The Daily - Could the Midterms Be Tighter Than Expected?

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

For months, leaders of the Democratic Party and President Biden have been bracing for huge losses in the upcoming midterm elections. Today, “The Daily” explores a new New York Times poll that complicates that thinking — and could set the stage for a very different showdown in November.Guest: Nate Cohn, a domestic correspondent for The Upshot at The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Here’s what a new Times poll shows about divisions and dissatisfaction in the United States.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Ested Herndon. This is The Daily. For months, Democratic Party leaders and the president himself have been bracing for huge losses in the upcoming midterm elections. Today, my colleague Nate Cohn won a new Times poll that complicates that thinking and could set the stage for a very different showdown this November. It's Wednesday, July 13th. So Nate, the assumption has always been, or at least it feels like this entire year has been,

that the Democrats are going to get absolutely creamed in the midterm elections, that they'll lose seats in the House and they will probably lose the Senate as well. But you just released a poll that takes stock of the mood of the electorate, and it seems to implicate that the picture's a little more complicated than that. Can you tell us about that poll? What did you find? Yeah, we found Democrats doing, you know, not necessarily well, but maybe surprisingly well, given that backdrop. Democrats and Republicans were tied on this poll question called the generic congressional ballot, which just asks whether you'd rather see Democrats or Republicans in control of Congress. Among registered voters, the Democrats were up by a point. Among likely voters, the Republicans were up by a point.

voters. The Republicans were up by a point. And, you know, while usually you wouldn't say that was exceptionally good news for a political party, it was maybe better than you might expect, given the expectation at the beginning of this year that the Republicans were on track for a route in this year's midterm election. Right. Democrats are up against headwinds that I think we know. It's hard for a new president in their first midterm elections. But what you're saying is that this poll actually shows that Democrats are actually still kind of in the game here. At this stage, I think it's fair to say they're still in the game. Whether they can keep it up is an open question. But at the beginning of the race, voters are pretty evenly divided between the two parties. Why do we think then, if we could guess, why are Democrats doing better than we might have expected?

One question that we ask voters is what's the most important problem facing the country? And it's an open-ended question. They can say whatever they want. And in this poll, something surprising happened. About a third of voters chose something about guns, abortion, or threats to American democracy as the most important problem facing the country. But definitely the big topics of right now. That's right. Roe versus Wade was just overturned. There's been this wave of mass shootings. The January 6th committee is, you know, putting out high profile hearings every week or two.

So it's not terribly surprising that those issues are, you know, at the top of the mind of many voters. But it is a change from earlier in the year. Earlier in the year, issues like immigration and crime and education, which was sort of a grab bag of different, you know, Republican resentments over, you know, race in public schools or the way the coronavirus is being handled. Those were the sort of issues that voters were ranking at the top of the list right after the economy. And that's changed with the news over the last month. American politics has honed in on some issues where the Democrats are on pretty good

ground. And I think that's part of what's helping the Democrats solidify an important segment of the electorate that's pretty dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country. At the same time, the issues that were expected to help Republicans at the beginning of the cycle, like immigration or crime or education and so on, have become much less significant in the minds of most voters. Those three issues were only cited as the most important issue by 4% of the electorate. So that's a much more favorable balance of issues on the top of the minds of most voters. So you're saying part of what's changed from the beginning of the year to now is the political landscape that voters were initially talking about things like crime, like immigration, like education, issues that maybe Republicans would prefer them to be talking about.

