How Trump Won

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Welcome back to Risky Business, our show about making better decisions.

I'm Maria Kanakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

It's the morning of Wednesday, November 6th, so today we are going to be talking about what happened yesterday about the U.S.

election, about polling, what went right, what went wrong,

where we stand, the house race, the state of democracy, what we have to look forward to.

And Nate, I'd like to kick us off by kind of asking you, you know,

why are we here this morning taping this podcast as opposed to the version of, you know, Kamala Harris has won the presidency?

Yeah, look, I think Democrats faced a lot of uphill conditions.

I mean, start with around the world.

We'll start with three basic categories, actually.

Inflation, immigration, and Joe Biden.

If you had said

in January 2021, when Joe Biden was inaugurated, that we would have inflation hit a peak of 9%, I guess it was in early 2022,

then I think you would have probably said, okay, I understand why Biden might lose or his successor might lose even to Donald Trump, right?

When you have a global backlash to immigration to the point where even famously immigrant-friendly Canada, Justin Trudeau, who's very unpopular, is announcing cuts to legal immigration in Canada, a country with, frankly, plenty of space and plenty of tolerance for immigrants, then you have a substantial rise in unwanted arrivals on the southern border, and that can be an issue.

And Joe Biden decided he wanted to be president until he was 86.

A terrible idea from the start, which culminated in an embarrassing spectacle of a debate in which, you know, frankly, I became worried that the president of the United States was not capable of carrying out his duties.

And that had been a fact that was denied by lots of people who were Democratic partisans

who couldn't, I mean, because these things are all quite obvious, right?

I'm very pro-immigrant.

I'm probably not as bothered by that as some other people, but like inflation is just an empirical fact that you see every time you go to the grocery store or drive past the gas station, right?

And the fact that Biden was old and

infirm mentally potentially, or at least came across that way, maybe coincidentally, he was extremely lucid and sober in private moments, but every time he appeared in public, every other time, he wasn't.

So these conditions, plus the fact that we have lots of empirical evidence that like globally, it's been a really tough time for incumbents, you know, and the fact that

Democrats' message was a little bit tired.

The third time that people say, vote for us, or the country gets it, democracy ends.

People stop believing it, even if there's more than a grain of truth in it.

I mean, I think we're going to have actually, one irony is that, like, the fact that this election was not particularly close means that

we're not going to have a contested election.

I guess Harris took a while, frankly, to concede, but

this is Trump's last election, presumably.

Democrats will have to,

well,

I don't know.

I think there is some,

how to put this.

If Trump's going to win,

conditional on that, I think there is some good in it being

a relatively decisive, undisputed win, where he'll probably also win the popular vote.

And then in four years, he'll be gone.

And in two years, we'll have a midterm where Democrats,

they might win the House this year

still, but they'll be in a strong position against, I'm sure, a Trump who has overreached and will be very unpopular to retake the House.

The Senate's a longer shot, but they're going to have to have a real reconciliation.

It's not the marginal stuff that matters.

And,

you know, maybe it will make Trump

a little more content and

more trying.

No, I'm not kidding.

I mean, maybe more trying to govern for the plurality of the popular vote he's going to win.

He may even win a majority.

We should say there's a lot of vote left in California and places like that.

So I don't think it's out of the question that Harris could win the popular vote, but it could also be Trump plus two or something like that.

Yeah, I'm going to, I want to add a few factors to why I think Harris lost, but I also want to push back a little bit on the fact that he's going to be happy and will

tone down and become more moderate.

Because, frankly, from a psychological standpoint what we know about Donald Trump, what we know about the personalities of people who are cult leaders, who are kind of the sorts of strongmen that he is and that he has just openly said he is and the sorts of people he admires, he loves power, he loves himself, and

he loves his cult and he loves kind of his adoring fans and he loves saying outlandish shit.

Like he gets off on it.

You know, I don't, I don't see him,

I hope I'm wrong, by the way.

Like I don't want to be right here, but I don't see him toning down.

I don't see him moderating.

He has flat out said that he is going to basically operate as close to a dictatorship as he wants, that he wants to, you know, jail his enemies and do this and do that.

And I think we'd be well served to actually listen to the words coming out of his mouth because he is telling us exactly what he wants to do.

It's a cult that currently,

according to the New York Times, won the vote of 51%

Absolutely.

Well, that's the way cults work.

You know, that's

not a cult.

