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- [00:00]
A
Oh, the live video recording is ready. We have five hours of streaming on.
- [00:06]
B
I'll go back and watch.
- [00:07]
A
Should I just publish that instead? Put a five hour podcast in the feed, please.
- [00:11]
B
God, no.
- [00:12]
C
You could try to edit it down. No.
- [00:16]
A
Impossible task.
- [00:17]
B
Good way to spend your birthday.
- [00:20]
C
Happy birthday, Galen.
- [00:21]
B
Happy birthday, Galen.
- [00:23]
D
Happy birthday, Galen.
- [00:24]
A
Thank you guys.
- [00:27]
B
So are you announcing your candidacy for president now that you're eligible?
- [00:30]
A
You ruined the surprise, Nathaniel. Hello and welcome to this late night, election night edition of the GD Politics podcast. It is a quarter past midnight on the east coast and and we are just coming off of a five hour long livestream. To be honest, that is not what I expected when I decided to do a livestream on GD Politics. And it's not what I workshopped originally with the folks.
- [01:07]
B
It's not how you sold it to us either, Galen.
- [01:11]
A
You know, we'll do like 15, 20 minutes, quarter past every hour. And we kind of just turned the livestream on and people kept joining. Honestly, the reason we kept going is because there were so many people tuning in. So thank you to everyone who tuned in to the live stream. Maybe it means we'll do it again in the future. I hope folks who did tune in got a lot out of it. To folks who didn't tune in in the future. You know, before too long we're going to have more elections. But let me jump straight to introducing the late late night crew that is here with me this evening. First up, Mary Radcliffe, dear friend of the podcast. These are all very dear friends of the pod who are who have not only just committed five hours to live streaming with me, but are now doing a post midnight podcast on election night. Mary Radcliffe, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:01]
C
Thank you so much, Galen. Not to be too American Airlines about it, but we know you have choices in your election night podcast and we appreciate you spending your time with Chidi Politics. And I've got myself a real drink now, so let's get to it.
- [02:14]
A
Ooh, what are you drinking, Mary?
- [02:16]
C
This is Hennessy.
- [02:18]
A
She goes, now I got a real drink. I'm working on a glass of Grunewald. Lenny, am I saying that right?
- [02:28]
D
Sure.
- [02:29]
A
Can you say it in your Austrian accent?
- [02:32]
D
Grunefeldliner.
- [02:33]
A
That is Lenny Brauner, data scientist at the Washington Post, who as folks know is from Vienna, Austria. Welcome to the podcast, Lenny.
- [02:41]
D
It's great to be here.
- [02:43]
A
And also last but of course not least is dear friend of the podcast, Nathaniel Rakic. Welcome to the pod, my friend.
- [02:49]
B
Thanks, Galen.
- [02:51]
A
Um, that was kind of sad. Are you. Are you sad that you came last in the lineup?
- [02:55]
B
I don't know. I'm just sad that the night is over.
- [02:57]
A
Aw.
- [02:58]
B
Every another election day under. Under our belts. We've done so many election days together, guys. We've done a decade of elections and we really have with the passage of time.
