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- [00:00]
A
Hey there listeners, a couple notes before we get started today. First of all, I look forward to seeing everyone who's coming out to our sold out live show at the Comedy Cellar on Wednesday night. It's going to be a blast and the recording will be available to paid subscribers after the fact@gdpolitics.com Also, we have plans for Tuesday night coverage of the primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas starting at 7:30pm Eastern Eastern. I'm going to be joined by some friends of the pod@gdpolitics.com where you can watch our live coverage throughout the evening. We're going to talk, I guess mostly about Texas, but we'll touch on some of you know, the races in North Carolina, Arkansas as well. It's going to be a blast. So grab a beer, a friend, whatnot and join us@gdpolitics.com on Tuesday night, March 3rd, starting at 7:30 Eastern. We'll see you there. All right, here's the show. Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drew. We were originally planning on dedicating today's whole episode to the kickoff of the 2026 primary calendar with elections in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas on Tuesday. But if I've learned anything hosting the GD Politics podcast, it's be flexible. We might end up at war. And that is what happened this weekend. The US And Israel struck Iran across the country beginning on Saturday, killing Iran's supreme leader. Iran responded, attacking Israel, US Military assets and civilian targets in the Gulf states. Hezbollah and Lebanon has now joined the fighting. As of the time of our recording, the back and forth bombing is continuing and there are more questions than answers about what will happen next. Will there be a revolution in Iran? Will it be successful? What would the current regime staying in power look like? How wide could the conflict spread and how long could it last? I am sure those are questions we'll contend with in the future. Today we're going to kick things off with how the American public views the conflict and how politicians are reacting. Then we will move on to Tuesday's primaries. Of course, the blockbuster races are the Republican and Democratic Senate primaries in Texas. I've covered a lot of these things in my day, and I have to say I can't remember the last time I saw polling quite as conflicting as what we're seeing in the race between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico in Texas. We'll also touch on some of the House primaries worth keeping an eye on Tuesday night. And here with me to do it is Director of data at 50 plus one. Mary Radcliffe, welcome to the podcast.
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B
Thank you, Galen. And I'm sorry, if you've got a kitty cat meowing in the background, she's really mad. She's not outside chasing birds.
- [02:43]
A
You know, I think she's, at this point she's become a friend of the pod herself. So no worries. No worries. She is, she's absolutely welcome here. Also here with us is deputy editor of Inside Elections, Jacob Hrabashkin. Welcome to the podcast, Jacob.
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C
Good morning, Dalen.
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A
All right, so Mary Queen of Polls, what do Americans think about this latest war with Iran?
- [03:03]
B
There's sort of like two ways to get at that question, I think. One is to look at what people were saying before the strikes happened. The other is what people have been saying in the limited polling we have since Saturday where the news of this started coming out. So since Saturday, it's a little bit of a mixed bag. I intentionally here tried to only pull nonpartisan pollsters because we did get some polling from more partisan pollsters that shows something a little bit different. So if you look at RMG Research and Neapolitan News, we see among registered voters, 40% say they favor sending American soldiers into battle to help Iranian civilians, 47% are opposed.
- [03:44]
A
Wait, so that's straight up boots on the ground, 40% support.
- [03:47]
B
Straight up boots on the ground, 40% favor, 47% opposed. On the other hand, if you look at like Reuters, Ipsos, they had a survey on the 28th and March 1st among adults this time just asking if people approved of the strikes. They had approval at 27%, disapproval at 43%. So that's a little bit different.
- [04:06]
A
Wait, that's quite a bit different. Right. I was talking about conflicting polling when it comes to the Texas primaries, but I, I'm not getting a signal in between those two polls so far.
- [04:17]
B
And then we had a YouGov survey where a highlight asked whether or not it was a right decision or a wrong decision to strike Iran, we have 31% saying it was a right decision, 45% saying it was a wrong decision. In a more general question about supporting military action in YouGov economists, prior to the strikes, there was support for military action at 27%, opposition at 49%. So prior to the strikes, I think we had support at slightly lower levels than we see in the post strike polling. And that tends to happen because you tend to see a little bit of just partisan sorting once an action has been taken by a president who you might disagree with or agree with in a General sense. In particular, what we're seeing here is Republicans sort of getting off the fence and saying, I support President Trump, but it's not like a lot. Right. So like as a reference point, if you looked at March of 2003, 71% of Americans told Pew Research that they supported the use of force in Iraq in March of 2003. 71%. Right. And now we're looking at like at best maybe 40% in favor of, of these strikes after they have happened. So it doesn't look like there's a lot of public support for the president on this.
- [05:32]
A
We've talked on the podcast before about how public opinion changes depending on the outcome of the use of military force. And we've particularly talked about this when it comes to the strikes on Iran last June. We talked about this in the context of Venezuela. And if it seems like the United States military gets involved in a limited way and there's not some all out war support even gets a bit closer to 5050 or something like that in hindsight. So we're at a moment where we can't really say whether or not something like that could happen because as I said in the intro, we have kind of like not one clue about how this is all going to play out. And already this is a much wider war than we saw last June or than we saw in Venezuela. Are there any indications of the maybe upside or downside politically for the President here? Maybe some follow up polling questions that people asked about the duration of a war or how involved the United States might get?
