Tangle - INTERVIEW: Isaac talks with Evan Roth-Smith

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

On today’s episode, Isaac talks with Evan Roth-Smith. Evan Roth Smith is a campaign consultant and pollster whose work includes federal, state, and local races, international opinion research, and independent expenditures and nonprofit advisory. He is a founding partner of Slingshot Strategies, a New York City-based political consulting firm providing communications, polling, and advisory expertise. He is also the coauthor of Putin's Master Plan (2016), a book on Russian foreign policy ambitions.You can also check out our latest YouTube video where we tried to build the most electable president ever here and our interview with Bill O’Reilly here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Good news and bad news, everyone: Our New York City event sold out over the weekend! That's good news for us and for everyone who bought their tickets early, and bad news for everyone else who wanted to go. But we talked to the venue and were able to release some more tickets to make sure we got as many members of the Tangle community in the door as possible. So, more good news: There are a couple dozen more seats available. They're going to go fast, so get your tickets now!While we're on the topic, I'm thrilled to announce two of our guests for the event. We'll be joined on stage by Katrina vanden Heuvel, the longtime editorial director at the progressive magazine The Nation, and Josh Hammer, the biting conservative columnist who is now a senior editor-at-large at Newsweek.Buy your tickets hereOur podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

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your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of Isaac's take. I am John Wall, and today we're going to be presenting to you an interview conducted by our very own founder, Isaac Saul.

going to be presenting to you an interview conducted by our very own founder, Isaac Saul. Isaac got to talk with Evan Roth Smith. Evan is a campaign consultant and pollster whose work includes federal, state, and local races, international opinion research, and independent expenditures and nonprofit advisory. He is the founding partner of Slingshot Strategies, a New York City-based political consulting firm providing communications, polling, and advisory expertise. He is also the co-author of Putin's Master Plan, a book on Russian foreign policy ambitions. Without further ado, here's the interview. Evan Roth Smith, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

So before we jump in, I mean, I have so many questions for you. This polling, some of this stuff you've just released, it's super interesting. I think you guys are over the target on some really fascinating narrative threads that I'm seeing a lot in the media space right now. But I'd love to start if you could just tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into some of this work. Sure. Well, like many people in politics, I've never done anything else. uh right before and excited to be able to do great projects like blueprint um which is uh the the democratic research project that uh produced this research uh and um yeah i mean we we put this project together uh late last year uh out of out of sort of an abundance of caution i mean there was you may remember, there was so much concern in the fall of last year around the state of the Democratic Party and what we were facing in 2024,

both at the top of the ticket with Biden and down ballot, right, where we'd like to pick up the House, we'd like to hold the Senate. And there were, you know, the numbers were bad, the issues seemed unfavorable. Approval ratings and favorability for our leading elected officials were really, really rough. And it seemed like there wasn't a roadmap, right? There wasn't a blueprint for how Democrats could could move forward. And many of us, people like myself who have been in Democratic politics for years, we're very concerned by this. for years. We're very concerned by this. And we put this together as sort of a, like, okay, we, you know, all the niceties aside, all of the things we'd like to have, like to do, like to be about, how do we go out and win this election, right? How do we go out and beat Donald Trump? You know, we've endeavored to be descriptive, not prescriptive. We are not a, you know, an advocacy group or an interest group. We don't get money from, uh, you know, whether it's good guys, bad guys, it's, it's, it's no guys, right. It's, it's funded by democratic party donors.

that freedom, we kind of just took a really hard look at the electoral landscape and have been able to do that starting late last year when we focused a lot on Bidenomics and the failure of Biden's economic agenda to break through with voters in a positive way. And now we've covered things like immigration, like junk fees, foreign policy, and lots more to come. There's lots of time before the election. So you guys just released a new poll that has a lot of, I would say, maybe surprising results for me in some areas and some fascinating stuff to consider in this moment right now. Joe Biden is heading into a State of the Union that is coming on March 7th. His campaign is basically calling it a reset moment. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about some of the top-line findings of this poll and maybe discuss how the results sort of continue trends you've seen in the past or maybe break from those trends, which I think is, you know, an important thing to know heading into this, you know, quote unquote, reset moment? Well, I think the campaign and the White House