- [03:08]
A
This was my first election since 2011 not in a mainstream newsroom. And yes, in 2011, I was a senior in college, so it's been real. But wait, guys. Okay, hold on. We're, we're getting, we're getting, we're getting too bogged down in the sort of camaraderie that we have created over the past five hours. And frankly, past seven years, folks, I think are tuning in because they want to know the takeaway from the night which. Yes, Democrats won big. Maybe you can debate how big. There are lots of different takeaways about the polls. It seems like at least as far as the margin is concerned in New York, polls were close. Ish. But maybe overestimated Mamdani's margin a little bit. Certainly underestimated Democrats margins in Virginia and New Jersey and it looks like in California and as well. And just for anybody who has not already seen the news, Democratic candidate for governor Abigail Spanberger won in Virginia. That was called pretty early on. Actually, everything was called pretty early on in the evening. We could have made it a short night, but we just decided. Early night, but we just decided not to. The big question also down ballot in Virginia was Jay Jones. Would Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for attorney general who had texting scandals in which he was supporting political violence, would he pull it off? He did in the end. Then we get to New Jersey where Democratic candidate for governor Mikey Sherrill. There were some questions about her quality as a candidate from Democrats down the stretch, but she pulled it out and again easily. I'll cite some, some numbers here just as we're going through. Abigail spanberger won by 15 points in Virginia with more than 95% of the votes in. In New Jersey, Democrat Mikey Sherrill won by at right now it looks like 95% of the votes in. And of course, we can go to New York City where Zoran Mandani looks like he will end up winning by about nine points over Andrew Cuomo. And lastly, but not least because we are maybe going to fit in some other races that California Proposition 50 on redistricting currently has a 30 percentage point lead over the. Yes. Has a 30 percentage point lead over. Over the nose. There's a lot of different angles to take Here. And where we left off on the live stream was everyone sort of giving their, their headline from the night. So maybe we can pick up there, which is what was your top line takeaway, Mary, from the evening?
- [05:49]
C
Yeah, I mean, obviously, like, I think you can't walk away from this evening without the, like, main top line takeaway that this was a very good night for Democrats across the board. They won all those races that you mentioned, the other sort of competitive races or the other races that we had been discussing in previous podcasts, the Georgia Public Services Commissioners. Democrats won both of those seats by about 20 points. They won all of the judicial retentions in Pennsylvania. So I mean, just like across the board, really good night for Democrats. The thing that really caught my eye watching the results come in tonight and I'd be really excited when we get all the data and could get my hands on it and do like the full analysis here is how the turnout differentials really benefited Democrats in various places across the map. So those Georgia races, the reason they won so big was because you had huge turnout in Atlanta and surrounding areas like Fulton County, Cobb County, Gwinnett, because they had a mayoral race in Atlanta and municipal elections in those surrounding areas that you didn't see in other parts of the state, that really juiced turnout in that area. That's why those elections went so big. When you look at Virginia, we saw higher turnout in some of the more urban and suburban areas that we expect to go to Democrats than you see in like the rural areas. And again, that sort of is like sitting behind some of these big margins you're seeing at the top of the ticket. So I guess for me, I'm just really interested in digging into how these turnout differentials, especially in urban and suburban communities, may have really, like, juiced to the Democrats margins. Like, whether they would have won these races without those differentials is possible. But like, margins really might come down to like this differential turnout. So that's, that's what I'm interested in. I don't know. That's like the top line takeaway, but I think that that underlying, like how big these margins are is really like what we've been seeing in midterms and off off cycle elections in the, in basically throughout the Trump era, which is this sort of like two electorate theory that the like, engaged voters that show up all the time really tend to be more Democratic. So I'm interested in taking a look at that.
- [08:03]
B
Yeah. So we started the live stream by basically setting a marker for like, okay, like, what are these races really going to tell us about 2026 before we know any of the results. And I think I argued and I think people largely agreed that like it is neither the winning party in this case Democrats is going to argue that oh like you know this is a great indicator for the national environment. It means that Democrats are going to win big in 2026 and then the losing party in this case Republicans is going to say oh well these were idiosyncratic races and you know, they don't necessarily tell us anything because it was all about like the individual candidates and various factors and the truth is going to lie somewhere in between. And I think that, that what Mary said is a really good illustration of that. The Georgia races are a great example. Those races would not have been as big 20 point win for, for Democrats. They would not have, they would not have been that much of a margin if it weren't for the idiosyncratic fact that the Atlanta area municipal elections were juicing turnout. And so that's a good example of you can't read too, too much into these results because of the specific factors at play. That said it was still a Democratic win. Like even without that Democrats probably still would have won. You saw Democratic over performance across the state. Obviously it was part of a broader pattern of Democratic over performance in basically every race. And I think that when you see that kind of broad support it's does suggest that there is something in the water nationally and that there is an energy behind Democrats right now and that that means that the national environment again kind of like going along with data that we already had from special elections and to some extent the generic ballot, you know just some generic ballot polling has been better for Democrats than others. But that you know it go it, it adds to this corpus of knowledge that we have evidence that we have that this is a Democratic leaning environment. Things can absolutely change by 2026. Just ask Republicans how 2021 their big wins 21 in Virginia or and and their near, their near loss or near win in New Jersey how that turned out for them in 2022. Obviously the Dobbs decision intervened but I think that you, you have, you had like it was, it was there were good signs for Democrats tonight. But you have to be aware of the individual unique things too.