- [06:42]
B
Yeah, yeah. So if you look at the Reuters Ipsos poll that was conducted this weekend, they did a series of questions about whether Americans would be more or less likely to support US Action in Iran given sort of various outcomes. And like I want to give all the usual caveats about more or less likely to support types of questions. These tend to be a little fraught. People are pretty bad at predicting their future behavior or future opinions. But it does give you sort of a window into the kinds of outcomes that Americans would feel good about versus bad about. And just to remind folks, in that Reuters Ipsters poll, approval of these actions was at 27%, disapproval at 43%. So this is already a survey where people are not super fond of what's going on here. So I just want to highlight a couple of these. This is not all of them. If government change happens in Iran that's friendly to the U.S. 47% of Americans say they'd be more likely to support this action, 5% less likely. So people are actually interested in regime change in some kind of a meaningful way. If this led to an end to the Iranian nuclear program, More likely to support, 48%. Less likely, 7%. So, again, that's an outcome people want. But on the other hand, if you look at, like, the things people are not so jazzed about. So if this leads to broader conflict in the Middle east involving many countries, more likely to support, 9%, less likely, 45%. So that's something we're actually already seeing happen, which is an outcome Americans clearly are not in favor of. The outcome people were least in favor of. The one that had the worst numbers in this poll was US Troops in the Middle east being killed or injured. More likely to support said 6%. Less likely, 54%. That is the strongest response. And that has happened as of this morning. I'm aware of reports that four U.S. service members have been killed at least, and many more injured. So I think that's probably not a good sign for the president. One other thing from an AP Nork survey, this was from before the strikes, from earlier in February. They were looking at how voters feel about Trump, like on the world stage. And they asked whether Americans have a great deal of trust or how much trust they have in Donald Trump to make the right decisions about the use of military force outside the US and the numbers here are already pretty dire for the president. Just 27% of Americans said they had a great deal or quite a bit of trust in Donald Trump to make the right decisions about the use of military force. 17% have a moderate amount of trust, whatever that means, 14%, only a little, 43%, no trust at all. Right. So the numbers for the president in terms of his ability to act as commander in chief are already pretty bad. And if we see that these outcomes that, as in the Reuters Ipsos poll, people were saying they really are not interested in, if those continue to push down support for this like this could be detrimental. That's if, if, if, if, if. Right. Because also there there were outcomes people liked, and we don't know if those are going to occur yet.
- [09:45]
A
So that gives us a clear picture of some of the political upsides and downsides. And we're at a moment where we're just going to have to wait and see how this all plays out. But politicians are reacting nonetheless in the moment. Folks want to know what they have to say. Jacob, you're joining us from inside the Beltway. From what you've seen so far, how are politicians reacting to this?
- [10:07]
C
Well, we'll know a lot more in a couple of days because Congress this week was already set to vote on the Iran War Powers resolutions. So members of the House and Senate will have to go on the record to a certain degree about how they, you know, feel about the President taking unilateral action to engage in what I think the President has called a war, which, of course, is a power that rests with Congress. So we'll know specifically, specifically where members fall on this issue to a greater degree at some point this week when that vote happens. For now, I think that the response has largely fallen along expected lines. Democrats are not particularly happy with the President taking these actions. Republicans have, by and large, lined up behind the president. The few exceptions to that rule have generally been people that we would anticipate to break from the norm. So Senator John Fetterman, for instance, is a Democrat, but was very supportive of the president. President strikes. Congressman Josh Gottheimer, one of the more moderate members of the Democratic caucus. He was also pretty supportive on the Republican side. Congressman Tom Massie, of course, Republican from Kentucky, much more likely to speak out against the Trump administration, and said that he was not particularly supportive of these actions. I think the most notable reaction to me is from Ohio Congressman Warren Davidson, who is not somebody that we typically think of as a rebel within the Republican conference. He is a pretty conservative guy, represents kind of the Cincinnati exurbs area, and he's a former Army Ranger. And so he comes at it from a national security perspective. And he said that he would support the War Powers Resolution and expressed a lot of frustration that Congress was not looped in to the extent that he would have liked on this particular engagement, and expressed some skepticism that the administration had kind of a clear plan to prevent this conflict from escalating into another regional war like the US Was mired in for many, many years in the early 2000s.
- [12:13]
A
Yeah, that actually seemed to be something of a through line in terms of members of Congress who have experience in the armed services or who are veterans, like Ruben Gallego, for example. Senator from Arizona, you mentioned that there were some Democrats who were like a couple Democrats who were more supportive, but mostly things fell along partisan lines in terms of Democrats objecting to it. There's also varying degrees in there. Right. Because you hear a lot of Democrats saying the Iranian Supreme Leader was an adversary to the United States, he was evil, et cetera, et cetera, and maybe treading a little more like lightly. And then you hear folks like Ruben Gallego saying, you know, for folks who have lost friends in battle, in engagements in the Middle East. Like, I take this personally and I'm skeptical about sort of sending our, you know, sons and daughters in uniform into harm's way over a conflict where there wasn't clearly an immediate sort of threat to the United States. While other, other Democrats, of course, are a little more open to the idea that Iran posed an immediate threat to the United States. And I think Graham Platner is another example here of somebody, of course, the primary candidate in the Democratic Maine Senate race, of somebody who's leaned into their service experience as a way to critique the president.