are right to want a reset moment. We have seen that on a handful of really salient issues, like immigration, like the state of the economy, like foreign policy. voters really struggle to assign positive outcomes to the White House, even when there are real accomplishments for them to take credit for. A lot of voters don't give them that credit. And that's in part a messaging failure. It's in part a communications failure. It has to do with the media ecosystem and what gets attention and what doesn't. And it also is because we're now just really getting into the meat of the election season. Anyone who works elections will tell you, you know, voters break late, they tune in late. Trump and Biden are obviously dominant headlines in so many ways, but a lot of voters don't really start paying attention day to day in the way that you or I or the people who are watching this might pay attention until much later in the game. Most people do not live their day to day lives in a state of monitoring politics. God bless them. They're better for it. And so as this election shapes up, I do think we will see hopefully the Biden campaign get more aggressive. This is a good moment for that reset. And in our

polling, in our most recent polling, we focused a lot on the contrasts between Biden and Trump that can be drawn by the Biden campaign and by the White House, right, as he goes out there and talks about what he's doing as president. And one of our real frames for this was the belief and understanding that, you know, for a lot of voters, now that people are coming to terms with what appears to be right, we haven't had the conventions yet, but appears to be a Biden versus Trump election. Uh, you know, that's a rerun of 2024 of 2020, excuse me. Uh, it's a rerun of 2020. So the only thing that's different between now and 2020, because we know both of these guys really well, right? We know a lot about Biden. Voters feel they know Biden. Voters feel they know Trump. The only thing that's different is Biden's been present for three years, right? So what's changed, right? What has he gotten done with that time? And what might actually be different between him and Trump this time. So that's what we really

tried to dial in on. And some of the things that voters are concerned about with Joe Biden, right? We asked voters, if Joe Biden were to become the next president, what would you be most concerned about? And then we did the same thing with Donald Trump, right? So with Biden, the top of the list is age. That won't surprise anyone, right? This is not a media, you know, manufactured concern. People are worried that Joe Biden might be too old for the job. But there are other things that are pretty close to the top of that list, right? Things like increases on the price of goods and services, things like immigration and the border, things like the state of the economy. And fascinatingly, and I'll return to this, is the national debt, that Biden would raise the national debt. Now, it's almost funny because we

barely talk about the national debt these days, but we do have to remember that for really two decades, two and a half decades, the national debt was key core issue in American electoral politics, particularly at the presidential level. Bill Clinton won two terms, really, on his budget policies in so many ways, right? He rebalanced the budget. He promised to cut deficits. This was a core promise of the Clinton years. And it was something that liberals hammered, Democrats hammered George W. Bush over, that he was ballooning the deficit. And it was something that conservatives and Republicans went after Barack Obama on, right? So we have two decades of debt and deficit politics in this country, budget politics. I'm not saying it doesn't go back further, but, you know, it's in recent memory.

And now, particularly post-COVID, it's become almost passe to worry about the budget and to talk about the debt and the deficit. But voters still care. And in fact, when it comes to Biden, the debt is the second highest concern after age. And it's only six points behind age. It's at the same level as inflation and prices. So that's interesting. It's something we can return to. It's also worth noting the debt and deficit in the minds of many voters is a stand in for prices and inflation and general economic health because that's how it's been sold to them, you know, was sold to them during campaigns in the 90s and the 2000s as because I am responsible on the debt and the deficit, therefore I'm

responsible for your, you know, with your economic well-being. You are going to see when I cut the debt, when I minimize the deficit or run a surplus as president, you will see the benefits. Voters were told that for many, many years. And so they still expect they want to hear it. And they're worried about not hearing it. With Trump, there's been a lot of conversation about what are Trump's actual vulnerabilities, right? We know there are many things that are unfavorable about him, right? That he has committed crimes, that he was an irresponsible president, that the, you know, his policies were bad, that he's personally, you know, repugnant in my view. But what actually resonates with voters, right? What are they worried about if he becomes president again out of all this stuff?