But now they're talking about abortion, guns and democracy. Those issues have shot up in terms of priority, according to your bullet. That's right. And among that 30% of voters who choose something in that category, abortion, guns, democracy, Democrats have a big 66 to 14% lead. So the people who care about those issues are ready to show up for the Democrats right now, whatever else they think about how the country's doing. What type of voter is most responsible for the bump that we've seen Democrats see in this poll relative to ones earlier in the year? Well, I think that the clearest area of strength for Democrats in this poll is among white college-educated voters. They have a considerable lead, 57 to 36 percent, which is right up there with how Joe Biden did against Donald Trump two

years ago. And it's easy to look into the numbers and see why. I mean, that's the likeliest group to cite abortion, guns, or democracy as the most important issue facing the country. This is the most liberal group of the racial and demographic categories that we look at. So it makes sense that they're most responsive when big liberal issues like abortion and guns rise to the top. And they're also relatively affluent group. So they are maybe a little less likely to be turned off by Joe Biden's handling of the economy or inflation, which might otherwise be holding back Democrats. So it's not only that different issues have come to the forefront of the political space, but that the type of issues that are now being talked about,

those are issues that are specifically well suited for the type of voters that Democrats have been performing well with in recent elections, college educated voters who are often, or at least in a higher percentage, whiter voters. Yeah, that group of highly educated, relatively liberal, predominantly white voter has been training towards the Democrats for a long time. And yet again, we now have another round of the news cycle that seems like it's reinforcing that trend line. Have we seen the trend continue on the Republican side? I remember doing so many stories about college-educated Republican women who, in the 2018 midterms, were thinking about voting for Democrats, or even some voters who may have thought Roe was

settled law, but are now looking at a post-Roe world. Have we seen that transition happen on the opposite side, where maybe someone who was more conservative or moderate is also thinking about or being more interested in Democrats because of the changes in politics this summer? There aren't very many voters who told us that they voted for Trump last time and are thinking about voting for Democrats this time. But most of the people in that category tend to be college educated voters. So there is this group of voters out there who the Democrats aren't their party. You know, maybe they have conservative views on economics. But when national attention is focused on social issues, they're at least willing to consider the Democratic Party.

And there are some signs of that in the poll. But most of what we're seeing is the Democrats retaining a huge proportion of the white college-educated voters who backed Biden last time. And this is a midterm election. You don't need to tap into too many new voters. If you can get out the people who supported you last time in a presidential race, you're going to be in a pretty good spot. And in this poll, 92% of the white college graduates who say they voted for Joe Biden last time are still willing to do so. And the numbers are much lower for other demographic groups. So the bottom line is that in this poll, it somewhat is outlining that in a strange

and what we should say kind of politically callous way, that what Democratic voters would universally describe as really bad news this summer, Supreme Court rulings overturning Roe v. Wade, gun rulings, January 6th and the long tail of that news, it seems like that has actually maybe politically helped them among some voters. I don't think you'd find too many Democratic officials who would, you know, agree to tell you this on, you know, in a podcast like this. But yeah, I think that the issue landscape is better for Democrats and the Democrats are polling better too. If you look at the polls that have been conducted since Roe v. Wade was taken, Democrats are in the lead

on average on the generic congressional ballot. And if you compare the polls that were taken after Roe to those from the same pollster immediately beforehand, the Democrats are doing three points better. So, you know, this poll is not alone in showing signs that the bad news, as you put it, of the last month or so has been good news for the Democrats. It seems like the change in whether a voter's political priorities of this summer has actually helped to at least mitigate a political fortune that looked pretty bleak. Yeah, what's been bad news for many Democratic voters looks like it's good news for the Democratic Party, at least for now.

But the poll contains plenty of bad news for Democrats as well. And Joe Biden is one of those areas where the news will not do much to help the party's chances in the midterms. We'll be right back. Nate, before the break, you said that Democrats aren't in as bad of a position as we once thought, but that President Biden isn't really keeping pace with the perception of the rest of his party. Can you explain that? Yeah, I mean, the poll numbers were not good for Joe Biden. I mean, there's no other way to put it. His approval rating is at 33%.

