The Bulwark Podcast - Amy Walter: A 50-50 Race

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

The presidential race is essentially tied, with movement on the margins that may not be picked up in polling. So prepare for a lot of mood swings in the next seven weeks. Amy Walter and Tim Miller dive deep into PA voters v WI voters, Penn State grad Trump fans, and the prospects for Kamala in NC v GA. Plus, a cliffhanger in the House. show notes: Vance's awkward missed fist bump with Marcy Kaptur

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That's the thing. I've kind of let this lesbian buddy comedy thing happen over on the Focus Group podcast. I know it. And I'm like, no. We can have a cross, what is that? A cross platform? Cross pollinate. Yeah. You know, we can kind of break down the barriers between the L and the G.

That's right. You know, it's just, you know, we're all on one flag. Okay. I want to get nerdy with you today. Is that good? We had Brownstein on a couple weeks ago. People love the nerdy stuff. All right.

So we're going to update. It's been a few weeks since we've gotten really deep into the numbers. So before we kind of go state-by-state, I'm just curious, big picture, just looking at the presidential first, then we'll get into down ballot. How do you look at the state of the race right now, you know, a week out from the debate? Tim, it's funny because I was just having this conversation with folks this weekend about what's the best analogy to describe where we are in this election. And I start with saying, all right, like you, Tim, I'm not as big of a like football aficionado and all of the details of this, but this is what I

know about football. I'll help you punch it up. I'll help you punch up the analogy. Thank you. All right. So here's the deal. In July, you had Team Red that was in basically first and goal, and Team Blue had half their team on the field field and the quarterback had a dislocated shoulder and a broken ankle. Okay. And that's where we were. Yeah. And the only way that Team Blue was going to win is if Team Red just fumbled and fumbled and fumbled. All right.

Now what we have, and here's my challenge, is that both teams, maybe we have like a split screen, and both teams are at first and goal. And I don't know which one is going to be able to get it over the line so they're basically now in that same zone you think it's even right now that's what you're saying yeah total coin flip if you are a person and this is no judgment at all but are looking at all the different forecasts and models and basing your mood on whether it says 55% or 62% or 71%, you're never going to feel better because it's essentially a 50-50 race with movement coming on the margins that I just don't know that we're going to be able to pick up in traditional polling or modeling or any of that. Now, could we get to a place in October

where it feel like we're going to be vibing a lot, right? Who does it feel like has the momentum? Where's the issue set? Or what are we talking about more than not talking about? But like, I don't know. I look at all of those States. I look at the polling and all of those, I look at the results in those swing States from the last two cycles.

They've all been decided by three points or less actually, mostly less. I'm partially with you well i'm partially uh being clocked by you because yeah okay my mood my mood is drastically impacted by each data point and each movement each new forecast update it does impact my mood and you know i also uh i also use artificial means to mood stabilize. I get you. Because that's what you got to do sometimes.

But at the same time, I think that some of it is, there's a silliness to it. Part of it that I don't participate in is like, I'm so mad at you, Polster or a modeler, because you're not correct about what is going to happen. Right. You haven't put into the model things that i think are important i find that very stupid and kind of a waste of time and actually almost if particularly if you have your kamala hat on like potentially actually harmful like if you're if your entire existence is arguing on the internet that kamala is definitely going to win and that anyone that

doesn't think that she's going to win is part of a russian plot like you're actually probably hurting kamala uh you're probably not making any difference at all but if you're if you are it's negative because there's a reason why kamala's campaign leaked internal polls that showed them losing right because they want people to be engaged like they they do not buy the kind of thing that like it helps the narrative for people to think that she's winning but yeah yeah and that's what the campaign wants. So anyway, putting that aside,

I'm going to give you my state of play, bullish pitch for Harris, and then let's talk through it. Okay. So we have a Pennsylvania pullout yesterday that has her up three, 49, 46, one poll in Suffolk.

