Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Mike Murphy on the Mid-Terms (& the madness of polls)

Episode Date: September 17, 2022

Between now and November, we will be taking a close look at the midterm election season, which -- for most voters -- is just kicking off now. If history is a guide, the first mid-term election cycle of a new president should result in the opposing party (the party not in the White House) scoring a wave of victories in Congress. How big will the wave be? New polls suggest that there may not be much of a wave for Republicans. But are these new polls missing something? To offer a masterclass in how to de-code the polls -- and a number of other dynamics in these midterms -- Mike Murphy returns to the podcast. Mike’s worked on 26 gubernatorial and US Senate races across the country, including 12 wins in Blue States – something that’s getting harder and harder to do for Republicans. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He’s co-host of the Hacks on Tap podcast and newsletter. And Mike’s also co director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future. Pieces discussed in this episode: Mark Mellman: : https://tinyurl.com/3v74z3hp Nate Cohn: https://tinyurl.com/dzjrbc2m Hacks on Tap podcast: https://tinyurl.com/55j5pe5k Hacks on Tap newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/yckkzrpx

Polls give you a great idea what happened two weeks ago, and I have no doubt that the perception of the Democrats is higher now than it was 100 days ago. But does that mean that the polling number of the 800 people who were called two weeks ago today, those opinions today, project what will happen on November 8th? And the answer is no. Between now and November on this podcast, we'll be taking a close look at the midterm election season, which for most voters is just kicking off now. If history is any guide, then the first midterm of a new president should see the opposing party enjoy a wave of victories in Congress. How big will that wave be? Well, it depends. What is the president's approval rating?

Does the electorate think the country is on the right track or wrong track? How do voters rate the president's handling of the economy? And does the quality of the candidates running actually matter? Or are we, practically speaking, more of a parliamentary system in our midterm elections in which the party, rather than the candidates, is all that matters? Other than aberrations like 1934, during FDR's first midterm, and 2002, George W. Bush's first midterm, the party in the White House has usually suffered during these midterms. And that was the course we were on for President Biden and the Democrats heading into this fall. But a bunch of new polls have just dropped, suggesting that

there may not be much of a wave for Republicans after all. Are issues like inflation, crime, and immigration being eclipsed by the re-emergence of Donald Trump and the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe versus Wade? And what about Biden's recent string of legislative victories? Do they matter? Well, to offer a masterclass in how to decode the polls and a number of other issues in these midterms, my old pal, not old, longtime pal, Mike Murphy returns to the podcast. Mike's worked on 26 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races across the country, including 12 wins in blue states. He and I worked on one together in Michigan back in 1994.

These wins in blue states, by the way, is something that's getting harder and harder to do. He was also a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mike's a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He's a co-host of one of my favorite political podcasts, Hacks on Tap, which if you're not a subscriber already, I highly recommend that you become one. He also pens a political newsletter, the Hacks on Tap newsletter, and Mike's also co-director of the University of Southern California's Center for the Political Future. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome back to this podcast a fan favorite. There's like three or four guests

we have on from time to time where every time we have that person on, people are making it well known to us that we need to get this person back on more. So with that, we are bringing back Mike Murphy, GOP strategist extraordinaire, co-host of the critically acclaimed Hacks on Tap podcast and co-author of the Hacks on Tap newsletter, all of which we're putting in the show notes. Mike, good to be with you. Well, thank you for that introduction. And I'm only popular if you're listeners because I work blue.

That's it. That's it. I'm filthy. Well, Mike, we got a lot to get into here. And I sort of resisted the kickoff to the midterms uh episode right after labor labor day because i'm sort of skeptical that it really gets going right after labor day i feel like right after labor day it's the start of football season and there's like big call the big college game weekend with the you know university of texas and alabama and then the weekend after it's's the big NFL opening, and people are talking about a lot of stuff.

I feel like now, actually, middle of September is probably the beginning. I think that is correct. I mean, because of digital and the fact you can talk to your supporters for free endlessly, you know, the noise begins a lot earlier. But for most people, it's still true that, you know, the tune in happens late and it starts now. Okay. So with that, I want to tackle a topic that you feel very strongly about, which is the state of public polling, because nothing drives the conversation about our politics, at least among people who follow this stuff relatively closely,

than public polling. I want to do it for a couple of reasons. One, because a new New York Times, a big New York Times poll came out this morning, which is pretty significant. We should talk about it, or the implications of it are significant. And two, my pet peeve is every time like a fly-by-night poll comes out from some state sponsored by organizations that have no real track record in polling, and the poll gets released, and it suddenly gets some press attention as though it's an indicator of something. And then I get this poll forwarded to me by every friend of mine in the business world who think that this has huge implications. Right, exactly. So I want to- Short the dial. Exactly, exactly.

So first, let's just set the table with this poll, the New York Times poll. I mean, the big- I don't want to go through the whole poll. People can go to the New York Times and see the poll themselves. But the big news out of it, which they're calling a general, a Democratic surge in the generic ballot. I'm not sure it's an actual surge, calling a general, a Democratic surge in the generic ballot. I'm not sure it's an actual surge, but they're showing the Democrats up in the generic ballot over Republicans 46 to 44, which is a movement since their last poll in July, which was 45, 44.

I guess the more interesting numbers, if you dig a little deeper, Biden's job performance is among Democrats. In July, about 70% of Democrats approved of his job performance. That's up to 83% among independents. It was 25% in July. Now it's 39%. So if you believe these numbers, Democrats and independents, more of them like what Biden is doing. And the right track number has moved. In July, it was 27% voters thinking the – or those polled thinking the country's on the right track. Now it's 50% among – these are among Democrats. Right. So the New York Times is saying this is a big deal. What is your reaction to this particular poll?