That is lower than Donald Trump's approval rating ever was. It's the lowest since George W. Bush in 2008 in the heart of the financial crisis and with the Iraq war going on. So these are the sort of numbers that are not good for the president's party and make it very hard to compete in midterm elections. Now, the Democrats are still doing better than that. They've got 41% of the vote in this poll among registered voters. So there are some voters who disapprove of Joe Biden, but are still willing to back the Democrats in the midterms, at least in a poll. But it's going to be a big drag on the party's fortunes. You're saying that Joe Biden's current approval rating is lower than Donald Trump's ever was during his tenure,

even through both impeachments, even through the Charlottesville controversy, even through all the ongoing scandals that happened in the former president's tenure. He was never at a point, approval rating wise, as low as Joe Biden is right now. He never was. Now, I have to add one caveat, which is that you said both impeachments. And I got to tell you that I was not tracking his approval rating in January of 2021 after he was already on the way out of office. So I'll leave open the possibility that he fell this low after January 6. I don't remember that. But otherwise, he was better than this in that when they were going into the 2018 midterms, Trump's approval rating was in the 40s. They still lost control of Congress. Well, how do you square that? How is it

that more people prefer Democrats to lead Congress, particularly when we looked at that generic ballot question you mentioned? But that pro-democratic feeling does not translate to support for Joe Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party. Well, for a lot of Democrats, they're looking around the country and they don't think things are going well. In just the last month, they see that the Republican Party might pose a threat to democracy. They see abortion rights going away. They see a spate of mass shootings. And although they may not necessarily blame Joe Biden for that, he's still the president. And so they don't approve of his job as president.

And they wish that he could have brought Americans together and unified the country in all the ways that he promised during the campaign. But that doesn't mean that they want to vote for the Republicans, who they see as trying to overturn the election as potentially a threat to the continuity of constitutional government. So I think it's easy to imagine someone who is deeply uneasy with Joe Biden's job performance, but still couldn't imagine voting for Republican. We talked to a woman in North Carolina named Lucy Ackerman. She is 23. And I mean, here's someone who's very progressive. She recently signed up with the Democratic Socialists. She does not approve of Joe Biden's performance, but she's still as committed as ever to trying to get Democrats

elected this fall. She says that she's gotten more involved to help people sign up to vote, in no small part because of the court's decision to overturn Roe. Now, this is one person out of 849 people who we spoke to, but just one example of how someone can be pretty dissatisfied with Joe Biden's job and yet look around and think that Republican rule is less acceptable than ever before. look around and think that Republican rule is less acceptable than ever before. And I think that if you can imagine a different world, maybe more like the sort of situation that Barack Obama was in in 2010 or 2014, where Lucy doesn't vote because these issues like Roe versus Wade or a threat to democracy or this wave of mass shootings doesn't create that urgency that compels her to vote and that might have otherwise allowed her to be a little bit more apathetic. But those very same issues, as we were just noting, may also be hurting Biden. So it's an odd situation.

So it seems like the same factors that are mobilizing the Democratic base broadly, abortion, guns, democracy protection, are also the same issues that are making some sour on Biden because he's not speaking about these things with the same level of urgency or, frankly, fire and passion that many of them have. That's right. There's this group of highly educated, relatively liberal voters who are not happy with Biden. But because these cultural and ideologically progressive issues are at stake in American politics right now, they're still going to come back to the Democrats. The problem for the party is that there's this other group of voters. They're less ideological. They're working class. They may care about abortion and gun control,

but they care more about the economy and inflation. And they also, not only do they not approve of Biden's performance, but they're a lot less likely to return to the Democrats. And maybe the Democrats could be losing them, not just for this midterm, but maybe even for good, given the way long-term trends are going. This seems like an important point. These are the type of voters who are less invested in politics day to day, who are not maybe following the every second of the January 6th hearings and who do not know, you know, Nate Cohn to be the polling legend that we know he is. But the Democratic Party still needs that type of voter to become motivated by these midterms. What did your polling tell us about where they are? The numbers weren't good for Democrats. You know, in fact, you know, to make a contrast here,

this was the first national poll or state poll with a meaningful number of non-white voters where Democrats were winning a larger share of white college graduates than Democrats were winning among non-white. Wait, wait, wait. So this is the first poll in which the numbers for Democrats have been better with white college graduates than they have been for non-white voters. That's right. Democrats were winning 57% of white college graduates in the poll compared to Democrats carrying 51% of non-white voters. And it's, you know, we've become accustomed in recent years to the idea that Democrats win white college graduates, but it is hard to overstate how much of a change this is in American politics in