- [10:23]
A
Right. There are sort of two lessons here. The, the Democrats dual electorate theory means that one, Democrats who want to look at this as of some indication of how 2026 might go, you can be happy or you can be assured that the two electorates still exist and that the two electorate theory applies to midterms. So if what you're focused on is 2026, this was, well, this was good news at face value, but it's also, you can reasonably say it portends Good news for 2026. Now, can you extrapolate beyond that? No. And that's exactly because of the dual electorate theory, because we saw, and Lenny pulled up some fantastic data on this. I'll let him jump in in a second. Looking across, for example, Virginia, we looked at what turnout was like and what the margins were like across rural, suburban and urban areas of Virginia. And, and it was clear that just voters were really turning out in the urban and densely suburban areas and really voting for Democrats in those areas. Whereas the parts of the state, the more rural parts of western Virginia that of course put up huge margins for Republicans really just weren't engaged in this election. And you better believe that they will be engaged when there's actually a presidential election on the ballot in 2028. And so you can, you can perhaps get excited about 2026, but perhaps not get excited about 2028. And like Nathaniel said, there is still a year before 2026 during which all kinds of stuff can happen. But Lenny, I want to give the floor to you because you had the enormous task of collecting data from Virginia, New Jersey and New York City this evening and trying to look for trends across different demographic groups. Different, different, well, precinct levels in Virginia and New York City and counties in New Jersey. And so what is your top line takeaway from all of that?
- [12:24]
D
I do think that the precinct results, the more granular results that we got from New York and Virginia really illustrated what Mary and Nathaniel just said, which is that there was really this juicing of turnout going on amongst the. What in this election was the Democratic base. I mean, that actually looked a little bit differently in Virginia and New York. New York saw what looks like a pretty big surge of young voters. We're going to have to see whether that holds in Virginia, too. The precinct data in Virginia doesn't really lend itself to that analysis the way that it does in New York because there are just precincts that are very young in New York and in Virginia that's true, too, and like Roanoke and stuff, but it's a little bit more complicated to suss that out. But maybe if we take a look at exit polls, we might get a sense for that. But either way, maybe the actual people making up those different groups was slightly differently. Different, excuse me, but they were both sort of what made up the Core Democratic electorate. So in Virginia, obviously, this was around in the Nova area, Northern Virginia. These are places that have been particularly affected by the shutdown by Doge in the last years. I mean, those areas saw effectively, I mean, when we talk about the two electorate theory, you know, like the two electorates, they basically saw 20, 24 turnout, some of those areas versus, you know, Southern Virginia, the more rural areas.
- [13:36]
A
Presidential turnout.
- [13:38]
D
Yeah, nearly presidential turnout. And I mean, the New York City mayoral was, I think, the highest turnout mayoral election maybe ever. I don't.
- [13:45]
B
I don't have a problem. Did it hit 2 million votes?
- [13:47]
D
I think so, yeah.
- [13:49]
B
Which is a number that a lot of people had said would be like a huge hit. Two million votes. Yeah. That is genuinely impressive. And then actually 2 million.
- [13:58]
C
And they've still got a bunch of votes left to count.
- [14:01]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:02]
D
I mean, Cuomo got 850,000 votes. I think that would have been enough for him to win any other mayoral election in the 21st century. But Mamdani just ended up with another 200,000 votes on top of that. So, I mean, these were, you know, these were very high turnout elections. If you really want to, like, force a takeaway for, you know, future elections, you can say that this is actually a good sign for Democrats because it means that they're doing well in higher turnout elections. Like, but still, this is such a strange and different electorate because like I said earlier, you know, we saw presidential level turnout in Democratic strongholds and we saw not that in Republican strongholds, especially in Virginia, where we're able to do that analysis. And so I saw that Nathaniel was about to jump in and tell me that I'm wrong, and I think he would be right to do so.