- [13:30]
C
Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I think this is something that we're seeing as veterans of the global war on terror continue to get elected to higher office. We're now, you know, we're in 2026. We're more than 20 years after the start of the war in Afghanistan. We're just a little over 20 years past the beginning of the war in Iraq. And so there's a whole generation, several generations at this point, of Americans, I would say young Americans and some not so young Americans who, you know, experienced those conflicts and are now, you know, in the House, in the Senate, like Senator Gallego. And, you know, I think they bring a perspective that was not present necessarily in the Conversation 15 years ago when we were talking about, you know, the military action in Libya and potentially in Syria. That was the last major war powers dust up. And so I think, you know, it's a new front for all of us. And my boss and his mentor before him always liked to say that the worst time to analyze the effect or impact of an event is while it's happening. And the second worst time is immediately after it's concluded. And I don't even think we're in the conclusion phase of the process yet here. So there's a lot we don't know. And there's a lot, of course, that rides on how things go. And, you know, to Mary's point, the fact that service members have already died in these operations makes it very different than either the Venezuela operation from a couple of weeks ago or the Iran bombings from last year or any of the other kind of major military actions that Trump has taken, I think that that makes it materially different. And if, you know, we're going to see a reaction from the American people that is different than how they've reacted to some of these other actions, I wouldn't be surprised.
- [15:31]
B
Yeah. To that point about the strikes in June, one thing I thought was interesting, looking back at this polling. Sometimes you learn something about American politics just from reading the way poll questions are worded. Back in June, pollsters were asking about this as the Iran Israel conflict. They were not saying US Involvement in Iran, they were saying US Involvement in the Iran Israel conflict. It was framed as something going on with one of our allies where we stepped in and did a thing, but we're not really part of it. And I don't think that that framing is showing up in the way that pollsters are crafting their questions in this immediate aftermath of the strikes this past weekend. So I think that's one sort of like interesting flag that this is sort of very different from the June operations in the way that it's being presented and perceived by the public generally.
- [16:21]
A
Yeah, that's a good flag. And to Jacob's point about us not even being at the conclusion of the event, let alone two weeks out from it, and able to gather a bunch of public opinion polls to assess how people think about it in a backwards looking manner. Be prepared. We will. We will continue talking about this, Mary. I'm sure we'll be back on with more polls just like the ones you've already cited. But for now, let's talk about the primaries that we intended to dedicate a whole podcast episode to today. But first, a break. Today's podcast is brought to you by you, the listeners. Without paid subscribers, GD Politics simply wouldn't exist. Your support means we can continue making an independent podcast that prioritizes curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and can join in the paid subscriber chat. Also importantly, you get access to our live shows. The videos for this week's live show is gonna be coming out later in the week for paid subscribers subscribers only. Also, the audio will be available in the feed as well. Over@gdpolitics.com you can also connect your personal feed once you become a paid subscriber to wherever you listen to podcasts, so you'll never miss an episode. Join the GD Politics community today and become a paid subscriber@ GDPolitics.com we got a lot coming up for you in 2026, so now's a great time to join again. That's GD Politics, and thank you. I want to begin this segment by simply reading the margins in the latest Democratic Senate primary polling in Texas. Emerson College Poll Talarico 6 UT Tyler Poll Crockett+18 Blueprint Poll Talarico12 Public Policy Poll Talarico6 Impact Research Talarico4, University of Texas Crockett+12. As folks can tell, those are varied results. Mary, what the fuck is going on here?
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B
Well, I. Okay. PPP poll and the Impact Research poll were Both for super PACs or campaign internals. So we can maybe just set those ones aside from just.
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A
And those were both showing Talarico up at single digit margins.
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B
Yeah. And they were both conducted. One was conducted for the Talarico campaign and the other for a super PAC supporting Talarico.
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A
And honestly, if you take those out, it's even more varied. Like all the other polls are either Talarico plus double digits or Crockett plus double digits.
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B
I can also toss in a University of Houston poll that had Crockett up eight. That was in late January if you want.
- [18:55]
A
Yeah, I mean, why not? Why not add more contradictory polling to the pile?
- [19:00]
B
Yeah. Okay, so what is going on here? There's a couple of things. There's like two big issues underlying, like why this polling is so wildly variant. The first is that Texas is an open primary state, meaning that voters don't register as a party. They just like go to the polls and they're like, I feel like voting for this party's primary this time and they can just take whichever ballot they prefer. What that means is that modeling the electorate can be very, very difficult for pollsters because they're independent voters or voters who say that they are independent voters or who are modeled to be independent voters based on their past behavior in the voter file. Pollsters are sort of guessing at what they're going to do. So it's pretty difficult to construct a model of the electorate. So, like, generally pollsters are like trying to ask voters like, hey, do you plan to vote in this primary or not? And just taking them at their word. But then some like, insane stuff is happening when they're doing that. So if you look at the UT Tyler poll, for example, it does ask voters, hey, do you plan to vote in the Republican or Democratic primary? And when they did that, 86% of their registered voter sample made it past that likely voter screen. There is not going to be 86% turnout in the Texas primaries. Like, that's insane. Completely insane. So that's clearly like something is going wonky with that likely voter screen.