I mean, I think there's something implicit in the definition of a cult that it's a

small, energized minority.

So

let's go back and call it con artist and people who are in the thralls of a con artist, as opposed to saying cult.

What I'm trying to say is that when it's basically a movement founded on one person and on people believing in the personality of that one person and kind of being

not caring as much about a lot of other things as kind of the fact that this is a charismatic leader.

And by the way, I've never met Trump, but I'm willing to bet that he's incredibly charismatic and he has some sort of kind of intuitive appeal if you if you spend time with him because otherwise this is like very difficult to understand.

I'm sure he has magnetic energy

and that

that's kind of part of all of this.

But what I wanted to what I also wanted to say was

in terms of kind of why he won, I think all of the reasons that you stated are absolutely spot on.

And I would just add to that

that I wouldn't underestimate how much people hate women.

Like, I actually think that this is, this is part of it.

This is why, part of the reason why Hillary Clinton lost in 2016.

And one of the reasons why this is kind of the, you know, when you were saying that Biden

shoulders a lot of blame for not stepping aside earlier, like he put us in a position where he put us, he put the Democratic Party in a position where Kamala Harris was kind of the only choice.

And I think it was a really bad mistake to run a female against Trump a second time.

And I think that people underestimate how much that mattered.

I don't think Biden would have won, by the way.

Like I think Biden absolutely needed to go, but he needed to go sooner so that we could have had a primary and so that there were choices other than Kamala Harris.

Because psychologically speaking, I think it was a horrible mistake to run a female candidate against Donald Trump.

Look, as the guy in the pairing,

I worry that Democrats will internalize that message too much.

And now it becomes a thing that,

you know, are they not going to nominate a woman for president in the next 30 years?

I mean, I don't know if...

No,

that's not what I'm trying to say.

Yes, Democrats, that's not what I'm telling you.

Trump winning currently, Michigan's not being called, probably a one-point win, and neighboring Wisconsin, one-point win, and somewhat neighboring Pennsylvania, three points, probably close to two points with late recorded vote.

Should have picked Shapiro, but it wasn't the factor that mattered.

Yeah, I don't know.

Does a Whitmer-Shapiro ticket that throws Biden under the bus win?

Maybe.

I don't know.

I have no idea.

Look, I don't think Harris was.

She didn't really have a message.

She didn't really have a second act.

She had this period that got Democrats very excited.

And it's very weird because

conservatives are not good

at coming up with the strongest intellectual hygiene version of their argument, right?

They'll say things that are in the wrong way, the unapproved way.

I just think if you believe in democracy, you have to have some respect for the fact that 51% of Americans, probably fall to 50-ish, 49.7-ish something, voted for Donald Trump, including, by the way, where we live.

You live part-time.

I live mostly full-time, enough that I have to pay New York City taxes in New York City, where there were huge gains.

I mean, I'm working on an article on this this morning in Queens.

Yeah.

Queens, New York, Donald Trump got 38%

of the vote.

That's double what he got in 2012.

He got 19.9%.

I mean, no, I think you're absolutely right.

We cannot, we can't just put that aside.

And by the way, I think that Democrats are also to blame.

I think that they did lose votes from the very woke Democrats who are like,

we refuse to support Kamala Harris.

The holier than thou liberals who are like, oh, because of her stance on Gaza, we will not be voting for her.

They are absolutely to blame as well.

And I hope that they understand that.

Because I think that some of the vote, you've got the Hispanic men, like that's

the immigration, the economy.

very real issues that they don't understand that I think Democrats might actually be better for them than Republicans.

But then you also have, you know, within the Democratic Party, I think there were major missteps as well.

Well, about 1.5% of the vote collectively goes to all third-party candidates, which is low actually by recent standards.

Look, I do think low-key that this was a hidden factor that hurt Harris.

You didn't really have a

right-leaning, I mean, you know, I don't particularly consider libertarian candidates right-leaning, but you didn't have like a Pat Buchanan type.

You did have Jill Stein.

You also had Kennedy endorse Trump, and that kind of coincided with a

rough period for Harris in the polls, actually, where she had her convention, things looked on the up and up, and then and then doesn't get that much press coverage, but Kennedy endorses Trump, and and and

you know, all of a sudden

Harris is polling worse than she had before the convention.

So, you know, if that makes a difference to a point, it probably isn't a one-point election, probably comes down to needing a two-point-ish swing.