- [14:46]
B
Right. No, I just want to clarify right there, it's a high turnout election for a Virginia gubernatorial race or for. Or even for a midterm. Right. But it's not high, like, as you mentioned, like some places saw presidential turnout, but overall it's not at presidential level. So, like, certainly I don't want to mislead anybody into thinking that, like, you know, if we were to run the presidential election today, you know, Democrats would win because we don't. We don't know that maybe they would. But. But yeah, I think I do think I completely agree with the idea that, like, the midterms are going to be a. They are going to be decided somewhat by turnout as well. They are not. They will not be at presidential levels. And you will not see some of these low propensity Trump, Trumpy voters Turning out most likely.
- [15:30]
A
I'm curious for your take, because this is the first big election night of Trump 2.0. Does it remind you of the first big election night of Trump 1.0? Would you say that Democrats are doing about the same. Would you say that Democrats are doing even better than they did in for example, 2017 or 2018? 18. Worse.
- [15:56]
B
This is a much more impressive win for Democrats than the 2017 election. This is, this is akin, more akin to the special elections that we saw during 2017 and 2018 when Democrats of course won the US Senate seat in Alabama, which was, was obviously, I think that was probably the single most crazy result for like crazy good result for Democrats during any of the Trump times. But they also won the special election in Mary's neck of the woods, Connor Lamb's district in Western Pennsylv. I think that that's the level of Democratic overperformance that we saw tonight in 2017, in November, November 2017, in like Virginia and New Jersey, it was like Democrats won, but it wasn't particularly impressive.
- [16:38]
C
Yeah, Spanberger is definitely outperforming Northam's performance in 2017. And Cheryl's pretty close to Murphy's performance in 2017. He won by about 15 points. She's ahead by about 13 as of right now with still a little bit of votes left to count. So I mean in 2017 when Murphy was running, the state had an sitting incumbent Republican governor, which also like would improve the performance probably of the Democrat because we're in this sort of anti incumbency era. But they came fairly close to the 2017 result anyway even with the unpopular Democratic incumbent governor.
- [17:13]
B
And New Jersey was just a much bluer state back then. As we've talked about on this podcast, 2024, New Jersey moved significantly to the right, voting for Harris by only 6 points. And back in 2016, presidential race in New Jersey was still considered a safe Democratic state.
- [17:27]
A
Can we say something for the polls? I just want to run through this really quickly. In the pre election polling average over at decision desk hq, Spanberger was leading winsome Earl Sears by nine points. We'll go back to the results again. In the end, Abigail Spanberger looks to be winning by 15 points. So that's a six point polling error. We know that. On average.
- [17:53]
C
Well that depends on the polling average you use. If you used 50 plus 1, we had Spanberger ahead by 11.
- [17:59]
A
Oh, look at you guys. Okay, so the average error in gubernatorial election polling is 5 percentage points. So it's, it's about, it's about the average. But it's, you know, it is polling error nonetheless. When we head to New Jersey we see that Cheryl was leading Cittarelli by 5 percentage points. As we mentioned, she's going to end up beating Cittarelli by 13 percentage points, more or less. So that's an eight point error. That's a, that's what's well beyond the average error in gubernatorial elections. And I am curious what happened there because there was a lot of hand wringing down the final stretch amongst Democrats who felt like wasn't a particularly good candidate and that New Jersey could really be in play. I just want to, before we dive into sort of assessing how the polls did over the course of the evening, I want to, I want to round it out which is that in New York City Madani was in the end leading by 10 percentage points. And in the end tonight, I think I said at the beginning, he will end up winning by nine. So actually a polling average that pretty much hit the mark in what, in what in many ways should have been like the toughest race to pull out of all of them because it was a Democrat versus an independent who is highly recognizable as a Democrat versus a Republican. In an election where trying to decipher what the electorate will ultimately look like could be really tricky because there was a candidate in Zoran Mamdani who was really pursuing low propensity voters who might not be used to voting in off off year elections or even voting in local elections, period. And so trying to model that electorate could be tricky. But in the end of all of the races, the average was most spot on in New York City. I think it underestimated everyone's margin a little bit.