was really this sort of personal, almost plutocratic vendetta-style politics of abusing the presidency to take revenge, of breaking the law, letting tax cheats off the hook, that he would ignore military leaders, that he would cut taxes for the rich but not for anyone else, right? And I think that, you know, what we found here is maybe the start of a playbook, as it seems Trump comes closer to becoming the nominee, that Democrats can run to really attack the president on things that matter. Not that he, you know, it's true that he, you know, attempted to subvert our democracy. It's true that his actual policies were really bad as president. But that's not what voters are most concerned about. They're concerned about the style of politics that he practices, the way he uses politics to benefit himself personally, and the fact that, you know, to turn one of his real strengths against him, that he's going to cut their taxes and his own taxes and his family's taxes. These are not concerns people have about Biden. And they are a place where it seems very, very productive to draw a contrast. So I actually do want to talk about the deficit, the national debt response really quickly, because this was a question I had sort of written down for you for later in the interview, but you brought it up, so you might as well get to it. This shocked me. I mean, this was maybe the most

surprising thing about the whole poll that I saw, which was that 63% of respondents said they were worried about Biden increasing the national debt, and 69% said they were worried about his age. So, I mean, literally almost as important as the age question for voters. Yet, you know, if you were watching the media coverage or just keeping track of where things were in the campaign, you would think the age issue was eons and eons more important. I'm curious kind of what you make of that result and maybe what your advice to the Biden administration would be about how to act on that data? Well, they have a great record on the deficit that they can point to. They have cut

the deficit. They've talked about it. They put press releases out. They'll talk about it in briefings from the White House and things like that. And again, sometimes it feels silly to turn to the Democratic Party at this moment with everything going on in our politics and say, you should talk about the debt and deficit, right? It almost feels crazy or a little harebrained. But it's true. I mean, voters are programmed to care about this stuff. And, you know, by programmed, I mean, they've been told by politicians for years that they should care about this stuff. And, you know, we talk a lot about new voters and young voters and people who are just coming into the electorate or who, you

know, maybe their first encounter with presidential politics was during the Obama years, right? But that's not most of the electorate. Most of the electorate came of political age much earlier than that, right? And their first president was voting for someone named, you know, Bush or Clinton or another Bush or maybe Reagan, right? Or even earlier, right? Most Americans voting in this election have a longer political memory and a longer set of political stimuli than the issues du jour would suggest, right? And the debt and deficit is a big part of that. It's a core metric by which we've measured almost every president. It was something that presidents would tout when they got it right, they'd run on it. And it was something that, you know, both parties would bash presidents over the head with when they got it wrong.

And voters were told they should be responsive to that, they should care about that. And it shouldn't really surprise us that they still do. What should surprise us is that it vanished from the political discussion, right? Not only because of this sort of political electoral history, but because it is actually an important thing, right? We don't want to run a huge national debt. It would be nice to have, you know, better government budgeting and things like that. And I think part of this is, you know, COVID is mentioned, right? Thinking about money and the deficit and the debt, all that just sort of went out the window because we as a country, as a society sort of went into survival mode. Everyone loved having

checks written to them. That was an important moment. I think it goes back a little further also to the 2009 crash of the economy, the Great Recession, and the massive bailouts that were undertaken of the American industry as a result of that. And we sort of, we, you know, the electorate is willing to turn a blind eye to the debt and deficit during moments of crisis, right? When no one wants to be a bean counter when it feels like the world is burning. But as you leave moments of crisis, the debt and the deficit return. So that's one element of this is that we are returning to, it might not feel like a normal mode of politics, but we were returning to a more normal post-crisis mode of politics. So that's one factor. The other factor is that the deficit hawks, the people who like to talk about the deficit the most, who like to put it on the table the most, are the hardline traditional conservatives in the Republican Party. And Donald Trump has scrambled the conservative movement. He has made it about things that are not, you know, the federal budget, right, that are not about small government. If his presidency is anything to go by, Donald Trump doesn't really care about small government, right? He ran up the debt. And so those two factors combined, you know, the dual crises that sort of of the Great Recession and then COVID that sort of weakened the position of of the national debt and American political discourse. And, you know, the sort of debt or, you know, dying moments of the of the traditional American conservative movement around the budget and the budget hawks at the hands of Trump, largely. Those two things,

