Pod Save America - Can Dems Sweep the 2024 Elections?

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Dan is joined by Amy Walter, Editor-in-Chief of the Cook Political Report, to break down Democrats' chances of winning the White House, Senate, and House. They dive into key battleground polling trends, the fight for control of the Senate, and whether Dems can flip the House. Then, Dan answers questions from subscribers. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. From now through Election Day, monthly subscribers can upgrade to a yearly Friends of the Pod membership with a massive 25% discount. Your support helps us build the shows and initiatives we’re envisioning for 2025—it’s the best way to back our team as we create new content and launch exciting projects! Take advantage of this offer here: http://go.crooked.com/B3CLJM or sign up at the top of your Apple Podcasts feed!

Welcome to another special episode of Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. This is the second of four bonus pods I'll be hosting on Sundays in the lead up to the election. If you like these episodes, I highly recommend you sign up to get my subscriber show Polar Coaster by subscribing to Friends of the Pod at crooked.com slash friends or through the Apple podcast feed. It's where we really dig deep into polling and it's a great way to support crooked media. And we have a 25% off discount for annual subscriptions right now.

In today's episode, I'll be talking to Amy Walter, one of the smartest people I know in politics, the publisher and editor in chief of the Cook Political Report and host of her own podcast, The Odd Years, about the state of the house and Senate races and Democrats chances of winning a trifecta in this election.

Amy Walter, welcome to Pod Save America. How are you? Thank you. I'm pretty good. I'm still I'm still here. So really, that's the goal. That is the goal that I am upright and, you know, just trying to pace myself. Well, we have you on I want to talk about the presidential race, but also the Senate and the House, something you're in,

both of all three of which are an expert in. Let's start with the presidential. Three weeks ago or so, Democrats were feeling ecstatic. They were feeling confident. Over the last week or so, the Democrats have gotten anxious. We've hit this is the phase we get in every year. Have you seen anything in what you've seen in the race

and the polling and the people you're talking to that would justify the vibe shift among Democrats? Yeah, Dana, it's a really good question. And I dug into this myself because I always wonder, all right, how much of this is real and how much of this is just sort of a mood that's not backed up by actual data? And so if you look at the national average, like things haven't moved that much.

They're moving around the edges. At the state level, I think the reason for the frustration, depression, whatever you want to call it, anxiety among Democrats is that you can see, and if you go to the 538 site, which does a great job with this, right, because they have the trend line and you, as well as many of the folks in your business and our business, appreciate a good trend line, right? And what you can see, though it is a very small trend line, but that the peak for Harris was basically, not surprisingly, close to the end of September, right? That was after she had the strong debate performance,

you had the DNC that went really well, the waltz rollout went well, right? Like that was, I would say, peak for Harris. And since then, it's kind of gone down. And so instead of being ahead in a state like Michigan, by an average of two points, she's now ahead by nine tenths of a point, right, or one point. So we're really talking about movement of a point or a half a point in most of those battleground states. But as you know, half a point or a point is the difference between

winning and losing in these states. So it seems there is some reason to, again, if you're just looking at the poll averages to say, well, boy, was that a peak? Did you peak too early? That's a thing Democrats also love to talk about. Oh, we peaked too early. We need to peak at the election. But it's also a sign that coalescing the base has gotten her to a certain place, but it's not getting her as far as she needs to, to win this thing outright.

The other thing I noticed, and we noticed this in our own data, as well as just looking at all of those national, the network polls that came out last weekend, that her slipping is with independent voters. And so, you know, that's something to keep aware of. But again, we're talking about a movement of half a point to a point. So freak out about that as you will. Yeah, exactly. Choose your level of panic based on that information. It's so hard because we've never seen a race this close

in all the states. That's right. Usually the margins are a little bit larger and usually they're larger in some states and maybe narrow in just the tipping point state for instance. But here it's all seven and nationally are within the margin of error. So it's so hard to separate real movement

from statistical noise. Exactly, from noise. And then, right, and from what is, to me it kind of comes back to, all right, well how likely do you think these people who are answering the polls or who we're weight waiting the polls to are gonna show up, right? And that's where we really get into the difficult prediction part because we all talk about it comes down,

it all comes down to turnout, but nobody really knows what that's gonna look like. Yeah, and you, you know, it's part of your political report, Swing State Polling Project, you had an analysis that showed that Kamala Harris is doing much better with highly engaged voters and that Trump is depending on low to mid propensity.