- [19:53]
D
Right.
- [19:53]
A
Zoran Mamdani in the end will exceed the. Okay, so we're still waiting for about 9% of the expected total votes. But at the moment Zoran Mamdani is over the 50% threshold. So he has 50% 0.4% according to the AP. If folks want to want to know about the significance of that margin, they can go back and listen to an interview that I did with Michael Lang in the run up to the election where he talked about yes, the margin will matter in terms of takeaways and political punditry, but it will also actually matter in terms of what governance looks like in New York City. We won't get too much into that right now because folks can go and listen to that. And then lastly in California, the pre election polling suggested the average was a 20 point lead for Proposition 50. And in the end. We have a.
- [20:47]
B
Well, we don't know the end yet.
- [20:48]
D
We have far, we're far from the end of California.
- [20:51]
B
Yeah, don't, don't draw any conclusions about polling error in California yet.
- [20:54]
A
Okay.
- [20:55]
B
Two more weeks of vote counting, so.
- [20:57]
A
Scrap everything I just said. But it does lead currently by 30 percentage points and it got called before a single vote was counted based on the exit polls alone.
- [21:05]
C
At which flag. Also in California, the polling was very thin. Right. Like I, I recall three, I think maybe in October. I recall seeing only three surveys, so. So October slash November.
- [21:17]
A
So we have traditionally said that during the Trump era, even though the polls have underestimated Trump consistently, the polls have still been quite accurate in off off year elections and midterms. That didn't really, that wasn't really the case tonight. And I, I do have to ask, like, pollsters have been making a lot of adjustments to try to make sure that they don't undercount Trump's vote. And sometimes when you fight the last battle, it bites you in the ass. And you know, sort of, we kind of were expecting that sooner or later there would be a polling error that underestimated Democrats in a significant way. And you know, we can debate where the threshold is for significant, but we saw some underestimates for sure, in New Jersey at least. So is this just a case of fighting the last battle?
- [22:12]
D
So the fact that the polling error in New York City, there's basically very little polling error in New York City from what we can see so far, does make me think that this may be some product of waiting weirdly on partisanship in these other two states in New Jersey and Virginia, because that might cause exactly what we're seeing, which is, I mean, don't think the pollsters would have waited to the 2024 election, but that would have caused this. Right. Which would have been we would have been seeing Republicans doing better in the polls of what ended up happening. I'm curious, Mary, do you know if pollsters were waiting on New York City.
- [22:47]
C
If they were waiting on partisanship? But I actually want to push back on this. There was very little polling error in New York City. Looking at that, 50 plus one did not have a tracker for New York City. But if you look at DDHQ, they had Curtis Sliwa at 18% of the vote.
- [23:04]
B
Mm, good point.
- [23:05]
C
He got 7% of the vote. That seems like a pretty big error.
- [23:11]
A
So I don't think.
- [23:13]
D
But again, I mean, that'd be the same direction.
- [23:15]
A
That's like quite a fair Conclusion. Because there was basically an October surprise in the New York City mayoral election, which is that at the last minute, Trump endorsed Cuomo. And we know that Cuomo and Sliwa voters were more liable to vote on election day. So the fact that Sliwa support collapsed sort of on election day or whatever in the final stretch makes sense to me, given that there were. There were sort of late breaking moves in that race that would have affected exactly those voters. And so in some ways, I guess maybe it's luck that they still got the margin. Right on.
- [23:52]
C
Yes.
- [23:52]
A
Um, but I don't think that's down to polling error so much as, like, the polls were conducted before the final big news happened.
- [24:00]
C
Well, I mean, if you're gonna say the final big news happened and these polls couldn't take it account, therefore ignore these polls, then I don't think you can say the polls were accurate.
