party because to them it meant this establishment.

And it was all kind of the warning signs that said this party is up for grabs and somebody who's very much an outsider like Donald Trump can come in and take a hold, which is not to say the exact same dynamic is happening now, but right now Republicans look better on those fave-unfave questions because Republicans like their party now.

They're in a place where they feel like they're dominant.

They feel like they're putting wins on the board.

They feel like things are moving in their direction, and they like Donald Trump.

And Democrats are more likely to say they feel unfavorably about their own party.

So independents have for a long time been in a place where they say, I don't like either party.

But part of what's making Democrats look so much worse is that lack of support from people who are ostensibly on their own side.

But the other problem Democrats have, there was a CBS poll that came out a few days ago that asked about a bunch of different attributes.

And it said, do you think of each party as being extreme?

Do you think of each party as being strong?

Do you think of each party as being effective?

And while Republicans were slightly more likely to be viewed as extreme relative to Democrats, they were also much more likely to be viewed as strong and effective.

And so that to me is a big problem Democrats have is that while voters right now may be looking at Republicans and looking at Trump and going, I wanted to secure the border, you might be going overboard.

I didn't want this guy from my community who we really like to be deported.

What's going on there?

Or I wanted the economy to get a shake up and for manufacturing to be brought home.

I don't know that I love these tariffs that are going to make it more expensive for me to go Christmas shopping.

Hang on.

Like there, I have some notes about the execution.

There is at least a sense that Trump is trying something.

And I think if the question is somebody who tries something, even if it doesn't always work, versus a party where people go, I don't know what you would even try.

I think that is what is keeping Republicans in the game in a moment where where the party out of power usually has a great midterm election.

I think it's not guaranteed for Democrats yet because it's still unclear what exactly their case will be besides we will stand in Trump's way.

Yeah, that's been one of my big frustrations.

And I interview a lot of elected Democrats and I often have to say, like, I get it.

Like, I don't like him either, right?

And we have to make sure that some combination of what we can do in, you know, checks and balances and the court system or whatever to try to hold them at bay.

But you're still not giving people this positive vision with clearly delineated plans of what it will mean if you put us back in charge.

And that was a big debate within the Republican Party back in that Tea Party era was, is it enough to say, we stand against Obama, we stand against the Affordable Care Act, is it repeal or is it repeal and replace?

Like those kinds of debates.

There was a lot of conversation on the right.

And I don't actually know that there was ever a clear resolution to whether do you need to be for something or can you simply stand against what's going on?

You know, voters will tell you, I always want to hear what you're for, but sometimes in a midterm, voters are just looking to press on the brakes.

They just feel like things are getting a little bit out of control and they're looking to have a sort of thermostat reaction.

Oh, it's too hot in here.

Let's make it cool.

Oh, it's too cold in here.

Let's make it hot.

We have seen so many of the last elections as these kind of power-changing hands type elections.

Like we're not in an era like we used to be where Democrats controlled the House for eons and then Republicans controlled the House for eons.

Like we don't live in that world anymore.

Voters are perpetually feeling like things are not being delivered, which means they're always on the hunt for, well, somebody else has to be better.

But I do think the Democrats would be missing an opportunity if they just said, I'm not Trump.

Donald Trump's not enormously popular right now, but I'm not Trump.

I don't know if that'll be enough.

We're gonna take a quick break.

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welcome back i want to ask you about the dynamic that we saw on the right and whether it's playing out on the left like i live in new york city mom donnie is going to be the mayor here i you know i think there is no possible way that that is not the case um and there's a lot of hemming and hawing about, you know, he didn't endorse Kamala Harris, but, you know, ended up voting for her.

And there's a huge swath, especially of younger liberal voters that are part of the uncommitted movement, for instance, and who really don't identify with the Democratic Party as it is conceived today.

Do you see a world in which the Democratic Party really suffers from a massive fissure with our younger, more liberal base or potential base of voters?

So it's possible.

When we did that political tribes analysis I mentioned earlier, there was this interesting group that is about one in 10 voters who we called the sort of young and disillusioned, where these are voters who they tend to be pretty progressive on a lot of things.

There are a handful of issues where they're interestingly lean, more conservative than you might expect, like the Second Amendment.

But in general, this is a younger group, very racially and ethnically diverse, very anti-establishment.

They think politicians in the media are always lying, but they are not, these are not your like base Republican voters at all.

These are the kinds of folks that are finding someone like a Bernie or a Zaran Mandami to be very interesting.

And when you look at their voting behavior in 2024, of the groups that I would categorize as on the left, these are the ones that voted the least overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris.

Right.