They did look at two particular swing counties as well. So, you know, it seems like they took the effort seriously versus some of these polls and she's had a you know persistent lead in michigan and wisconsin she has basically solved the enthusiasm gap problem there is a you know maybe not all parts we'll talk to this when we talk about the bullish side for trump not all parts of the coalition but much of when we talk about the bullish side for Trump, not all parts of the coalition, but much of her coalition, much of the coalition that turned out for Joe Biden in 2020 is solid. There are some, you know, gains that you see certain places, high educated,

former Republicans and Donald Trump lost last time. And so, you know, she comes from a place where it's like, if you're going to be able to turn people out, if you've added a little bit, if you have those two states, there's a bunch of different paths to victory. They've got to feel pretty good about the state of the case. That's kind of my bull case for Kamala. Would you add or subtract anything from that? that if you say since Kamala Harris has gotten into this race, she has been on offense, and there's not really been anything to take her off of offense, right? Like, she has not had self-inflicted mistakes. There's not been an event or a series of events that has taken her off of that sort of forward momentum. And, you know, if you think, all right, it just keeps going this way for the next 40, whatever many days,

then yes, you can sort of see how she is pressing the case. And it's Trump who is desperately trying to like, get back into the race. And it's been pretty clear now after the debate that he, well, let's start with the debate. That was his one opportunity to do that change and put her on her heels. He did not do that, obviously. Now it's the, well, let's keep pushing on immigration. Even if it's talking about cats and dogs being eaten, that's better than talking about maybe anything else, because immigration is the thing that he wants to talk about. Of course, it's where it's his wheelhouse, he feels comfortable there. But I don't know that that's really getting the job done in the way that you need to in order to prosecute

the case he needs to make her the incumbent and his ads actually tim this is what i'm really curious to see we've now had i want to go in and check what the numbers are now but the amount of money that's getting dumped into those key swing pennsylvania just Pennsylvania, for example, the ads are telling the story that the Trump campaign wants to tell. She's been a cheerleader for everything that's gone wrong under the Biden administration. She loved Bidenomics. She was the border czar, right? If you think you're electing a vote vote for change you're not but he didn't make that case in the debate particularly well no and she's been able to push back on that narrative in part by not giving more oxygen to this idea that she's just more of the same or that she's going to be not just more of the same but maybe more liberal but 49 46 let me just say this

before we get to the trump bull case let's just be on coconut time for a minute and talk about the the pennsylvania poll let's talk 49 46 two swing counties erie and up by allentown where she's up by and up in both same pollster had federman winning that's pretty good yeah and if you get pennsylvania you'll be winning michigan right she'll win michigan i think wisconsin we always get fooled by wisconsin that it just doesn't make any sense to me that the polls show her up by four points in wisconsin but tied in pennsylvania remember biden, Biden won Pennsylvania by like two points and, and won Wisconsin by less than one. So either Wisconsin is not the outlier, Wisconsin is actually where this race is. And in that case, then Pennsylvania is also in her camp. And that's

the, that's the blue wall being reconstituted or wisconsin is going to be once again like really close as a tipping point state instead of pennsylvania which everybody's rightly focused on because trump is focused on pennsylvania and not as much on wisconsin but yeah you can sit on 40 you could say 49 46 given how important pennsylvania is sure i'd like to see some more polls out of pennsylvania sure as you would like as well more it's more pollsters yeah yeah get on it let's continue to talk about that upper midwest blue wall and the case for her a couple other data points that i would look at this is is part of the blue wall case, is that we do have Senate polls in all those states. Yes. And the Democrats are winning in all of them. Yes. And so, I don't know, maybe, again, polls are polls. They're not

crystal balls. But you combine the fact that you have Casey winning in Pennsylvania in all these polls, you have Baldwin winning in Wisconsin. You know, there's gonna be some crossover voters, but those two numbers are going to have to meet closer to the middle, right? I keep coming back to that too, which is, which is the, I mean, I've been having this conversation, Tim, for, well, months, even when Biden was in this race, right? Especially when Biden was in. That was the case for those that were like, that was trying to move bison it's like biden's losing by 10 and bob casey's winning by 10 seems like a biden problem to me and that number has the number has uh gotten smaller you know the gap is smaller but still the democratic senate candidates persisted having better poll numbers than harris right and so you can look at the Senate polls and say,

well, what's happening is that Republicans have a down ballot problem, right? That why aren't there down ballot candidates hitting Trump numbers? Like who are these, who are these voters that are voting for Trump, but are like, I don't know what I'm going to do on the Senate.