- [24:10]
A
Hmm. I don't know. I guess. I guess we live in a complicated world.
- [24:14]
C
It's like, it's completely luck. Right. Like if. If they happen to get the margin at the top of the ticket.
- [24:20]
B
Right.
- [24:20]
C
While overestimating one of the candidates by 11 percentage points.
- [24:25]
A
I mean, so what we're thinking is, what we're thinking is you give sort of 10% or, I don't know, 5 to 10% of Cuomo support back to Sliwa, and all of a sudden you have the polls underestimating Zoran Mamdani.
- [24:39]
B
Right.
- [24:39]
A
Is that what you're thinking?
- [24:41]
C
No, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking that either you take these polls as they are and you say they were not accurate, or you do what you said and say there was an October surprise these polls were unable to capture and therefore we should ignore them.
- [24:53]
B
I mean, I do think what you said is correct, Galen, in that. Right. So, like, I'm looking at the DDHQ average and the current results in New York, Mamdani was at 44% in polling average. He is now at 50%. So that was a significant underestimation of him. Cuomo was at 34% in the polling average and finished at 42%. So that was a significant underestimation. And then Sliwa, we already talked about, so, yeah, they.
- [25:22]
A
Does this mean Sliwa voters split evenly for Mamdani and Cuomo? No, I don't think.
- [25:29]
B
No, not necessarily. I mean, the kid voters for other reasons.
- [25:32]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [25:33]
B
Right. I just think that, like. Right. The poll. I think Mary's point is well taken, which is that, like, they. The polls missed on each of the individual candidate numbers, the margin ended up happening incorrect.
- [25:46]
C
When we do scientific assessments of poll accuracy, you do not look at the margin. You look at the predicted vote share for each candidate.
- [25:52]
A
Yeah. All right, well, then, sorry, New York City pollsters, you guys. You guys weren't on the mark either. It looks like Lenny's about to say something.
- [26:01]
D
But mind you, I mean, this basically means that we saw an under that the Republicans were predicted to do better by the polls in all three elections. I mean, nearly by the same amount.
- [26:11]
A
Perhaps all four elections or something. We're gonna have to wait and see. On California.
- [26:15]
C
In Virginia. In Virginia, I'm looking at the 50 plus 1 polling average. In Virginia, on average, we have Republican. Or we had Sears at 42.4 in our final polling average, and she's currently on 42.3. I mean, big polling.
- [26:31]
D
Ms.
- [26:31]
C
Terrible. Right? I mean, like, that's almost perfect. Right. So what's actually happening here is the Republicans were correctly estimated.
- [26:38]
D
Yeah.
- [26:38]
B
And undecideds broke.
- [26:40]
C
Undecided broke largely toward Spanberger in that race.
- [26:46]
A
All right, so we're getting a little bogged down in the technical weeds, and I do want to close out for the evening we talked. So maybe eventually we'll publish the. The live stream that we just did for five hours. And I will also say that in the future, we're going to get into conversations about what this all means, what lessons Democrats will take away from it. You know, what it means for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party versus the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, how folks might model any of the candidates who were on the ballot tonight in 2026 elections. We're gonna have lots of time to talk about that, but I do want to do final takeaways sort of geared towards the future. Sort of what? This. Not like, does this mean that Democrats or Republicans will win, but lessons that folks might take away from this evening. Maybe, maybe even if you don't think they're apt. But sort of how you think tonight will shape the next six months of discourse.
- [27:43]
B
I'm kind of curious to see if this affects a shutdown. Yeah, Like, I don't think, like, Democrats have felt remarkably little pressure. Right. Like, the polling has been on their side in terms of the public blaming Republicans more so for the shutdown. They just. Democrats just won big. So, like, they don't have any reason to give in now. And like Democrats or Republicans, I think may feel pressure now because there's gonna be a lot of stories in the next couple of days about how badly they just did in these elections and how much of it might be due to the shutdown, especially in Virginia. So I'm curious if this leads. Look, there was already some movement, it seems like in negotiations in the Sen earlier today slash yesterday. And so I will be curious if this maybe moves the needle a little bit just in the short term.