a short amount of time. I mean, even back in 2016, Democrats were winning non-white voters by 50 points in the race for Congress, and they were losing white college graduates. So there has been a huge convergence of these two demographic groups. And we've talked at this point about many of the obvious reasons why Democrats are gaining among white college graduates. But the Democratic losses among non-white voters have been going on for a long time as well. And they have continued during the Biden administration. And in our poll, it suggests it's mainly because of economic issues. You know, the focus on abortion and guns democracy. It may not hurt Democrats among those groups, but that's not why those

voters are Democrats. It is not having the same role in helping revitalize Democratic support among working class and non-white voting groups. So we have a poll that shows, on the one hand, better overall polling for Democrats in this moment than we might expect. But they also have these very serious political challenges that they're facing, including an unpopular president and a voter coalition that shows real signs of erosion. What is the path forward here for Democrats? Are candidates supposed to go to voters and say, hey, you don't like the president, but you should like me instead? Well, in the short term, they don't have too many other cards to play, right? Joe Biden's unpopular. The economy is not in a great place. Unless the president can figure out a way to rejuvenate his political standing, get costs under control, help the economy and so on. It's hard to see them getting out of that fundamental problem.

So in the meantime, they happen to have three solid issues that appeals to a really important part of their base and democracy, abortion and gun control. And, you know, it's worth noting that in a midterm environment, that can get you pretty far. Midterm elections are lower turnout. The electorate tends to be better educated, more ideological, consistent voters, you know, are likelier to show up in that sort of election. So the Democrats can get pretty far in 2022 simply by mobilizing the kind of Democratic voters who really are animated by these sort of liberal cultural issues. It may not be enough for them to hold the Congress, but perhaps if voters stayed focused on it all the way through November, perhaps it could be enough to prevent the total

wipeout that maybe you would anticipate otherwise. Over the long run, that's not going to be enough. You know, for the Democrats to really, you to really win in 2024, they'll need to rejuvenate their broader coalition, not just the sort of people motivated by guns and abortion, but who care about the economy and care about bread and butter issues. Is there a trade-off between these two voting blocs? It seems like we're talking about two populations, a largely college-educated, disproportionately white group of folks, as we've talked about, and a group that Democrats are eroding with on another side, which tend to be younger, which tend to be more working class, and which tend to be more non-white.

Is there any chance that as the party focuses more on that college-educated voter in the midterms, that they hurt themselves among other populations in the long term? These trade-offs exist. They're there. You can think of tons of examples of it. If you want to take climate change seriously, you wind up supporting regulations on coal that hurt you in West Virginia. In this election, I think the Democrats actually are sort of fortunate that the issues that we're talking about, like gun control and abortion and threats to democracy, don't necessarily have as many trade-offs among the kinds of working class voters who have been supporting Democrats in recent years as some of these other newer cultural issues that the

Republicans have tried to exploit. That doesn't mean there's no trade-off at all. I mean, maybe there is something the Democrats could campaign on this election that would have a lot of appeal to working class voters. But I'm a little skeptical of that. I mean, what the economy is, what it is, like, what are you going to tell them? You know, the messaging that Democrats have tried on these issues is not very good. And I get how that works from an issue level. But it does seem like when the party focuses its attention on a certain type of voter explicitly, that there is some kind of zero-sum attention choice. I think about consistently all of those explicitly, that there is some kind of zero-sum attention choice. I think about consistently all of those communities, particularly working class ones, non-white ones that we know

through election cycle after election cycle, often complaining about the Democratic Party that only shows up every four years. Isn't part of that complaint based in the fact that the party spends the midterm year focused on a different type of person? I think that's definitely right. I mean, the trend line speaks for itself. The Democrats have been losing ground among working class voters among all races for a decade, if not longer. And, you know, look, it's easy to say that, you know, in 2024, we'll go back to talking about working class issues or something. But, you know, the truth is that, you know, if the Democrats don't solve these problems sooner than later and don't devise a message that will let them talk to a broader proportion of the electorate, there's no