And then we can talk about your take on polls generally. Yeah, no, thank you. And prepare for the five-hour episode as I launch into a Castro speech here, because this poll... First of all, I love polling science. I buy a lot of polls. I interpret a lot of polls. I've designed polls. I'm a polling nerd on polling science. The problem is, just because you can go online and buy surgical scalpels doesn't always mean an enthusiastic observer of politics knows what to do with them. I often joke that if I ever got a phone call, hey, Murphy, you're secretly a Chinese communist robot and we're bringing you home and we're going to put you in charge of our foreign

intelligence service, the first thing I do on the budget is add 100 million bucks to bribe pollsters. Because whatever the CW media polling is, instantly the herd runs to it. Because what most people who aren't running campaigns use polling for is they think it's a way to predict the future. And therefore, they make calculations, oh, we're going to win. And then what really happens with the partisans who are rooting for one side or another is the polling becomes a wonderful therapy animal. Oh, thank God we're back. I remember the New York Times in March said it was over. Now it's back. Thank God that Trump, I feel much better today. Well, the polls give you a great idea what happened two weeks ago. And I have no doubt that the perception of the Democrats is higher now than it was 100 days ago. For a lot of reasons, part of it, Roe v. Wade being overturned, which has energized parts of the electorate.

Part of it being we've got a couple of boxes of hammers running for Senate. So the Republican Party has been tripping over its clown shoes. But does that mean that the polling number of the 800 people who were called two weeks ago today, those opinions today, project what will happen on November 8th? And the answer is no, it doesn't. Now, what we use polls for in campaigns is to go inside and find out what new information we can introduce into the voters' mental bloodstream to try to change their opinion to eventually land where we want to. So that was a long-winded way of getting to. I'm sure it's a legit poll, and the Democrats have had a comeback. That doesn't mean necessarily they're in a cinch, because you've got to look

at all the data, not just the public opinion data from the end of the summer. And the polls are kind of a tunnel vision thing. Historically, and I'm not a believer that the historical pattern is immutable and we're always going to have it, but it is very hard to find a midterm election with a new president where the president's party hasn't gotten punished. In seven out of the last eight elections, the party in power has suffered at the polls. We have an angry, punishing electorate. And the right track, wrong track, which is kind of the mood of the country, how mad they are, can get a little better, but it can go from irate to very mad. And that improvement, quote unquote, in the numbers doesn't always necessarily drive

the outcome. You still have inflation. You still have expensive gas. I pay six bucks a gallon here in California. In the suburbs, there's fear about crime, even though there's not as much crime. So yeah, yeah, it's a big basket of things. And the problem with polling, because it looks like science, and there are issues, not all polls are equal. It's hard to poll in our modern society. People go to the therapy animal side of it and say, oh, thank God we're going to win. The polls are never wrong. Well, they're not that predictive often on the horse race this far out, and they can be wrong. And to the extent that some think that there is a science to this, just because I do want to provide a little bit of a master class for our listeners on polling and how it's done. Pollsters make a bunch of assumptions when they are deciding who to poll,

when they're deciding what questions to ask. So it's actually anything but a science. There's a bunch of qualitative, almost judgment calls that pollsters are making. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah, sure. And first of all, I encourage any polling nerd and peer assist listeners you have, if you go to thehill.com, which is a rag on Capitol Hill, kind of an inside baseball thing, my old friend Mark Melman, great Democratic pollster, well-trained in political science, writes

a great column about polling. I highly recommend it. We'll put it in the show notes. He's also the mastermind of the Yair Lapid juggernaut in Israel. Yeah, he's an excellent consultant. We're working together on a referendum right now, and I really trust his polling, along with John Anzalone, Biden's pollster, and a bunch of good Republican pollsters. So anyway, to your point. So here's the problem pollsters had. In the old days, they'd go door to door door because polling science relies on a random sample

and an unbiased questionnaire. Those are the two things that drive it. So when they could go door to door with addresses and people voted in kind of a simpler time in a simpler way, you could get pretty good results. The problem is it's extremely expensive. So then they invented phone polling. And that worked for a long time because when, you know, Dr. Gallup called, people would stand up and take the call like it was the president. It was a big deal. One famous poll, maybe two, Gallup and Harris. Now in our complicated society, it is pretty hard to get somebody on the phone for 20 minutes to talk about the hated subject of politics. So what the pollsters do is go multimodal. That's the magic phrase, which means the sample and they try to go get 800 random people in Wisconsin or 600. They call some with landlines and they know who they're calling because they take the voter list, which has pretty good voting history in most states, not all. And they randomize it, match a phone number and they call them at home. It often takes over 100 attempted interviews to get one complete. And that audience tends to skew older because they're sitting around

at home and they turn off Wheel of Fortune and they take the poll. Then they try the cell phone. You get younger people, but people don't like to talk for a long time on their cell phone. Then you get people online, which you can do, and get them to fill out an online question. Very cost efficient. A lot of the time now we text people on their cell phone and there's a link and they quickly do an online survey on their phone. So these are all the different ways they're interviewed. They're compiled together. They're weighted to reflect the census. So if you need 52 guys named Dan in New York and you only have 23, you can statistically or like in the program, you can weight them up,

their voice becomes louder. If you have 800 guys named Mike and you only want 50, you can weight them down. And bingo, there's your poll. And it gives you a pretty good idea of what's going on. Okay. So another factor that often gets misunderstood is this distinction between, you were just talking about voting patterns, voting behaviors, past voting behavior, the distinction between registered voters and likely voters. So we tend to put a premium on polls that capture likely voters. Can you explain why this matters, likely voters versus registered voters? So yeah, there's this obsession of likely voters, and people hear likely and think, oh, that's more accurate. It's not true. Melman's done a lot of good work on this. Because when you only pull likely voters, you start putting

a lot of screens in and you miss people who are voters who may be motivated by, oh, I don't know, an overturning of Roe v. Wade to show up and vote. So the smarter thing to do is you pull registered voters, often who have some voter history of showing up in an off-year election. Not everyone, but they've done it before. And you ask a lot of questions. And then in the data, you can kind of interpret who's following the election more. We used to use a great trick question. Can you name the two candidates open-ended? And if they could, then all right, they're tuned in.