- [28:32]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:33]
C
Mary, I've been thinking a lot, especially in the last week, about the moderation wars being waged by nerds on the Internet and how people will read these results with respect to like strategy for the Democratic Party, whether, you know, running more moderate or more progressive candidates is the more successful approach and how this election is kind of confusing there because they did both of those things in different parts of the country and they both won. So I wonder to the extent to which these results will be interpreted and, or misinterpreted in advancement of these sort of strategic goals for the moderate versus left wings of the party.
- [29:18]
B
Yeah, I think both sides will find something to like in these results.
- [29:22]
C
And so, and so the moderation war shall continue.
- [29:25]
B
Yes, continue. These moderation wars show.
- [29:29]
D
I mean, after the 2024 election, I think I said something or tweeted something like, you know, Democrats are going to pivot in some random direction and do really well in the midterms and then draw all the correct lessons from that pivot. And actually we're seeing them pivot in all the directions and drawing all the correct lessons from whatever direction they they pivot in because thermostatic, you know, opinion does seem to work and it has worked this time around and I assume it's going to work well enough for them during, during the midterms next year to get them over the finish line there too. But obviously like you all said, a lot can happen between now and a year from now.
- [30:02]
B
Yeah. I think just to be completely on brand as the fundamentals based person, I do think that what the, you know, the specific messages that the Democrats. Yeah. That the Democrats may not have said in this election maybe weren't responsible for their win so much as just the fact that Donald Trump is president. And when the Republican is president, things shift toward the Democrats.
- [30:23]
A
I think candidate quality matters and I think we saw especially candidate quality does matter decision Jon Jay Jones versus yeah.
- [30:28]
B
The J. Jones race was a great illustration of this. Democrats had a scandal played candidate for Virginia Attorney General who significantly underperformed at the top of the ticket. Completely agree that candidate quality matters. But a rising tide lifts all votes and Jay Jones, despite threatening or like wishing political violence on a Republican colleague is going to be the next attorney general of Virginia. So there's that.
- [30:51]
D
That and did did better in Virginia than Harris did.
- [30:54]
A
I think for my part, what I'm interested in in the coming months is, you know, for anyone who's still listening from all the way back in 2016 when we were covering the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, this is, this might be the most high profile win for the Democratic socialist slash progressive left part of the Democratic Party in Zoran Mamdani's victory in New York City tonight. Now, you can say that New York City isn't representative of the country as a whole, and that's absolutely correct. But because of what New York City is, which is a center of media and commerce and whatever else you want to say, there's going to be a spotlight now on democratic socialist governance, on crime, on affordability, on all kinds of things. And how Zoram Ramdani performs in his role as next mayor of New York City is going to shape Americans perceptions about democratic socialism to some extent. And that will, I think, in turn shape primary campaigns in 2026 and primary campaigns in 2028. So I am curious to the extent that Zoran Mandani sort of sticks to maybe the further left interpretation of his beliefs or to the extent that he pivots. I mean, obviously he's pivoted a bit during the campaign, but now in governance you have to make sort of, sort of real moves like who are you going to align yourself with? What kind of policies are you actually going to get passed? How are you going to relate to the governor of New York? How are you going to relate to the city Council and all of the business leaders and, and the president? I think it'll be, I think it'll be really fascinating. I think it'll be really, really fascinating. And of course, last but not least, how does he relate to Donald Trump? And we're going to learn, we're, we're going to learn an awful lot. So, boy, this has been one eventful off off year. I think we can all say that much. I, you know, but, but, but it's meant that you've got to spend more time with all of us. Dear listener, with that, now it's time to fight. I don't have, I think I'm honestly too tired for birthday shots at this point. But thank you for spending the first hour of my birthday with me, Lenny, Mary and Nathaniel.
- [33:17]
C
Happy birthday, Galen.
- [33:18]
B
Thank you, Galen. Happy birthday.
- [33:21]
A
My name is Galen Droop. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and you can join the paid subscriber channel chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. Also, be a friend of the podcast and go give us a five star rating. Maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.