The NPR Politics Podcast - Midterm Update: What You Should Pay Attention To On Election Night

Episode Date: October 31, 2018

This is your guide to what to pay attention to as the results roll in on Tuesday. The NPR Politics team walks through what races they will be watching on election night. Key battlegrounds in each timezone will illuminate whether there will be a blue wave, red wave, or something in between. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Jonna and Alexandra. We're filling out our ballots while listening to the latest NPR Politics podcast. This podcast was recorded at 2.09 p.m. on Wednesday, October 31st. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. OK, here's the show. Well, hey there, it is the NPR Politics podcast, and we're here with an election guide to help you figure out what you ought to pay attention to as the results roll in on election night. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress.

I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover Congress. So we're going to walk through what we will be paying attention to on Tuesday night. But first, let's talk about the big picture. It seems increasingly likely that we could have both a blue wave and a red wave, depending on how you look at things. Yeah, I think it's really fascinating that that's actually the way that things appear to be shaping up or moving toward. And what we're talking about here is that the House increasingly looks more and more likely that the Democrats will take over control of the House, if all things go as predicted. When you look at the Senate, though, it's still a very difficult

landscape for Democrats. They're down two seats. They need two seats to take back control of the Senate. And the fact of the matter is, a lot of the Republican-leaning states are looking like they are, guess what, Republican-leaning states. So one of the things we want to do today is talk about where things are going, right? And so let's pretend for a second. Let's fast forward to November 6th. It's Tuesday night of Election Day, and we've been waiting around all day, and you've kind of had some pizza or whatever meal it is our editors decide to buy for us. Can I say something very important on that end, Kelsey? Yeah. I am almost always at with a campaign on election night. I will actually be at NPR and I'm so excited to eat the food. I know. I feel the exact same way. So we're very excited about a potential pizza dinner. So I'm going to ask you guys to picture yourselves. You have just eaten pizza

or whatever it is that we end up having. And we're all sitting together in the newsroom. What are you going to be looking for first geographically, starting on the East Coast where the polls close first? Okay, so this isn't exactly on the East Coast, but Indiana, my home state, closes its polls at 6pm. That's early. It's one of the few states that closes that early. And so we'll have a pretty clear sense, I would say, of a very important Senate race early on. There's a small sliver of Indiana that is on the central time zone. That part of the state tends to be very Democratic. And you can make the argument that if before that section of the state's polls are closed, we already see a huge Republican advantage. That does not bode well for Joe Donnelly,

the Democratic incumbent senator. But it also, I think, could kind of tell us a little bit about the tone or the tenor, maybe, of the Senate throughout the evening. So, Scott, I'm curious what you're going to be paying attention to geographically as these kind of first results come in. Well, based on this new information, I might be paying attention to the fact that there wasn't pizza in the newsroom. But I will plow forward. And there's two states I'm very interested in that close at eight o'clock, and that's Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I'll talk about Pennsylvania real quickly. First, all year, Democrats have said this is one of the most important states for them if they're going to retake the House of Representatives. But due to a number of factors, they're already basically assured of picking up four seats

already. They're in really good shape to do that. Can they get up to six seats? If that's the case, then that could be a sign that it's going to be a very good night for Democrats. Also, New Jersey. We've been talking all year about how big the suburbs are, the high-income, high-education voters who might be drifting Democrat. There's four of those seats that are up for grabs, that are currently held by Republicans, that Democrats feel like they have a really good shot at. One of them, Kelsey was just there spending a lot of time covering the campaign there. It's held by Republican Tom MacArthur, who played a key role in that attempt to repeal Obamacare last year. If he is behind early in the night or if that seat flips, that could be a sign sign that this messaging on healthcare really did work and that voters responded to it. And if not the other, then maybe all this talk about healthcare was a little exaggerated.

Domenico, what about you? Well, early on in the night, I mean, I think there are a couple states that are going to be really key, Kentucky and Virginia. Kentucky closes its polls half in the eastern time zone, half in the central time zone. So that means that half of the state's at 6 o'clock, half of it's at 7 o'clock. And so we'll have a lot of results. And I'm watching one particular congressional district race, the 6th congressional district, between Andy Barr and Megan McGrath. And McGrath's the Democrat, Barr's the incumbent Republican.