Can you talk a little bit about what you guys found there? Yeah, yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Right, we did this project, we've had three different polls, we're doing them with BSG, the Bennet & Sons Strategy Group, Democratic polling firm, and GS Strategy Group, which is a Republican firm. And these guys have been fantastic partners

in part because they both work in states that are purple or sometimes in states that aren't friendly to their side, so they appreciate a real swing state. But what we did is we broke up the overall electorate in those seven states into basically three buckets, one being people who've shown up in the last four elections. And what we know about people who show up in election after election is they're going to show up in this election, right? If you voted in four out of the last four elections, there's a 90 plus percent chance you're showing up in this election, as long as you're physically able to do so.

The next and by the way, that group of voters, that's somewhere around 60% of the electorate. So they're the biggest share, but just over a majority. And then another 30-ish% fall into the category they voted in anywhere from one to three of the last four elections. And then the final bucket, which is the smallest bucket, are people who said they've registered since 2022. So they weren't able to vote in any of those four elections.

Now the one consistent for May through this last poll we did in September is those most engaged voters were voting for the Democrat, whether that's Biden or Harris, by four points. And that goes to kind of the makeup of that electorate, which we know is it's an older group. It is whiter than average, right? It's less diverse than the overall electorate. And it's probably going to be more college educated than the overall electorate. And these are the voters that are propelling and have propelled Democrats to success in 2018, in 2020, but certainly most, I think, most notably in 2022. And if those were the only voters that turned out in this election, that would be pretty

good news for Kamala Harris to be ahead by four points in the battleground states, right? This isn't nationally, this is a battleground state. But then you put in those low propensity voters and Trump has about a seven point lead with those voters. His lead among them has varied between five and 10 points. And those voters, again, not surprisingly, younger, they are going to be, identify more as independent, more diverse in terms of the electorate. And what's funny, Dan, is when you and I came up in politics, we would look at that group of voters, we say younger, more diverse.

Those are Democrats, you just need to get them out to vote. Right now, they're leaning more to Trump. Now, I don't know, I think a big piece of his success has been from the very beginning, from 2016, is turning out people who are not traditional voters, right people who Are either tuned out of politics or who are really cynical about politics? and So if we think about all right, what is what's motivating? Those voters and how does Harris sort of chop into that group of voters, you

know, some of them are going to be motivated by something that she does or says that also feels like it's different, like she is going after the status quo as well, that she's skeptical of a lot of the institutions out there. And so her message, when I see her message on things like, we're taking on price gouging, we're taking on big pharma, right? It is aimed at a lot of the voters out there who are in that camp of, yeah, I'm the little guy, I'm getting picked on by the big guy. Where Trump wins them over, of course, is by saying, I am the great disruptor. I am not beholden to anyone or anything.

I am unlike any other politician, and that makes me able to do things that no other politicians been able to do. It's very interesting you say like the reversal in the parties. I had, I was interviewing, which is an awkward experience for me, but I was interviewing David Plouffe last week and he was making this case about it. And it is like an out of body experience because that was the Obama coalition. That was the argument against Obama's electability, both in the primaries and the general, was relying on all these young people.

Young people never vote. And they turn out. But what is interesting, though, is like we knew that challenge and we built a campaign to account for that, a massive volunteer-driven food organization we had organized everywhere. And the Trump folks are taking a very different approach. That's right. They don't have a traditional food organization. They have outsourced it to Elon Musk and others.

I'm sure you're hearing plenty of concerns, as everyone does, from Republicans about the status of that. What have you heard? That's right. You know, I do hear that. It's not as loud as, say, it was in 2020 when there was a lot of hand-wringing about the fact that Trump was actively discouraging people from doing mail-in voting.

I would talk to folks in Pennsylvania who are like, the mail-in vote piece, we're trying to put a mail-in vote program in place, but we are getting pushback from the very people who are supposed to be helping us institute it because Trump told them that it was rigged. So they are now doing more of a, and outside groups are doing more of a mail-in process with their voters. Now, does that mean they're picking up those low propensity voters with the mail-in program? I don't know. That is a very, very good question.

And it also comes back to, look, how much do you believe that the reason that, say, Trump did better in 2020 than many expected was because they did doors and traditional field and Democrats did not. I don't know. I mean, I'm not here to say that field doesn't matter or that all those people who are working really hard on both sides on the ground going to doors, that it doesn't make a difference. What I wonder though is whether what Trump has shown time and time again is his ability to infiltrate

into areas of the electorate that nobody else can, no traditional politician can, is what allows him to get turnout among voters even without the quote unquote traditional field programs. It's really interesting because in 16 and 20, well 16 in particular, his turnout, sort of his turnout boost was primarily among

white non-college educated, primarily rural voters who are true, who are profile, they come from Republican parts of the country, they profiles Republican, they adjust not, there were people who found Mitt Romney to be not someone who could speak to them and Trump could, we can probably spend six years trying to understand why that is, but that is the case. Here he's trying to do something a little bit different. He's trying to get people who are, come from Democratic parts of the country in some cases,

who are, have agreed with Democrats on some issues to do it. So it's just, it's interesting. We're obviously not going to know until after. No, it's really, I know it. And this is the really fascinating question, right? Which is, I mean, if you, I was just looking through, um, today, the support that Trump is getting from black voters, right? And, and you know, he's getting somewhere like 20% of black men. Now that's nationally.