Um, but I guess, I mean, I think we've had this kind of difference in perspectives before, but like, I

am

more willing to tolerate or credit like an inarticulate or poorly articulated moral feeling.

You know what I mean?

I,

that like,

um,

I mean, I don't get exercised about like immigration and stuff, but like, it's the notion that like things shifted far to the left.

and that um

elites like like you and i got a little bit drunk on their power right i mean you know one thing it wasn't wasn't one of the 20 most important factors in the election but like um you know like the student loan relief bill benefits basically wealthy people including a lot of like law school graduates and things like that um

who instead of like the working class right literally benefits only people who went to college um

and that's democrats attempt at like populism in a country where most people don't go to college and by the way more women than men go go to college.

And this was an election where kind of revenge of the men.

I agree about that part.

And like, um,

and I don't know.

I mean, it's a stale critique, but the notion that like kind of liberals are living in a bubble and that they're kind of, I don't know.

I, I, you know, obviously, if you followed my work, like, I kind of became

disillusioned with the way that I thought expertise was weaponized for political purposes during COVID.

Um, and that a lot of what passed for public health advice was just like like

trying to say orange man bad or or

declare which team you're on.

And I don't know.

And I voted for Harris.

I voted for Harris, like I said on the earlier show on the Working Families line is just a little minor protest against the two-party system.

So this is not the outcome I wanted.

But like, I

understand

why people voted for Trump.

And I don't buy the notion that the only reason

was because

the wool was pulled over their eyes.

I mean, maybe it was about Trump in particular, right?

Like, I agree with Apartheid that, like, he will not deliver

on some of the things he promises.

I mean, even on economic growth.

I think tariffs are very damaging.

And, you know, Elon Musk going on Joe Rogan and saying this will be the last election of Trump.

I mean, just that's fucking gross, right?

There's no kind of warrant to that claim and

Trump's disrespect for the rule of law and

and january 6th but like but like you know i mean um

a friend of uh the podcast jeff maurer who writes a blog he's like it's not quite the boy who called wolf because uh trump is a wolf but um

it's people seeing everything is a wolf and maybe just focusing on the the one wolf, the really bad thing that Wolf did, you know, January 6th and the cronyism, which, by the way, I mean,

Harris played it about and Democrats played it about as badly as you can when it comes to like, like,

if you're going to have the richest men in the world turn against you, and, you know, maybe Elon benefited Trump in various ways, maybe not, we can debate that, then at least do some fucking populist shit, you know what I mean?

Or at least say that, like, all these Silicon Valley, they kind of just played it in a very, in a very weird way, where they seem to regret, like, offending Silicon Valley,

but then they didn't take advantage of the fact that like Silicon Valley is not very popular.

Elon Musk is more popular than the average Silicon Valley magnate, but like

but the message of

they retreated to the Biden message that had been losing the whole time and like

they're going to lose popular vote by one point instead of four points because like that's the penalty for being 81 years old.

But

I don't know.

I don't quite

get what they thought was happening.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that what you just said was kind of what I what I meant about like not, even though Kamala Harris was, you know, running on vibes early on about not quite getting kind of what you need to do with social media and the kinds of pointed messages that you need to get across, which the Republicans did incredibly well, right?

They didn't attack that, like, they didn't take those shots that I think they should have taken that would have resonated a little bit more.

And so, I think that, you know, I don't disagree with you that there are very real issues that Democrats need to address, right, about

the discontent and why.

I think that where we, so

I still fully maintain that there is wool pulled over people's eyes and that Donald Trump is a con artist because he's not going to deliver on what he says but I think that we need to figure out you know why were they susceptible right why are people susceptible to con artists and you become more susceptible when there's transition, social change, uncertainty, where bad things are happening to you, where bad shit's going down, right, where you're losing money, bad economic times, all of these things, existential threats, that's when con artists can sweep in.

And I think that that's kind of, that's the thing that ties what you're saying, Nate, to what I'm saying, right?

I think that Democrats have been ignoring a lot of those reasons for too long, right?

Why was over half of the population susceptible to this message?

And those are very real issues that

make people psychologically susceptible to charismatic leaders, right?

To people who can really kind of galvanize those feelings of discontent and then sell them the version of the world that they want to see, right?

A version where they are empowered, where they get their own back, where they become kind of the protagonists again, instead of people who feel like they're marginalized.

And I think that that's the dynamic that we see happening.