You can also assume Tim that those people are going to end up. Nobody's going to win a Senate race in a battleground state by 10 points or 8 points. We know this is going to be 4 or 5. Well, Ruben Gallego might. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. That might be the exception. We're talking about a 50-48, a 52, you know, whatever. Like, these races are going to narrow.

But anyway, going back to the point of, like, how are these Democratic Senate candidates, do they represent the true Democratic number, right? And that ultimately, this is where Democrats will end up because they are not burdened by what has been, namely, Biden. And that Harris just needs to get those skeptical Baldwin voters skeptical. I don't even know if they're skeptical as much as they're like, I just don't know. Like, who is this Kamala Harris person? She'll have an easier time consolidating them than you could argue that Trump will have in pulling them away to vote for him. In order to compete with Sarah, Sarah puts a lot of work in, obviously, on the focus groups, doing the focus groups, recruiting focus groups. People should listen to focus group podcasts. I do a little less work,

but at bedtime, when I'm supposed to be going to sleep, I scroll through TikTok. That is a very, very important. Thank you for doing that for all of us, Tim. I appreciate that. You're welcome. And it's very scientific. And last night, you know, at like 1215 or something, I should have been sleeping. I came across a tech talk, I want to play for you, because I found it so fun. And it was a guy who's in North Carolina, he's going door to door. And he is speaking to undecided voters. And he's giving us a report. And it's very lengthy tech talk. But I just picked out three, there were three people that he said, he said he didn't believe most of the people that told him were undecided. But there were three people that he believed.

And I want to play for you his description of these undecided voters because they might explain the Baldwin Road you were just talking about. Let's listen. First is a man in his 70s. We spoke only through his doorbell camera. We did not have a face-to-face interaction. He told me that he was definitely not going to be voting for Donald Trump, but he wasn't sure if he would vote for Kamala Harris. The second is a 25-year-old white guy. We had a long conversation after he shared with me that he was originally planning to vote for RFK, but hadn't been who RFK endorsed, but was clearly not particularly aligned with that candidate.

The third was a middle-aged South Asian man who didn't realize that he was eligible to vote, let alone the fact that he and his wife were both already registered. So he left our conversation planning to go do more research. But my takeaway was that he had tuned the election out because he didn't particularly think that it applied to him. So there's my Sarah Longwell focus group. That is actually excellent. It goes back to your original point, Tim, which is, and this has been the point that Democrats, even before Biden dropped out, have been making, which is, if you just pull together the coalition of people who voted in 2020, who voted in 2022, voted in 2018, in those key swing states, North Carolina, being the exception, because they did go for for Trump, but there is a big enough coalition that has already been assembled of people who don't want to vote for Donald Trump. And the only question is, could they be

inspired, interested in voting for somebody like Joe Biden? And many of them said, nah, I'd rather sit out, or maybe vote vote for RFK or some other third party candidate. I just can't get excited about Biden and that Harris's job is to just reconstitute them. So that seems to be what your North Carolina TikToker is picking up, right? I was just like, it's the three guys. It's perfect. It was like the RVAT voter. It's a 70 year old Republican guy who's like, I don't like Trump, but I just don't know if I can

get there. It's a 25 year old bro who's maybe for RFK. And then it's somebody that's disengaged. That's in a, that's in a democratic constituency, right? Like that's it. Those are the undecided groups. Right. And you say those are gettable voters. It's been fascinating watching this rfk thing by the way because you had democrats for months out to you know sink rfk jr because it's clear it was clear when biden was in the race that he was a resting place for a lot of disaffected not trump voters right like i don't want to vote for donald. Traditional Democratic constituencies. They were a lot of Democrats. Now that Harris is in, those anti-Trump voters mostly went to Harris. And the people still sitting in RFK Jr., what we found in our polling back at the end of July,

the group of voters who say they like Trump's policies, but don't like him, right? That group of people, which in our swing state poll, it's like 17% of voters fall into that category. And 13% of them said they were going to vote for RFK. That's a big problem. If you're Trump in a state that's going to be decided by a point or two, right? I'm sorry, I've got to come back to that. Did I get that right? In your poll in July, what I'm going to call the Brit Hume voter, the National Review voter. Right.