I don't know, you know, you'd have to get into some of the cross tabs of these other polls to see how he's doing in states like Georgia, et cetera. But essentially what the polls seem to be telling us and the reason that Trump is doing better in Georgia, et cetera. But essentially what the polls seem to be telling us and the reason that Trump is doing better in Georgia, let's say, than in Pennsylvania or in Wisconsin is that exact thing, Dan, is that he's doing that much better with black voters than I would assume that it's going to be with black men.

The thing that I keep coming back to, and I know your conversation with David Plouffe is kind of centered on this too, is this idea of looking at Trump's vote share rather than focusing on the margin. So I was just looking at, for example, the Pew poll out from early October. And if you look at the support that Donald Trump is getting from say, men under 50. Okay. In 2020, Biden won those voters by 10, men under 50. And right now Trump is only losing them by one. So that's, you know, a nine point swing. But if you look just at the share of the vote that Trump is getting

from those voters, it's not any different. I can't remember the exact number. Let's call it 39%. Okay. And now he's getting 40% of those voters. So what you have is a whole chunk of younger voters who are sitting out there who are not committed to Trump, but they're not giving their votes to Harris yet either. And that goes to this point about who would you rather be in this scenario? Would you rather be the Harris campaign who's basically, then it seems like their challenge is getting those voters to come out for them rather than sitting at home instead of worrying about whether those voters are going to actually go to Donald Trump. In other words, he is looking stronger with those voters in part because Harris'

numbers look that much weaker than where Biden was at the end of 2020. And so that's the thing that I keep sort of grappling with to your point about like, well, what does this really, really look like? And how many of these people actually do come out and go to the polls? So I think there is a real underperformance for Harris at this moment. But what we don't know is if that's going to result in an over performance at the end of the day by Trump. Yeah, it is. This is such a confusing election in so many ways. But one of the ways is that I think in order to adjust for the anti-Trump polling error

last time is everyone is trying to, most I would say most people are trying to model their vision of the 2024 electorate based on the 2020 electorate. Right, exactly. We're getting into the very esoteric debate about whether you weight your poll based on the how people voted

voted in 2020. And that could be right, that could be wrong, but that was in itself a black swan election because of the pandemic and the changes in voting behavior turnout was so high. And so it's just the margins and the vote share and how this actually looks is there is this feeling, and I've never seen an election where so few people are confident in saying anything about what could possibly happen because we're all just, we're on a very rickety ledge with how we're looking at it.

It's possible that how we're thinking about it and how we're, and it's been so long, like even 16 was a very bizarre election too, low turnout relative, huge third party participation that tilted these states. Then you have 2020 and now here we are with a new brand new candidate who started four months ago that they, you know, there's never been a less known candidate. Exactly. This close to the end.

Yeah. And that we've never had, we've had, we have an election where again, you and I growing up in politics, you always say, well, all right, what's a presidential election about? Do you want to stay the course or do you want to go in a different direction? And what's fascinating about this election is we have the guy who is the challenger,

so the different direction, is the semi-incumbent, right? People, this is not brand new to anybody about what direction he wants to go in and what it would be like to have a term with him in office. And then you have Harris, who's also new, as you said, people don't, there's still a lot to fill in about her. And yet she's the incumbent and having to defend the status quo.

So you can't really put either one of them cleanly into that I'm the change candidate. They are both trying to grab onto that. And then they both have their past, their past votes, their past behaviors that are tethering them to this idea that they're really not change. So I think that's what's also hard about it because you're right. If you were in a cave, Dan, for the last 10 years, or maybe let's not call it a cave, let's say you were just in a luxurious, wonderful place for 10 years, you knew nothing about our politics. The last campaign you did was 2008 and you came out and you said, and I told you, there's

an incumbent president, not running again, but with an approval rating in the 40s, and we're coming off really high inflationary period where people are still pretty frustrated about the state of the economy. Oh, and 70% of people think the country's headed in the wrong direction. Do you think that incumbent party would win?

