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Next question comes from kb. KB says, I would love to learn more about what you guys do in your day jobs. How did you get started in this career? And how would you recommend someone get into the world of polling analysis? So of course the GD Politics podcast is not the day job of some of our regular guests, but it is in fact my day job. I don't know if I should be embarrassed or I gave you the impression that I have enough time to focus on something else, but I don't. This. This is my bread and butter. This GD Politics podcast is how I pay my bills. So thank you to all of our subscribers for making that possible. Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drooch. I hope everyone's summer is off to a nice start and that everyone has a good long weekend in recognition of Juneteenth. A little political trivia for anyone who didn't know recently ousted Texas Senator John Cornyn actually co authored the bipartisan legislation that officially made Juneteenth a federal holiday along with Congresswoman Sheila Jackson lee back in 2021. Speaking of John Cornyn, does he want retribution and will he use any of his former campaign funds to get it? That's one of the many questions that paid subscribers to the GD Politics podcast submitted in recent weeks. And there are a lot more questions where that came from. How does a likely voter model work? Do people actually move abroad for political reasons? Does Congress buck a president, the more unpopular he becomes? Today we're opening up the mailbag for a long overdue listener question episode. In fact, there were so many questions we might have to do another one again soon. And by the way, you can submit your own questions in the paid subscriber chat at GDPolitics. Also, there's a catch. Today I am solo. We've done this just a couple of times in the past, but it's just you and me today. So get comfortable as I do my best talk radio impression and attempt to answer your wide ranging questions. Let's get straight into it. Our first question comes from Greg. Greg says, I'm curious how likely voter models are made. Are they backwards looking, assuming that this election's electorate will look like previous ones? Or or do they consider how things have changed? For example, the recent Marquette poll shows Trump's strong approval numbers shrinking and his strongly disapproval numbers growing. Is something like this baked into a pollsters likely voter model for the midterms? The answer to that question, Greg, is that it's unlikely that strong approval or disapproval Numbers are included in a likely voter model. Pollsters do likely voter models differently, but in general it's largely based on asking registered voters themselves how likely they are to vote and then also looking at historical data to see if that person has voted in the past, what kinds of elections they have voted in in the past, and creating some kind of turnout score for how likely they are to turn out in the upcoming election. They then pollsters set a threshold above which you know you're included in the likely voter model or the likely voter poll below which you are not included. And then on top of that, oftentimes pollsters create a model of the electorate overall, suggesting that, you know, based on historical evidence, we know that a midterm electorate is going to be sort of X percent white voters or black voters or Hispanic voters, X percent youth voters. So using some of that crosstab information to, to try to project what the actual electorate will look like even after you do that likely voter model. But just to sort of get into the details a little bit further here, when a pollster is determining that first question, you know, asking a respondent how likely they are to vote, number one, they're only including registered voters for the most part. Now, of course, people can register to vote between say now and election day, so that's not capturing the only people who can potentially vote. But generally you're going to stick with registered voters voters. Pollsters have different categories that you can fall into. You can say definitely going to vote, very likely to vote, likely, not so likely not going to vote, et cetera, and pollsters treat those responses differently. So I've talked to well known pollster Ann Seltzer of the Iowa Poll a couple times on the forebearer to this podcast, and she was very explicit. The only people that they include in the likely voter model are people who say they are definitely going to vote in this election and they don't really look too much at historical data or try to model what the electorate will look like based off of that past data. Of course, you know, she often always said, I'm either going to be a goose or I'm going to be golden. Of course, in the 2024 election, she was a goose. And so that likely voter model didn't pan out in that case. But that's just to suggest that there are different ways of doing this. But overall, you want to include the voter's intention as they state it today. You want to include some historical context. You can look in the voter file or you can buy voter data to see, has this person voted? What elections have they voted in? Have they voted in the past two midterms? If they have, they're very likely to vote in this one, especially if they say they're very likely to vote. So maybe you're getting a score of, say, a hundred, but maybe you've only voted in one of the past midterms and you still say that you're definitely going to vote. You probably fall a little bit further down on that turnout score. And then, of course, each pollster has to decide where they want to cut that off. One final aspect here, as you get closer to Election Day, with more voters voting early, sometimes you can see if a voter has actually cast a ballot already. You can ask them if they have already cast a ballot. So in a likely voter model, the highest scoring individual will be somebody who has already, in fact, voted. Much of that other data about, you know, overall, how enthusiastic are Democrats or how antagonistic are voters towards Trump. You know, that's interesting information, but we can't apply that information to individual voters. And that's what pollsters are trying to do with a likely voter model. All right, next question comes from Willis. Having considered my own this past year, I'm interested in people's red lines in terms of what can lead to immigration, be that between states or countries. Every election cycle, someone is threatening to move to Canada. What does the scientific literature say about how often people form these red lines and how often do they follow through when they're crossed? Do you have any red lines, Galen? Okay, a bit of a tricky question here. I'll try to answer the first part first, and then we'll see if I can dig deep and give you an answer to the question about my own red lines. So the first observation is absolutely true. A lot of Americans say that based on current conditions in the country or based on an individual election, they might like to leave the country altogether. So, you know, a prime example of this is that Gallup found in 2020, one in five Americans said they would like to leave the US permanently if