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- [00:00]
A
Hey there, listeners. Before we get going today, I want to remind you all that we've got a live show coming up at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Claire Malone on September 29th. I can't predict what the news cycle will be at the end of September, but I can confidently forecast it will be messy. So grab a ticket, grab a drink, and come join us as we try to make sense of it all. You can find tickets@gdpolitics.com I have somehow.
- [00:28]
B
Successfully managed to avoid getting in any real Twitter fights ever.
- [00:32]
C
Because you're not a mean person.
- [00:34]
B
No, that's true.
- [00:35]
C
I'm not particularly confrontational.
- [00:38]
A
Okay, hold on. Nathaniel, have. What's the biggest Twitter fight you've ever been in?
- [00:42]
C
Okay, so this is a good one. I got into a fight with Nate Cohn about. Get ready for it. The Seattle Mariners, which is a baseball team. Galen, this is Major League Baseball, the one with the ball on the stick.
- [01:08]
A
Hello, and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. It's Election day in Virginia's 11th congressional district on Tuesday. Call it an amuse bouche for Virginia's statewide elections this November. The special election following Democrat Gerry Connolly's death in office is not expected to be competitive. Harris won the district by 34 percentage points in 2024. But it gives us one more data point to assess how the parties are doing in special elections. So far this year, Democrats are overperforming by double digits. Also, how about those job numbers? Friday's jobs numbers were not good and may add momentum to Americans pessimism about Trump's handling of the economy. It's a very different dynamic to Trump's first term, when Americans approved of his handling of the economy even if they didn't like him overall. So how should we make sense of that? And lastly, a recent New York Times analysis of population trends paints a dire picture for Democrats Electoral college math next decade, with red states gaining electors and blue states losing them. But if you Is it good data, bad data, or not data? Here with me are two trusty hands, Nathaniel Rakic and Mary Radcliffe. Mary, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:21]
B
Hey, Galen. Good to see you.
- [02:22]
A
Good to see you too, Nathaniel. Likewise. Welcome to the podcast.
- [02:26]
C
Hey, Galen.
- [02:27]
A
So, before we get started, I want to send out a quick call for listener questions. We've got a mailbag episode coming up. If you have questions about politics, elections, the meaning of life, paid subscribers can reach me in the paid subscriber chat. Everyone else, you can reach me on X Bluesky. I Guess Instagram. Although that's mostly a place for, like, puppies and nice interior design. But you can reach me there if you want to. We also have an email address that is galendpolitics.com in case you don't know how to spell my name. It's G A, L, E, N. Okay, let's get to it. Are we ready to talk about an election? A real live election that's coming up in an off, off year?
- [03:04]
C
First, I want to hear what the meaning of life is.
- [03:07]
B
42.
- [03:07]
C
Yeah. The correct answer. Okay. Do you get that joke, Gary?
- [03:11]
A
I don't. I don't.
- [03:12]
C
Okay. Well, not okay. You're. You're banned from this podcast. Not nerdy enough. Everyone is screaming at their AirPods right now. Galen, read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I believe you can actually see on my shelf right here.
- [03:27]
A
You know, there I cosplay as a nerd.
- [03:31]
C
Yeah, exactly. You're a pretender is what you're saying. That's a nice way of saying you're a pretender.
- [03:36]
A
Yeah. So, you know, I play a nerd on tv, but in my normal life, what do I do? Like, the most recent thing I read was the unauthorized biography of Gwyneth Paltrow. So if you have any questions about GOOP or the GOOP business, I'm happy to talk about that.
- [03:53]
B
Well, then it's a good thing Nathaniel and I are here.
- [03:59]
A
Okay, now that I've thoroughly embarrassed myself. Nathaniel, as a Washingtonian, the Virginia 11 special election is in your backyard in the fancy northeastern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. what should we know about it?
- [04:13]
C
You should know that it's just a very blue district, as. Yeah, as you mentioned, it's in the northern Virginia suburbs, which is an area that has famously gotten a lot more Democratic over the last 20 years and has, in fact, turned Virginia into a fairly reliably blue state. So, yeah, it's not expected to be competitive. This is, as you mentioned, Democratic held seat that used to be held by Gerry Connolly. He endorsed. He retired before he passed away, and he endorsed his former staffer, James Walkinshaw to succeed him. Walkinshaw won the primary easily, and he is going to win the general election easily. Obviously, with special elections, we are always paying attention to the margin of victory and kind of comparing it to past benchmarks like the presidential result in the district. We already have a lot of evidence from previous special elections this year that Democrats are overperforming, which is not really a new thing for Democrats in special elections. It is. They are Overperforming to an unusual, to a degree that we haven't seen since the 2017 and 2018 cycle, which, of course, probably more than that. Well, actually, I have some quibbles with that, but. Which we can talk about. But, yeah, but, yeah, they're doing very, very well. And it, it is probably a good sign for them in the 2026 midterms, similar to how those 2017-2018 numbers were a good sign for them in the 2018 midterms.
- [05:28]
B
I want to hear your quibbles.
- [05:31]
A
Okay. Well, you guys have teed me up perfectly here. According to the down ballot in special elections so far this year, Democrats have overperformed where they were in 2024 by almost 16 percentage points. I don't know myself if that's the best baseline. So maybe that foreshadows some of your quibbles, Nathaniel. I don't know. But if you compare where they are so far this year to 2020, they're overperforming by 11 percentage points. So, first of all, should we care more about their overperformance compared to 24 or 20? And then eventually we'll get to the question of what should we say the benchmark for a good performance for Democrats or Republicans is in Virginia's 11th. But first, let's answer the 2020 or 2024 baseline question.
- [06:20]
C
I mean, when we did these analyses back at fivethirtyeight, we had a stat called partisan lean, which was just like a blending of the last two presidential results in the district. And that is empirically better because the. If you forced us to choose between 20, 20, 24, 24, I would go with 2024 because the most recent election tends to be the most relevant. But you do want to kind of hedge against some, like, reversion to the mean by including some, like, results from the previous election. So, for instance, obviously in 2024, we saw a lot of shifts, particularly in, like, heavily, like, Latino areas toward Republicans. And we don't know if those trends are going to continue or not. And so it's good to kind of, you know, hedge with including some older data as well.