So it's definitely a group that

I don't think they are at risk of voting for Republicans, but they are very much at risk of staying home.

The problem is, in order to energize or recruit those folks to turn out,

do Democrats assume, well, I need to just chase whatever the most vocal online leftist activists are saying in order to win them?

Or can I just speak in a manner that is like fairly populist and just says, the little guy can't get ahead in this country today, and I want to fix that?

That may be it.

Like, it is not clear to me at all that this like young and disillusioned group is demanding Medicare for all, but they are demanding that someone do something about healthcare.

It's not at all clear to me that they are demanding for like the nationalization of industries and the institution of central planning, but they do think that something's not working quite right in capitalism these days, and they'd like to hear someone talk about how we can fix it.

And so that's where there's a way to reach that group that doesn't have to split the party.

But if you incorrectly assume that they want you to sort of chase the most out there and unpopular things that I think online activists sometimes drag Democratic candidates to do, you are going to be at risk of losing a lot of those voters who are not as part of the left, but actually do form a pretty important part of the Democratic voting base.

And especially in a primary or a midterm election, you can't really ignore that.

No, I always find that interesting when I do talk to younger voters that I wouldn't say a conservative bent, but you kind of run through the litany of things that have hurt the party since the murder of George Floyd, you know, talking about to fund the police, for instance.

And And they're like, well, that's stupid.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

So why did we go down this path?

Obviously, the right helped amplify it a lot, much to my chagrin.

And I'm still mad at my colleagues about it.

But, you know, it's a difficult dance, I guess, to get it right.

And what you seem to be saying is being authentically concerned with the needs of working people, which is exactly what Zoran Mom Dani has managed to do is a big piece of that.

There's also this other element that I wanted to ask you about, which is this turn against supporting Israel that's going on, certainly on the left and to some degree on the right, though that comes kind of for a different reason.

But I've been surprised to see how central this message of Israel's carrying out a genocide, for instance, in Gaza has become.

Like Graham Plattner, who's running for Senate in Maine against Susan Collins, oyster farmer, you know, former Marine, you know, he's out there talking about all the right things about the oligarchy.

And then he also says, like, FAPAC and like Israel's committing a genocide.

And I'm thinking to myself, like, do, is this what rural Mainers are talking about?

So is that what rural Mainers are talking about, Kristen?

So it is not an foreign policy just in general is not a top issue for your median swing voter.

I mean, they are so laser focused on cost of living and then just general crime/slash immigration safety type issues, which is not all accruing to Donald Trump's benefit.

There are, you know, certainly questions about has he gone too far, et cetera.

But on something like foreign policy, I'm generally finding it to be very far down the list.

There's a question that I've been asking in some of my surveys where I ask, which do you agree with more?

Like the biggest threats to the U.S.

are coming from within or coming from the outside.

And by like a three to one margin, voters are saying the biggest threats to our country are coming from within.

Like they're so domestically focused that a lot of these foreign policy issues that certainly can catch fire and get a lot of attention, especially on social media.

We now live in this world where horrific footage from war-torn zones can make its way around the world very quickly and sometimes out of context and sometimes, you know, misleading on a narrative.

But I think that it's the kind of issue where The main place I'm seeing it pop up in polling is among those younger voters who are consuming most of their news about the world from the TikToks, et cetera.

And that's an issue that where that is one place where it has broken through.

So, I don't know if that's the sort of thing that somebody in rural Maine is focused on, but there are pieces of the Democratic Party that now that is the news that they are marinating in all the time.

And for them, it's, you know, the things that they're seeing are making an impression.

And the other thing to remember is I see big generation gaps on this, both on the right and the left, in part because an older generation has some memory of a time when having Israel as an ally in the Middle East like was clearly beneficial and important to the U.S.

This is a tough region of the world and having Israel as an ally matters.

Where for younger voters, and you find this a little bit in their views on the conflict in Ukraine too, like they don't have as much of a memory of American foreign policy of the post-World War II Cold War era.

And so for them, they're asking leaders to make the case.

You cannot just assume that they understand why does it matter to support Israel?

Why does it matter to support our allies against Russia?

Like, these are not questions that younger voters feel are just settled matters.

Like, they are challenging that status quo and demanding, why is it in our interest to support Israel?

Why is it in our interest to have military or foreign aid around the world?

It's not that they can't get there, but they're not pre-baked in with a like, oh, yeah, of course that matters kind of attitude.

Yeah, I do feel very old every time I talk about the post-World War II global order, and young people's eyes just totally glaze over.

You mentioned TikTok and I want to use that as a way to get into this conversation about political violence that we're seeing in our country.