they had the opportunity. It may not be very surprising to hear that this is pretty partisan. Among women ages 15 to 44, some of the most Democratic people in the electorate, the number was actually double, so up from 20% to 40% for that part of the electorate in Trump's first term. Gallup did similar polling and found that people who disapproved of Trump, 22% of those people said they wanted to leave, whereas 7% of Trump approvers said they wanted to leave the country. Now, social scientists have tried to actually look at the data and determine how likely people are to actually follow through on this sentiment. And there's some data from Trump's first term in office about moves from the United States to Canada. And the first thing is that number was not enormous. It did increase during Trump's first term, not enormously. But the other important caveat here is that it was largely coming from non citizen residents of the United states, such as H1B visa holders, international students, the like. And so that group rose noticeably sort of leaving the United States and going to Canada. Now, is that because there was a sentiment of I would like to leave the United States for political reasons, or was it just a logistical question of during Trump's first term, it was easier to get residency based on a work visa or permanent residency or what have you in Canada versus the United States because of stricter policies coming from the Trump administration. You know, you'll also see, I think both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times put out pieces in the past several months spotlighting Americans moving abroad, in particular to Europe. Some of those people, I think, mention the fact that they're not happy with the domestic political situation in America. But really, the focus actually of both of those articles was on the cost of living and how when you make a salary in US Dollars and you're able to spend it in a European country in euros or or even further afield, there is a real cost of living advantage that you gain when you're making an American salary. But spending that American salary ab and that gets to another piece of this question, which is domestic migration. Overall, the research suggests that when people are moving to new states or cities or what have you, by and large, it is for cost of living reasons. Housing, jobs, family, those kinds of things. And like, think about it. Yes, politics can be very frustrating sometimes. But for the vast majority of people, the most important daily concerns are connections to the people around you, whether you're able to make ends meet, the cost of things like housing, groceries, et cetera. And so that is more of a driver. Now, if you want to look for areas where there is evidence that people move based on politics, this one's kind of intuitive, which is that within a state or a city, we have a sense that there are certain enclaves where Republicans or Democrats can tend to live. And that is in part, well, one, it's in part because you're socialized into maybe believing the things of that the people around you believe. But for people who are Moving. There is evidence to suggest that people want to move to neighborhoods to be with people like them. Say, maybe they share the same politics, maybe they share the same religion, ethnic background, what have you. And so there is a desire for people to live amongst people who generally agree with them or, you know, see the world like them or are like them. But it's not so much a total like, I'm leaving this state. I'm leaving this country, even though there are individual cases of that happening. Maybe you have a friend, maybe you've heard of a celebrity who's done something like that. That is not the most common experience for everyday Americans, even those frustrated by American politics. Okay, so now we get to the personal question of my own red lines. When I think about when we see, you know, significant international migration, it's because of things like war, famine, sort of severe repression, severe lack of economic opportunity. I would say I'm someone who maybe whose red lines fall maybe more in that category than disapproving of a particular government. People who've listened to the podcast for a while know that I have a decent amount of experience living abroad, and it's those experiences, perhaps, that make me more enthusiastic about living in the United States. You know, when people sometimes say flippantly that they want to move to a new country, one of the things I'm most curious about is what are you looking for? Like, are you looking for more freedom of speech, more liberal social policies, just to sort of stop thinking about Trump altogether? Like, is it a response to psychic angst? Is there a particular policy that people are looking for? You know, for people who've spent a lot of time looking at other countries, thinking about other countries, we in America have really strong free speech protections, which is, of course, relevant to me as a journalist. So that's something that's. That's very important to me. You know, having a red line is one thing. Knowing where you would go to sort of fulfill those desires is. Is another thing. And, of course, I also care deeply about my friends and family, so, like, many Americans just wouldn't do it for that sake. But, like, I don't know, is there a circumstance in which, you know, it's very clear that an election is overturned, there's a severe curtailment of First Amendment freedoms. You know, maybe those are our kind of red lines, but in general, America, you're stuck with me. Speaking of Canada, our next question comes from a Canadian listener, Rebecca says, longtime listener from Canada here. Our government recently went from a minority to a majority government, primarily through floor crossings from other parties. Would that ever happen in America? For example, someone elected as a Republican becoming a Democrat or vice versa while in office? Is it legal? Has it happened in the past? Can you imagine it happening now? And what would be the consequences? It is certainly legal. It has certainly happened in the past. There's one canonical example which might be quite similar to the Canadian experience in which a senator switched parties from Republican to independent in that's the end of today's Preview. Head to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber and catch the full episode. I spent about an hour answering your incisive questions. We got into the history of politics, politicians switching parties in America, the trend of politicians self dealing on prediction markets, the trend lines for Trump's strong approval rating. Spoiler alert, they're going down. And when one might expect a congressional Republican revolt. We also got into specific elections questions in Iowa and Nevada and about midterm turnout overall. I even answered that question at the top about my day job and how I ended up in the world of political podcasting. Like I said, head over to GDPolitics.com to catch the whole thing. For eight bucks a month or 80 bucks a year, you'll get twice the number of episodes and we'll help ensure we can keep making an independent podcast again. That's gdpolitics.com hope to see you there.