I think, obscure how important the debt still remains to many voters. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. The most recent survey that you guys put out, I thought, did a really good job of focusing on some of the differences between different voter groups. So working class voters, independents, young voters, 65 and over, among others. And then there are concerns about Biden and Trump as candidates. Could you talk a little bit about some of the core concerns these voters have, maybe how they differ, anything among these groups that kind of sticks out to you as a Democratic pollster? Well, I'll start with independent voters because they are almost certainly the most important,

right? And independent voters are not a demographically neutral group, right? They skew a little more conservative, they skew a little older. But they're really important when it comes to winning elections. They're really important when it comes to winning swing states like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Arizona. In Arizona, independents are actually the largest registered voter group, right? They outnumber Democrats and Republicans. And they're also really important for these swing congressional races, right? If you are in a swing district, you need every last voter you can get. And these independents are a critical part of the electorate and any sort of winning coalition, any swing election at any level. So we looked at their concerns specifically. And fascinatingly, you know, they are concerned about Biden's age. They are concerned about the debt, like other folks. But prices for independents rockets to the top. Independents are more concerned about prices and inflation under Biden than they are about his age. That is a huge opening

for Democrats to make the positive case on what this president has done on prices and inflation. That, you know, we have a lot to run on. Numbers continue to improve by and large. There's been a lot of talk about why doesn't Biden get enough credit? Why, you know, this, that and the other. And so it's already, you know, flashing red lights around how does Biden take credit for combating inflation. But really with this group of independents, it should be our number one priority because it's their number one priority. They are more concerned about this than anything else. And they are so critical to winning elections. When it comes to Trump, it is a pretty similar set of concerns as we discussed before.

You know, a majority of independents are worried that Trump is going to pardon himself for crimes that he gets convicted of, you know, over the next few months if he becomes president. They're concerned he's going to let rich tax cheats get away with cheating taxes, cheating the government out of money. And they're worried he's going to ignore military leaders. This was an interesting one to see at the top, right? That Trump won't listen to the generals, he won't listen to the seasoned advisors, that he's going to do things that threaten national security, even when the generals tell him no. This is a problem sort of of Trump's own making, because during his presidency, he really lifted up a lot of generals, right right he lifted up a lot of military folks um as as in many ways the face of his foreign policy and the face of his administration when it came to america's place in the world uh and then you

know one by one sort of like like stalin deleting people from pictures so he'd never have to be associated with them right he sort of tossed him to the side, right? As they started to tell him not to do things that they thought was right. And that stuck, right? If you were an independent voter who was Trump-curious or maybe voted for Trump, you were watching for signs that he maybe wasn't doing things the way he was supposed to. And when the president comes up and says, here's this general who gets everything right he's he wins every battle he's going to win every war i trust him you know to lead our our young men women in battle right and i listen to what he says and six months later you're like he's a traitor to our country and has

no place in my administration you know voters who maybe gave you the benefit of the doubt start to think i don't know about next time. Right. So it is interesting to see that really pop for for independents. Based on Charles Yu's award winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 Thank you. free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

One thing that you guys said or a point that you've made that certainly caught my attention was that Democrats should treat Black voters as if they're swing voters in 2024. Now, I'm cognizant of the fact that for the last couple of elections, I feel like I've seen this kind of narrative arc happen that Democrats were at risk of losing black voters. I remember in 2020, Trump was claiming he was going to get 20 or 30% of the black vote. But I very rarely have seen that kind of come into fruition at election time. And I don't want to talk about Black voters as if they're just a monolith. But in the last few elections, at least, they have tended to get in line with Democrats once election day came around. So I'm curious to hear more about that position, your concern, what you're seeing,