- [07:00]
B
Yeah, I tend to agree with that. I think the most recent election is going to be the best representation of how voters think about politics in that district. I mean, it's tricky to do these kinds of comparisons also, because when you compare to the presidential electorate, you're really comparing to, like, apples and oranges electorates between what you'll see in a midterm versus what you see in a presidential election. That being said, I think we have some pretty significant evidence at this point that the midterm electorate is likely to be more Democratic than the presidential electorate. Just as a general, like, demographic rule, you tend to see a more educated electorate during a midterm. And in the last several elections, we've seen higher educated voters shifting toward the Democratic Party. So all these pieces taken together are pointing towards probably a pretty good situation for Democrats both in Virginia, November and for next year.
- [07:52]
A
Nathaniel, was that your main quibble that we shouldn't just rely on 2024?
- [07:56]
C
Yeah, basically. So, you know, the down ballot obviously does a good job of collecting all this data, but comparing it to 2024, which was a good year for Republicans, is not the same as comparing the 2018 special election numbers to 2016, which obviously Donald Trump won that election, but in the popular vote, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. And so when you kind of take into account the fact that like Democrats had more ground to gain from a 2024 baseline, they're actually like pretty similar. Like the over performances are pretty similar. And you also, I think, kind of have to account for, I'm normally someone who is like, obviously with kind of like our philosophy with polling is just throw it all into the average, even the outliers and stuff like that. That said, there was this one special election in New York City earlier this year which was a just a really unique situation because it's a heavily Orthodox Jewish district and they voted very strongly for Donald Trump in the presidential election, very strongly for their Democratic state legislative candidate. And so that data point alone is kind of like throwing off the average for the special 2025 special elections by like a couple of points. And so if you want to throw that out, or maybe a fairer way to do would be to take the medians, which kind of, you know, accounts for kind of crazy numbers skewing it on one side or the other. You just have much closer, like it looks quite similar, I think, to the 2017, 2018 special election numbers.
- [09:23]
A
And so if we are comparing to 2018 and saying this is similar, how much did Democrats overperform by in special.
- [09:29]
B
Elections that cycle on average, compared to the 2016 presidential results? Democrats overperformed by 10.6%. Those numbers are from the down ballot. If you look at just US Congressional races and exclude all of the like state level races and things like that, so you can try to get some of that noise out like Nathaniel was talking about, the overperformance was 12.7% on average.
- [09:52]
A
So it does look like whether you use the 2020 baseline or 2024 baseline, we're in similar ISH territory to 2018. Given that, what would you say is a good performance for democrats in Virginia's 11th on Tuesday, and what's a good performance for Republicans, understanding that Harris won that district by 34 percentage points?
- [10:15]
C
Well, I mean, I always hate the, this idea of, like, benchmarking, right, because it's, it really feeds into someone's biases because you can be like, oh, well, like, Democrats have been overperforming by, you know, 15 points in special elections, therefore, this year. So anything less than that would be a disappointment for them. But, like, actually if they only overperform by, like, 12 points, that's still, like, really good for them. So, I mean, I think the real and boring answer is your benchmark should be that 2024 number or some kind of, you know, average, if you want to average out the 2024 and the 2020 numbers and just look at how much better Democrats do from that and then throw it in the average. So I would expect, again, based on these historic, these what we've been seeing so far in special elections, that Democrats might win this election by between 45 and 50 points, but if they win it by less than that, it's certainly not bad news for them. I think, like, I think it would probably raise eyebrows if Walkinshaw wins by less than Harris did, but that still wouldn't throw out the evidence that we have from other special elections this year that Democrats are really energized across the country.
- [11:16]
A
Well, I do have one quibble with that, Nathaniel, because in some ways, you wouldn't expect Democrats to do as well in a midterm environment as they would in a special election environment. Based on a lot of the trends that Mary just mentioned, right. Democrats are increasingly skewing towards this highly politically engaged, highly educated electorate. And in that kind of environment, like a special election environment where a lot of people aren't paying attention, it's the people who are mainlining the news who are going to show up. Whereas, yes, the midterms are not a general presidential election, but you're going to still get, you know, 50% turnout or something like that. Whereas in a special election, you might just get like a third of eligible voters turning out or something like that.
- [11:58]
C
Totally. But there's still a correlation, right? You know, the, it doesn't mean that the overperformance in special elections equals the result in November, but, like, the better that a party does in special elections, you know, Compared to a previous year, the better they're going to do in the eventual general election. So back when we were doing this at 538, again, kind of using a more, in my opinion, kind of slightly more like rigorous baseline, we found that basically Democrats did like a few points worse in the House popular vote than they were doing in special elections previously, which kind of accounts for that fact that, you know, those special elections are going to be more demographically good for Democrats. So in 2018, we found that in special elections, Democrats overperformed by 11 points. They won the House popular vote by nine. In 2020, Democrats overperformed in special elections by four. They won the House popular vote by three. In 2022, they overperformed. They actually didn't overperform at all in special elections. It was neutral. Republicans won the House popular vote by 3. And then 2024, the relationship did break down somewhat as many people have covered, which is the Democrats overperformed in special elections by five, but Republicans still won the House popular vote by three.
- [13:05]
A
All right, well, we will have to wait and see until 2026 to know how that trend is continuing. But we will have an election in Virginia this November that will presumably have higher turnout than a special election because Virginians are voting for governor. Mary, how are things looking there? I mentioned that this isn't a moose bouche.
- [13:27]
B
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that this special election is going to tell us a ton that we don't already know about the Virginia races in November. So I do some data work for an organization state navigate. We focus on state level politics, so state legislatures, governors, things like that. And we have a forecast up for Virginia this November. We have Abigail spanberger as a 97% chance of winning in November based on the.
- [13:55]
A
She's the gubernatorial candidate.
- [13:57]
B
She's the Democratic gubernatorial candidate this November based on, you know, standard forecasting stuff, polling data, as well as other on the ground factors. And with respect to the House of Delegates, we have the Democrats at a 93% chance of winning a majority in that chamber. So we pretty much already know based on pre election polling based on other various factors, these races are overwhelmingly likely to go Democratic in November and regardless of what happens on Tuesday, which of course will be a data point fed into our model. But I don't think it will have a huge impact.