You don't have to like him personally, but you like his policies. They like his policies, but they don't like the tweets. That was 17% of Trump's vote or the electorate 17 of the overall electorate put themselves in that category that's big that's a bigger number than i would have thought it would have been i would have thought it would have been more like nine yeah maybe and we'll see what it looks like now you know like this was literally like right as the switch was happening i mean these are they're pretty conservative some of them are gettable not a ton of them sure but you could argue the best thing for harris would be that they remain focused on trump's personal behavior and go i'm gonna stick with the third party person yeah but rfk being off the

ballot in north carolina is helpful to trump he's still on the ballot in michigan he's still on the ballot in wisconsin which we were talking originally about the blue wall, that's probably helpful to Harris there. It's a small number, but it's still critical. Do you ever open your closet and think, man, I got nothing in here I want to wear? I sure as hell do. If you're on YouTube and cable news all day looking at yourself, you start to get a little tired of the wardrobe but since i started shopping with quince i've got a few more hits a few more things that are a little bit different from my standard wear and i'm going to be wearing them season after season quince has all of your seasonal must-haves 100 european linen shirts from 30 bucks performance polos and versatile active

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We're not at 2016 Trump. You don't see quite as many F your feelings flags when you're driving around this great country as you're used to. But still, if you look at the polls, most of his core base is excited to vote for him. He only lost, you know, by, we all know the number in Georgia, 11,000 votes. And, you know, it was in, except for Michigan, in most of these states, it was a pretty manageable number that he lost. If you're saying that he's kept most of his coalition and that there's more of these kind of working class black and latino men and you know who are you know disaffected from the democratic party who are hurt disproportionately by inflation and that there are more of them than there are of the 70 year old wall street journal reading guy

that voted for trump twice and it's flipping the other way there's some of those sarah's over there working on getting those people out but let's just posit there's more in the first group than the latter. Then that gives him a pretty clear coalition for getting over the hump. And he's only got to do it in Georgia where he lost by 11,000 votes and in Pennsylvania where he lost by, what was the Pennsylvania number? Yeah. I mean, it's like a little less than two points yeah there you go i think you're exactly right i'm glad that you brought that up about just the electoral college math because you know we talk a lot about all these other states and they matter and it's we're not i'm not going to discount them but if you're the trump campaign and they've said this from the very beginning all we need is ge Georgia and Pennsylvania. And of course, they got to keep North Carolina in their

column. But they don't need to win any other states that they lost last time than those two to get to 270. And the ad spending has also suggested that that's where they're going to be putting all of their time and energy in just getting those few voters. And if you say, well, what's their biggest challenge? You're right, it's expanding the ceiling, the Trump ceiling. Like what is the, we've been having a conversation for years about, is there Trump ceiling? Like, has he maxed out on the Trump vote that there are very few people who are ambivalent in the electorate about Donald Trump. And so he's had two elections now, where he keeps bumping up against the ceiling. Now, he raised it a little bit in 2020. You know, he went from 46% of the popular vote to 47% of the popular vote.

And then in some of these states, you saw him go up a tiny bit or go down a tiny bit. But ultimately, he has two things that he can do to win. One is that he still never breaks that ceiling, but there is a third party, whether it's the green or the whatever, that still siphons off enough from Harris. Like, if you're the Trump campaign, pushing not Trump people into a third party choice right the other is that they spend all of their time getting those very difficult to turn out because they are inconsistent voters for a reason they are not plugged in they are not reliable voters but you spend all of your time doing nothing other than trying to get them to turn out. And he seems like he's been doing that media-wise, though it doesn't really seem like they've got a significant ground game. A ground game in that sense, yeah. One more thing on Pennsylvania.