So I think that that kind of squares the things that you and I are talking about.

Would you kind of agree with that way of looking at it?

Yeah,

look, I guess I'm having trouble articulating.

It's like.

It's okay.

We haven't said much.

A better version of Trump would have a very good argument that Biden-Harris should be voted out of office, right?

Now,

Trump makes the wrong version of that argument, which kind of happens to be more successful

because it's a populist version.

I don't know.

I mean, look.

All right.

All right.

Well, the notion of, like, I mean, look, again, I think the popular vote thing is a big deal.

It's a big deal.

Trump made huge gains, according to both the exit polls, which are not always reliable, and just ecological data

among

Hispanic voters, and I think also among Asian American voters,

and probably actually lesser among black voters.

It seems to have been a little overbaked in the polls.

But, you know, the fastest growing populations in the U.S.

are Hispanic, Asian, and quote-unquote other are mixed.

And those are the populations where it looks like Trump gained the most ground.

I mean, I can't help but

see some irony in the fact that like, and now I'm going to sound like a fucking conservative podcaster for 30 seconds, right?

But like the Democrats hyper attention on racial identity, most like white people, you know, and it's like, I think a lot of people

who are not like

white

super college educated people think like this is just weird, right?

Why are they so obsessed with this shit?

and and actually we want to integrate right we want to integrate into society maybe we're first generation or second generation or whatever right and we don't want to like be cordoned off into like racial identity groups and it's just it's just it has to be one of the most electorally unappealing messages in the history of the united states um

because like it's not the my it's not the majority right it's only it's a majority and you demonize the minority right but like

woke white people or woke any people are a pretty small minority.

And the fact that if you're not on board with their entire agenda, if you're or if you're like me on the COVID center, like, yeah, um, vaccine's good, lockdowns went too far, masks, we can, you know, probably minor either way, do what you want to do, right?

Like the fact that you're seen as a fucking heretic for like stating this majority position, most people felt like vaccine's good.

Lockdowns went too far, masks do it to be polite, Probably doesn't matter.

I mean, it just, it's just, I don't know.

I mean, you're, you're, you can't have a message that says, if you're not in this narrow circle on all people, and Trump was the one who went on these weird fucking bro podcasts and went and tried to get votes that weren't his and tried to get the crypto people and did a, you know, rally with Modi.

Was that in 2016, right?

And like, I'm on your side, Indian Americans.

It's so crude, but like, but you don't actually get that from

Democrats saying, I'm on your side, right?

I'm fighting for you against the elite.

I mean, I guess because they are the elites.

I mean, there's like, that's a non-hypocritical.

I mean, it is hypocritical.

I take that.

I mean, because Trump is an elite and has always been just.

Trump absolutely is an elite.

And he's going to be worse for those people than Democrats in a lot of ways, which is the irony of all of this, right?

That he is much better at appealing to them and at thinking that he's going to be better for them, where at the end of the day, he really is not.

And I think that

there is a lot of evidence for that.

So it is ironic, but it's very true.

So this is where we are.

And I think that it is important to note this and it's important to try to understand why Democrats have lost so much of the Hispanic vote, why they've lost some of the Asian vote, why they're losing a lot of these votes that they should be winning because theoretically, they should be better for them.

And so I think this is just an issue for, you know, two years down the line, four years down the line.

These are things that the party has to grapple with.

Let's talk a little bit about the polls and about whether you think that Donald Trump was once again underestimated, even though pollsters tried very, very hard not to commit that error.

What do you think?

And I'm also actually quite curious about, we talked about the Seltzer poll on Monday, so I'm quite curious about your take on that as well.

So it's an oddly consistent, it looks like,

polling error of about two, maybe two and a half points.

For this stuff, you do want the precision of waiting till everything is in, right?

If you take all the polls and shift them over by

two points, two and a half points toward Trump, then they were actually very accurate.

And, you know, the average systematic polling error is like three points, basically.

So basically, you have like, it's very normal.

And the thing is when you have like

things so close to 50-50, then shifting everything two and a half points to Trump goes from

the swing states being split.

to Trump winning all seven, which he probably will the other way.

It's

Harris wins all six.

I mean, clearly,

it's a very tough cycle for the and seltzer style of we're just going to trust the raw data and we're not going to do a lot of waiting and a lot of turnout modeling right um

yeah look it's the short version is like

the idea that like

it was a bad election for polling is kind of like wrong on the surface but kind of true on some deeper level right the extent to which polls had an okay year by the metrics that you use to officially judge them.