- [14:35]
A
So maybe New Jersey will actually be more interesting than Virginia, which will almost certainly. Almost certainly. Okay, well, I'm just saying we'll talk about that on a future podcast before I move on to the jobs numbers. Are there any other special election results impending or that have already happened that we want to talk about?
- [14:55]
C
Yeah, I mean for the real election nerds, we've been following state legislative special elections a lot. There was a notable result a couple of weeks ago in Iowa where Democrats flipped a Republican held state Senate district that broke Republican supermajority in that chamber. There have actually been a lot of particularly strong Democratic over performances in Iowa, specifically special elections this year, which is interesting considering that Iowa is now has an open Senate race, U.S. senate race in 2026. And that's.
- [15:27]
A
Yeah, we forecasted that that was likely to happen when I talked to Jacob Robashkin a while back. But I don't think we've actually mentioned formally on this podcast that Joni Ernst is out.
- [15:37]
C
Yeah, it actually doesn't count until we mention it on this podcast.
- [15:40]
A
Exactly, exactly.
- [15:41]
C
Tony Hearns does now officially now been.
- [15:44]
A
Relieved of your duties, Galen. Official.
- [15:46]
C
But yeah, so and of course, as probably folks know, Democrats need four Senate seats in order to take control of the chamber. It's going to be a difficult row for them to hoe. And Iowa is one of the probably one of their better prospects for that. So, you know, it's interesting, I haven't specifically looked into the question of whether like state specific special election performance is predictive of state specific general election performance. Actually, I should, I should look into that. But if it is, then maybe Democrats have a bigger, better set in Iowa than we think.
- [16:21]
A
By the same token of what Mary and I have already been talking about in terms of the demographics of who turns up for a special election and who turns up for a midterm election, you potentially make the argument that that's even more pronounced in Iowa because Iowa is a really white state and we see education being even a bigger dividing line within the white electorate. So if in special elections you're getting just like a lot of college educated, Democratically inclined voters, when you switch to a midterm environment, you have like Ashley Hinson running a statewide campaign talking a lot about Trump amping people up over the things that she's been talking about like birth rate, citizenship and, you know, helping farmers and all of that kind of stuff. There's a world in which you could see the shift from special elections to midterms being even more pronounced in Iowa.
- [17:06]
C
I think that's right. I think another factor in Iowa is that it has a well organized Democratic Party and infrastructure. Right. Obviously the caucuses being there for a long time really helped.
- [17:16]
A
Notwithstanding Biden's attempts to overthrow their, you know, position of power.
- [17:22]
C
Right, for sure. But, but I think that, that I wouldn't be surprised if that's contributing to the unusual special election over performances on Iowa as well.
- [17:30]
B
And it's also worth noting that as recently as 2012, Iowa was considered a swing state. So you do have folks in Iowa that may have some muscle memory of voting for Democrats that have switched in recent years to voting for Republicans, but would be willing to switch back.
- [17:46]
C
Yep.
- [17:47]
A
All right, well, more future elections to keep an eye on. Let's move on and talk about Friday's job numbers. But first, a break. Today's podcast is brought to you by you the listeners. We've been making this podcast for about six months and it honestly wouldn't still exist if not for our paid subscribers. Because of you, we could pick up where FiveThirtyEight left off and continue covering politics with curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. So first, I wanna say a huge thank you for all of your support. I feel the community that we've built here at GD Politics. Second, if you have not yet taken the plunge, come join us. The water's warm. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes, access to the videos and you can hang with us in the paid subscriber chat. Now that it's post Labor Day, we're heading into this fall's off year elections. Before long, we'll be talking about the midterms in earnest. Make sure you never miss an episode and become a paid subscriber@gdpolitics.com that's gdpolitics.com See you there. Friday's job numbers showed a significant slowdown in hiring over the summer. The US added just 22,000 jobs in August. Those are preliminary numbers. And in June, the numbers were revised to a loss of 3,13,000 jobs. These are the first numbers since Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erica McIntarfer. So first things first. Is there reason not to trust these numbers based on Trump's political meddling with the agency about a month ago?
- [19:22]
B
No, I would say. No. I mean right now. So Trump has floated a name for heading up the bls, but that person is not in place yet. There's no real change in terms of how these numbers are being generated at the BLS since Erica McInterfer was fired. So you can trust them exactly as much as you trusted the jobs numbers last month.
- [19:45]
A
Got it.
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C
I mean, I would actually. I think the way that you phrase that is interesting. Galen, you asked, is there a reason to not trust it as much based.
- [19:54]
A
On Trump's political meddling.
- [19:55]
C
Right. I'm not sure actually what the answer to that question is. Like, if you asked me, like, do I trust the numbers? I would say, like, probably yes, for a couple of reasons. One, like Mary said, Trump's appointee is not in place yet and hasn't really had the opportunity to meddle if he is going to. Two is that this jobs report was not particularly good for Trump. And so you would think that if, like, there was some meddling going on, he would do a little bit of a better job with it. But I do think that, like, yeah, there is some reason to think that it could be different. I think I think about this in terms like, look, I'm not an economist, and like, yes, most people in economics world are saying, you know, these numbers are still trustworthy for the time being. So I think that's important to take their. Their opinions seriously. That said, I, I do know a lot about polls and I know a lot about, like, internal polls and how they can be biased. Right. And some of the reasons why an internal poll might be biased might literally be that people are, like, sitting in a room around a table and it's, you know, all dark and scary and they're saying, like, ha, ha, ha, let's fudge these numbers and, like, then release the poll and make it look better for us. But some of the number, some of the reason why an internal poll might be better for the candidate is that there's this unconscious bias of, like, a pollster doing a poll for a client and they want to please the client and, like, you know, they might, you know, make certain methodological decisions that are going to make those numbers look better. And I don't think that we can totally foreclose the idea that maybe some of the methodological choices subconsciously are, are changing and they don't want to. They're kind of afraid of pissing off Donald Trump.
- [21:29]
A
And I agree with you that that is possible and that that happens in polling. But if you read a little bit about how this is done, it's basically all automated and they're not actively thinking about how to rejigger the methodology that they're using to collect this data.
