The Daily - Why Republicans Are Winning Swing Voters

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

After a summer of news that favored Democrats and with just two weeks until the midterms, a major new poll from The Times has found that swing voters are suddenly turning to the Republicans.The Times���s Nate Cohn explains what is behind the trend and what it could mean for Election Day.Guest: Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times.Background reading: According to the Times/Siena College poll, American voters see democracy in peril, but saving it isn’t a priority.Despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights, disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party.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 Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. With nearly two weeks to go before elections that will determine which party controls the House and Senate, a major new poll from The Times has found that swing voters who had backed Democrats are suddenly switching sides and supporting Republicans. My colleague Nate Cohn explains why that is and what it will likely mean on Election Day. It's Thursday, October 20th.

Nate. Michael. Hello. Hello, how are you? I'm okay. Okay. I have this sense every election season that this is your game time. This is basically Christmas for your little corner of

the world. Well, Christmas, you know, I think typically brings a little bit more happiness than the election can bring. Unless you want to count the polls as a gift. I do enjoy the polls, I have to say. I do too. So we wanted to talk to you right now because the political winds have changed. The last time you came on the show over the summer, you told us that according to multiple polls, including polls conducted by the Times, Democrats were doing surprisingly well, despite longstanding rules in American politics, which say that the party that controls the White House is supposed to get crushed in midterm elections. Somehow, Democrats were poised to potentially avoid that fate, according to the polls.

What did the latest poll tell us about what happened to that summer of relative Democratic love? Well, if our last poll found a summer of Democratic love, Well, if our last poll found a summer of Democratic love, then I think our poll suggests that the electorate's summer fling with the Democrats is coming to an end. We show the Republicans now taking the lead on this poll question called the generic congressional ballot. It's a little complicated, but it just asks voters whether they want to vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress in their district. And in this poll, we show the Republicans leading by three percentage points by that measure. In our last poll, just a month ago, we show the Democrats up by one point. So that's a four-point swing towards the Republicans. Huh. Can you put a four-point swing into some perspective for those

of us who don't live in the polling world? I would describe that as a modest but meaningful swing. It's a large enough number where you don't just assume it's just random noise necessarily. And importantly, in this case, it's also backed by other evidence. We have a lot of different data points. We see the Republicans gaining a lot of key Senate races, a number of important House districts, including House districts where the Democrats probably shouldn't even be in trouble. And you just put it all together, and I think we've got a clear picture here. Right. And when we think about a four-point swing and what these midterms are fundamentally all about, right, which is control of the United States House, the United States Senate,

how does a four-point swing help us understand Republican chances in these elections? I think it's the difference between whether the Democrats are favored in the Senate and whether the Senate's a toss-up, and it's the difference between whether the Democrats can at least dream about the House and whether the House is just going Republican. Got it. So how does this latest poll help us understand why there was this meaningful swing from Democrats to Republicans in a pretty short period of time since the summer. You know, a lot of polls that we conduct, it can be hard to tell the story of why things changed. There are cross-cutting indicators or you see a weird number and you wonder whether it could be real.

But I think this poll actually tells a really simple and unusually clear story. And it shows that the issues that voters are focused on right now are very different from the ones they were focused on over the summer when we last chatted. And, you know, it's worth trying to remember what it was like when we lasted this poll in early July. Yeah, please. It was just two weeks after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. I mean, you can remember how much media coverage there was about it. There were protests.

New state trigger bans were going into effect every day. It was at the very forefront of the public conversation and understandably slow. I mean, that's going to be something our grandkids are going to learn about in the history books. It was a really significant historic event. And the other thing we were talking about over the summer was gun violence. In just a three-month period, we had the shooting in Buffalo. There was the Uvalde shooting. And then on July 4th, there was that shooting at a

parade in Highland Park, Illinois. Congress was moving on gun control legislation at the time. So gun control is an issue and gun violence as a problem were also really high on the minds of voters at the time. And like abortion, a sudden focus on gun violence and gun control is pretty good for the Democrats. A majority of voters tends to favor the Democratic position on, say, an assault gun ban and supports abortion being mostly legal. And then the final category is democracy. As you may recall, over the summer, the January 6 hearings were a nationally televised, almost weekly event. Right. And the January 6 hearings served to elevate democracy, and in particular, the Stop the Steal movement and election denial

and President Trump's conduct in the minds of voters. Every time there was a January 6th hearing, there's a whole set of stories afterwards, and it became an important part of the national conversation. So that too was a good issue for Democrats. So for all those reasons, this sudden prominence of three very meaty issues that aid the Democrats on a generic ballot, the end of summer 2022 is a kind of high watermark when it comes to polling for the Democratic Party heading into these midterms. heading into these midterms. Exactly. But what our poll shows is that those three issues have really started to fade away. And they have been replaced by a series of issues

that are much more favorable to the Republicans, the economy, and even immigration and crime. If I can put a number on that, Michael, you know, when we last talked, 26% of voters just volunteered that democracy, abortion, or gun violence was the most important issue faced in the country. In this poll, it's down to 14. So it's basically in half. Wow.