you know, what kind of makes you feel like the situation might be that dire right now? not that black voters are swinging the way swing voters are uh but that you can message them the same way that if there is any slippage among black voters and there is some polling data to suggest that you know maybe we're not we're not in the shape that we'd like um or or at the very least that trump is pulling higher than we'd like particularly on things like favorability among black voters who absolutely true that they they are the core and the base of the democratic party that the most reliable voters for the democratic party out there um but what we found was that if we want to if we are worried about some of this slippage and we want to address it the same there are things that work for black voters that that black voters care about en masse uh that also work with some of these

swingiest swing voters right right, who we need. And so if you're worried about shoring up the base of your party, if you're worried about some slippage there, but you also know you need to go out and get, you know, these suburban swing voters, right? If you're talking about a state like Wisconsin and you're worried about the, you know, black voters in Milwaukee turning out in large enough numbers, because it's rarely, as you said, it's really when black voters have doubts about the Democratic Party, it's rarely them becoming Republicans. It's more of them staying home and saying, these people haven't earned my vote, right? And so if you're in a state like Wisconsin, you're worried about black turnout in Milwaukee being where you need it to be,

right, and being healthy and substantial and black voters being motivated and feeling like they're excited and that the Democratic Party is delivering for them uh but you also need to win right these collar counties in the in the milwaukee suburbs uh filled with with swing voters and independents what do you go out and talk about right so so we said you can actually on certain issues you can you can talk about the same things, that it's prices, prices, prices, that it's things like health care and junk fees, even the deficit, that we saw these things. What we went out and did is we polled the swingiest swing voters, people who have actually changed their vote over the last four elections. They don't just say they're swing voters so they can get into a focus group, right? These people are actively changing who they vote for. And we looked at Black voters, and we ran the same policy test on both of them, on both groups, to say,

what do you want to see? What would work for you? And we pulled out a handful of things that tested really well for both. And at the top of that list is something that is going to happen over the next couple of months that the White House is already rolling out, which is Medicare being able to negotiate drug prices. Uh, and that is huge, huge. Uh, it is at 87% support among swing voters is at 89% support among black voters. So if you are looking for something to talk about, you can talk about everywhere with everyone, with all of these voters, whether they're loyal base voters that you're worried might not turn out for you, or they're swing voters who you need to persuade to vote for you, you can go out and talk about Medicare

negotiation of drug pricing until your head explodes, right? And in this most recent poll, one of the things that we found was how well the Medicare drug pricing does with the electorate writ large. And we actually tested some of the drugs, because there's a list of drugs that Medicare is now going to, you know to be able to negotiate pricing of and bring down prices on. And a majority of the electorate seems to think that they know someone on these drugs. About 42% are sure they can name the drug. Half the electorate isn't quite sure if they know someone in their immediate family on one of these drugs. So that probably means some of them do, and they'll notice it once it comes through. But, you know, if you put names like, you know, Entresto and Stelara in front of people in a poll, they don't always know, is my mom on that, right? Is my partner on that? Is that the one, right? want. Right. But we see huge opportunity in this Medicare drug pricing negotiation. And as it comes into fruition over the next few months, it's something that the administration

should really be aggressive about, you know, hanging their hat on. I'm interested to hear what you guys are seeing with regards to abortion and how it's impacting voters right now. Obviously, Democrats have been on a really strong electoral run since the fall of Roe v. Wade. It appears to me to be an incredibly salient issue, maybe the issue that's driving a lot of Democratic turnout. I noticed, you know, in the press release about your survey results, you know, you guys listed the top five concerns voters have about Donald Trump. Abortion was not in that top five. It wasn't part of, you know, the big concerns voters have about him, but it was listed as sort of a salient talking point for President Biden.