- [21:49]
B
Yeah, the methodology was already in place, and they apply the same methodology month after month.
- [21:55]
C
I mean, do we know that, though? I mean, you had Ben Castleman on this podcast, like, about a month ago, Galen, and they were kind of talking. You talked on podcast about how there are methodological decisions that go into like how? Like, sure, like the process is automated, but like you have to make certain like decisions on like edge cases and stuff like that. And like, do we know for sure that that is the same as it was a month ago? Again, I agree that it is probably trustworthy, but I, you specifically, you asked is there a reason to think that maybe it would be different? And I, I think there is a reason to think that maybe it is different. Like, I just think we can't pretend that we're in the same kind of condition. Like the context is the same.
- [22:34]
A
Maybe I asked the question in too open of away in general, folks suggest that we should trust these numbers just as much as we did previously. And these numbers do have challenges in terms of response rates falling and you know, these agencies getting less funding to maybe spend more time in the field or whatever initiatives they might try to otherwise do to get response rates higher. But so far we understand that the acting commissioner of the BLS is a longtime bureaucrat who everyone says would make a big stink if anyone tried to meddle with their methodology at the moment.
- [23:12]
C
To be clear, I don't think that anybody is like purposefully meddling with these numbers at this point.
- [23:17]
B
Yeah, and I want to be clear also. I mean, I said that I think you can trust these as much as you trusted the numbers last month, which I mean, I think is an important caveat. Right. Because like we have seen pretty significant revisions in the last several months on the jobs reports. So like, do I trust that these numbers were produced with the same methodology? Absolutely. Do I trust that these are the final jobs numbers for August? Nope.
- [23:43]
A
Yeah, okay, agreed, agreed. Especially in economically dynamic times, we see larger adjustments. And so if we want to know as close as we're going to get to the truth of what happened in August, we're probably gonna have to wait until the end of the year. Yep. Let's talk about the substance here though. How are Americans feeling about the economy? And I wanna add some context to these numbers, which is that we have not seen big layoffs yet. Even if we're seeing anemic job numbers, the unemployment rate is not rising very fast. I think in this most recent report it was by hundredths of a percentage point. And that's in part because the labor pool is shrinking with dep and so there's not a large pool or a much larger pool of Americans who are looking for work who aren't able to find it. That being said, the long term unemployment numbers are going up. So even if there aren't mass layoffs, we're not seeing much hiring. So people who are already unemployed are in a difficult spot. But historically speaking, a 4.3% unemployment rate is not a bad spot to be in. Nonetheless, we have talked many times, the three of us, about how the underlying numbers are not so bad, but Americans feel like the economy is absolute. Mary, is that still the case?
- [24:58]
B
Well, I wanted to get a handle on this with like something that had some long term numbers so we could get a sense of how this moment in time differs from, you know, maybe the last couple of years or whatever. So I went to, to take a Look at the YouGov Economist weekly tracker here. And what I think is really interesting is that the way people feel about the economy right now in their most recent surveys doesn't look very different from the way people felt about the economy through the last two years of the Biden administration. Like 2023, 2024, there's like a weird spiky muddle that happens right after the election before Donald Trump, like, takes over the economy, where it gets a little confused in there, but then it sort of settles right back into where it was during the end of the Biden administration. So in their most recent numbers, they have 50% saying that the economy is getting worse. Throughout 2023 and 2024, that number of people saying the economy was getting worse was typically in the high 40s or the low 50s. So basically the same those that say the economy is getting better, the Most recent is 27%. That's compared to basically the mid to low 20s throughout 2024. And people saying the economy is staying about the same is 19%, mid-20s in 2023 and 2024. So it's basically pretty much the same. Now. I think that's actually probably a problem if you're Republicans, because in 24, in the presidential election in 2024, people were really, really mad about the economy. And that sort of fueled a lot of that anti Biden, sort of anti guy in charge mentality that put Trump back into the White House. So if people are basically in the same position they were in 2024 with respect to whether they think the economy is improving, I think that's, that's tough. So that's sort of like a, a broad sense, which is nothing has changed, really.
- [26:49]
A
Yeah. I think the last time we were actually all talking, I brought up Gallup's routine polling, asking Americans what the most important issue facing the country is and how taking issue with poor government leadership was almost on par with taking issue with the economy. That is no longer the case, according to the latest numbers from Gallup. And it's in large part because concerns about the economy have ticked back up. So in July, 27% of Americans said the economy was the most important issue facing the country. Now it's 34% of Americans.
- [27:21]
B
So I want to drill in a little bit on this concern on the economy. So there was a NBC News survey released this weekend that asked actually a more specific what's most important to you question. They asked which of the following economic matters is most important to you and your family right now. So, not just what issues are most important. We know the economy is most important to voters, but when you think about the economy, specifically, what's most important to them. They gave a bunch of options. 45%, almost a majority said that the economic issue that's most important to them is inflation and the rising cost of living. 45%. There was like 10 other options. The next closest was healthcare costs, which 11% of people said. So this is far and away the thing that people and health concerned about.
- [28:07]
A
And health care costs is also a cost of, like, you could almost add that 11% to the 45%. Like, we're experiencing, I think, decade and a half record increases in health care costs this coming year.
- [28:20]
B
Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I can read you out all of these things if you want. There were eight options here, but those are the only two that were directly. Well, I guess there's also a question about how there was. One of the options was about housing affordability, which was 9%, which if you.
- [28:33]
A
Add housing affordability, healthcare affordability, and inflation, Overall, it is 65%.
- [28:41]
B
Okay. And that I would, I would say if you are the Trump administration, you've got to be concerned about that, because Trump's approval rating on handling inflation and cost of living, that's his worst issue in the tracking that Elliot Morris and I have up. So in Elliott and my tracker, he is underwater by 24 points on handling inflation and cost of living issues, which is, I mean, that's much worse than his overall approval or his approval on the economy overall. So, I mean, if I were in the Trump administration, I would be very concerned about this.