And there were plenty of polls, to be clear, that showed a result exactly like this, right?

We're not lacking in pollsters, including high-quality pollsters who like had Trump winning these swing states, had Trump even winning the popular vote.

I mean, the New York Times last poll had the popular vote in Trump's hands, and the last NBC News poll had the popular vote tied, which will be about right, right?

Maybe it's a win for a national poll, but this is actually not so far from the polls, but like it's bad for the pure sense that we're just going to go out and collect public opinion and

not do a lot of waiting and massaging and

I don't know.

I mean, look, at the end, I think there was a lot of hurting in the polls and a lot of hedging.

And I think Anne Selzer still had a lot of guts to

not succumb to that.

And part of the beauty of polling averages that you collect a diversity of opinions.

But like, you know, it's what I worry about in a lot of things in society, including the polling, is that like, there's not really this kind of ground truth.

anymore.

Everyone is kind of indexing on everyone else.

And like, and like,

what happens is that the modal outcome is that you get closer to the mark like if pollsters had not

herded it would have been more of a surprise but what happens is that when something really big happens I mean in a statistical way you get you don't get this bell curve distribution that occurs from like normal statistical phenomenon where you're taking a random sample of something right um

instead you get uh

a distribution with wide fat tails where actually most of the time you kind of are pretty good, right?

But then there are catastrophic non-linear misses and shifts every now and then.

And maybe the next shift will be that the Gretchen Whitmer Josh Shapiro ticket, or maybe it won't be something like that, you know, is two points behind.

I don't know who the fuck the GOP nominee will be.

I mean, look, Democrats are probably set up pretty good for 2028.

You know, I mean, Trump will probably be unpopular and probably overreach or worse in a lot of ways.

And it'll be, and he's old.

You know, I mean, Democrats have a good bench and they'll have a fresh start.

So just kind of to sum up,

if you were to give advice, I don't know if that's the right way of phrasing it, but if you were to kind of be thinking about polls two years, four years down the line,

do you think that anything needs to change, basically?

Or do you think that, you know,

obviously we did have the polls saying that this was going to be an exceptionally close election.

And even though it looks like Trump is sweeping, he, as you point out, is sweeping by small percentages, right?

So it it is within those polling errors so do you think that the polls should just pollsters should keep going as they've been going or do adjustments need to be made in kind of the new the new climate to how we look at them how we

wrong types of adjustments will be you do have these counterpoints of like see these three elections

Where Trump runs, presidential elections, where Trump runs and beats his polls.

The biggest miss was actually 2020.

It's just that Biden is such a big lead.

It didn't cost in the election.

And then 2016.

And then

this year is the smallest miss probably we'll see the numbers once all the paint is dry um

i i just think the techniques they're applying like i want to see a fucking poll

that i don't know particularly it's always going to say trump plus one right or tie you know it's like it's like can you find ways to like

i don't know not put a thumb on the scale, but understand that like these classic methods aren't working, but actually still have like some semblance of, like, not just artificial sweetener, of like real content from like real people, and not just, you know, I don't know.

I mean, I mean, there are elements of the story everywhere.

There are a lot of polls that did show Trump losing ground

among, or gaining ground among Latino voters and among black voters.

Like, why did the

why was the Latino thing underestimated, but the black vote overestimated?

You know, I think in general,

pollsters need to also,

you know, have more consideration for people who are not

black or white or Latino.

That's a growing segment of the population.

It's influential in some states.

And they get tossed into lumped into non-white or something, right?

And, you know, I mean, that's a little minor thing.

I mean, I don't know.

I mean, you do have the fact that, like, in the elections when Trump has not been on the ballot, the polls were fine.

The polls were pretty good in 2018 and 2022.

They underestimated Democrats in 2012.

And so I think pollsters are going to be hoping it was just a Trump thing.

And look, eventually people will

move their methodologies enough where they will have some cycle eventually where they underestimate Democrats.

I don't know which one it will be.

Yeah, I mean, it's not great.

We'll be right back after this message.

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I'm curious.

The other kind of the other element here is that, you know, we've talked before about how the prediction markets and Polymarket, where you're a paid advisor,

was actually differing from the polls for a while and then started converging back to the polls.

But you can make the argument that in some ways they were more correct

than the polls.