So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about maybe that discrepancy and just what you think the lay of the land is on the abortion issue right now and how advantageous it is for Democrats. So I would say based on what we found, it's not just a salient talking point for Democrats, it's the salient talking point for Democrats. It was our top testing contrast message, right? After we tested all these concerns, we tested a whole bunch of messages about every topic under the sun, contrasting Joe Biden and Donald Trump, right? Our own words, right? But coming up with the kind of thing that the campaign could say, you know, Donald Trump did this and it was bad. Joe Biden does this and it's good. Vote for us, Right. So we tested that about all sorts of things. And the number one thing is

abortion. And I think what's what's happening there and why it has so well, other than that, you know, there is massive support for for reproductive rights across the electorate. Every poll shows this when you pull reproductive rights in swing districts, swing congressional districts, swing congressional districts, as we've done, it's usually about twice as popular as the Democratic Party, right? So we'd be silly not to tie ourselves to reproductive rights and abortion. But I think that contrast between, or that discrepancy between what people are worried about when it comes to Trump and what works when you're hitting Trump is, you know, people were not worried about Trump's ideology.

So I think most voters know he doesn't really have one. Right. His his personal ideology that he'd be too conservative. Right. Tested pretty low. They know Donald Trump is not a Barry Goldwater conservative or a Rush Limbaugh conservative. He's a guy who will do whatever he needs to do and say whatever he needs to say to meet, you know, the political realities of the moment. What they were worried about is that he will capitulate and privilege conservative activists, right, with strong ideological beliefs in his administration. ideological beliefs in his administration. So we tested the same thing on Joe Biden, right? Is he going to be too progressive? Is he going to, you know, favor progressive activists? And they were sort of in the same place, right? They tested right next to each other when it comes to Joe Biden, because he's a standard Democrat, right? People are always worried, is that Democrat going to be too liberal? You know, is that Democrat going to let, you know, aggressive activists run the show? But with Trump, we saw

separation between those two things. They aren't worried that Trump is going to be a conservative himself. They know he doesn't have personally conservative instincts, but they are worried he could hand policy over to conservative activists. And the reason the abortion messaging test so well, I think, is that when we pin Donald Trump down on that, it works. It works because voters are worried. They see what's going on. They saw the fall of Roe, which was unpopular. They're seeing I mean, this IVF stuff is is beyond the pale. And it's sort of proof positive for this kind of approach where when the Republican Party gets overtaken by its activist wing, they really suffer electorally and they're thrown into political crisis. You know, it's been almost two years since Roe was struck down. And, you know, the Republicans still don't have a playbook. They don't have messaging. They don't seem to have a legislative approach that

they can roll out in the states. They they control plenty of states they had opportunities to try and sort of you know appease the activist wing and mitigate damage with voters by passing laws and states uh that they control around the country but they didn't do that really uh what happened is the activists you know stayed at the vanguard and have been writing really draconian legislation that has made national news has caused enormous tragedy and loss around the country, suffering, persecutions, prosecutions. And it is an entirely credible argument for Democrats to make, to say, listen, you know where we are on abortion. We want it legal. We want to codify Roe. The president has now said this. None of us really know where Donald Trump, what Donald Trump feels

about anything. We get that and you get that. You know, you, the voter, get that. But what we know and what you know and what we see around the country is when Republicans take control of government, these conservative activists come in and pass lunatic abortion laws, incredibly restrictive. And they go way beyond abortion to things like IVF and stuff that, you know, a lot of voters assumed was untouchable, right? Assumed they'd never come from. The primary victims of Republican IVF laws like this, you know, what's going on in Alabama right now are Republicans, right? They're doing this in states they run, where they get the majority of the votes. And so a lot of Republicans and a lot of independents who live in these states or around the country watching this stuff, that is a very credible argument to make, to say,

you know, that the conservative activists who have pull within the Republican Party are calling the shots on this. And if you vote for Donald Trump, even though he may not be a personal conservative ideologue, these people will call the shots on abortion policy. And that is very, very scary. It's scarier and more salient than anything else we test. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. I'm curious about, I guess, a larger polling question that I have for you that maybe steps away from your work a little bit. It's possible you guys have actually done some work on this. I don't know for sure. One of the things that I'm sort of seeing and a narrative that I've kind of