- [29:18]
C
Just to add on to that, you know, there was a CBS News poll from a week ago that said that, you know, ask people like, in your observation, like, do you think that prices in the last few weeks have been going up, staying the same, or going down? 64% said they were going up. There was a partisan split on that with Democrats being a lot more likely to say that they were going up, of course, but you know, what else is new, but among independents going up, obviously. And that's kind of the ball game. So, yeah, I think that generally speaking, Americans are not perceiving a big difference in the conditions that they have been mad about over the last couple of years, which is just things are too darn expensive. And yeah, that's obviously not good for Trump.
- [29:55]
A
And unless the only thing that you're buying is eggs, and God bless you, the only thing you buy is eggs. Call in, I want to know what your life is like. But eggs are falling in terms of the cost of eggs. But everything else is pretty much rising. Inflation rates are still at about 3% or so annually. And it seems like it may be ticking up as tariffs. The reality of tariffs set in. So Americans are correct. At the same time, 3% annualized inflation is not 9 or 10% annualized inflation like what we saw in the summer of 2022. We've talked about this a lot before, but that even though we reset those numbers at the beginning of every year, Americans aren't goldfish and they don't forget about the increase in prices accumulating over say, a five year time period. And so when you think about, oh, how much does housing cost this year? You're not like, well, it's not so much worse than it was last year because last year you already felt like the cost of housing was. So you might be more thinking about what you paid back in 2019 or 20, 2020 for housing. And so the, the tail for the pain of inflation can be quite long and we're gonna see whether inflation ticks back up. I imagine that will get people anxious again. But what I haven't heard here is concerns over job loss trumping concerns over inflation. And we don't know, maybe, maybe what's happening right now in terms of those job numbers will, in retrospect turn serve as a turning point in that, you know, maybe if the economy turns south, prices begin to fall a little bit, or just that anxiety about having a job starts to Trump, for some people, concerns over the cost of living. Nonetheless, neither of those options are great for a Trump administration. If you're worried about having a job or if you're worried about paying too much, it's all negative. So this is a very different dynamic, like you mentioned, Mary, from Trump 1.0, when Americans were pretty down on Trump, they felt even worse about him then than they do about him now. But his best, his brightest spot was the economy. Now, his brightest spot is something like immigration or crime. He's still underwater on those issues. But, you know, his approval on immigration is like net negative 3 versus the economy, which is like net negative 15 or something like that. And you already mentioned that inflation is even, even worse. So one option is to try to change the subject, right? Like, all the adults in the room in Trump 1.0 kept being like, just talk about the economy, change the subject to the economy, stop talking about the sideshows, stop talking about, you know, the culture war issues, stop talking about Charlottesville or whatever it may be. But now they're in a situation where the incentives have reversed. They don't want to talk about the economy. They do maybe want to talk about crime in American cities or immigration or what have you, because that's a better issue for them. And it also just seems like Trump likes talking about those issues more than even back. Back in, you know, 2018.
- [32:55]
C
Natural fit for him. Yeah, yeah.
- [32:57]
A
So what I do imagine this, the impact of this being is like, our politics might shift. It seems like they maybe already have.
- [33:04]
B
Yeah, I don't, I'm a little skeptical about this. And the, the take I have here is not unique to Trump. I think it's probably true of, of many political figures. But it seems to me that whenever Trump shifts his focus to a different topic, his approval rating on that topic falls and then maybe recovers as it falls out of the news. So you can see that with immigration, for example, when, like, immigration was the story in the news, his approval rating on it fell pretty significantly, and then it sort of recovered after that fell out of, like, the, the news of the day. And you can actually also see that on crime right now. So there's not like a ton of approval rating data on crime. We don't have an ongo on approval on crime because the, the polling is fairly sparse. But I pulled everything that we have, and if you look at, like, the beginning of Trump's term, like, the first two months of his administration, we have 10 polls that asked his approval rating on crime. So that's, I mean, 10 in two months. This is why we don't have a tracker. And he was above water by an average of 9 points. But if you look at polls from after the DC Takeover with the National Guard and all of that going on in Washington, D.C. since it's become a topic of convers, there have been nine polls, and he's only above water on crime by an average of one point in those nine surveys. So. And I Mean, you could argue that he's below underwater if you take a more sophisticated average. This is just a straight average. And it's been falling basically since that August 11th if you look at the progression of polls that have come out since then. So I'm not quite sure that changing the subject is going to work because whatever he changes the subject to, Democrats and independents that are inclined to dislike Trump are going to decide they disapprove of him more on that than they did a few days ago. And I don't, like I said, I don't think that's a unique to Trump thing. Right. If, if he brings something up, it's going to become more polarized in the way that our politics becomes polarized.
- [35:02]
A
I agree to an extent. But it's still beneficial to Trump to focus on crime and that dynamic because, yeah, being net neutral or even underwater a couple points is still a lot better than net negative 20. And if you ask Americans the question of like, do you trust Republicans or Democrats more on things like crime and immigration, they still trust Republicans more. There's some variation by poll, but it is at least much closer than, you know, whether Americans trust Trump or Republicans or Democrats more on something like tariffs. And so I still think the incentives are there, even taking that into consideration to try to change the subject. You know, ultimately Americans know what living life is like in America and under Trump and under Biden and whatnot. And so you can't just like trick Americans into being like, I no longer care about how much things cost or how much healthcare costs or how much housing costs. But around the margins, changing the subject potentially helps you.
- [36:08]
B
Yeah, and I guess one point of agreement to contradict myself a little bit on that, you say Americans know what it's like to live in America with respect to things like inflation and cost of living. But I would argue that when you.
- [36:19]
A
Talk about what it's like to live.
- [36:20]
B
In America, when you talk about crime in big cities, a lot of Americans don't know what it's like to live in a big city and experience the day to day life of supposedly high crime or whatever. Like, I think that Republican politicians are exaggerating this problem pretty significantly. But that's an experience that many Americans actually don't have. And so they may be more easily swayed to a harder line position on this than, than some other folks who actually do have the experience of living in cities in America.
- [36:54]
A
Also, after all of this focus that Trump has marshaled towards crime, he is going to be able to tell a success story at the end of the year. Because folks who listen to the episode of this podcast that I did with Jeff Asher know that we were already on track to have potentially a record low murder rate in the country this year. That is an extension of trends that started two or three years ago. And so we were likely to have a record low murder rate in America no matter what Trump did. But now that he's getting all of this attention on fighting crime in D.C. and next Chicago and California and whatnot, he's going to be able to say, and that was all because of me. And so I think he will be able to shape public perception of both the level of crime and his success on it far more than he will be able to shape the public perception of what the economy is like and whether his policies have been successful.