reason to assume that they'll come up with it later. You know, it's not like the problem is they have some solution to their problem and they're not using it. Their problem is they don't really have a solution even. So what started off as a poll that seemed to show a Democratic bright spot seems to also show the complications of really bringing that to fruition. voter who has helped us over the last 15 years? Or do we try to win over some of the undecided ones who we also, being Democrats, need to win? Yeah, that's right. What do Republicans do with this type of information? It seems like they won't be passive actors here. If you're the Republicans, you have a very easy hand to play. And every card in your hand says Biden. My undecided voters, only 23% approve of his performance. Undecided voters are much likelier to say that the economy and the cost of living is the most important issue.

Many of them do think abortion should be legal. And they are, you know, I'm sure many of them are concerned about gun violence. And many of them think that Donald Trump acted inappropriately on January 6th. But that is not their priority. I mean, to be blunt, if these people did care that much about abortion, they would be Democrats. So for the Republicans, you know, if they hone in on Joe Biden's job performance in the state of the economy and make a credible pitch that Republican control of Congress might be able to help, I think that they would have a good chance of winning over the preponderance of those voters. And suddenly that one point lead among likely voters could end up looking a little bit different. So while the Democratic card to play is to frankly try to

keep the environment that we have now, the environment that you capture in the poll, the Republican card to play is to try to change this environment to make issues like the economy or a referendum on Joe Biden, issues they feel more confident on, they want that to return back to the top of voters' priority list. Yeah, and so they'll probably, you know, take measures of their own to try and make that happen. And they can also just hope that the news will sort of naturally shift in their direction anyway over time as, you know, Roe versus Wade shrinks smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.

Right. This could be that this poll actually captures a high watermark for Democrats because of the news cycle. Yeah, if you're a Republican, that's your hope. I mean, you say, well, the Democrats just had a dream month where the national media was relentlessly focused on issues that were good for the Democrats. We didn't get to talk anything about immigration, crime, or education, those sort of issues that we thought we were going to win on earlier in the year. And the best the Democrats can do is to more or less pull even on the generic ballot. And then they can, you know, lick their chops and think about how nice it's going to be in September when they get to campaign about Biden.

how nice it's going to be in September when they get to campaign about Biden. I think it is worth stepping back to, you know, the very first point you made here, which is that the Republicans are expected to win this election. And there is a pretty good historical reason for that. When you have a president who has this kind of approval rating, your party gets crushed in midterms. There have been no exceptions, really. who has this kind of approval rating, your party gets crushed in midterms. There have been no exceptions, really. And in this news environment, maybe we're seeing a moment where the Democrats can defy gravity for a bit, but it would be very different if they managed to defy gravity a few months from now.

Thank you, Nate. Appreciate it. No problem. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. This is a January 4th text message from a rally organizer to Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO. In the latest January 6th hearing, congressional investigators revealed that Donald Trump planned to direct his supporters toward the Capitol, but he wanted it to look spontaneous. The organizer says, you know, this stays between us. We're having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the ellipse.

POTUS is going to have us march there slash the Capitol. Investigators also revealed that Trump attended a meeting of outside advisers who proposed to issue an executive order directing the military to seize voting machines in key swing states. The meeting has been called unhinged, not normal, in the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency. And Twitter announced on Tuesday that it was suing Elon Musk after the billionaire decided to forego his purchase of the company, setting the stage for what could be a lengthy legal battle.

The social media giant wants to force Musk to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the company. A court in Delaware will determine whether or not Musk needs to proceed with the purchase. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko and Rochelle Bonja, with help from Michael Simon Johnson and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by John Ketchum, Paige Cowett, and Mike Benoit, and contains original music by Marion Lozano. It was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderland.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Ested Herndon. See you tomorrow.