On the other end of the ledger, the proportion saying that either the economy, crime, and immigration is the most important issue went from 38% when we last talked to 52%. So a majority of voters in this poll are now focused on one of these issues that favors the Republicans. Interesting. And as is the case with how we can tell a pretty clear story for why voters were focused on abortion and democracy and guns over the summer,

I think we can tell a similarly clear story about why they're focused on this different set of issues now. Well, let's take these three issues that you just brought up as favorable to Republicans, the economy, crime, immigration, and talk about how they end up becoming such a powerful force that explains this switch since the summer from Democrats to Republicans. Sure. So, I mean, let's start with the economy. The official economic numbers confirmed what American households already know. Prices continue to rise in September. Over the last month, the economic picture has gotten quite a bit worse. Food up 11.2 percent year over year. Rent up 7.2 percent. The largest increase since 1982. The inflation news has turned from okay to quite a bit worse.

The Dow Jones sank about 630 points. The stock market has fallen a lot. Gas prices have been dropping throughout the summer, but recent news from overseas sent them right back up again. Gas prices bottomed out in early September and began to increase. And so it is no surprise to me that the share of people focused on the economy has gone from 35 to 45%. And there are a lot of people

who are struggling day to day with rising costs or looking at their 401ks. So you have both this combination of abortion being farther in the rear view mirror and that steady drumbeat of stories on that topic fading, but also a new set of stories about the economy that people are living every day. I mean, there's no way around it. The president is always held accountable for the state of the economy, whether the president deserves it or not. And in this case, the Republicans have a credible pitch that Democratic

policies like the Recovery Act contributed to the inflation by overstimulating the economy. So this is a tough issue for the Democrats. Got it. Let's turn to crime and immigration as issues that favor Republicans. Yeah. You know, I think crime and immigration are both really interesting because they're both issues where I don't think it's as much the news that's helped put that issue at the forefront of voters' minds, but Republican strategy. Turn now to immigration, the showdown playing out right here in the U.S. tonight, far from the U.S.-Mexico border. You know, start on immigration. Remember that a couple of weeks ago.

Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis flying roughly 50 migrants to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Governor DeSantis shipped migrants to Martha's Vineyard. Driven by bus and fueled by politics, another wave of migrants arrived in New York City today. Governor Abbott from Texas who did New York. Democrats going absolutely ballistic after getting just a small sample of the border crisis. You know, that resulted in multiple days of news coverage about the situation at the border,

and it offered an opportunity for Republicans to focus the electorate on an issue that the electorate trusts them on, which is reducing illegal immigration. And, you know, in our surveys, both in the summer and now, the voters who say immigration is the most important problem are overwhelmingly likely to back Republicans. Fascinating. And I think we see something similar on crime, too. I'm not sure that there has been some huge wave of crime since the summer, but I think that as the election season has gotten underway... Mandela Barnes stands with defund the police and supports no cash bail that releases dangerous criminals back into our communities. In campaign after campaign, Republicans have aired political

advertisements and focused their message on crime. What happens when criminals are released because bail is set dangerously low? Tragedy and walk a shot. Especially in districts and in races where the Democrats have, you know, previously supported defund the police or any other more reformist steps that has given the Republicans the ammunition to argue that the Democratic candidate is weak on crime. We all know Fetterman loves free stuff, but we can't let him free murderers. Right. It's really interesting. Republicans wagered that a very focused, intensive effort

on elevating issues favorable to them, namely crime and immigration, in ways that don't actually conform to reality. I mean, they're both in some ways manufactured crises, really has the ability right before the midterms to swing swingable voters their way. Yeah, I mean, I would say that these are real issues. You know, immigration and crime have been major problems in the minds of the electorate for a long time. And once those other issues faded off the front page, there was an opportunity for the Republicans

to bring those issues back to the forefront of the minds of voters as they often have been in the past. And the economy is an entirely different category, where the news really did swing in the Republicans' favor. You put all that together, and you have an environment that's shifted in ways that's much more favorable to the Republicans. And that's the environment that we conducted this poll in, and it helps make sense of why the Republicans have gained so much since our last poll. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. from favoring Democrats on the generic ballot to suddenly favoring Republicans and getting us to this four-point swing?