And you work it backwards. But chopping a third of the data coming in because you figure, oh, they won't vote, big, dangerous assumption. Especially now when the turnout numbers are through the roof. Yeah, we saw in some places that we may have abnormally high turnout. See, the big problem the Democrats have in a presidential election, everybody votes. And off your election, you lose 30% to 40% of the voters. Not as interesting. And a high proportion of those voters you don't get, the most casual voters, tend to be young and tend to be often of color

and Democratic. So Republicans have a little bit of an advantage in the electorate and off-year. Democrats have an advantage in the big full turnout election of the on-year. So you're always looking for what'll, if you're a Democrat, you spend a lot of time, call Eric Schmidt. The difference between off-year and on-year is off is off years midterms on years presidential right right so the dems have spent billions and get the silicon valley guy we need some geniuses trying to get off year excuse me presidential year voters to vote in the midterms it almost never works because it's kind of like people do their thing and it's just not as interesting so they they don't turn out. But if you find an issue like overturning Roe v. Wade that younger voters are more interested in, by the way, the most

pro-choice voters are not young women. That's the great myth that abortion is a gender-driven issue. It's young men who never vote in the off year, but maybe they will now. It looks like some of them did in the Kansas primary surge. It looks like some of them did in college towns, in the Hudson Valley, in the special, New York 19. So we might have these other forces this year, which is why don't fool around with the likely voter screen at the front. It's a mistake. It's like turning off your radar for a quarter of the circle.

The 2016, the presidential turnout was 130 million Americans voted in 2016. Then 2018, and to your point, you're supposed to have that drop from presidential to midterm. So if that were true in the midterm, we would have had like, you know, 90 million or something vote, 100 million maybe vote. In the 2018 midterm, we had 118 million people turn out. It just blew all the models off the charts. And then in 2020, we had close to 155 million people vote. So we went from a presidential year in 2016 of 130 to 155 million in 2020. But you see, there's that still, even in the new world of higher turnout, there's that delta again. Right.

So the point being, and the country's growing, and there's a lot of emphasis on absentee ballots now, which can turn up. In some states like California, they just mail everybody a ballot now. It was the COVID thing, and they've locked it in forever. Bottom line is, turnout is a big deal in the off-year election, but when in doubt, bet on revert to mean, which means it'll be less than a presidential and certain voters drop out. So the Dems always try to make it as much like a presidential as they can. And the Republicans are very happy the other way. And we'll see. My guess is it'll be high. When people are pissed off, voting gets high because politics becomes more relevant. They're in pain. They want to punish somebody or do something. But will they get enough of a surge to undo the ugly little fact that since World War II, the party in power in the midterms and first term has lost an average of 26 congressional seats and three or four Senate seats?

You know, maybe. That'll take a big warp to deliver that. The Senate, you have an argument that the Republican candidates are terrible. But in a big enough wave, anvils can win. So I do think the Senate is more competitive than the House. The other countervailing factor is thanks to redistricting, we have fewer swing seats now, so a wave has less grip. But still, do I think the Republicans are going to win the majority in the House despite this kind of phony question the media loves to ask because they're dying to predict the majority in the House, despite this kind of phony question the media loves to ask, because they're dying to predict the election, of which party you're going to vote for. Yeah,

I think that's one of the most useless questions. So you're not a believer in the generic ballot question? I am not. I am not. I believe it in October when ballots are starting to move. I don't believe it in August. Okay. It's basically, who are you mad at this week question? And people can be very mad on, uh, August 29th at the Republicans or the Democrats. Uh, but show me what Biden's favorable, unfavorable, and his job approval on the economy is on October 12th. And I'll tell you who's going to, who's going to carry the house in the Senate. So a few days ago, Nate Cohn, who I think is a, you know, sensible, nonpartisan, analytical, or an analyst of polls for the New York Times, wrote a piece that basically argued that if you apply the polling errors that we saw in 2016 and 2018 to the polls that are coming out now in these Senate races in 20, for the midterms,

for the, you know, for November, and you apply, you sort of come up with a methodology to apply the same errors from past cycles in polling to this one, a lot of these races that Democrats are excited about suddenly start, maybe they shouldn't be so excited. So for instance, he looks at Wisconsin, which the polls have Ron Johnson, the incumbent Republican, down four. If you apply the polling error methodology of previous last couple elections for Wisconsin to this one, suddenly Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, is up four. If you look at North Carolina, where the Democrat is up one, the Democrat's up one, the Republican flips to plus two, according to NACO. And Ted Budd goes to plus two.

Ohio, Democrats are all excited that Tim Ryan, the Democrat, is running a great race in Ohio. It's a tight race. Polls have him slightly ahead. And then suddenly he applies his methodology of the errors in polling, and it has J.D. Vance up seven. I mean, it can go on and on here. What the implication of this is suddenly some Republican races that Democrats thought were in their crosshairs and they could

potentially flip, maybe not so easy, like Johnson's seat and Vance's race, which is a Republican seat, and also some of these pickups that the Republicans were hoping to pick up and the public polling was throwing some lack of enthusiasm on.