You'd be like, no, probably not. I mean, I'd rather be the out party. Right, if that was a poli-sci 101 test and you wrote, yes, the incumbent party would win, you would tell. And I think that's just an, no one knows what's gonna happen, but there is this,

you can hear it in some of the critiques that's happening, like this is a race that Kamala Harris should be running away with. Now put aside that bespeaks a real misunderstanding of how polarization works and how the electoral college works. But even then on paper, this is Trump's election to lose. That's right. Just based on every, there we go.

Everything right there. And she's being asked to do something unprecedented to go from a standing start to running against not just some random schmoe nominated by the Republican Iowa caucus, but by the former incumbent president of the United States running again. And so it's just, I think a lot of sort of the framework of analysis that's come to this election,

I think is off because Trump is such a unique figure. But when you do the fundamentals, and it's interesting because the fundamentals of the political environment massively favor Trump, for all the reasons you said. You can put aside the fact that unemployment is at a historic low, but because of inflation, because of Biden's approval rating, because of the wrong direction number.

But the fundamentals of her candidacy favor her, right? She's more popular. And in general, in a normal world, she's significantly more popular. You would say, undecidedided break for the better like candidate. You would say, who has more money? Who has a better campaign and a better organization? So it is like these two forces going against each other,

between the political environment for Trump and the candidacy and the candidate skills for her. Yeah, and that makes it all the harder to figure out where these last batch of people who are not yet committed to voting slash committed to a candidate are going to, what is it that's gonna push those voters over the edge? And again, in the old days you'd say, well, there's gonna be, what is it that's going to push those voters over the edge? And again, in the old days, you'd say, well, there's going to be, what is it?

What's the issue environment going into the last three weeks of this election? Again, and who is that going to favor? So I mean, there's a lot that's happened, Dan. We've had two assassination attempts on one candidate. We have a growing war in the Middle East. We've got, you know, let's see, major disasters, natural disasters in North Carolina and Florida. None of those things alone are making much of a dent in terms of the race, in terms of just the overall polling or the sense that, oh, this is a political environment that is going to be beneficial to one candidate or the other.

There's so much conversation about the October surprise. What's the October surprise going to be? Maybe we already had it when we had two hurricanes on the first week of October. But what's different now is not only do we have this small group of voters who are inside this election, but the media environment is so different now. Like I think all the time about 2004 and the last weekend when that audio tape

of Bin Laden came out and leading every newspaper, every news story was about Ben Laden pledging to attack America again. And I don't know whether John Kerry would have wanted that had not come out, but that definitely puts in people's head an issue environment. This is a security election. Exactly. Let's take a quick break.

We'll be right back. Let's move into the Senate. The narrative is that the Democratic chance of holding the Senate has gone way down. This was spurred in large part by your publication, the political report moving John Tester from a toss-up race to a lean Republican race. How do you see the overall Senate map right now? And I assume you agree with that assessment. Yeah, it is. You know, look, this was always going to be

a challenging map for Democrats. We've known that since the very beginning of the cycle. So holding on to three red states in a presidential year is tough. Tester's challenge in Montana is even a little bit harder than, say, Sherrod Brown's challenge in Ohio, because Trump is going to win the state of Montana by probably twice as much as he will win Ohio. So for Tester to win, he's going to need to get one in five Trump voters or something like that.

I think there was a time, again, going back, I feel like this old person now, back in my day, but where Montana was a more parochial place and where you could be a Max Baucus, a John Tester, where you are a Montana Democrat. You are distinguished by people in that state from national Democrats, in part because of your voting record, but also how you look and act, right? The farmer and the buzz cut and the whole deal,

which in an era of more nationalized politics and in a state that is growing really, really quickly. I think the number now is only half the people who are in Montana right now were actually born there. And so that makes it really hard for Tester to outrun the national environment like he was able to do in previous years. I think the remarkable thing to watch though is how well Sherrod Brown has been holding on in a state that Trump's probably going to carry by 10 points. And I think some of that is Brown's own brand. But the fact that he has been able to outspend and in fact went on the air early and his Republican opponent was dark for a good chunk of the summer, allowing Brown to really control

the narrative around this race. Now at the end of the day, Moreno may be able to just count on a strong Trump performance to pull him up over the line. So it's not as dangerous to be trailing an incumbent like Moreno is right now or be tied an incumbent, as it would be in a purple state or a bluer state. But so you put those three states in really dangerous territory, that means that Democrats are gonna have to find two states, or if we just say Montana's the only one that flips,

they've got to pick up one state and Harris, win the presidency in order to hold the Senate. And if we look at the map, we see Texas coming in there. Nebraska has been quite the surprise, even though he's not technically a Democrat. He's an independent who hasn't said who he's going to caucus with. But it would definitely make the politics of the Senate even more interesting should you have another independent in there. But look, I think Colin Allred has run a very, very strong race in Texas, driven in part

by the fact that it is, as we've seen since 2018, if you're a Democrat running against Ted Cruz, you can're a Democrat running against Ted Cruz, you can raise a lot of money. Ted Cruz raises you a lot of money. Just out of sheer spite, people like to donate to people running against Cruz. And Texas- People generally don't like, yes.