And this is a race that really should not be on the map. This is a race that should be Republican territory. And if this race is, you see McGrath leading for much of the night and the Democrat is doing well there, that's a pretty good sign that the wave will be building. The first place I'm looking is Florida. Now, Florida is really interesting because it has just races that we're watching at every part of the ballot. So from congressional races, really tight congressional races, like the district just south of Miami, Carlos Cabello just came back from there, and that one is going to be a nail biter. It'll give us an idea if that happens to go for Republicans. It'll give us an idea of, you know, which way the electorate is tilting. We're also looking at the Senate race there, which is also

expected to be really tight between the current governor, Rick Scott, and Bill Nelson, the current Democrat senator. This is one of those races that if it goes for Democrats, we will have a good idea of the fact that, you know, Democrat this wave starts to look real. And we're also looking at the governor's race there. So there's just a lot to see in Florida. One other thing to look at in this first wave of states is governor's races. Really important position. We think about it in Washington as important because the governor who's going to be serving the next four years will play a key role in drawing the congressional lines the next time around after

the next census. So if Democrats win back some state houses, they'll be able to have a better say in how the lines have drawn. Of course, it's also incredibly important because you're running a state, just to say that, obviously. Ohio is really interesting. It's an open race because John Kasich is leaving. The Democrats look like they have a good chance to pick up the state house in Ohio. And that's interesting, given how hard Ohio broke for President Trump in 2016, that you could have Democrat Richard Cordray and Sherrod Brown win another term in the Senate in that state. And two other East Coast races that are really interesting that Democrats are really going to be paying attention to is that Florida governor's race where Andrew Gillum is running

and Georgia where Stacey Abrams is running. They're both trying to win for the first time in those states as African-American candidates. If they're successful, Democrats are going to read a lot into it and say, hey, we don't need to be moderate. We don't need to be Republican light if we're trying to win in Republican leaning states. We can just be our progressive selves and that would get our voters excited. So it's kind of a laboratory of how to run a campaign as a Democrat going on in those two states. It's really interesting. And Scott, we should point out that really on the East Coast, and even you could argue into the Central Time Zone as well, really the focus is going to be on a lot of House races as well as governor's races. I want to throw one more

governor's race in there that I think is really interesting. And that's Wisconsin, where the incumbent Scott Walker is trying to win a third term. But, you know, we'll see because it's a really competitive race. And the Democrat there seems to be sort of neck and neck with polls and even sort of outpacing Scott Walker in some of these polls. Yeah, Wisconsin is one of my pet interests of all of the states, just because their Republican Party is so strong there. And they're very good at polling. They're very good at raising money. And it's run largely by Scott Walker and in partnership with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus. And that group right there have been really influential in the state. And whatever happens after this year, those dynamics are going to change.

I mean, he's won three races. He's won a second term, and he also won that recall. So the fact that if he loses that race after being successful three times running for governor, that says a lot about how the winds might have shifted. And oh, by the way, Wisconsin was one of those quote unquote blue wall states that President Trump wound up winning. And Democrats want to have a chance to win there in 2020. And this could be an early sign if that the Midwest could be tacking back toward Democrats if they're able to take down Scott Walker, which they haven't been able to do in a bunch of elections. And there's a Senate race there. Exactly. And we'll get a clearer picture, we should point out, of the Senate as we get later

and later into the evening, as we get closer to, say, 9, 10 p.m. So we'll talk about that later. Let's take a quick break first. And when we get back, we'll talk about what happens as more results come in on election night. Dr. Larry Nassar abused his patients for decades. I do remember telling the nurse, what if everyone thinks I'm lying? Believed, a new podcast from Michigan Radio and NPR, looks at how a team of women put one of the worst serial sexual abusers behind bars. And we're back. And it is still, hypothetically, Tuesday night. Kelsey's like smirking. It makes me giddy, too, to be honest. I'm ready to do it. Let's do it.

Returns, votes. Okay, so imagine, imagine, put yourself there Tuesday night. And depending how, you know, some of those races where the polls close relatively early go, we will start to have a picture of whether it's going to be an early night or a long night. You know, say the Republicans win Senate races in West Virginia, Indiana, and Florida. It could be a sign very early on of the way that the Senate's going. But let's posit that maybe it's going to be a long night. And it is now 10 p.m.