Those suddenly flip and suddenly the Republican path to majority goes up. So what do you – Which would fit the historical norm, although I'm a fan of Nate's. But this is, again, we're in the predict the future Sufis saying business. It's like charting the stock market a little. But his argument that polls in the past have had an inaccuracy, and if you apply that inaccuracy to the current, you can have different outcomes, is not crazy. The question is, was the inaccuracy random, so it's not built in and repeatable, or was it something in a design of that poll? Some media polls decide that we're going to pull what ought to be. We're going to pull adults because all

humans are equal and we ought to have all opinions. Hardened political consultants only like to pull voters who they're pretty certain are going to vote or have a good chance of being able to be persuaded to vote because that's what's actually going to be counted. Yeah. So so there are some polls have had a bias that way. There are Republican leaning polls that have had a bias toward likely voters that miss more casual voters who can show up and they have. And, you know, so it's interesting. But the fundamental thesis of it, which is we're going to try to predict the election with polling, is a very shaky thing. It's much more opinion than science.

And do you think, though, that one of his arguments is it's just – and I've heard this from Republican operatives, too, who are deep into polling. It's just harder and harder to reach these voters that Trump appeals to in a general election. There is a political science framework of analysis, which I believe is true, which is, you know, voters make a lot of legitimate decisions. Decision one is, are you going to register to vote? That's a choice. Maybe I choose not to participate. I hate politics. Choice two is once you're registered, do you actually decide to vote?

Does the election motivate you? Is something bothering you? Is some candidate you love that makes your behavior change. And then there's increasingly a theory of that alienated electorates don't want to talk to pollsters because they don't trust them, particularly, though not all, because you can make this argument on the far left of kind of Bernie world. Yeah, it's all rigged. You know, Bernie voters, all corporate America, the polls are rigged. I'm not going to talk to them. MAGA people, this is just a plot to write another crappy poll about our God, Trump. And they choose not to participate or they choose to lie in the poll.

In the old days when George Gallup called like the president, polling was serious business. Now polls are everywhere. They're in pop culture. And so they don't count as much. So lying to them is more palatable. So the theory goes. And I think there's some truth in all this stuff. Polling is harder. Generally, pollsters think, and some polls have adjusted their assumptions, that Trumpy voters, lower educated, white working class in particular, are underrepresented in modern polling samples and therefore need to be upped a little.

And that is a reaction to the past that some of the stuff Nate's thinking of. And this is more in the campaign polling. In the media polling, in addition to mostly being cheap, they've got to sit in a very woke newsroom and convince everybody that they're talking to everybody and the poll is socially just. And that can warp the sampling too, and those pollsters are sometimes under that pressure. All right, I want to drill down in a couple of these races you and I have talked about offline in a moment, but before we do, I just want to talk about

two figures who will no doubt loom large in the midterm elections, which are Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Now, I think if you applied truth serum to anyone on the ballot from either of their parties in these midterms and ask them, do you want these individuals to loom large in the midterms? I think it'd be a fair bet to say the answer would be no, and yet they do. So I want to take each one. Let's start with Biden. What does it appear to you like the role he's crafting for himself in these next few weeks? And what do you think the impact will be? Well, he knows in the White House political operation, though, they're going to own the outcome, fair or not.

So they're trying to fix the outcome, fair or not. So they're trying to fix the outcome. And I think they, like a lot of Dems, understandably have kind of an emotional connection to running out there to defend democracy because we do have a unique threat to it. The problem is out in voter world, that's an exhausted topic and it's tribal. So it just creates more polarization. Biden's real problem is unless he can move up the perception, perception being reality in politics, so the perception that he's doing a better job in the economy, the more the election is about him, which generally off midterm elections do tend to be about the incumbent president, the more his party is going to get punished. So there's a school of thought that it's really time for Biden to be the first president on the moon and, you know, get him out of there. Just get him out of the frame and let us go pound on do-nothing Republicans. But nobody tells the 400-pound gorilla what to do. So there's a fear in Democratic operative circles that instead of going on the road with why did 160 members of Congress vote to turn over the future of

manufacturing to the Chinese on the chip bill, $100,000 a year jobs right here in River City, he's going to go out and lecture people about how bad the Republicans are, which will scare away suburban Republicans, piss them off, and energize the other side. And politically, yeah, that's a really bad move. And how much of this is about Biden wanting to convey that he's still got it as he contemplates whether or not to run for re-election as president? Oh, tactically, sure. Yeah, they know they get wiped out in the midterms, even though it's a historical norm. Everybody's going to say, all right, get rid of him. Let's find a new candidate who's not Kamala Harris. And there'll be all the leaks about primaries, and it'll be a nightmare for him. So he's trying to go out there and do the I've taken my Geritol sharpens attack thing

and get credit for a good midterm performance. And frankly, the messaging platform was good, and he was out there making a strong argument on kitchen table economics, the Medicare prescription drug stuff. I mean, he's got stuff to talk about, but the civics lecture, even though I agree with him, is not a number mover and will make the situation worse, not better. But no doubt they're trying to show Fightin' Joe he's back. And, you know, this is a thing nobody's talking about. When the Republicans, who are, again, I'd say about 80 percent likely to win the House, win, they're probably going to go off on the stupid investigation tangent.

I think they may win tighter than people are expecting, which is trouble for Kevin McCarthy internally. He could get toppled. Or if he's not toppled, he just has a harder time governing because he's got to- Well, Trump will blame him for the loss because Trump- Yeah, but it's sort of like what Pelosi has to deal with with the squad. Like she's always- Yeah, right.