Generally don't like, right, exactly. So it's, you know, already I'm not taking anything away from him, but if you're running against Ted Cruz, there's a lot of money sitting out there from people who just don't like Ted Cruz. But that's still a tough, that's a tough haul to get from, you know, 46, 47% as a Democrat to 50 in the state of Texas.

Every 1% is just brutal. And it's gonna depend a lot on what happens with the Latino vote, right? Are we snapping back some to where we were before 2020? Are we staying at 2020? And is there erosion? Back in my day, it was Texas is on its inexorable path to be a blue state because of the margins Obama

and then Hillary were getting with Latino voters. Then that changed after 2020 and now we are in a much different place. Would you have a feel for Nebraska? I've never seen a race for people. There's been such conflicting polling and like there are some polls that show it incredibly close. I've seen polls that,

not so the highest of quality polls I'll make that have shown, they've shown the Democrat, it's shown Dan Osborne ahead, seeing polls that have shown huge leads for Fisher. I think you guys have Fisher as a lean Republican, or is that right? Yeah, I think we have an unlikely right now.

Yeah, yeah. And this feels, in some ways it feels somewhat familiar. We've seen this in other Plains states. We saw it in Kansas, right? With Pat Roberts, where an independent candidate who was really a Democrat, but ran as an independent. It got very close until it wasn't close at all. And so there's a formula here for a Republican to, you know, you just have to make the case

that this person who calls themselves an independent is actually aligned with the Democrat, make it a national partisan race, and you pull out a win. I think Osborne has been successful for a couple of reasons. The first is he just doesn't look or act like your typical politician. The fact that he's not aligned with the party, I think, helps. He's a former labor leader and has a good story to tell. And Fisher, I think, is not as particularly well-known and not well-defined in that state. So he kind of snuck up on her.

It's hard to sneak up on a senator, right? We have about six years to prepare for this thing. It's hard to sneak up on anybody in politics these days, but he did just that. And so, look, at the end of the day, it is still Nebraska. But the fact that this of the day it is still nebraska but The fact that this race is where it is. It's also notable that his last name is osborne now You may remember there was a very famous football coach named tom osborne the the football coach for the university of nebraska

Who he had an e at the end of his name, this Osborne does not, who was also a member of Congress. So the name Osborne in Nebraska is actually a good name, it's a good brand to have. So I don't know how much of it he's benefiting there. But it is clear that he's picking up some level of support from people who are also voting for Donald Trump, right? The kinds of people who I think would say, yeah, I like Donald Trump because he shakes it up

and he's not one of the insiders. This guy seems like a not insider-y kind of guy to me too. And she's part of the system and part of the establishment, so to speak. So yeah, every year you've got one of these races, there's usually one in the house too, or an incumbent that nobody was paying attention to, all of a sudden looks like they are in a lot of trouble. And you know, the money is starting to flow to her, but he's been able to raise an incredible amount of money.

And this is where the nationalization of politics actually helps candidates because a candidate in Nebraska is now able to raise money from people around the country in a way you couldn't back in the pre-internet, pre, yeah. Yeah, there's no grassroots money for a Nebraska Senate candidate. You were just counting on- Yes.

PACs to decide whether your side was gonna be the majority or not. Exactly. It's gets your money. Exactly. So let's talk about the House. In all the various models I've seen, Democrats have a slight or slight favorites

to take the House. I think I find the house fascinating because other we talked to we spent some time talking about the red states there but the Senate map mostly overlays over the presidential map we're talking you know and so the same trends are affecting Kamala Harris in Wisconsin are affecting Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin same thing for Bob Casey and come as Pennsylvania. So there's a lot of that.

The house is very different. There are obviously some battleground house districts in Pennsylvania and states like that, but it's really gonna be decided in New York, in California. Two states which kind of underperformed in 2022. What do you guys think in the House? Well, I'm really glad you brought up New York

and California because the one thing we're noticing in both of those states, which you're right, if you look at, if I told you that, look, Democrats chances run through California and New York in a presidential year, normally you'd say, well, that's great for Democrats because those are two great states for us.