- [20:24]
A
And that was the Crockett plus 18 poll.
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B
Yes. So they're showing like an unbelievable turnout rate that is simply not going to happen. Right. Like if 86% of registered voters in Texas turnout in this primary. I don't know, I should quit my job because that just seems impossible to me. The University of Houston poll that had crockett up 8 used a combination of past election participation and prospective intention to vote to do their likely voter screen. But again, that's also probably pretty problematic because as we've seen in the early vote data, if you screen out people who haven't voted in primaries in the past couple of elections, you're going to lose like 20% of the realized Democratic primary turnout. We've already seen, because we can tell
- [21:13]
A
from the early vote if they're new voters.
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B
Yes, you can tell from the voter file if they're new voters. Based, you know, you, if someone votes, you can look at their past voting history. So that's already a problem. So that's one thing. It's just like, who the hell is going to vote in this election? Pollsters just don't know. And they're making guesses, and some of those guesses are very questionable. The other thing that I would flag here is that pollsters seem to have, like, really different perspectives on what percent of the Democratic primary electorate is going to be Latino, which I think is probably making these polls a little bit wonky. Right. Like in Texas, you should expect some, something like 30ish, 35% of the Democratic primary electorate to be Latino. But I've seen surveys that have less than 25% of the electorate as Latino in those surveys. It appears, although it's not quite clear because of low sample sizes, that Latino voters tend to favor Talarico by perhaps a small margin. That's a. Even. That's in debate. Right. So without the sort of. Right. Balance of the, the demographics in the likely voter electorate, we're getting like, really wildly different results because different pollsters are using different benchmarks for these kinds of demographic distributions in the electorate. Here's the summary. We have no idea who's ahead of this race.
- [22:32]
C
And, and Mary, to your point, not all of these polls are conducting interviews in Spanish either.
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B
Oh, great. I didn't know that.
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C
But that I'm pretty sure one of the. Whether it was the. Which UT poll it was, maybe none of them are only conducting interviews in English, which I think in Texas is malpractice.
- [22:53]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [22:55]
A
To put a finer point on what you were saying, oftentimes when we talk about general election polling, again, this is primary polling, general election polling in the United States, we have a better sense of what the electorate is going to look like. So it's not so hard to model it. And we're mostly focusing on are you getting a representative sample of, you know, the electorate, like the white voters that you're talking to. Are you getting a good portion of, say, non college educated, less engaged voters who might be more inclined to support Trump? Are you getting a good representative sample of what the Hispanic vote might look like or what the black vote might look like in terms of what the preferences are here? That is an issue. We don't know exactly what the preferences look like because there is some contradictory evidence in terms of, in particular, like you mentioned the Latino vote. There's some showing that it's pretty clear that the Latino vote supports Tyler Rico. Other polls where it's a bit more muddled. That's, that is one question. But the other question on top of that is, like you said, who is even going to turn up to vote? And I was talking to, by the way, we're going to be, in case I haven't already mentioned it in at the top of this podcast, we're going to be doing some live streaming@gdpolitics.com on Tuesday night. So we're going to be talking about all of this stuff as it comes in. But I was talking to a friend of the podcast, Lenny Brauner, in preparation for doing that live stream, and he was trying to figure out some sort of similar past primary election that he could compare Tuesday's night's results to. And the reality is there just hasn't been a really competitive Democratic primary for Senate in Texas recently. Like, you remember folks like Colin Allred and Beto o', Rourke, those guys walked away with their primaries. It was never close. Like, even though we paid a lot of attention to the general election because, you know, particularly in 2018, it seemed like better or work was giving Ted Cruz a run for his money. The actual primary process wasn't all that competitive. And so there's not a good past election for us to even compare this to to get a sense of what the electorate might look like.
- [24:57]
B
Yeah, 2020 was a little bit more competitive in the Senate primary, but there were also like a bajillion candidates. So it ended up going to a runoff because, like the top five candidates all got, you know, 10 to 15% or something like that.
- [25:11]
C
And the 2020 race, I think was competitive because the candidates were more at parity because they, both of them had some level of political support, but neither of them were particularly strong Between Royce west and MJ Hagar, who ended up being the nominee, I really, I can't recall. And I went back and looked over the last 20 years, a primary that was so competitive because both candidates were strong, they were robust, they had name id, they had resources, they had all of the trappings of really serious statewide candidates.
- [25:44]
B
And certainly to have a Democratic primary, voters like them both.