That'll still be more so because most of the thoughtful conservatives are gone now. A lot of them voted for impeachment and they got clipped. But anyway, the point being, they'll go investigate and probably try to impeach Biden a few times. That will rally the Democratic Party around Biden. So there are comeback crumbs out there for him. But bungling the midterms on a message platform and putting himself in the middle too much to a country exhausted with rehashing Trump v. Biden again, where they were on the Biden side, and maybe they will be again. Trump still anthrax in general election. It's still not optimal because right now the electorate wants to punish somebody, and generally they punish the person with the biggest job, which is Biden. Okay. So now let's talk about Trump's role. What is motivating Trump in these next few weeks and

what role do you think he'll play? Well, you know, I think he's crazy, so it's hard to build the logic ladder, but he's got a certain animal cunning. I think on one level, he knows that the federal justice apparatus at every level absolutely hates to be near an election because they never want to be accused of putting a prosecutorial thumb on the election. That's why the Comey thing got all tangled up at the FBI. And so here we are again. And so because of his significant legal trouble, he's thinking the sooner I become a candidate, the more hesitant they're going to be to really press forward. Now, I think he's probably in too deep for that, but I've seen that strategy before where people are running to elevate themselves to escape a borderline charge in their view. So he's got his

own selfish reasons. Second, and this is the bad thing for him politically, he's a little scared about his position in the party. The polls lag reality. And in the inside game, there's a little scared about his position in the party. The polls lag reality. And in the inside game, there's a lot of Trump fatigue. I mean, even if you poll Republican voters, 85% of them will say, did a great job, great president, screwed the New York Times, I hate Biden. Well, should Trump be the nominee again? Boom, the number cuts in half. Then he gets down to about 50, not 85. It used to be 40 until he got a little Geritol boost from the raid on his house.

So there's huge Trump fatigue even in the party, and he smells DeSantis and some younger lions moving around. Trump did a very unique thing a few weeks ago for him. He went on a big donor tour. He actually went to see people rather than making them come to him like a true despot. That's a sign of weakness. Jumping into the race now, putting the legal thing aside, just politics, he looks weak. He's responding to DeSantis. He's acting scared. He's trying to build a wall to protect what he has, but he is scared. And he might, if he wants to run or use the legal rationale to talk himself

into it, I think he may announce at least an exploratory committee pretty soon. And that, again, puts him in the middle of the election. And have no doubt, not only now in 2018 and 2020, Trump is anthrax in the general election. And Republican candidates outside of safe seats don't want him anywhere near them. And that's why Biden wants to bring him in and elevate him and bring in Trump election-den denying conspiracy theorists on the ballot. Try to get as many of them elected in Republican primaries. But the slick move for Biden is Trump's going to force his way in anyway. Ego maniac, crazy legal need to worried about DeSantis.

And it'll be a crazy off like DeSantis right now. He's throwing poor migrants into buses and dropping them off at, you know, to get a Fox hit. Biden doesn't need to be in the middle of all that. You know, Biden can go be president and talk about the price of hamburger. And the CHIPS Act. Careful, Biden. I mean, he's got issues. Right.

Medicare. He's got that CHIPS Act. They ought to sell that like the Apollo mission. $100,000 a year jobs, the future of manufacturing, the future of everything, here, not red China. And why the hell the Republican primaries are locked up with Premier Xi and the secret police in Beijing? You explain to me.

I'm for $100,000 jobs right here in Toledo, Ohio. And he ran on trying to extinguish some of the crazy from Washington and bring some normalcy back. And this was a bipartisan vote. He was able to bring parties together. He's the first guy, for all Biden's problems, and I'm a right-wing nut, I have my policy issues.

He's the only guy to get big bipartisan stuff done in decades between infrastructure, which the country desperately needs, and the CHIPS bill. And he also got some Republican votes on the gun control bill right yeah regardless of what you want think it thinks of the substance that's a bill that the barack obama could have never gotten passed never never ever and i don't think you

would have done the chips bill and the infrastructure the at least the first infrastructure one that got all those republican votes in the senate trump could never have gotten passed so right right so biden could go be the grown-up with the stuff people understand, let the machine run against the do-nothing psychopath Republicans who want to lock your sister up for being raped and wanting an abortion, that want the hundred grand jobs to go to China, et cetera, et cetera, and then go let Trump be the crazy clown in the middle of it. And that's what's driving this generic ballot question right now, which again, I argue is not predicted. Right. The reemergence of Trump and the Republican crazy factor, because thanks to our primary electorate, we do have some real weak candidates. It doesn't mean they can't win. There'll be some surprises, but they give the Democrats something to work with. I mean, look at Pennsylvania. That race is broken open to the Democrats.

And if Fetterman can hold his health together, unless it's a really big wave, odds are Oz will lose. Other tighter places like Georgia, I think, you know, Hershel Walker could be in the Senate, and then Trump will be talking about him for vice president. There will be heart attacks all over every blue county. So I want to talk about some of these individual races in a minute. Before we do, you and I have talked about this before, but I just want to revisit it.

By my math, the Democratic Party committees have spent something like $50 million in Republican primaries, elevating, you know. The Democrats, if you just read Joe Biden's speech from a couple weeks ago in Philadelphia, basically say these midterms are about the future of democracy. The future of democracy hangs in the balance. And at the same time, they are helping elect in Republican primaries, not in all races that are actually swing states that, you know, not every state or district is one in which the Republican will likely win the general, but in a big way, some of them could. And they have elevated some really... No, they've won primaries for people.

Peter Meyer, he would have made it in Michigan. Right. So just who he is. The D-Trip came in and crushed him. Incumbent Republican voted for Trump's impeachment days after he got into Congress, right? I mean, I just want to give the context for who he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And...