And you kind of alluded to this earlier when you were talking about the disconnect from the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania polls. Because I'm, you know, less deep in the demographics than you are. And just playing this up, he lost by 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania. So that's, that's not nothing. That's a significant vote share. Why would Pennsylvania be behind Michigan and Wisconsin? I guess is the question. Like, I just think about the, like, just without actually looking at the math, just, you know, with my knowledge of the state, do you look at it and it's like, well, you've got Philly and Pittsburgh. So you've got two big metros you've got two suburbs you're wasting some of the philly suburbs in new jersey you assholes in cherry hill should be moving across the river

there to try to help out democrats because you're just wasting your vote over there in cherry hill there's nothing good over there anyway you get better food on the pennsylvania side of the river wow just something to think about you're you're gonna get a lot of you're gonna get a lot of negative feedback on that from my fellow gw grads from south jersey yeah okay well that's fine just just just you know just move across the river more black voters more hispanic voters like why you know what i mean like yeah i just i can't explain it like why wisconsin they've got penn state i guess madison's bigger than but you have harrisburg and college you know uh state college i don't know

just like on its face and like you said i he biden did better in pennsylvania so it's it's confusing to me like what would explain it this is an excellent excellent question and some of it is your almanac right now i'm bringing out I'm bringing out some of my... Well, this is looking at catalyst data. So, this is their modeling of who voted in the 2020 election. And if you look at... All right. So, in Pennsylvania, which as you pointed out, you've got the Philly suburbs, right? And you've got the Pittsburgh suburbs. Those are great. Like Montgomery County is going to go 65, 75% for Kamala Harris.

All right. So 80,000 votes. He won Pennsylvania by he carried white college voters 53, 45. Okay. That's great now look at wisconsin a state that has a bigger white non-college population right but among white college voters like many of whom are living in dane county he won white college voters by 20 points that's the answer i was looking for it's the white college voters in pennsylvania some of it's the white college voters he did a tiny bit better like if

you look at how he did with not white non-college voters he did just as well in pennsylvania as wisconsin yeah and you know you've got to get in both cases black turnout in your major cities this feels like joe paterno's fault that there's something culturally about penn state that is pumping out college educated trump fans at a higher rate than Wisconsin. I don't know. It feels like there's a big 10 thing happening. Well, I think about Wisconsin being for so many years, it has been so evenly divided right between the two parties. It's kind of like gotten calcified there.

And the rural areas are just conservative even though they used to be democratic leaning yeah but dane county is growing faster i guess maybe the way to explain it is that wisconsin it has been a perfect balance where for every Democrat that is moving over to Republicans in rural, which ancestrally Democratic areas, there's another Democratic voter that emerges in the suburbs of Milwaukee or in Dane County. And that balance has been quite remarkable and, you know, evenly divided. In Pennsylvania, what I think has happened is that you've got the ancestrally democratic areas, not just in the rural parts, but thinking about Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, you know, the western, northwestern part of the state. Allentown, Erie, all of those places that, you know, you would see Democrat, Bob Casey's dad would carry by like 30 points, right? Young Casey's not going to win it by that percentage. And the reason that Biden carried Pennsylvania when Hillary Clinton didn't, is he just did a couple points better, not in those immediate suburbs around Philly, but in those sort of, you know, smaller city regions. The one place that's fascinating about Pennsylvania, actually, which also goes into our down ballot races, is, you know, you think about, again, how the Scrantons

of the world have been moving away from Democrats. The one part of the state that has been moving toward Democrats is in and around like the Harrisburg area. And this is the one sort of bright spot in the state for Democrats. If you look like there's only so much more vote they can get out of Philly, there's only so much more you can get out of the suburbs of Philadelphia. But that part of the state is growing and is moving in their direction. This was my 2020 back when I was doing, you know, anti-Trump political stuff, not just flapping my jaw on a podcast. I was just like more money in Harrisburg, more money in Harrisburg media market. I was like, that's where the, that's where the Republican

voters against Trump are. Like that's where the gains are in Pennsylvania. I agree. I have one more. I'm hoping you can enlighten me in the way that you've enlightened me that Penn State grads are the problem right now in Pennsylvania. I want to know what the Georgia to North Carolina thing is. Because there is like a conventional wisdom like that is congealed that it's like, because of what happened in Georgia in 2020, that Georgia is a better bet for Democrats. And you know, because of Cal Cunningham's texting problems and the narrow loss last time, that also doesn't make sense to me. Charlotte, you have two metros and obviously Atlanta is much bigger than Charlotte, but you have Charlotte and you have Raleigh and you have