- [37:49]
C
That's interesting, too, because there's also, of course, this well documented phenomenon that, like, Americans keep thinking that crime is bad and crime is getting worse, even though the stats. Stats contradict that. And it'll be interesting actually if, like, if Donald Trump, like, declares victory on crime at the end of the year or something like that, if that'll actually could reverse or at least stem that, that trend. Because I feel like that's a probably pretty durable trend that is driven by things like, you know, just the news media being really, like, covering crime stories is a. Is a kind of a popular pastime for local news and stuff like that. I don't know. It's an interesting.
- [38:24]
A
Well, actually, the official FBI numbers will come out in the second half of next year, so maybe he will declare victory right before the 2026 midterms on crime. So even. Even more data to fuel the shaping the narrative perspective.
- [38:42]
B
Yeah, I guess. I guess I want to say one more thing on this, though, because, like, maybe you can shape the narrative on this, but the question is, can you turn it into a voting issue? Right? Like, for whom is this a voting issue? If you're like a swing voter in the suburbs or whatever, is this the issue that you're going to decide your 2026 midterm vote on? I don't think necessarily it is, because this is an issue that probably doesn't directly impact you, but I could actually see these attempted federalizations or successful federalizations in various large cities motivating an urban population to turn out to vote. And that is probably to Trump's detriment.
- [39:20]
A
Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think we shouldn't get too carried away with one, one narrative or the other here. But just out of curiosity, can you guys guess what percentage of Americans said that crime and violence was the most important issue facing the country? According to Gallup's polling, which, a reminder here, you're only allowed to pick one thing. So it.
- [39:39]
B
And it's an open ended question.
- [39:40]
A
And it's an open ended question. So we prevent. This sort of polling prevents Americans from saying, I care a lot about absolutely everything. They're like, okay, actually pick one. Can you guess what percentage of Americans care about crime and violence the most? 5%, 2%, 3%. You guys are pretty close. That's pretty far down on the list. Things that ranked higher were, as we already mentioned, poor government leadership and the economy, but also immigration, the courts, elections, election reform and democracy, race relations, unifying the country, Poverty, hunger and homelessness. Ethics, morals, religious values, family decline. All of those things come higher than crime.
- [40:21]
B
Family decline.
- [40:25]
A
Yeah, I mean, what's the Ken Paxton getting a divorce like? I'm all. People are worried about it. Okay, let's move on and talk about everyone's favorite American institution, the Electoral College. Which also brings us to today's gdbd. Good data, bad data, not data. So the New York Times recently published an analysis of how the Electoral College math could change in the next decade. In 2023, there will be another census and congressional seats will be reapportioned according to the population gains and losses across different states. In the Times analysis of data from esri, which is a nonpartisan mapping software and demographic data company. Among red states, Texas could gain three seats, Florida could gain two seats, and Utah and Idaho could each gain one. One seat. Amongst blue states, New York could lose one seat, California could lose three. And then among swing states, Minnesota could lose one and Pennsylvania could lose one. And of course, if you lose a congressional seat, you're also losing electors to the Electoral College. The New York Times describes the following quote, the year is 2032. Studying the electoral College map, a Democratic presidential candidate can no longer plan to sweep New Hampshire, Minnesota, and the blue wall battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And a victory in the swing state of Nevada would not help either. This is the nightmare scenario many Democratic Party insiders see playing out if current US Population projections hold. Okay, is this good data, bad data, or not data? Mary, you look like you're just so eager to jump right on in here. And part of the reason I know that is because you had a little diatribe about this analysis on Twitter, which I appreciated.
- [42:12]
B
I surely did. This is terrible data.
- [42:17]
A
Okay, wait, Nathaniel, do you want to. Do you want to get in here before Mary pops off. Is this good data, bad data, or not data?
- [42:25]
C
No, I think it's bad data. And I think the quote at the end, if current trends continue, which is a huge caveat that is like, well, okay, then, sure, this is one of many possible outcomes, but go off, Mary.
- [42:39]
B
Okay, there's two pieces of data happening here, and I think it's really important to consider them separately. The first is how the maps will change, and the second is how people vote. So let's just pick these two pieces apart. First on how the maps will change. People. You'll be surprised to hear people have been trying to forecast changes to apportionment for decades. We can go back to previous forecasts based on similar data sets as to what the Times is analyzing here and see how well they performed. And they're not very good at this. They're like, wrong on 50% of the seat changes, generally speaking, five years out from the apportionment. So I'm trying to compare what was. Look what was done in 2015 to the actual 2020 reapportionment, what was done in 2005 to the actual 2010 reapportionment. And they're just not that successful at projecting the ultimate population change five years hence. There are a lot of reasons for that. And there are actually reasons this year in particular, to be even more skeptical of the population change from 2020 to 2024 continuing on into the rest of the decade. I want to say some specifics about that because I think this is actually really interesting. So the fine folks over at the American Redistricting Project have done a lot of work looking at this data. They also have an ongoing Forec 2030 reapportionment, but they do some interesting stuff picking apart what the recent data looks like. So I want to pick on California and New York for a second. In this analysis, California and New York are both projected to lose seats. California to lose three seats. And that's because California has lost population since 2020. But if you think about what was going on in 2020 and 2021, folks were leaving blue states, high tax, high cost of living states because they were working from home. They were moving to places with lower.
- [44:42]
A
And to avoid Covid restrictions.
- [44:44]
B
To avoid Covid restrictions, Lower cost of living, lower taxes, whatever. Whatever. Okay, so you saw a bunch of population loss in California, New York and Illinois and some other places in the first two years of this decade. But if you look at the most recent data sets, if you look at the five states that have gained the most population between June of 2023 and June of 2024. California and New York are both in the top five. The people are coming back. So, like the trends you see in the first four years in terms of population drift and migration are not necessarily going to continue throughout the rest of the decade. There's lots of forces that make people move, and those forces are going to evolve over time. Right. So who knows what's going to happen in the next five years? Natural disasters, pandemics, whatever, changes in local governance of various flavors. People move for lots of reasons. And I don't think it's reasonable to expect that the reasons people were moving in 2021 are going to continue throughout the rest of the decade. And that is what we've seen in previous years.