- [25:47]
C
Yes, yes, they're popular, they're well liked. And you also have this crazy Republican primary going on at the same time. And I truly am not aware, you know, of the last time where you had both parties with seriously engaged, uncertain, blockbuster, tens of millions of dollars primaries going on at the same time. Which, Mary, to your point about voters who have the decision to walk into the voting booth and pull a Republican ballot or a Democratic ballot, that's a real choice that voters will have to make and it's not an easy one to make. Oh, this race is uncompetitive, so I'll vote in the other one. There are real considerations that go in there. So I'll just echo the we don't know what's going to happen here. But you know, there's, there's a lot that's unique about this particular contest.
- [26:38]
A
Right. To make that more explicit, Jacob, like if you're a moderate independent voter in Texas, you can either vote in the Republican primary and vote for John Cornyn or and this gets tricky, you can vote in the Democratic primary and maybe vote for James Talarigo. To be honest, their policy differences are almost non existent. It's all stylistic. But say you're more of a low key, mild mannered, moderate independent in Texas, like you do kind of have that choice to make. And obviously the incumbent Republican president, being unpopular, has in the polls pushed independents towards Democrats. So you could, you can make a theory of the case that those people might be more inclined to vote in the Democratic primary because they've been repelled by the Republican president. But John Cornyn has a long history in Texas. You know, he may, he has a well established branch brand amongst the old school traditional Republicans who may not like President Trump but may still want to support him. So all of that to say that I, it seems like the modeling that is going on is all over the place. But I also don't envy the job of trying to model the electorate.
- [27:48]
C
And, and maybe that's the case of a voter, you know, who, who approaches it that way. But you can also imagine a voter who might go into the polls and, and say, do I want to pull a Republican primary ballot and vote for Corden or a Democratic primary ballot and vote for Jasmine Crockett, Right. If you moderate independent black voter in a, you know, major city in Texas and you might feel, you know, pulled in one of those two directions. I think voters are, voters are complicated.
- [28:17]
A
What percent of the black electorate is John Cornyn getting in Texas?
- [28:22]
C
I have. The point is Texas is a huge state and there are a ton of voters and we're talking about races with really narrow margins. And so I think, you know, you can, you can probably create or find a voter that is cross pressured in all sorts of unique ways somewhere in the state. And where we get in trouble and why I don't envy pollsters who have to try and make assumptions about races like this one is when you start to go down these hypothetical trees of, well, this voter who has this kind of profile is facing this particular choice and there's no way they could possibly go in the third direction. Maybe they want to vote. Maybe you've got cross pressured, you know, Wesley Hunt, Jasmine Crockett voters as well. Right?
- [29:10]
B
Yeah, I was going to say Wesley Hunter ratio.
- [29:14]
C
You know, I don't, I think the Hunt boomlet is pretty much over at this point. But I do, you know, it's not as straightforward as like a moderate voter is faced between supporting Cornyn or Talarico, you know, in the ballot box.
- [29:32]
B
It also creates the opportunity for rat. Like there has been some reporting that there has been some GOP spending to try to boost Jasmine Crockett because the GOP thinks she would be an easier candidate to beat in November. We can have an argument about whether or not that's true, but it does sort of raise the possibility that you could go in and say, I'm a serious Republican. These guys are all fine with me. I'm going to go vote for the Democrat I think is more likely to lose.
- [30:01]
A
Or on the flip side, Democrats can vote for Ken Paxton.
- [30:04]
B
Correct?
- [30:05]
C
Yeah.
- [30:05]
A
So I do want to say that while this data all seems very muddled, the Scottish teens over at Polymarket. Again, inside joke. Scottish teens. I'm not specifically talking about people between the age of 10 and 20 in Scotland. The betters at Polymarket show Talarico with a 75% chance of winning. Meanwhile, Crockett does lead in the average by single digit margin.
- [30:30]
B
So in the 50 plus 1 polling average as of this morning, she leads by 2.3%.
- [30:35]
A
Okay, so it's pretty even. But she has, she has a slight lead. But the betters at Poly Market say Talarico has a 75% chance. I don't think any of us know exactly why that is. It could be because they're biased in favor of Talarico and they're putting it's dumb money putting dollars on their preferred candidate. Or there could be a more sort of rigorous argument here, which is the polling showing Crockett leading is mismodeling the Texas electorate or whatever. And there's a stronger chance, you know, they have some sort of theory of why Talarico is actually in the lead. I'm curious if anybody else has thoughts on that sort of betting market polling average mismatch beyond just, hey, things happen.
- [31:20]
B
I mean, I will mention that, like when I was picking on some of the polling methodology, two of the surveys I shouted out as having potentially problematic methodology are two of the surveys that have Crockett with the largest leads.
- [31:32]
C
Yeah, I mean, I. Galen, you know my feelings about this. I think it's a waste of time to try and discern what the betting markets are doing or. Or why they're doing them.
- [31:41]
A
And they have. And to be clear, they have a mixed record. Right. Like, the betting markets performed better than the polls in 2024 and worse than the polls in, you know, the papal election last year. So, you know,
- [31:57]
B
there's probably a lot of overreading of the early vote data. I think that's going on there where, you know, in. In the early vote data, you are seeing pretty significant Latino turnout in the Democratic primary. And if you buy the theory that Tellarico has a lead among Latino voters, then maybe that's a good indication for him. But again, like, that is. Even that point is pretty debatable based on the surveys. I mean, when we're looking at Latino voters, we're looking at cross tabs. That's like, you know, 30% or something of the electorate in a poll that maybe has like 400 or 500 people at the top line. That sample size is tiny.