brought up in my newsletter and on the podcast is every year that Donald Trump's been in an election, 2016, 2020, even in the midterms, 2018, 2022, there's been this fear among pollsters in the media that the Trump vote was being undercounted, basically, that, you know, Trump voters, there's been this fear among pollsters in the media that the Trump vote was being undercounted, basically, that, you know, Trump voters, there's all sorts of different theories of why they don't respond to pollsters, they don't pick up the phone, yada, yada, yada. But the upshot is basically that we're missing that vote. And what I feel like I'm seeing the last few years is that polls are actually overstating the level of Trump support. I mean, it seems like Republicans are underperforming in a lot of elections. And even

in the primaries, we're seeing, you know, Trump polling two to one over Nikki Haley in South Carolina and then winning by 20 points, you know, still obliterating her, but not by a two to one margin. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that trend or if any of your work has kind of touched this issue and how you think the general polling landscape is handling the Trump political movement right now. Well, the general polling landscape is pretty crummy, right? And one of the things that happened in 2016 is you had a failure of the institutional polling players, right, to predict the Trump outcome. It was widely discrediting to the industry, you know, this is nothing we don't know, right? That after 2016, all pollsters were sort of

a joke. They can't, you know, they can't get anything right. Uh, and there was some truth to that, right? The pollsters blew it in 2016. What that caused was a market opportunity, right? It's if all the old institutional players in this very, you know, sort of niche and, um, largely closed industry, uh, are suddenly discredited, uh, all these new players can enter that market. Right. And you saw new polling operations launch and you saw, you know, new poll, you know, pollsters who may have been around have been small. Suddenly we start to do a lot more volume, have a lot more clients. Uh, that's, that's when we started, uh, slingshot, right. Uh, which is blueprint is, is our project. And what that led to is a lot more irregularity throughout the polling landscape, a lot less consistency. When the pollsters missed before, when the institutional pollsters missed, it was largely due to methodological issues, but they'd miss in the same direction, right? They all miss the same way, usually by similar numbers, right? Some are worse than others, but if you, you know, analyze it, it's, they would miss usually in the same way by the same amount. But now when misses happen, it's just all over the place, right? Because so many different pollsters who entered this market are doing so many different things. You have pollsters who run all online, you know, polls and recruit their

sample off of Facebook. You have people who still do it all landline, right? You have all sorts of approaches that are happening, and all of those approaches build in different benefits, different limitations. one pollster who you know missed 15 points one way and another pollster missed 15 points the other way and it's like what the hell are these people doing and and i think people are right to to worry about that and fake that um when they see you know a 30 point spread between the polls and you know a result right in the middle or something uh you know the the polling for for blueprint in this project is done by you gov um by and large, right? This poll you're looking at now is done by YouGov. And, you know, they're a well-established polling firm with a pretty good track record. But one of the things we focus on, you out and say, oh, Biden up three in Wisconsin, right? Biden down five in Pennsylvania. You know, that sort of day-to-day horse race polling is where you find a lot of that volatility. When you dive in on issues like this, you limit some of that volatility.

But also, you know, we care about rankings and relative positionings, right? So if we're wrong 10 points across the board, our rankings, you know, what does best, what does worst is going to be largely unchanged, right? Even if our sample isn't perfect. And so that's why we like to do these sort of relativistic positionings of various statements, of various concerns, because it limits that kind of volatility where if your sample's wrong, even in a small way, but especially if it's wrong in a big way, you know, if you're out there trying to talk about a three-point margin, a five-point margin, if you have a problem in your sample, you're wrong. You are just wrong. But if you're talking about, here's the order things are in, it's much harder for a sample composition to impact that kind of result. Throughout this conversation, one of the things that strikes me is a lot of the polling, as you guys are doing it, as you just described, it's designed in a way to give you specific takeaways about how to approach the campaign.