- [45:47]
A
Can I ask a question on that? Because I was going to take the opposite position on this, which is that these projections might be reliable because we've already seen so much change. Whereas in 2005 and 2015, they're taking somewhat subtle changes in population and maybe projecting them out five years. Whereas this time around, we know right now that 2020, 2021 was something of an earthquake in terms of population migration trends in America. And we know also, if we were to reapportion today, a lot of these seat changes that the New York Times describes based on esri's data would actually happen. Right. That New York would lose a seat, that Florida would gain, that Texas would gain, et cetera. And so it's doing a little bit less work of projecting forward based on these subtle trends that have started and more just saying, like, this is where we are today. We're likely not to see an earthquake of migration changes within the next five years. And so to some extent, that makes me think this is a little more reliable than projections from 2005 or 2015.
- [47:00]
B
Yeah, except that, I mean, I think, like the thing I was saying about California and New York shows that actually some of those changes are reverting. Right, right. Like those two states are now in the top five gaining population. And listen, to be clear, so are Texas and Florida. If you asked me just the simple question, do you think both Texas and Florida will gain seats in the next redistricting? I would say yes, I do. Right. Like, I'm not quibbling with, like, the enormous population. Yeah, well, so like the direction corrects, but Texas and Florida quantity, Texas and Florida in particular, have gained so much population that I don't think there's any quibbling with. They're going to Gain seats, probably at least two in each state. But all the other states, I think we're still in that wishy washy. It's not clear. People move around and lots of things change. And that's what we've seen in past cycles. I will say, though, you know, in past cycles, if you look at the data I put up on Twitter, the projections for past cycles, anytime the projection had more than one seat moving in a state, it was directionally correct. So this projection that both Texas and Florida will gain seats because it's more than one seat, I suspect that's directionally correct.
- [48:13]
C
There's also obviously a long term trend of Texas and Florida gaining population. Like, I think we can be fairly confident in, in the direction because of that as well.
- [48:24]
A
Okay, so that's the first set of data which I think you're taking issue with in some sense. The, the certainty or the level of. The level of precision and the extremity in terms of how it's described.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah, I mean, yes, the, the New York Times literally said in their piece that Democrats will face this kind of map. Right. Like that is not true. We do not know that. They have no quantification of uncertainty here. And I have a lot of skepticism about forecasting the trends from the first four years of this decade into the next six years of this decade. Because the first four years of this decade were weird. We had a pandemic, the first in most of our lifetimes. Like, unless you're what, 102? I mean, it's. Stop it. Everything that happened in 2020 and 2021 should have an asterisk on it.
- [49:21]
A
Okay, so in some ways I take less issue with the way they're describing population trends in some ways because of what I already mentioned. And yes, I do agree that there will likely be some reversion to the mean. We have experienced it right here in New York City, where I'm sitting, where, where rent has gone absolutely bonkers because people have moved back into the city. But the, in terms of sort of projecting the population changes onto how people vote is where they lost me. So, Mary, I don't want to steal your thunder. I think you were about to get there.
- [49:59]
B
Yeah. So this is the second piece is basically assuming that all the states vote in the same way as they did eight years ago. Right. Because we're talking about the 2032 election. So eight years before that was the 2024 election. Now we all know what the swing states were in the 2024 election. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina. Right. We all remember, we've been talking about them for a long time. I want to read you the swing states from 2012 and I want you to think about whether or not you considered those swing states states in the 2020 presidential election. Are you ready? According to the Washington Post, In April 2012, there were nine swing states in the 2012 presidential election. Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
- [51:02]
A
All right, good job, Mary. You won your argument.
- [51:08]
B
Do I need to say any more? Eight years later in 2020, that list of swing states sounds insane and I don't think we know yet what in 2032 is going to sound insane.
- [51:18]
A
Yeah, this is where they lost me. In 2032, we will be two cycles removed, presidential cycles removed from Trump being on the ballot and the particularities of his coalition. Look, not to say that certain trends won't last, but if you want to talk about reversion to the mean, there's only so much better Republicans can do amongst sort of white working class voters. There's only so much better that, you know, Democrats can do amongst, I don't know, college educated women or whatever. Right. Like there will likely be some reversion to the mean. Also Democrats just lost, so they have to change strategy probably if they want to win some elections. And the way that they do that, you have no idea yet. The Democratic Party can't even agree on like whether they should be like trolling Trump on social media, let alone how they should try to win over a majority coalition in American politics. And they could decide that it's all about Arizona, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and you know, that eventually the blue wall states aren't worth it anyway. Like it, it's just, it, it's just weird to me the, the sort of way that they over index on current political trends.
- [52:32]
C
Right. I think, you know, if there is something valuable to take away from this, it's that like, yeah, like Democrats do need to be prepared for a scenario like this where they need to start making enro like the states where they are slightly strong, they're slightly stronger at least in 2024 and in elections in the, the kind of northern swing states, the Wisconsin's, Pennsylvanias, Michigan's of the world versus the Arizonas, Georgias and North Carolinas of the world and certainly the Texas's and Florida's of the world, I just named all of them even though that was saying of the world. But, but like this is something that Democrats have like known for a while, right. And like the best thing that they can do, right, is figure out how to win Texas, afford again because there's such big, big electoral college boons. Democrats would do well to have some, like, alarm bells about this. But like, yeah, I completely agree with Mary, the certainty about it, the idea, like, Democrats may very well be competitive in Texas and Florida in 2032. I think one of the, you know, obviously we've talked a lot about, everybody has talked a lot about kind of the racial depolarization and how that has affected, you know, Texas and Florida, moving them to, to the right, especially the movement among Latinos toward the right. But another trend is that urban areas are getting bluer and rural areas are getting redder. And Florida and Texas are two pretty urbanized states. So if you look at it through that lens, and that's a much more.
- [53:58]
A
Kind of trend recently, cities are getting redder.
- [54:03]
C
Okay.