Young congressman, put a big career on the line early, and committed basically political suicide, saved himself at home, heading to reelection. And the DTRIP comes thundering in and says, hey, here's a complete psychopath. Vote for him because he's pro-Trump. And DTRIP is the Democratic Congressional Committee. Yeah, they iced a guy. And, you know, the worst crime of that besides they're pouring gasoline on a very bad fire. You know, this is like, hey, President Truman, here's an idea. Let's give the H-bomb to Stalin, and the war will be a week shorter in Europe than Stalin.

I mean, it just categorically is so bad for democracy, for dumb tactics in our district they might still lose. For one congressional seat in a cycle, they're going to lose anyway. And they've done it in multiple places. They did it in Pennsylvania with the crazy governor candidate there. And by the way, Pennsylvania is a state, if we don't get the Electoral College Reform Act done, where the governor can really screw with a presidential election result. The governor has a lot of power there. So it's very dangerous kids playing with machine gun stuff, and it's stupid, and it's incredibly hypocritical for

the Democrats to do that. Do you think it is that they just don't believe there's actually that much of a threat to democracy, as they say in their public rhetoric, the Democrats, and that's why they feel comfortable playing these games? Or do you think they do think there's a threat to democracy, but they're just like, you know, they think in this, all these primary shenanigans that they're engaging in, it'll all kind of work out. I think there's a split opinion. I think they do worry about a threat to democracy. And the smart congressional Democrats know that the cloakroom discussion to a Republican who knows better is, you know, you got to do the right thing here.

And the Republican can now say, look, I think I can smother my local Trump nut and maybe make it through a primary because I'll have money and they won't. But now the D-trip will drop $2 million on my head and I'm gone. So fuck you, I'm not going to do it. They've really, you know, they've taken away a lot of the be a good Republican incentives. I think you've got a couple of pit bulls at the DTRIP who cannot see beyond November, who are grasping at any straw because they know they're going to lose control. So they're doing some of this stuff. And I think older, wiser Dems are troubled by it. Yeah. Okay. So now let's talk about a couple of these races. Let's start with Georgia,

which you're particularly interested in, Herschel Walker versus Senator Warnock. What is your take? I mean, this is key, one of the key two or three races in terms of determining who's going to have the Senate majority. Well, Warnock's a good candidate running a better campaign, but if inflation is still high, gas and groceries are kicking people every week in October, and Biden's numbers aren't better, Walker has been hanging in on the polling. And I think he is formidable, despite all the crazy, I've heard the clips about clouds in China.

He is credentialed there outside of politics, and well-liked from his sports career. And when people think you've been great at something, they tend to give you a lot of slack on political stuff. So maybe he'll totally melt down and show up in a chicken suit and chain himself to the gates of the TV station at the debate or something and implode. There's a chance there. But he's hanging into the polling for a reason. And I think any Republican, unless Biden's numbers really recover late, is going to get an extra two or three points.

So if all your friends are calling you, oh, new polls out. Thank God. Warnock's one point ahead. Warnock's going to lose by two, and it's Senator Walker. Or three or four. polls out, thank God, Warnick's one point ahead. Warnick's going to lose by two, and it's Senator Walker. And also— Or three or four. Governor Kemp, the Republican, is something—is up like seven points. That's hilarious.

Right, he's up like seven points over Stacey Abrams. Yeah, he's a very adroit Paul. You know, he absolutely put Trump in the hospital in the primaries. He knows how to work the right side of the party better, just about as well as anybody. And the kind of Shakespearean tragedy here is Stacey Abrams was a big deal in the Democratic Party, even though she lost. So she put all her chips in a bad year to re-bet, and she's going to get beat and dropped to the B team. She could have credibly run for president without having done this and given Kamala Harris heart attacks

all over the South and could have even, I think, had a shot at being the nominee. Now that's all gone because the odds are, I think, about 85, 90 percent that Kemp will beat her. But the fact that, I mean, if you believe the polls, apropos of her. No, that delta is something. Right. So how many, then you got to say to yourself, how many Kemp Warnock voters are there? Probably not.

Right. There will be some. There's some in the polling now, but those are the easiest. Think of a campaign like being strapped to the roof of a car and going through 500 car washes. Right now we're on car wash 49. So how long can they breathe up there going through all that water, scalding water again and again? And those are the voters that in the end will peel off in our tribal world and how many of them that Warnock can hold. And he's running a great campaign, by the way.

He's just – Walker is more bulletproof, I think, unless he goes really crazy, than kind of scoffing Manhattan. Can you believe what that Republican moron did in Georgia? Well, the thing to remember is when you have a high wrong track like this, people think the country is going in the wrong direction and they want to fire politicians. Being weird and offbeat and not a smooth politician is a plus, not a minus. Fetterman is benefiting from that because he looks like he ought to be in a cage match. Arnold benefited from it. They said, oh, he's a dumb bodybuilder who can't find Sacramento on a map. People were good. When he gets there, he'll blow it up. I've seen him use a rocket gun in the movies. So that Uncola thing, if you're credentialed somewhere else, and in Georgia, Hershel Walker has some of that,

is really strong rocket fuel this year. All right, New Hampshire. I mean, yeah, let's talk about New Hampshire. Spend a minute on New Hampshire. And I know, by the way, you spend a lot of time in New Hampshire. It's like- Yeah, well, we have a secret retreat up there. I wish I paid New Hampshire. Spend a minute on New Hampshire. And I know, by the way, you spend a lot of time in New Hampshire. Yeah, well, we have a secret retreat up there. I wish I paid New Hampshire taxes. So the family were there in the summer a lot. Pepperidge Farm, you know, have to vote for General Bulldog. So what happened was this is a great story of the Republican recruiting meltdown this year.