I mean, it's the blueprint, as you said. to approach the campaign. I mean, that is, it's the blueprint, as you said. I'm curious what your relationship's like with the White House, their campaign. Are you guys communicating this stuff to them? How receptive are they to some of the weaknesses and the strengths of, you know, where Biden is and what do you expect from them going forward, you know, in 2024, how they're going to handle this? Well, we, we communicate that we absolutely communicate this to the white house and to the campaign. Um, they get all of our, our polling results. We communicate it to just about every, um, major operator and not so major operator in, in the democratic space, right? We, we talked to house leadership, we talked to Senate

leadership, um, because the whole point of this was just, Hey, we want to get numbers in front of you that show you how to win, show you how Democrats can win. Um, we've, the response has been universally appreciated. Um, you know, I think there are places where, uh, our polling has, uh, potentially, you know, informed some decisions about what gets talked about, uh, at the campaign level or the White House level. We also, I think, you know, a very helpful thing to do is a lot of politics is like gut what you think is right. And it's very helpful when someone comes out there with a poll and says you're on the right track. And for things like junk fees, right, where the administration could put a lot of work into junk fees regulation and talked about it a decent amount um you know we we put out a whole bunch of polling and we'll continue to so long as it um continues to be uh an issue uh that shows that yeah voters are really really responsive

to junk fees stuff they love that uh and i you know that creates a sort of feedback loop uh with the white house where you know if we're putting out polling that says you guys are on the right track keep talking about this stuff um they do they do look at it they see it um sometimes you talk about it but uh you know that helps them sort of stay the course right instead of flitting around trying you know throwing spaghetti at the wall see what sticks uh you know we're out there being like actually we've we've tested which spaghetti is the stickiest and you guys just threw it so stick with that spaghetti um and i would say the the uh and by the way we also talk to state parties even in states that

are really tough we talk to congressional campaigns uh we'll talk to any demcrab who's trying to win an election frankly um. That's our MO here. That's our approach. And, you know, there are elections that are very, very important, like the presidential. And there are elections that are happening all over this country that receive a lot less attention but are just as important for Democrats to win. So I know you said you don't do horse race polling. But before we get out of here, I think,

you know, I'd be derelict in my duty not to ask about kind of where you see things right now today. We're recording this on Tuesday, February 27th. How do you think Biden is matching up with Trump? If the election were held today, you know, what would you expect to happen? How do you think things would break? I'm just curious what your state of the union is right now from a polling perspective. I think the race is just about on a knife's edge. I think that if the election were held today, that there are more voters who would break away from trump than break away from biden i think there are a lot more unanswered questions about trump uh right now in the minds of voters there's a lot more uncertainty there's a lot more uh volatility uh surrounding trump at the current

at the current moment you know on this day we're talking i i also and you know not not to not to reject the premise, right? But the election isn't today, right? And that's part of how it works, right? There are plans in place. You know, a billion dollars more is going to be spent by each side going into November. Voters are going to be inundated as they always are with TV ads and mailers and things like that. There are going to be things that happen in America and around the world between now and the election that inform the choice. And, you know,

the Biden campaign is going to get into full swing. You know, I think we will, there are choices to be made around how the president can be positioned, framed, not just on a messaging standpoint, but literally, right? Do you have them doing standing speeches or do you have them doing sit-down interviews, right? Do you have them doing everything out of the Rose Garden in the White House in familiar settings or do you send them all over the country at a breakneck pace? Who are the lead surrogates, right? These are all things that will happen over the next nine months eight months now um and and will inform the choice voters voters have to make and as as we talked about at the top you know it's not that

there are lots and lots of voters particularly in this election who haven't made up their minds but this election like most elections will be decided in the final six to eight weeks um and and that's just how it goes and And so where the election stands today, and this is part of why we don't really do the daily horse race tracking or the weekly horse race tracking, is it's just not the election. It's just not the election. The election, you know, the voters will have their say

and there's a lot that's going to happen between now and then. There are a lot of choices both sides have to make. There's a lot of money to be spent and there's a lot of time to make an impact. Evan Rothsmith, I appreciate you giving us some of your time today. If people want to keep up with your work, where's the best place for them to do that? Blueprint2024.com. We post everything out there. All the polling is public. If you are curious, if you are working on an election,

if you one day would like to work on an election, or if you're covering elections as a journalist, that's where everything is. We put everything out there. Thanks so much for your time, Evan. I appreciate it. Thank you, Isaac. Pleasure to be here with Tangle. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul,

and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like

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