- [54:04]
A
I guess, like, in fact, that's why I think this is problematic is that we're coming off of these sort of extreme polarizations and that a reversion to the mean is, is either just as likely or even more likely than continuing to go in our current directions. Like, you only get so Democratic in cities before people are like, I don't know, Democratic governance isn't always so good. Maybe I'll vote for somebody else. You only get so red in Kansas before people are like, I don't know, maybe we should, you know, do something else. Like.
- [54:33]
B
Laura Kelly.
- [54:34]
A
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And like, should. That's why I'm a little more skeptical of this than like, like, oh, Florida and Texas are such urban states. Why don't they vote for Democrats? Because that's been true for like, 20 years, I guess.
- [54:48]
C
Sure. You're talking on kind of like a smaller timescale than I'm talking on. I've been, I'm talking about, like, over the last, like, 50 years, this has been this kind of trend. And like, I think that in the long since we are talking on a bigger timescale, I think that there is basically, I'm saying, like, if you told me today that Democrats won Texas and Florida in the 2032 presidential election, I would not be.
- [55:08]
A
Be shocked.
- [55:09]
C
Whereas if you told me that they won Alabama and Louisiana, which were two states that the article mentioned as potential Democratic targets, I would be pretty shocked.
- [55:17]
A
Okay, so that's, that's okay. You're touching on another thing that made me be like, wait, wtf? They describe Texas and Florida as deeply conservative and sort of write them off for Democrats while they go on to instead say, should the projections hold, one hope for Democrats is to do what seems, at least after the 2024 election, impossible pivot to the South. That would mean turning states like Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, all places Mr. Trump won by more than 20 percentage points, into competitive battlegrounds. And quickly. Wait, hold on. Why would they cast their lot with winning Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana instead of just winning Texas?
- [55:55]
C
Right. Yeah, exactly. And like, to Mary's point, that list of swing states in 2012. Right. Like, if you, like, you can see the progression. Right. Like those states, I would not consider them swing states today, but they're, you know, a handful of them are. That's right. Yes, some of them are. But like the places like Colorado and New Hampshire, like, they're on the kind of, like, periphery. Like, you know, I'm not like, totally not paying attention to the New Hampshire Senate race in 2026. Right. But, like, you can see the drift. And so, like, if you kind of squint a little bit, you can maybe see you have, ironically, a clearer picture of what things might look like in, in eight years. And that's why I think, like, states like Texas and Florida, which are those kind of cuspy states for Democrats right now, like any pat, the Democrats becoming competitive again in, you know, the south is going to start with those two states rather than, you know, Alabama and Louisiana and Arkansas.
- [56:44]
B
Yeah. And I think there's also, I mean, there's been, you know, whatever since this 2012, there's been some Democratic gains in the Sunbelt states that you had mentioned before, Nathaniel, your Arizonas and your Georgias and your North Carolina. And, you know, if current trends continue, might suggest that. That suggests that those states continue to get bluer.
- [57:07]
C
Georgia, obviously, in 2024 was kind of one of the lone, like, bright spots for Democrats when you dug underneath the surface.
- [57:13]
B
Yeah. And I wouldn't discount including Texas in this sort of like, Sunbelt ish type of state. Right. There's some similarities there in different parts of the state. Demographics similar to Arizona, demographics similar to Georgia. Right. So, like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't throw that out as a possibility. The idea that you would call Texas deeply conservative and then be like, so you'll have to flip. Alabama is an insane person's approach to this.
- [57:42]
C
Right. And like, again, I. Texas has had.
- [57:45]
B
Races in the single digits. A bunch of races in the single digits.
- [57:48]
A
Yeah. Remember in the last decade, better or work won by negative 2.5 percentage points against Ted Cruz in 2018.
- [57:57]
B
Yeah. Right. So, like, that seems like a closer Target than like Alabama. Well, I guess Alabama did actually elect Doug Jones though.
- [58:05]
A
But it's also just a highly predictive.
- [58:07]
C
Election playing against a pedophile in a special election.
- [58:12]
B
Allegedly.
- [58:13]
A
Allegedly. Allegedly. We don't have lawyers on the Genie Politics podcast. Okay, so do we want to. Do we have any final words here?
- [58:22]
C
Yeah.
- [58:22]
A
So like, you want to say something nice about this New York Times analysis before we close?
- [58:25]
C
No. Right.
- [58:26]
B
So their graphics were very pretty.
- [58:29]
C
They were, they were. I do want to emphasize, like this is not to like, say that like Democrats have nothing to worry about. Right. Obviously, like that is. This is not a, you know, demographics is destiny argument, you know, and like, you know, Democrats are going to be fine. Like, they absolutely have work to do. Texas and Florida are not going to be easy for them to flip. But like, they have options. I think that they knew that this was something they were, you know, smart Democrats. I think at least knew that this is something they would have to work on before this article came out. And I think that the exact reapportionate numbers are not like, you know, to Mary's point, they are too imprecise to be described with any kind of certainty. And they were just kind of like a nice hook for the New York Times to write an article that at this moment in time there is a market for articles that kind of hand wring about Democrats because Democrats are very unpopular and they're wandering in the wilderness right now. And you know, these numbers are out there and they're like, ooh, let's write an article about Democrats struggles like using these numbers. And it's just not, you know, to coin a phrase, a good use of data.
- [59:33]
A
Okay, Any final words? Mary?
- [59:37]
B
Go back and read about swing states of old. It's really fun.
- [59:41]
A
I enjoyed that. So consider this an endorsement of honestly, past political analysis in general is fascinating. I remember going back and reading a 2000 era Wall Street Journal article that described sort of like the ascendance of the median moderate centrist voter and how they had come to dominate and would dominate American politics because there was just so little appetite for the fringe. It was incredible. Maybe I'll track it down and we can talk about it sometime, but I think that's gonna be it for today. Thank you, Nathaniel and Mary.
- [60:17]
B
Thanks, Galen.
- [60:18]
C
Thanks, Galen.
- [60:19]
A
My name is Galen Drook. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and access to the video for the podcast. You can also join in our paid subscriber chat. Like I mentioned, we're going to do a mailbag episode soon. I'm going to prioritize those paid subscriber chat questions. You can also. What else can you do? You ensure that this podcast continues to exist, which is, I guess, maybe the most important part of all of it. Anyway, way thanks for listening and we will see you soon.