Where, Kelsey, do we then start to look? Well, I think as we start getting closer to 10 p.m., I think we're just going to be watching states like North Dakota, where Heidi Heitkamp is the Democrat running against Kevin Cramer. It's one of those really strange situations where both of them represent the whole state, even though Kevin Cramer is the House member. They are both well known and they have been battling it out. Heidi Heitkamp is really well known at the moment for having voted against Brett Kavanaugh after having voted for President Trump's previous Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. And she has come under serious fire for that. She was slipping in the polls before

that happened. Some Democrats thought that this might start engaging Democrats behind her who are saying, look, she's standing up for the beliefs of the party and that she's willing to, you know, go out on a limb in a very conservative state. If she wins, that'll be a huge shift. But if she loses, then we are looking at a really long night where we have to wait until more of these West Coast and further out in the mountain areas when seeing what the polls look like for them. And Domenico, talk to us a little bit about that, right? Because there are Republican-held Senate seats right now in Arizona and Nevada that it seems like Democrats feel somewhat optimistic about. And could we get

a different kind of shift in the momentum, you think, as we start to see Arizona and Nevada? I think that those are two really key states. You know, when we talk about this idea of a red wave, it's really happening in Republican states, Republican, you know, conservative leaning states, I should say. So, you know, if if Democrats win in Nevada, if they win in Arizona, two places that are swing like states, Arizona is even a center right state, President Trump won it by about four and a half points. That tells you a lot more about where the mood of the country is than the fact that Republicans were able to win where they should win. So, Domenico, then what about the flip side

of that? What if Republicans managed to win in both Arizona and Nevada? Yeah, I mean, that's a key thing for them to be able to hold in the Senate and make some real gains. And I think you're going to then have President Trump and others being able to say that they have some momentum on their side and that the blue wave maybe wasn't as real, was a little bit different, and that they are going on offense in some places, too. So what happens if we don't have a clear picture of how things are going? Let's flip back to the House for a second, right? So we don't have a clear picture, let's say, in the House by 9, 10 p.m.

Scott, does that mean we're going to be waiting for California results that are going to be coming in quite late, let's say, 11 p.m.? Yes. I hate to say it. You know, I said before that Pennsylvania was one of the most important states for Democrats to flip the House. California is up there as well. There's a lot of seats there where Democrats are trying to pick off Republican incumbents or empty seats, again, trying to ride that suburban wave. But if all the polls are overestimating Democratic support and if Republicans are running stronger than we think they are and these races are really close, it could take a very long time. California is a state where a lot of people vote by mail. You can actually wait a couple days after Election Day for ballots to come in to be counted as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. If these are close races, we might not even know by the time we go to sleep Tuesday who's in control of the House.

We might have to wait into the next few days. Democrats have been saying this for a while, warning that even though they feel good, they feel like their margins would be very small in a lot of these races, that a lot of these races would be close. So there could be a lot of waiting for these ballots to come in or possible recounts to tell us who's in control of the House. So, I mean, what does that mean, though, right? If it's midnight, you're ready for bed, you're brushing your teeth, and the results have not been called at this point. I mean, Kelsey, do we get a sense of the way that each party's momentum is shifting if this is an early night or a late night? If this is a late night and it drags on for days, not just a late night, just a long wait for all of the results to come in, it makes it

harder for either party to claim a clear mandate. And it makes it much harder, particularly if you're the Democrats coming in, if Democrats do take the House, to come in and say that they have a clear mandate on a lot of the investigative work that they want to do, probing into the president's tax records, the buildings he owns. So basically the emoluments issue that we've talked about in the past and the Russia investigation. They want and need this momentum so they can say that the American people want them to investigate this president. And if it's a nail biter and Republicans come out on top, it also makes it harder for them to say that they can go back in and try again to repeal Obamacare. So a quick and speedy result that delivers a clear majority to one party or the other makes it easier for that party to

govern. So Scott, we started this conversation by talking about a blue wave and a red wave and how they could both potentially happen simultaneously. Do you think that we'll have a sense of that at this point or at this point at the end of the night? I don't know. But here's the great thing. We have been living in a world of uncertainty and assumptions and inferences for two years now. And the great thing is we'll actually start having facts on Tuesday starting at seven o'clock. And I think that's a very exciting thing for us. And one reason why covering election night is so great. voting numbers coming in, a lot of people trying to make one sort of claim or another. It's really hard to tell. We will know for sure in less than a week. And I think that's just what we should focus on at this point going forward. Just remember, it all comes down to turnout. It all comes down to pizza. It all comes down to pizza. Remember, it all comes down to pizza. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. And just a heads

up to keep an eye on our podcast feed all next week, because we will be there to give you in-depth coverage as the results come in. Don't forget, you can subscribe to our newsletter for a roundup of the week's best online analysis from the NPR politics team. You can subscribe by heading to npr.org slash politics newsletter. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.