And certainly we'll have higher turnout than we did in 2022, which was a weird year. And you had an unpopular governor in New York and a not very inspired top of the ticket race in California. And so we had really low turnout. At the same time, we're seeing, at least right now, that there's still some sign that that Republican, I don't know if I would call it momentum, but Republican success in New York

and California wasn't just about low turnout in 2022. This is especially true if you're looking at the districts that Democrats need to pick off in California where you have a significant Latino population. It goes back to that question of how well will Trump and Republicans do with Latino voters in a presidential election cycle compared to say an off year? Again, in the not so distant past, you would say, oh, if it's an overwhelmingly Latino district, it will perform better for Democrats in a presidential year than in a midterm year,

but you can't take that to the bank now, not certainly with where we've seen some of these trends with Latino voters going. And in New York, you know, the redrawing of the map that Democrats did didn't really do much to harm Republicans. It shored up a couple of their Democrats, which, you know, playing defense is important too, but, you know, there still are signs that Long Island and some of the places in upstate, slash, Hudson Valley, are just not, they're not gonna perform as well for Harris

as they did for Biden, at least they're not going to perform as well for Harris as they did for Biden, at least they're not right now. Again, it doesn't mean Harris loses these places. It's just that instead of winning them by 10 or 12, it's, you know, six or four. And that means that these challengers, you know, they have a bit of a tailwind, but not as strong of a tailwind as you would expect. To me, it's also like, you know, you've got some quirky races in there too. We've got Democrats holding on in red places and they look pretty strong now.

Marcy Kaptur in Toledo, who was supposed to be- Toast years ago. Toast, absolutely. They drew her a terrible district and she's still holding on. And you've got in the Lehigh Valley, Matt Cartwright in another district that has shifted dramatically to the right, he's still holding on.

The Jared Golden, I haven't seen any data up there recently, but up in Maine. So the incumbent Democrats in those red districts are holding on too. And so to me, it's really where Democrats are defending some of these open seats, like in Michigan. Yeah, what's the Slocken seat? Those two, the Slocken seat and the Kildee seat up there,

those are gonna be critically important. Abigail Spanberger's district in Virginia. Normally, these races, the closest races all break one way. So you see our toss-up category, usually, I think we have 24 in there, and usually 70% of the races would go one direction or the other. So that still may happen in this case. But you're right, they're all in different areas. So you could see something like,

yeah, the New York races go one way, the California races go one way, but North Carolina and Ohio and Michigan go a different way. So it makes for a really, really close, close call So it makes for a really, really close, close call on who has an advantage here. And if these things play out the way they have in recent years, where the top of the ticket is as important as the, it's not more important, but it is incredibly important to what happens below, you know, the races below it, you know,

outrunning your presidential nominee becomes really challenging. And it's interesting because in the Senate, in a lot of the races you're seeing some of the Democratic candidates outrun Harris. Now, I think that's narrowed some. It's definitely narrowed some. It was Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in particular.

And I think there's kind of unique situations in Arizona. Arizona and Nevada. In particular, in Nevada. And a little bit in Michigan, I think, because Mike Rogers is not. He has some challenges in reinventing himself as a Trump Republican. Yeah.

CNN contributor to Trump Republican is a tough pivot over the course of a couple of years with a way station and living in Florida, I think, to get there, but you're seeing them come together. And so I guess you would say the most likely scenario is the winner of the presidential wins the house as well. That's probably what you would expect. That's what we have seen forever and ever and ever.

But wouldn't this be the right year for that to be upended? And so we have a whole bunch of, this has never happened before, scenarios that could happen, which is a double flip, right? The Senate and the House going different ways. You could see that the presidential goes one way and the House going different ways. You could see that the presidential goes one way and the House goes the other, which, again,

haven't seen, haven't seen. I think the last time the House flipped control in a presidential year was in the 1950s. So Eisenhower was president the last time that happened. I think the one thing we can feel somewhat confident in is that we're not gonna get an answer on election night or the day after the election, or maybe two days after the election.

Yeah, it could be weeks, frankly, as it was in 2018. Yeah, and then if it's really close, then we're gonna have recounts and, yeah, and on top of recounts. So that should be quite something. Well I think it's a great place to leave it there. Amy, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

Always smarter after I read you or hear you talk. Oh, you're so nice. Thank you. Appreciate it. Good luck for these last two and a half weeks here. Thanks. You too. Let's take a short break, but before we do, I have an ask.

If you're listening to this podcast, you're already supporting the work we do here at Crooked Media, so thank you for that. As you may have heard, we're currently offering 25% off annual subscriptions to friends of the pod. Here's why you should sign up. Crooked's mission is to create a space for honest conversations about news, politics, and the world around us.