Well, the simplest answer is the people who support the Democratic position on issues like abortion or guns, but who are potentially sympathetic to the Republicans on other issues like the economy or crime or immigration. And, you know, there are millions of people out there who hold these sort of conflicting views. Republicans who are pro-choice, you know, there are millions of people out there who hold these sort of conflicting views. Republicans who are pro-choice, for instance, or an independent voter who is anti-immigration and pro-abortion.

Right. In other words, voters are complicated. Most voters are complicated. The people who are ideologically consistent, who agree with their party on everything, even if they're strong partisans, are the minority. Okay. So specifically, let's talk about the groups of voters who make this switch. Yeah, I'd have to start with women. You know, women have long leaned towards the Democrats in no small part because of issues like abortion and gun policy. But many women are also susceptible to carrying out the economy. Many women are also deeply concerned about crime. And indeed, our poll does show the Republicans making pretty meaningful gains among women over the summer. Now, I should say that when you get to

polls of gender or any subgroup for that matter, polls become a little less reliable. Our poll is just not designed to be a perfect representation of subgroups. So, you know, there's room to wonder about just how much the Republicans have gained. But clearly, in terms of just the direction that our poll shows, it shows the Republicans doing better among women than they had done previously. And it makes sense if you believe that the electorate has gone from focusing on a set of issues where women are especially likely to back the Democratic position to those where maybe there's a little bit less of an advantage for Democrats among women. But we tend to think of abortion as somewhat unique and core to voters' identity, especially women voters. And so what you're describing is a phenomenon in which maybe that assumption is just kind of wrong? Well, I think there are a lot of voters out there who care deeply about abortion. You could even call them single issue voters if you would. But, you know, the middle 50% of the electorate, I don't think I would put in that category.

They may care about abortion a lot, but it's one of many important issues to them. Just as one anecdote, you know, in our poll, only 5% of voters volunteer that abortion is the most important problem in the country right now, including less than 10% of women. It's only 1% of men. So, you know, that's a lot. You know, this is an open-ended question, and that was the first thing they named, 1 in 20 people. But 19 in 20 people think there's something else more important out there, even if they care deeply about the issue. Gotcha. So who else, besides women, swung in a meaningful way in this poll towards Republicans? I guess I would say maybe working class voters is a second category. Usually pollsters define working class voters as people without a college degree.

class voters as people without a college degree. For this conversation, I guess I would slightly redefine this to really mean people who care about pocketbook economic issues, whether it's because they're more economically vulnerable or just because they care more about their finances than ideological questions. In our poll, for instance, 49% of people without a degree listed the economy or inflation as the most important issue compared to 37% of people without a degree listed the economy or inflation as the most important issue compared to 37% of college graduates. So as the economy becomes more important, it does tend to land more among working class voters. But again, you know, that's going to hit anybody who just privileges the economy and they're thinking it can be a relatively affluent person thinking about

retirement looking at their 401k crashing, right? Got it. So that's the economy, which has a very unique power over voters of all kinds in elections. Who did this poll find seems to have moved from Democratic to Republican because of the specific issues of immigration and crime? Is that knowable? That one's tough. I mean, the number of people who are citing that as the most important issue is fairly small. We're only talking about, I think, a combined 8% on those two issues. And that's a no small part because many Republicans right now who may care deeply about crime and immigration are prioritizing the economy over that.

But I can say that those are issues as well where working class voters, and especially white working class voters, are much more likely to say it's the most important problem than white college graduates. In the case of crime, I mean, only like 1% of college educated voters in our poll think crime is the biggest problem. It just doesn't register for people who can live in communities with lower crime rates and so on. people who can live in communities with lower crime rates and so on. Got it. So the same working class voter who seems inclined to think that the economy is a big problem in their lives is similarly inclined to think crime and immigration are a problem in their lives. And all three of those issues, as you have explained to us very well, favor Republicans. Yeah. And we have Republicans winning by a very large margin among voters who select one of those issues. So if you get a 10-point increase in the number of Americans who are listing one of

them, that can pay off in big ways, and at least in our poll it does. Nate, I'm curious what happened to the issue of democracy and threats to democracy. We've talked about every other issue but that when we try to understand this switch because it might be true that the January 6th hearings have faded away and they have become less frequent. And we've talked about how the news cycle really matters when it comes to the prominence of these issues.