- [32:31]
A
Yeah. While we're talking about the early vote, I do want to mention that according to the early vote tallies, more than 638,000 Texans have voted in the Democratic primary, and nearly. Nearly 594,000 voters have cast ballots in the Republican primary. And folks are making hay of this because, you know, sometimes analysts like to take those totals and say, look, there's more enthusiasm on the Democratic side. This could bode well for Democrats come November. I don't know if either of you have a philosophy on how legitimate those kinds of takes are, but what do you think when you see those numbers?
- [33:13]
C
We know the Democrats have a motivation advantage. We know the Democrats have an abuse. Like, that's not any new information.
- [33:22]
A
Jacob's speechless. No, she's all frustrated with the bad takes.
- [33:25]
C
I just. Look, how many times do we have to see this movie that the early vote is like super favorable for Democrats no matter what the contest is. And then everyone remembers that Republicans show up on election day and like all of the priors that people have, you know, convinced themselves of during the early voting period go right out the window when, when people show up to vote on election day. Like, we don't need early vote numbers to show us that Democrats have an enthusiasm advantage. We see that in every single poll. We see that in every single special election result and off year election result over the last 16 months. I think between a Democratic enthusiasm advantage globally and the proclivity for Democrats to vote early, especially kind of post 2020, and the for Republicans to vote on election day post 2020, even in a state like Texas, which has a robust history of early voting, I am not surprised at all. I don't look at these numbers and say, oh my God, Democrats are going to win Texas. I look at them and say they tell us exactly what we already know, which is that Democrats have an enthusiasm advantage, Democrats like voting early, and there is an outside chance that Texas could become a very competitive race at some point in the fall.
- [34:36]
B
Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean, it's, it is true that this is different than we have seen in recent elections in Texas that Democrats have the advantage in the early vote, but we do not yet know the degree to which that's just cannibalizing their election day vote, that these are people that would have voted anyway. And because there's a race that is interesting that has candidates that they like, they went and voted early rather than wait till election day because they were excited about that. Right. Like, we don't have this comparison point to a recent election that had two candidates like this that were both very exciting to Democrats. So I, I just, at this point, we don't really know.
- [35:14]
A
We'll come back, we'll come back to the vote totals after the fact and we can see if Republicans ended up beating out Democrats with election day votes. I imagine that once everything is tallied Tuesday night, narratives will start getting written, hot takes will be baked. And before any of that happens, Jacob, I want to ask you, to the best of your sense, what has this race been about, the Democratic primary? Because there's a lot of different, oh, Talarico is the moderate and you know, Jasmine Crockett is the resistance lib or this or that. You know, they have very different approaches. Like one is more of a fighter and one is More of a sort of make peace, not war type of person. The former being Crockett and the latter being Talarico. But what do you see this race as being about?
- [36:03]
C
I think it's about personality. I think it's about what kind of avatar Democrats want to be at the forefront of their party, and what Democrats think is what Democratic voters think is the best way to win a difficult race. I think you have to kind of isolate Silo this contest, because this is Texas we're talking about, and voters in Texas, I think, are intimately aware of the fact that Texas is a Republican state. Right. This is not. I do not want people to look at this primary and extrapolate to a national Democratic electorate the whatever sort of lessons are or may be at hand here, because when voters are going to. To the Democratic primary, they are doing so with the understanding that they are picking a candidate for a race, that they will be an underdog in a race that will be very, very difficult, that the odds are stacked against them, and that changes the whole dynamic. But I do think it really is about personality. It's about what kind of candidate, what is the attitude, what is the approach of the candidate that they want leading the top of the ticket. It's not about ideology, because the ideology in this race is relatively consistent between the two candidates. And if anything, Tallarico is, you know, on. On the issues, more progressive than Crockett. But, you know, voters tend to see black women as more progressive than white men. And so, you know, there's a kind of a perception versus reality issue there. You know, they're both from very safe districts. They both are very young. They neither of them have been like, you know, 30 years in the state legislature. You know, this is about their approach. This is about how they come across to voters and what, you know, Texas Democrats think is the. The best way to win a seat that has evaded them for more than 30 years.
- [38:03]
B
Yeah, I think Tallarigo reads as a little more moderate because he does face a lot of his political positions in his faith, but he's decidedly, like, on the Christian left. So, like, he's saying words about faith and using them to justify quite progressive positions, which I think voters aren't used to hearing, and it's a little confusing.
- [38:29]
A
Well, Mary, to that point, I mean, we'll have more to say about this Tuesday night. I'm sure we'll have a long. We can have a longer conversation then. But I do see some of the national media's coverage of Talarico as extremely basic. Arithmetic of like, oh, he's talking about faith. Therefore he can appeal to like more moderate and right wing voters. It's like, if you actually listen to what he's saying, there's just as good of a chance that he will piss off moderate and conservative Christians. A lot of times he's targeting them, saying like, they're part of a Christian nationalism. They're using the faith, they're distorting the faith or for political means.