Yeah, I don't know.

Or do you think that was a fluke by that

French whale?

You know, what we're talking about.

I mean, the prediction markets kind of bet

they're always more Republican than the models are.

And when Republicans win, they look smart, except ironically in 2016.

Yeah, I look at a little data point in favor of them and good for my polymarket equity, I guess.

But, like, I mean, I don't, I don't, um,

I don't know.

I, I, I, I, I, I think

you have elections every four years, and and

80% of people just bet on red or blue every time, and they can kind of construct narratives where they look smart when they when they do.

Um,

you know, look, I mean, it it is also true that if polls become less reliable then it's not that your gut becomes more reliable but it's that it becomes more reliable relative to a declining indicator you know what I mean

because the argument it's never quite that like your gut tells you literally nothing it's that like um

you formerly have this kind of like scientific way to do better than your gut and now maybe

you know polls kind of reflect gut anyway and there's like not even this like clear distinction about it and you know, I don't know.

I don't know.

I think it was, I think, if you look at like the history, I think prediction markets need a couple more

good cycles.

But I mean, they got, they got, look,

give credit where it's due.

The French whale is a much wealthier man today.

I hope he comes to the win Las Vegas in December and plays in some paper tournaments.

Yes,

there are some wonderful events, French whale.

Please, please come and play.

But

i do want to say that um you know i always caution against going with your quote-unquote gut feeling because what we know and i i just want to kind of put that out there is that humans are very very bad at distinguishing correct from incorrect gut feelings right we're equally certain that both that both are good we we just we don't know um which are right and which are wrong so the gut sometimes tells us the right thing and sometimes the wrong thing but we just have no fucking clue so i think that that's really really important which is why we need data which is why we need kind of these external sources where you know in a in a tie break you can kind of look at your gut especially if it's a thing where you're an expert in right where you might not have conscious access to why your gut is saying something but it's not actually a gut feeling it's just expertise right it's the fact that you have pattern recognition because this is something that you're very good at and that you have correctly identified many many times before unfortunately the elections is absolutely not that because we have, as you say, an election every four years.

We simply do not have the experience.

We don't have the feedback.

And so I would just...

I would very much caution against kind of using your gut to try to come to pronouncements, especially because when you're also in an emotional situation, your gut tends to be much more incorrect, right?

Because you have, there are things that are clouding your judgment.

There are things that are making you act in one way or another.

So I truly hope that we are able to be in a situation where we have external data, ways that we can make sure that our polling, you know, does not, if it deteriorates, that it then becomes better again.

And that, you know, things like prediction markets end up being good.

Even though I know, and you've written about this extensively, that when it comes to big events like, you know, the elections or the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl is one that we have more frequently, prediction markets are obviously not the same as when it's when you have less money, right?

Less dumb money, less emotional money on the line.

So I think that that's

really one thing.

If you were following Polymarket last night,

if you were following Polymarket last night, you knew a lot Senator Harris was going to lose.

I mean,

you know, at first, very early on, there were these counties in Indiana and stuff that looked pretty good for her, but that's because

you had a lot of vote that was early vote and Democrats actually, it looks like, did do better in the early vote.

And then you get the election day vote, and it gets a little redder.

And then it was kind of consistently every, you know, except except maybe New York and California might actually have more of a redshift.

And then like there are a few, a few of the crunchy places, you know, Maine looks pretty good for Democrats.

Colorado, right?

The really white

states with lots, oh, the Colorado is a little bit more diverse.

But like, I mean, there are these pockets, but like very few, very few pockets.

I mean, kind of what happened is that like

I don't know if Harris actually gained ground among white voters, like some polls said she would.

She lost some ground.

We went over this.

She lost some ground in bumping black voters, not that much.

Although if you look at ecology, I mean, look at the fucking Bronx.

Let me look at the Bronx, which is obviously Hispanic and black.

Trump got 27% of the vote in the Bronx.

Do you know how much he got in 2012?

No, I don't.

8%.

It's fucking tripled 3.5x in 12 years.

That's huge, and that's terrifying.

It was Mitt Romney in 2012, I should say.

Not a Bronx guy.

No, not at all.

Trump got 9.5% in 2016.

Still, still.

Still, this is huge.

It is terrifying.

It is something worth consideration.

Let's talk a little bit about will Trump get the popular vote?

I think there are some indications that he will, but we obviously don't have the numbers yet.