So Chris Sununu, the highly popular and competent friend of mine, I'm a donor. Governor of New Hampshire. Governor of New Hampshire. Now I got to fork over a check. But anyway, he was the prize catch because Maggie Assange, the incumbent Democratic senator, had weak numbers. Not terminal, but not good. Vulnerable. So he was the big Republican hope to beat her. Mitch was all over it trying to recruit him. I think somebody told him, one senator joked to me, we had him until he found out he had to have a caucus lunch every week with Cruz. And then Sununu said, you know, I think the Merrimack bypass needs my attention here.

I'm not going to Washington. So then a reliable, regular Republican, Chuck Morris, who was the leader of the Senate, kind of a good chamber of commerce, somewhat boring, but not crazy Republican, was the establishment choice. And with the right campaign, he could have been competitive because he fits New Hampshire old school Republican politics pretty well. But there was a grassroots firebrand, a retired one-star general named Don Bulduk, who had been out raising hell about the flat earth and the metric system and Florida water for quite a while and had some grassroots name ID and put on the red cap, took him out in the primary. And despite a late surge by Morse, who had a lot of D.C. money come in to try to save him, won the primary. But that was another one where the Democrats also came in and helped Bulldog.

Of course. Yeah. They were like, hey, we have a kook. Let's put him on steroids. Good for us. Woo-hoo. More kooks. And you had the same thing happen in a congressional race where a semi-kook Trump staffer was beaten

by a real deal, I think 26-year-old woman from the White House press office who out-kooked him, which puts a decent challenge race in real jeopardy there against Chris Pappas, who for New Hampshire presidential campaign trivia experts is from the family that runs the Puritan, which is the big hangout in Manchester during a presidential campaign. It's a huge Greek diner, great place. Try it out. So anyway, all politics in New Hampshire is interconnected. So now we have Bulldog, who's trying to pivot. He's announcing that maybe geometry isn't a plot, but that's going to be a hard one to dig out of, and the National D's and Hassan are going to be all over him.

So basically, like Oz, like J.D. Vance, though Vance, Ohio, is so good, he probably can go into a coma and he'll still pull it off, even with Ryan's great campaign. Shot Ryan will upset him, though. And the other field candidate down in Arizona, Blake Masters, you know, just a total bungled opportunity on the candidate side, which, you know, gives the Dems something to work with in a terrible year. Bright spot, Joe O'Day, candidate in Colorado. Yeah, all of us never Trumpers love O'Day because he did the anti-Trump campaign. No, Biden won the election. Next question. And is running under the old playbook. And what's fascinating is the two candidates who are doing better than they get for free, better than generic, running ahead, punching above their weight, are Joe O'Day in Colorado and Tim Ryan in Ohio. Ryan's running the old blue-collar scoop Jackson race and doing a great job of it, uphill climb in Ohio.

But he's doing really well. He's within a couple points in the polling. And his messaging would get booed at a DNC general session. I mean, he is everything they're not doing in the party, and he's doing really well, which is a huge lesson. I'd make him head of the DNC if he doesn't win. Yeah, except he's got something like a near 100% voting record with Pelosi. So that'll, I mean, once the Republicans start prosecuting that, whereas O'Day, he's a total outsider, to your point about an outsider. Yeah, he owns a construction company. But the problem is Michael Bennett's a good center.

He'll be hard to beat in the end. So I spent some time with O'Day in the summer. I will say, out in Colorado, I will say what was amazing, I saw him soon after he won the primary, he said one of the biggest boosters of his primary was Chuck Schumer because Schumer was so worried that he was going to win and wanted to, like they've done elsewhere, get a crazy election-denying

conspiracy theorist nominated. So Schumer's Super PAC, or an entity affiliated with Schumer's Super PAC, spent something like $4 million criticizing Joe O'Day for, among other things, being pro-choice, because they thought that would hurt him in a Republican primary. So he comes out of the primary with a general election independent voter. With a suburban boost, thanks to, yeah, yeah. Dave's great, and for the cause, it would be great if he wins. Let me plug one more weird, interesting race.

Utah. Just junkies ought to keep on. Utah. Yeah, no, I'm talking my own book here. No, no, go for it, go for it. I promised you we'd talk Utah, so do Utah. Yeah, because Evan's a friend of mine, and Kyle Lehman and I are doing the super PAC on a shoestring. But, you know, there's new credible data out showing it essentially tied.

Evan one point up in one poll. So just explain the dynamic of the race, though, because people may not be familiar with it. Because Evan's running as an independent. And kind of great. So Mike Lee, the incumbent senator, has bad numbers. State's kind of tired of him, you know, many reasons. He really does seem to have a hatred for Ukraine. He's the last guy left on the Putin train in the Senate. He was also texting, like, don't forget to bring pitchforks to the riot on January 6th, and I'm willing to take, you know, just crazy stuff. So he's in trouble. He had a Republican primary, which he won 60-40. So, you know, 40% of the

Republican primary vote has already opposed him. The Democrats did not nominate anybody because they're not competitive in Utah. Evan McMullin, who's a former clandestine services CIA officer and was a Republican staffer on the Hill, is running as an independent. And the Dems haven't endorsed him, but a lot of Democratic voters find him, even though he's a center-right guy, more attractive than Lee. So he's built this kind of coalition of independents. His message is basically, I'm not Trump's guy. I'm not Biden's. I'm not Schumer's. I'm not McConnell's. The whole system's corrupt and broken. I'm going to be truly independent for Utah. Let's do some fiscal conservative stuff, et cetera, et cetera. And it's working.