- [39:08]
B
I mean, and misinterpreting.
- [39:10]
A
He's distorting the faith for political means. Like he's a type of person who will tell you there are six genders. Right. Like, he does not provide cross. Apart from maybe faith providing cross pressure in that you don't frequently hear Democrats talking about faith. Although, like, again, Nancy Pelosi, big Catholic, she talked about her faith kind of all the time in the context of politics, hoping that it would maybe provide some sort of cross pressure, whatever. She would be able to appeal to other folks. But like, Talamiko does not provide issue, issue, cross press at all. He's not saying, like, I think it's a good thing that we're strong supporters of the second Amendment in Texas. I think that, you know, Democrats have gotten ahead of themselves on the gender issues or whatever. Like, the only thing is that he is a minister in training. Basically, he's not providing cross pressure on any other issue.
- [40:00]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think this is actually really interesting. You know, listeners to the podcast will know that I do consider myself a church lady. I am also a Presbyterian like James Talarico. And so the kinds of ways that Tallarico is talking about scripture are very familiar to me from my own church experiences. And I think a lot of mainstream Protestants will have some. We'll have a touchstone there. Actually, you know, if you look at religious identity on the political left, you will frequently see appeals to scripture to justify like a more open and like warmer welcoming of immigrants or refugees, for example. Like there's easy, like there's easy pieces of scripture I could pull. There's like, clearly this is the approach that scripture supports. So I think on the mainstream Protestant side you will actually see some appeal to some of those positions. It's on the evangelical Christian, well within the evangelical Christian community that I think those are, be. Will be fairly anachronistic. But it's not. I mean, I don't know that Telorico or Crockett or any Democrat is in a position to really make headway among like evangelical right wing Christians at this moment in Time.
- [41:19]
A
Yeah. Okay, so that's a little preview of more of the conversation to come with Mary on Tuesday night. But Jacob, really quickly here, we gotta cover both the Republican side and those House races in Texas. So I'll say just to cover the polling on the Republican side. Polls tend to show Paxton up by single digits. It's significantly less varied, but most of the polling shows it going to a runoff. So there will be a little bit less excitement on Tuesday night on the Republican side, assuming it does go to a runoff. But again, primary polling can shift fast and so no guarantees, but we kind of expect a runoff there, likely between Cornyn and Paxton. Like you said, the Wesley Hunt boomlet seems to be subsiding. So we will see how that goes. And we've talked on this podcast before about what the two politicians represent. Traditional Republicanism, a more sort of all in on Trump kind of MAGA ism. We'll talk more about that Tuesday night as well. But House races, the House map has been redrawn in Texas since the last time the state voted, so there's been some mix up. What House races are you gonna be watching on Tuesday night?
- [42:36]
C
Well, there are so many. I mean, we're looking at a real potential for significant turnover in the Texas delegation. You know, as many as a dozen new members, essentially out of a delegation of 38. There are a couple primaries that will elect new members. So there are three seats that Republicans redrew that will almost certainly elect a new Republican member. So, you know, you've got the 9th district, you've got the 32nd district, and you've got the 35th district. All three of those have interesting Republican primaries. You've got some Republican incumbents, quite frankly, that are, that are in a fair bit of trouble. I would say those are perhaps the most interesting primaries that I'm watching out of all of these just because of the uncertainty. So Texas 23, you've got Tony Gonzalez, the embattled Republican congressman, who is alleged to have been either in an affair or pressuring one of his staffers to have an affair with him. And that staffer later died by suicide, self immolated. Really terrible, terrible stuff. Tony Gonzalez faces a primary challenge from a YouTuber named Brandon Herrera who ran against him two years ago, nearly won, lost by only a couple hundred votes. Herrera is got, he's, he's, he's got plenty of baggage as well. Republicans spent a ton of money trying to get him, you know, to, to, to beat him in, in the 2024 primary. He said all sorts of things on his YouTube channel, on podcasts that people find very objectionable. But now Republicans kind of think that he might be the. The safer alternative to Tony Gonzalez. So that's one primary I'm watching. The other one is the second District, where Dan Crenshaw faces his most competitive primary yet against Steve Toth, who's a state representative running from the right. The reason why I bring that one up is because when we talk about redistricting, so much of the focus always goes to the seats that are redrawn to be more competitive. You know, Democratic seats that are turned into Republican safe seats, or, you know, Democratic seats that were made less favorable to Democrats, like in the Rio Grande Valley. But the flip side of that coin, of course, is that incumbents, even if their partisanship isn't changed, have to take on new territory and have to lose territory that they're familiar with. And so Dan Crenshaw has always had a bit of a problem with the base. He's always faced some level of primary challenge, and he's won, but never by super convincing margins. This is his most serious challenge yet. His opponent has been endorsed by Senator Ted Cruz. So it's very possible he could be forced into a runoff. And when you're an incumbent who's forced into a runoff, and this goes for Dan Crenshaw, this goes for Tony Gonzalez. You know, Sylvia Garcia on the Democratic side is facing a primary challenge. You know, Julie Johnson, of course, running against Colin Allred in the Texas 33. And then in the Senate race, of course, John Cornyn, potentially looking at a runoff. It is very, very, very, very difficult to increase your vote share as an incumbent from the first round of a primary to the runoff round. I went back and I looked at Texas races. I looked at Senate races across the map in states that have runoff requirements. And it is very, very rare for an incumbent to pick up more than 5 or 6% of vote share from where they were in the first round to where they were in the runoff. And so if you're sitting at anywhere less than 45% in a primary first round as an incumbent, you're in a tough spot. And that's just the cold, hard reality of the situation for any of these people, if that's where they find themselves on Tuesday.