This is morning on Wednesday the 6th.

What will happen in the House?

I think that these are things that are actually quite important for Trump's mindset and for how he kind of sweeps into office and what his first orders of business are going to be.

Yeah, I mean, look, elections have consequences.

You know, as far as the house goes,

you have a lot of races that are uncalled.

The

models, Decision Desk HQ has like a model that last night was showing actually

Democrats were favored to keep the house.

That's shifted GOP now.

The prediction markets have shifted GOP now.

It's competitive.

I mean, but the kind of most likely scenario is this

tenuous GOP majority where

it's Republican probably.

I mean, I don't know the exact numbers, right?

But like, but with the Freedom Caucus,

we have a narrow GOP majority now, and it's not very functional.

So that's a veto point.

The U.S.

House is now where the action is

in politics.

Certainly if Democrats win it, which is still a possibility, but like it's, you know, it's either that or like a relatively narrow Republican majority.

That's the range.

And like, and like,

And if that happens, then,

yeah, I mean, that's where the action is.

The Senate is not going to be with probably 53-ish Republican senators.

It's not going to be a check on Trump's power appreciably.

But the House, in a weird way, might be.

And then you have to think Democrats are

pretty clear favorites to take back the House in 2026.

Yeah,

that would be nice.

And I think the and the other part of it is obviously the judiciary, right, and all of the federal appointments that Trump is going to be able to make and potentially Supreme Court.

I mean, this is something that we've talked about before.

I actually think that it would be pretty dangerous

given what happened with

past appointments in this lame duck period for Sotomayar to try to retire now and try to get Biden to replace her.

I think that

that might not go down very well, but I think we're now in exactly the scenario that you and I talked about where she wanted the first female president to replace her.

And now there's a good chance she's going to be replaced by Trump.

So this is kind of one of the other consequences.

I got a plan for you.

What's the plan for me?

Joe Biden appears on stage at 6 p.m.

in Kamala Harris's concession speech and say, I'm clearly not fucking fit to be president 24-7, and therefore Kamala Harris is now president until January 20th.

And then she appoints Sonya Sudomayor as replacement.

All right.

Will that work?

Okay, guys, listen to us.

This is something that.

Who do you think could make a better president?

There's still one, two, three months, right?

Like, I'd rather have Kamala Harris as president.

Oh, absolutely.

And maybe you, maybe you,

maybe you create a little bit less stigma around the next time you have a female candidate if you've had a woman's friend.

That's actually a really interesting proposal.

I like it.

So I think that that would be a really good call to action for Biden.

I know you said that kind of tongue-in-cheek, Nate, but still, like

if Biden were to instate this first female president and Kamala Harris can actually get shit done in the next three months,

and I think that that would be a really, really interesting consideration and play for the Democratic Party.

So let's leave it at that.

Biden, you know,

why don't you step aside and let the first woman be president?

So, Nate, before we leave, though, what are you going to be doing for the rest of the day?

You know, I got to write a blog post, and then I'm fucking free.

I'm going to have fucking free market.

I can do whatever the fuck I want for the first time in like 300 days because I have a book deadline, and then,

yeah.

Yeah, I'll be free.

Here's to embracing your freedom, Date.

I will also be drinking today,

and I will attempt once again to play poker because yesterday I was playing the NAPT North American Poker tour main event, and as the results got worse and worse I ended up punting late in the night and busting with a level to go.

So today I will try to keep my head in the game and not punt and actually make day two of the event.

That's good.

Yes.

It'd be funny if like every time you like win a coin flip like Harris loses a state and you're like, am I causing this?

That would be a very funny event.

Can you win the tournament at like 3.45 in the morning when they call Alaska for you?

I mean

that would have been hilarious.

That would have been the ultimate illusion of control study, right?

Like Oscar Wilde picture of Dorian Fray.

Exactly, exactly.

Well, today I cannot be causing it because

it has already happened.

But yes, that would be a very funny.

We should write, we should co-author a science fiction story like that, Nate.

Let's do it.

And on that note,

let's see how the next week goes.

And hopefully, by then, we'll know where the House of Representatives stands.

Hopefully, but maybe not because we're relying on a lot of...

Anyway, yeah, too long.

It's a lot of races in California take forever to count, so maybe not next week.

But yes, we will speak again next week, and I hope that you'll join us.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Kondakova.

And by me, Nate Silber.

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Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang.

Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

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