But election denialism is a very big part of this midterm election. We know that because hundreds of Republican candidates are running on the false claim that Biden didn't really win the 2020 election. And so it's hard to imagine that issue has just kind of faded out of people's lives. So what does the poll find about what happened to democracy and to the degree that it is still important to people, which party it favors? Well, the poll found that a lot of people are concerned about democracy.

I mean, more than 70 percent of voters said they thought democracy was under threat. Right. So it would seem to imply that it ought to be a very big issue in this election. The catch, though, is that many of the people who say democracy is under threat don't really mean what you were just talking about, Michael. When we asked them open ended, why is democracy under threat? They're not talking about stop the steal for the most part. They're not talking about election denialism. They're not talking about January 6th. They're more likely to talk about corruption. They're more likely to talk about polarization. They're more likely to list something that just has nothing to do with democracy too,

like inflation or something. So while many voters will tell a pollster they're concerned about democracy, only a small number of them are conceiving of that word and that topic in the same way that you just mentioned. I should note though, Michael, the people who do take the view of democracy that you just did, who say the threat to democracy is to stop the steal and right-wing authoritarianism and election denial and so on, the people who did tell us that, for them, democracy is the most important issue. They're just only 17% of the electorate. So for the group that has adopted the understanding of the threat to democracy that you did, it's a huge issue. And most voters just don't see it that way.

So when we look back at the summer, Nate, where we started this conversation, and how Democrats were doing unexpectedly well, I'm curious, should we think of that as basically a historical anomaly, right? A violation of the normal political rules around how a party in power is going to perform in midterms. And therefore, we should treat this latest poll, where Republicans are doing better, as a return to normalcy. Or should we view this change as a very rare opportunity that Democrats had over the summer,

but somehow squandered? I'm curious how you think about it. Well, we'll see the final result in a few weeks. But if we stipulate for a second but somehow squandered. I'm curious how you think about it. Well, we'll see the final result in a few weeks. But if we stipulate for a second that the Republicans go on and win the national vote by three points, like you might guess from our generic ballot number, I think we would say

that this was something more like a return to normal. After all, what happened over the summer was historic. The court decision in Dobbs is, again, it's going to be taught in the history books. Is there something that Democrats could have done to try and keep abortion in the news down the stretch and keep immigration and crime out? Right. That's the question. You know, maybe. I do think that Democrats are doing everything they can to keep it in the news.

I have to say that I was back home for a baseball game, watched the Mariners lose in 18 innings. And the Democratic ads were constantly about abortion. So I think the party's trying to bring back the summer. But, you know, airing political ads and talking about it on the campaign stump is not the same as it being legitimate breaking news that's dominating the national conversation. Right. Joe Biden is releasing more oil from the strategic petroleum reserve today

and trying to bring down oil costs. Maybe that'll help down the stretch to at least dull the economic issues a little bit to give a little more breathing room to their efforts to return focus on abortion. It's very difficult to predict what will happen over the next few weeks. And we have definitely seen, you know, those, quote, October surprises in the past. But the reality is it's really hard for the Democrats to recreate what they had over the summer. They can try and recreate it with advertisements the same way the Republicans have tried to bring back issues like crime and immigration. But that's not the same as recreating a truly historic moment when the whole national

conversation is focused on an issue where Democrats have the advantage. when the whole national conversation is focused on an issue where Democrats have the advantage. Well, Nate, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, Russia declared martial law in four regions of Ukraine that it has illegally annexed but does not fully control,

a move that will allow Russian leaders to impose even tighter restrictions on the people who live there. The decision appears to be a response to Russian military setbacks that have allowed Ukrainian forces to advance further and further into the annexed territory. And in a bad sign for inflation, two of the world's largest companies, Nestle and Procter & Gamble, both acknowledged on Wednesday that they have raised prices throughout the last few months and plan to continue to do so to maintain their profits despite lower consumer demand.

Nestle, for instance, which makes products like Cheerios and KitKat bars, said it had raised prices by nearly 10% during the third quarter of the year. Those price increases undermine efforts by government officials to lower inflation and are expected to keep consumer prices higher for a longer period of time. to keep consumer prices higher for a longer period of time. Today's episode was produced by Rochelle Banja and Sydney Harper. It was edited by Patricia Willans and Lisa Chow. Contains original music by Marion Lozano and Alisha Ba'etube and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.