Asheville. And in the Charlotte burbs, similarly, you're wasting some of the suburban vote in Rock Hill. So maybe you Rock Hill Democrats could Democrats and the Cherry Hill Democrats could all get together and have a little migration across the border into swing states. But, you know, I guess fewer black voters, obviously, it just comes back to about black voters. You have these smaller black cities, too, in addition to Atlanta. And that's really what it is. That's a big piece of it.

The black vote in Georgia, it's a third of the electorate. That's a big piece of it the black vote in georgia it's a third of the electorate that's a big big deal and you've got 20 of the electorate in north carolina is black now you said 33 to 20 yeah 30 to 20 that basically answers that's big the other piece is you know how the atl Atlanta thing is a big deal too, because if you're in a major city now and you go, you know, you draw a circle around a major, draw like circles around major cities, like two miles out, five miles out, 10 miles out, 20 miles out, right? It's like dark blue, blue, purplish, purple, red, red, dark red, right? That's how it goes. It expands out. There's nothing like that in North Carolina. In part, like the density is a big issue. I was just like in Asheville a couple weeks ago, and it's quite remarkable. You're in downtown Asheville, which is probably D plus, you know, 85, right? Yeah, right. Everybody, they got their crystals and they're brewing their own beer and kombucha.

Little signs, all are welcome here. We got to make sure everybody knows they're welcome here, even though everybody knows because everybody's a Democrat. But then you drive like two miles outside of the city and it's like Trump flags, right? So there's no, there isn't that sort of buffer between dark blue and dark red. Yeah.

And that's the other challenge in a state like North Carolina is getting those areas that are fast growing. If you've been to North Carolina, you'll see like the excerpts just keep, especially in and around like Wake and those counties, like the excerpts just keep spreading and spreading and spreading. Those become the key areas for this election and certainly for the next elections. The other piece of it, Tim, is like for every kind of liberal who wants to go and, you know, have their readings done for them in Asheville by a licensed tarot card reader. There's a conservative person from the Midwest or New York that's moving to wilmington to golf and retire this is right

and the atlanta burbs to the like what your point is and those purple burbs like the alpharetta's my buddies from coming yes out there like you know once you get like 40 minutes outside of town that's getting pretty purple now yeah right it used to be it was like blue and then it was like all the suburbs red red red red red now it's like purpley and you got to get into like pretty far out before you get into the dark red again that is enlightening it's going to be negative for bill crystal because bill crystal has been selling hard on the north carolina's undervalued thing but um a if you think about what it takes to win north carolina then you've got to do. In fact, you can listen to our podcast

this week. I sat down with Michael Bitzer, who's great politics professor covers politics in North Carolina. And his theory of the case is, Democrats have had two issues there. One, they really haven't maximized turnout of black voters outside of the urban core, right? So you've got rural black voters that need to be engaged, have not engaged younger voters in a way that they should, and then haven't invested until now in those parts of the state that I just talked about that are, you know, they're still going to be Republican, but instead of being 65, 35,

maybe it's 60, 40, right? If you just get five points more in each one of those swing counties, you need all those Duke kids to re-register from New Jersey as well. Let's see. It's all comes back to New Jersey problems. So really the problem is New Jersey?