And no matter who wins in 2024, we'll remain committed to that mission. To put it simply, building the shows and initiatives we envision for 2025 requires people, time and resources. Signing up for an annual membership to our subscription service is the best way to support us as we make shows and launch new projects. The 25% discount on new annual subscriptions is an amazing deal. But more importantly, your subscription powers the work we do on our shows and through Vote State of America.

So please help us build a strong, progressive, independent media. Head to crooked.com slash friends or to the Apple podcast feed to learn more. Now I'm joined by Polar Coaster's producer Caroline Reston to answer your questions from our subscriber discord. Caroline, take it away. Dan, I'm happy to be here on Pod Save. I was told by Elijah to downplay my banter by 50 percent. So if you guys want full. I mean, you know what that means?

I want you to double your banter. Do not. Elijah's just trying to stem everyone's growth here because he wants, he likes to be the positive American producer celebrity. He does, and I get it. Fame is a toxic drug, so I get it. Okay, so we have a few questions here from the Discord. The first one we got asked many, many times,

so I'm eagerly awaiting your answer. CNN was reporting on record early voting in Georgia. And Dan, you previously have talked about that the more people that vote, the better it probably is for Trump. What are these early voting numbers saying? Do not read anything into this. Early vote is we spend a lot of time

trying to parse early vote numbers and it tells us very little. Because this could mean really high turnout. Or it could mean that a lot of people who had previously voted on election day have decided that for the purposes of convenience to vote early vote. So you're not adding any new voters.

Turnout may not necessarily be any higher, you're just shifting from election day voters to early voters. Also, how enthusiastic people are, they will often just vote on the first day. As early vote and vote in mail becomes more normalized in this country, you're gonna have more people doing that. It could tell us something great,

it could tell us something terrible, we just don't know. Over the course of time, the campaigns will be able to analyze, take the number of who voted, run it through their database and determine whether these are just typical voters who are gonna vote anyway and now they're voting early.

Are they new voters, people who we did not think were going to vote? Are they low propensity voters that we were hoping to get to the polls? But based on what we know right now, you can't really read into it one thing, good or bad. Great answer to that question. We don't know. Yes. But don't freak out. Here's another question.

I saw that Republicans have completely outpaced Democrats in voter registration in swing states. How much should we be worried about this? How much is it due to people changing their registration to match their 2020 preferences versus a legitimate operation to recruit more Republicans? It is something to worry about. Now, I would state that for a long time, people don't change their voter registration

and they may have registered as a Democrat when Bill Clinton was president, and they've been voting Republican ever since, but they've remained a Democrat because they don't vote in primaries. And so there's no point in changing registration. You will often see, in an election where there's no primary on one side and a presidential primary

on the other, the side having the presidential primary will usually gain registrants because people will register to participate in the primary through the other. The side having the presidential primary will usually gain registrants because people will register to participate in the primary through the registered independents who have always voted Republican, maybe even a few Democrats who registered Republicans to vote in that primary. And so look, you wanna have more registered voters,

Democrats for a long time had a huge edge. That edge was larger than our typical edge in statewide races. So there were some people who were registered as Democrats but voting as Republicans. But it's not as bad as it sounds, but in general, you want to be gaining more registrants, not losing your advantage.

Okay, people are asking very extensive questions on this Discord, which is great, but reading these are quite a mouthful. That's why you should subscribe to Friends of the Pot and join the Discord, because there's some really smart people asking smart questions. They really are.

OK, should the Democrats prioritize energizing their base rather than focusing heavily on swing voters? This is how the press portrays swing voters. Like, the avatar of the swing voter in traditional political media narratives is usually a white man or woman in their forties to fifties in Wisconsin, they go to a diner, they print out the white papers of the Republicans and the

white papers of the Democrats and they go through them to see whose policies would benefit them more. And that's not what that's not those. There are some voters like that. They're definitely I don't know about the printing out of things anymore, but there are people choosing between Trump and Harris like that does exist. definitely, I don't know about the printing out of things anymore, but there are people choosing between Trump and Harris, like that does exist. But the largest swath of quote unquote swing voters or persuasion targets are people choosing between your candidate

and the couch. People who like, who don't like Donald Trump, they kind of like Kamala Harris, they don't know if politics works for them. And so that is who both campaigns are actually focusing on. Trump is not focusing on his base. He's actually there to the extent they have any sort of GOTV operation, it is to try to get low engagement voters, Trump is not focusing on his base. He's actually there to the extent they have any sort of GOTV operation. It is to try to get low engagement voters, people who profile as

Republican, but do not typically vote. And those could be young, young men are a huge part, including black and Latino men are a huge part of Trump's target there. Democrats have a much wider swath of voters that we're going to do that with also includes young, young voters, men and women, people who have never voted before who were trying to get registered. And so the idea that swing voters in the base

are these two entirely different things, I think is a misnomer born of some pretty lazy political writing over the years. Dan, if my memory serves me well, you once said that donating to campaigns directly is more impactful than donating to PACs. Explain further. Yes, your memory does serve you well.