We have a whole generation particularly of young men that spend way too much time online, not just on TikTok, obviously, but in like Discord chat rooms, 4chans, et cetera,

and who are increasingly nihilistic about their lives.

How do you, I guess, assess the moment that we're in?

And, you know, what do you think ultimately the impact of the completely horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk is going to be on our politics?

So there are a couple of questions that I've asked recently in surveys that give me

some real concerns about

where things are headed.

One question that we asked was,

which of the following do you agree with more?

And this was directly about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Which of the following do you agree with more that the assassination of Charlie Kirk shows that it's more important than ever for us to unify and come together and overcome our divisions?

Or does the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the reaction to it just prove that the other side is just as bad and dangerous as we always thought?

And the good news is that two-thirds of voters choose the former.

They say, okay, look, in the wake of this tragedy, let's all come together.

But conservatives are pretty split.

For them, the assassination of Charlie Kirk and then the reaction to it, which to many conservatives felt like a lot of liberals going, he kind of had it coming.

If not liberal politicians, but just, you know, people in their

left-wing, or even, not even people in elected roles, but yeah, people who are their friends and family, people in their own orbits, people in their social networks, seeing like a little bit of a, haha, this guy had it coming, I think has been a wake-up call/slash radicalizing moment for a lot of folks on the right, which I think is very, you know, if there was any hope of like, would we step back from the abyss, I think instead folks, especially on the right, are going, no, this is not a time for the temperature.

Like, why?

I'm tired of being told the temperature needs to be turned down.

When how come the heated temperature, it always results in people from my side getting shot at?

The assassination attempts on Donald Trump's life is something that comes up in focus groups of Trump voters even before what happened to Charlie Kirk, like all the time.

I think that folks outside of the right cannot fully understand the extent to which conservatives genuinely feel that liberals do not want them to exist at like some level, at some scale.

And that's, you're seeing this now play out with the firestorm around these like really horrible texts that the Democratic candidate for AG in Virginia had.

Jay Jones, yeah.

This has now become like a bigger narrative.

And in my polling, I could see conservatives very divided over coming out of what happened to Charlie Kirk saying, I think this just, this just proves that I'm not turning any temperature down.

I am under threat.

These people are coming for me.

The other question that we asked was essentially one that said, like, do you think that our political divides are ultimately about policy and the country will be fine no matter who wins?

Or the divides we have in our country are existential.

And if the wrong side wins, like the fate of our country is in jeopardy.

And it is liberals who are more likely to have that kind of like apocalyptic view of things.

So you can see on both sides, the seeds, they look different.

It's different questions that reveal them, but the stakes are so high and the other side is so vile and cannot be trusted.

And that makes me just gravely concerned that that is the environment in which we are all living.

Yeah, me too.

And I certainly hear that a lot at work.

You know, we're kind of at a post-rational phase of debate, even where, you know, you can give examples of right-wing extremists that have killed left-wingers, even people in elected office like Melissa Hortman in Minnesota.

And it doesn't matter or doesn't even register.

And

it scares me for the future of the country and for our ability to engage with each other kind of on a human level on top of it.

Last question.

What's one thing that makes you rage and one thing you think we should all calm down about?

Oh my goodness.

Something that makes me rage.

I was just traveling.

So I'm like, why can't I pick a good example from like airports these days?

Did you have a TSA agent?

No, you know what?

Like everything actually went completely fine on my travel.

So I can't pick from anything there.

I think something that makes me rage.

I'm like not a racial person.

I should have prepared better for this question.

Yeah, you know, just amped up.

Amped up.

How badly the University of Florida football team is doing?

I'm a Gator and our team is not very good.

But almost more troublingly, we are good enough that there there won't be any big shake-ups.

Like right now, there's a real clamoring in the Gator football fan base for a change in leadership coaching level.

But we just beat Texas last week, so that kind of pushes any of that a little further down the road.

Okay.

And calm down about

maybe the future of the Gators.

Nothing's making me feel calm about the future of the Gators.

I'll take this one from a polling perspective.

You know, the polling industry took a lot of heat over the last decade for, you know, definitely getting it wrong in 2016,

somewhat as an industry getting it wrong in 2020.

I didn't feel particularly surprised by the result of the 2024 election.

And I feel like polls have figured out a lot of what had been going wrong, which doesn't mean that we're all set for the battles of the future as AI and stuff try to change our industry.

But I think right now, everybody who looks at a poll and goes, oh, you can't trust polls anymore.

They're terrible.

Just calm down.

Actually, a lot of data is very, very, very good these days.

And the industry has made a lot of positive progress.

I love love that.

That's great news for me because I'm always referencing you guys.

Kristen, it was so great to have you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

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