Is that your answer to everything? Well, I mean, it's something that's coming to me as I'm getting more data inputs from you. Right, yeah. Yeah, the Virginia's for haters, I think they tweeted this week. You know, an inverse of Virginia's for lovers. So let's do the house really quick. And then I have one last thing for you before I let you go. So we've talked very little do the house really quick and then i have one last thing for you before i let you go so we've talked very little about the house i use your reports as kind of my rule of thumb

on house stuff and so if you just give us just like a four minute kind of lay of the land and just like a couple of bellwethers to look at maybe that central pennsylvania one and some others of how you see the house races you know i'm a house stan i grew up covering the house races. You know, I'm a house stan. I grew up covering the house. Love it. Here's the easiest way to think about this. Of those 435 seats that are up, only about 25 of them are going to be really competitive. That will decide control of the house, right? And the good news, if you are a Democrat, is that it is expanding the possible competitive races have expanded a bit with Harris on top of the ticket so that they put more seats in play. And also it keeps some of their incumbents who were kind of on the bubble with Biden on the top of the ticket in a much safer space. Okay. The other thing that if you're a Democrat, you're feeling better about is, you know, yes, there are battleground races in some of those swing states for the presidential,

but a lot of them are in, you know, California, New York, Oregon, where it's pretty blue. Ultimately, Democrats will need to win of those closest races to get to 218. They've got to win about 60% of the most competitive races. And Republicans need to win about 40%. You know, when it comes down to it, I do think Democrats need to have a bump at the end, whether that's a Harris bump, right, that the momentum is going that way. And that takes those, you know, 510 seats over the finish line. Or it's that the incumbents in those red states are so strong. So a Jared Golden, a Marcy Captor in Ohio, to your point about central Pennsylvania, Matt Cartwright in central Pennsylvania, like those guys hold on, even if Harris doesn't. And then you get the blue state seats, and then there you go. And that puts you over the top. So for the bellwethers, you know, Michigan is going to be critical. You've got two open seats there, both Democrats. This is a Lissa Slotkin seat. She's running for Democrats. Because those are the kinds of seats

where you're like, all right, that's a pure 50-50. And they're breaking Democrats way. Okay, they'll clearly pick up in the seats that are not 50-50, but are like 60-40. And yeah, Ohio will be fun too, because that is a state that comes in early. And you've got Marcy Kaptur in Toledo, Ohio. Been around, obviously, for, I think she may now be the longest serving. She has that awesome viral video with J.D. Vance

where he showed up to the union thing. Yeah, I'm going to put this in the show notes for people. It's really funny. And a new freshman member, Amelia Sykes. Both of them are in, again, this is a state that Trump's going to win by eight plus points. So Democrats holding on there would be a good measure of how successful they're likely to be in other parts of the country. Anything else you're looking at early? People love that. Like, you know, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, it's election night, things that are coming in early counties or races or,

you know, who counts quick. I get into this every year, Tim, I fool myself by looking at when polls close and when, right. And like, Oh, okay. North Carolina is Florida. They often do not tell us the real story.

Like if all you saw in 2022 was Florida, which is what we saw first. Yeah. Right. And it looked like, Oh gosh, Democrats are, they're going to get crushed.

Yeah, this is a blowout. And then like 10 minutes later, New Hampshire came in and that was an easy, easy win for the incumbent Democratic senator. So we've got North Carolina and Georgia are our two most important states that come in, quote unquote, on the earlier end, but we're not going to have the final results. So looking into a place like seeing how much of the vote is in, but one of those outer counties, we talked about Cabarrus County, which is outside of Wake in North Carolina. And if Democrats have been able to just narrow that Trump lead there, that is a sign that for Bill Kristol that they have cracked the code. And they've sort of figured out how to win in that state. And, you know,

Pennsylvania, you're right, everybody's going to be going to northampton county which was we'll go back to where you started this conversation about where the vote was coming in which is outside allentown yep where the polls right now that who did that poll again that was suffolk suffolk yeah found her leading in northampton yeah and doing better than and do it again it's just a poll so it's like comparing a poll to an actual election result is kind of is kind of silly but they enter up five and biden up one right so like that's to actually answer question is if northampton county starts coming into pennsylvania and it looks closer to five than one, then come was in business. We're going to start.