- [46:31]
A
Yeah. Okay. So we're definitely going to be keeping an eye on those House races in Texas. Dan Crenshaw is interesting in particular when you're talking about former service members who are now in Congress. He's one of those people who's. I don't think anyone would argue with his conservative credentials, but he's been a little more skeptical of Donald Trump.
- [46:52]
C
Oh, I mean, I think. I think the voters in the district would argue with his conservative credentials, which is why he's got a problem in
- [46:58]
A
a primary, I guess. I mean, conservative credentials as an old school conservatism, not new school conservatism in the sense of, like. He has a podcast, I've listened to it before, where he talks a lot about constitutional principles and things like that, which, like these days, when constitutional principles get in the way of what Trump wants to do, the new conservatives might choose Trump over the Constitution. Folks who still choose the Constitution, maybe like Dan Crenshaw, find themselves sometimes at loggerheads with the base. Would you agree with that characterization? I. Or you think, like, even. Even on, like, old school conservatism, he's not.
- [47:35]
C
Look, I. I am not going to venture, like, a definition of what conservatism is or isn't, you know, vis a vis the Constitution or anything else. What I will say is that, politically speaking, what it means to be a Republican politician in 2026 is determined by your level of fealty to Donald Trump. Trump has successfully reorganized the entire party ethos around him and kind of, in that process, has perhaps redefined what it means to be a conservative. In the only definition that I think is useful, which is how do Republican voters interpret what it means to be a conservative? Useful for my purposes at least. And it is all about how well do you align with Trump? That is the defining feature of the Republican Party. And so whether or not that means he's a conservative in the definition that someone might have used 15, 20 years ago, or the definition that a political scientist or historian would use to me, is somewhat beside the point. Voters interpret your value as a Republican, your score as a Republican, for lack of a better word, based on how closely you align with Trump on most issues, I think there are some places where voters give their politicians more leeway. But by and large, all of this is about Trump. It always has been. And, you know, that's why we see Republicans win and lose these races, not just in Texas, but across the country.
- [49:09]
A
All right, you make a good point. I'll accept it. I'll accept it. And to that end, before we leave, we should acknowledge that there are primaries in North Carolina and Arkansas on Tuesday night as well. Obviously, folks are paying attention to the North Carolina Senate race, but that's pretty much a foregone conclusion in terms of Roy Cooper winning on the Democratic primary and Michael Whatley winning on the Republican side. But are there House races that we should keep an eye on? Speaking of sort of the divides within the parties that we should be focusing
- [49:38]
C
on, North Carolina's first District, which was redrawn by Republicans ahead of this election cycle to be even more Republican leaning at this point is the only really interesting House race across those two states as it pertains to the primary. Don Davis, who's the Democratic incumbent, is the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent anywhere in the country at this point. And Republicans are very excited to try and take him out. But they've got to get through their own primary first. And there's a danger for them that they nominate. Probably they're not a weak candidate necessarily, but the weakest candidate of the bunch, which is Laurie buckhout. She's the 2024 nominee who lost to Don Davis even as Trump was carrying the district at the top of the ticket. She is not from the area. She moved to the area to run last time and then she left after she lost to serve in the Trump administration and then moved back to run again. There are a number of local office holders who are also in the race there, a local sheriff, some state representatives. But Buckout has the name ID and the financial resources to put herself in pole position there, even if she's the nominee. That's gonna be a very, very, very competitive race in the fall. But I think some Republicans would prefer to have a clean start with a different candidate, perhaps with more ties to the local politics.
- [50:55]
B
And just a flag. There is also a runoff threat in that race.
- [50:58]
C
That is true, yes, though it's a different threat. I believe it's a 40% threshold.
- [51:01]
B
I think it's 30.
- [51:02]
C
It might be 30. Okay. Yeah. If nobody gets above 30, then it goes to a runoff.
- [51:09]
A
All right. Well, like I said, tune in to GDPolitics.com on Tuesday night to hear a whole lot more analysis, but we're going to leave things there for today. Mary and Jacob, thank you so much for joining me.
- [51:20]
B
Thanks, Galen.
- [51:21]
A
Thanks. My name is Galen Drook. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you listen to podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice a the number of episodes and can join in our paid subscriber chats and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. Most importantly, you ensure that we can keep making a podcast that prioritizes curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. Also, be a friend of the POD and go give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts, Maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.