And let me offer some context for that. But the reason why donating to campaigns is more cost efficient and effective than donating to PACs is when it comes to television ads, not digital ads, but television ads, the stations are required to offer the lowest available rate to the campaigns themselves and they can gouge the living shit out of super PACs or any PAC, frankly. And so right now, based on what I've heard, a super PACs are spending five to six times the amount of money per commercial

as the Harrison Trump campaigns or congressional and Senate campaigns are paying. And so when it comes to actual, this sort of campaign, like super PACs and others that are going to run ads on television, donating to the campaign is much more efficient. Now, there are a lot of great organizations, many of them, we support Votes of America, who are PACs that do organizing.

They're doing deep canvassing, they're registering voters, they're getting voters to the poll. And those groups pay the same amount of money as per whatever it is they're buying as the campaign does. But for the purpose of who's spending money on television, give your money to the campaign, because's not you're gonna get much more Bang for your buck that way. Okay, Dan another question if you could design your ideal three week out polling That doesn't already exist or isn't publicly shared and your only budget and scale

Constraints are that you cannot collect info from any true swing state are that you cannot collect info from any true swing state. What states would you be polling and what measures and what differentials would you be watching with the greatest degree of interest? Oh, I mean, what a question. I'm gonna simplify that question. Please do. I think I would look at, there are two states

that are not getting a lot of polling that I would like to see poll because I think they tell us something about what could be happening nationally with certain groups. And so one of them is New Mexico. This is a state that was in play when Biden was the nominee. So much so that Trump was leading in some internal campaign polls in New Mexico from all, from the limited polling I've seen, it is reverted back to its the nominee, so much so that Trump was leading in some internal campaign polls in New Mexico. From the limited polling I've seen, it has reverted back to its relatively safe status from 2020 and before.

But I'd like to know that for sure. I'd like to see what's happening there. So much of the election depends on whether Trump can get to 40% of the Latino vote. Looking at New Mexico would be a very interesting place to do that. And I think looking at the Latino vote in a state that's not seeing a ton of campaign ads would be helpful to give us some sort of hint

in what's happening in other parts of the country, like California and New York, where you have huge swaths of Latino vote that are going to side the House. I'd like to see New Jersey. New Jersey is another state that moved towards Trump when Biden was the nominee. It's theoretically snapback. There's almost no polling there. We have an important Senate race there

where Andy Kim is running to take Bob Menendez's seat, as Bob Menendez heads off to prison or wherever he's going. And in 2021, a Republican almost won the governorship there. A Republican, former truck driver who had no money and ran no real campaign, almost beat Governor Phil Murphy. And New York has moved a little to the right. I'd like to see if that was happening in New Jersey as well.

Interesting time for your last name to be Menendez. I had to get that into one episode of Pod Save America. Okay, Dan, last question, arguably the most important one. If you had to awkwardly sway on stage for 39 minutes, what song would you choose to dance to? I don't think I can answer this question. What? All of my dancing is awkwardly swaying.

There's no other form that exists. But what's your ideal song? My ideal song to sway to? Yeah, in front of a really big awkward crowd. Is it gonna be the same song for 30 minutes or is it gonna be a genre of music? No, it has to be, we're gonna put it on repeat. One song on repeat for 39 minutes. I would say Bohemian Rhapsody,

because it's a long song. So you're only really getting it in like three times. I would say I prepared for the differential question. And the, what would my ideal poll be? I did not prepare for, and I would say in my defense, the actual question as submitted, although you edited it was, Dan, if you had to awkwardly sway on stage to an aria.

And I'm not sure I could name an aria, Ave Maria, I guess, because that's the one Trump did, but my aria knowledge is limited. Okay, I didn't know what that meant. So I just slide it right over it. You can't just take the questioner's questions and then change them to fit what you're interested in. I absolutely can.

Okay, all too well, 10 minute version would be your sway song. Thanks so much for taking Discord questions. what you're already a friend of the pod subscriber I'll be on your feet again soon for a new episode of Polar Coaster. Thanks everyone. Podsave America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seguin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefko, and David Tolles.

Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes, exclusive content, and other community events. Find us at youtube.com slash at Podsave America.