Right. Cracking the coconuts. To your other, to crack the coconut thing. But even to really go back to where we started and why this is a 50, 50 race, you're talking about comparing it to Biden's number. So if she's up one in Erie,

which I think that's what it was, which they had her up for Biden, one by one, Biden, one by one, Biden, one by one. Right. If she's up one in Erie, which I think that's what it was, which it. No, they had her up for Biden one by one. Biden one by one. Oh, Biden one by one. Right. If she's winning by four, then you're right. That would be a confidence monitor for winning the state. But if it's back to like one to two points, then we're basically where we were in 2020, which is this is an 80 000 vote kind of race waiting four days for

the media for the fake news media to have the balls to call the race that we knew that we knew was over on thursday that's okay that's a side thing that's a side complaint that i have what that they should have called it on thursday yeah we knew the race was over on thursday i gave them two more days everybody everybody's scared about what trump was going to do so they gave him two more days. Everybody is scared about what Trump was going to do. So, they gave him two more days to- To chill out, right? Conspiracy theories. Anywho, that's just a side rant. We can do it another time. I've got to go. We got to go. Amy Walter. We got to do things. No one's going to call you the human Xanax. You didn't come on and offer any- Nope.

Assurances. No calming assurances. No, I don't do that. Deep data analysis that reveals the secret silver bullet the guarantees of victory there's nothing it is we got a close fucking race in the house and a close fucking race for the president and all you got to do is don't tim don't make yourself crazy looking at those model projections you need to. I know it's so, it can be soothing. It's exhausting.

Don't listen to our listeners. Amy, don't listen. We need you. We need you coming back here every day where I'll be updating you on the model and your mood. Your mood will be determined based on whether that model ticked up or ticked down.

Okay? That is how we are living the next 50 days. All right. Listen, if it works for you, man, it works for you. I'm not here. I am not here to yuck your yum, as the young kids would say. All right.

That's it. I appreciate you so much. Yeah. Talk to you later. Bye. All right. Thanks so much to Amy Walter. I've got a few corrections, clarifications, and send-offs real quick.

I got got on a fake Donald Trump bleat. I'm pretty good at this, but you know, it's out there. The AI world, you know, the fakesters, the Russians.

When I said yesterday, he bleeded. Oh, and two, he didn't really do that though. Somebody else sending that and pretending to be Trump. My B I keep mixing up office space in the office. I don't know why,

you know, we love and appreciate the bobs, especially here at the Bulwark Pod, the office space bobs. I was referencing the office yesterday when I said office space. People are upset at me for saying the bear is boring. I just want to extend my remarks on that. The first two seasons of the bear were pretty good. Season three was fucking boring, okay? It was an absolute slog. Maybe it's good artistically. It's like reading a George Eliot novel or something, but it was a bear to get through, so to speak. And I won't apologize for that. Happy trails to Ted Drews Jr.

Missed this a couple weeks ago, 96 years old. The frozen custard king of St. Louis. I have so many great memories having concretes at ted drews and at the various spinoffs a great american brought joy to a lot of people r.i.p ted drews and finally peace out to diddy diddy got arrested yesterday hope you saw that and uh you know i just think it's a little lesson for donald trump and everybody his orbit. Eventually, bad boys can be stopped. So we'll be seeing you all tomorrow. Peace. laughing much nothing but big things check the hit list how we twitch what change but the name

we still here you're rocking with the best don't worry if i write rhymes i write checks who's the boss dudes is lost don't think cause i'm iced out i'ma cool off who else but me and if you don't feel me that means you can't touch me it's ugly ugly, trust me Get it right, dawg, we ain't never left We just move in silence and rep to the death It's official, I survived what I've been through Y'all got drama, the saga continues We ain't going nowhere We ain't going nowhere We can't even stop now

Cause it's bad boy, come on We ain't be stopped now, cause it's bad boy for life We ain't going nowhere, we ain't going nowhere We can't be stopped now, cause it's bad boy for life We ain't going nowhere, we gonna stay right here Forever and ever and ever and ever We can't going nowhere. We gonna stay right here. We ain't going nowhere.

We can't be stopped now. We gonna stay right here. For life we here. Going nowhere. We ain't going nowhere. We can't be stopped now. Cause it's bad boy for life. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and

editing by Jason Brown.