And so he has moved up to just about a tied race. If you average the two polls, he's like down two. And it's really kind of a fascinating thing. I highly recommend you go to the website and kind of see what's going on there. Now, the McConnell warbird is coming in to crush him. Club for growth is already there. And is it understood, and I know you're in the Super PAC side, so you're not coordinating with the campaign, but is it understood that if McMullen wins, he will caucus with the Democrats? No, he's been overt about that, because I think Schumer would

love to hear that. So would McConnell, because politically it would be a disaster. No, he said, I'm not going to caucus with anybody. I'm going to be totally in play issue by issue. Got it. And, you know, so there's a real thing going on. The problem is money because between Club for Growth, Mike Lee and everything, and Schumer's not really funding it. I don't think it's as high on his priority list as it ought to be on the theory of, yeah, he's not your guy, but he's also not Mitch's.

So, you know, have an exciting life. Let's have a true independent there on issues. He's not a liberal Democrat in any way. But, you know, now that the polls are out, we're starting to raise a little money. We had a big TV. We spent about half a million in TV over the last four weeks. The campaign spent a couple hundred grand, and that basically moved them up eight points to a tie. Now the panic cavalry is coming. It's going to be a fight, but he has a real shot to win as a rule of law center right independent. So I've given to him, and I encourage your listeners to do the same. Okay, before we go, one piece of good news. I know you are a fellow Anglophile, and you have been following UK politics. I'm like more of a Toryphile than an Anglophile. I'm fascinated by Tory politics.

Yeah, I've got some Irish issues, but yes. Yeah, yeah, you're like that quirky Anglophile. I like the frogs, too. You're like an Irish Anglophile, so you're like really. Well, that would be Murphy P-H-E-Y. That's the Protestant way to spell it. I'm P-H-Y, so I'm. But you're also become a member of the Tory party in the UK.

Well, I had a rating scam, you know, this podcasting game, Cruel and Unforgiving. So at Hacks on Tap, you know, I Tory party in the UK. Well, I had a rating scam, you know, this podcasting game, Cruel and Unforgiving. So at Hacks on Tap, you know, I would talk about the UK stuff. And I found out you can join and vote in leaderships in the Tory party from anywhere in the world. So I gave him 100 quid and I joined. Then I found that subchapter 411 of the party handbook, there's like a 12-week freeze-out period on the foreigners. So I couldn't vote. What I tried to do was auction my leadership vote to whoever would call into the podcast first,

either Rishi Sussnack or Liz Truss. Rishi Sussnack, yeah. Sussnack. They blew us off because my vote was useless. We have a pretty big listenership in the UK, so critical error, Rishi. I will convey, next time I'm over there, which will be soon, anyone I speak to in Tory politics,

I will tell them. Tell them we could have put it in the bag for them. And by the way, at the end, I did make an endorsement, which will be soon, anyone I speak to in Tory politics, I will tell them. Tell them. We could have put it in the bag for them. And by the way, at the end, I did make an endorsement. And even though I knew he was going to lose, I thought it would be closer. And it was. I was for Sunak. Because I want to win the general election.

I just want to spend a minute on that. Because there are two things that are interesting here. One, if you look at who the, if you go back to July. So I had James Forsyth from the Spectator, British journalist. It's great. You can get it on Kindle. I highly recommend the Spectator. I had him on and we went through

the finalists before it came down to Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. And the finalists were Penny Mordant, Liz Truss, Kemi Badnock, Rishi Sunak, and Tom Tuganit. Now if you look at those five candidates, it ultimately was Liz Truss, Kemi Badnok, Rishi Sunak, and Tom Tuganet. Now if you look at those five candidates, it ultimately was Liz Truss, only one of them was a white male. And actually if you look at Tory politics, not only over the last few years where you've now had two leaders,

Liz Truss and Theresa May, but go back to the iconic reagan-like figure in tory politics margaret thatcher um this party is a model of a right of center party that is breaking down barriers and um there's this is something to for us in the republican world over here to look at totally totally and keemee by the way tremendous. I would have been for her in the first round. So the story there is it is a, how do I put it, a supply side diversity, not a demand side diversity. In other words, it's not that they had a meeting and said, all right, 42.3% of our candidates have to be women. I mean, they might have done some of that. But what has happened in the UK is there's kind of been a surge over the last decade of minority people of color support for conservative ideology. So this is all legitimate and organic, not manufactured. Often with the children of

first-generation immigrants from Africa, East Asia, wherever it might be. And that has added tremendous vitality to the party. Of all the center-right parties in the West, there's no doubt that the Tories are the most legitimately diverse, organically diverse. And that's a great thing for the conservative movement. And the Republican Party could learn so much for it. But right now, you know, under the great leader, it's more about grievance in the Republican Party and with a big racial subtext all too often. Huge demographic and moral mistake. All right. We will leave it there. And I will make the case to any one of these rising stars in U.K. politics. They need to make time.

Their press secretaries need to make sure they get bookings on Hacks on Tap. Until then, Mike, thanks for doing this. As always, great to check in. We've been responsive to the podosphere that we've brought back Murphy to kick off the midterms here. And look forward to talking to you soon. Well, thank you for having me. I love this podcast. And remember, for 30 years, I've always called you back.

That's our show for today. To keep up with Mike, you can track him down on Twitter, at MurphyMike, one word. And then, of course, at Hacks on Tap. We'll post links to his podcast and to the Mark Melman column that he suggested. Mark's a terrific guy and a friend. Maybe we'll have him on the podcast in the next few weeks. Call Me Back is produced by Alam Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.