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- [00:00]
A
Hey there, listeners. I recorded this podcast on Wednesday before the news broke that Charlie Kirk was killed. So I wanna take a moment to address that beforehand. It's despicable and saddening. It's sad on a human level and on a national level. On a human level, my heart goes out to Charlie's family and his young children. On a national level, what a horrifying situation to be in that someone is murdered while engaging in debate on a college campus. People have to feel safe to speak their minds in a free country. Left, right, center. Controversial, not controversial. At the time of this recording, we don't have the details about the perpetrator, but all indications point towards political violence. If you're a longtime listener, you have been alongside me for far too much political violence. Multiple assassination attempts on President Trump, January 6, the shooting of Steve Scalise at a congressional baseball game, the shooting of two state lawmakers in Minnesota, the El Paso Walmart shooting, the shooting of Brian Thompson, and now the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And I'm sure there are many incidences of violence I'm not remembering here as well. Partisans may focus on blaming a political party, but we know from the evidence that that's not helpful. The best way to prevent future political violence is for all leaders to condemn it in the clearest, strongest terms whenever it happens by whoever it's committed. Evidence also suggests that it's a very small number of Americans who see violence as an acceptable form of political behavior. But tragically, all it takes is one person to wreak havoc on our country and our system. It's heartening to see the most prominent Democratic leaders condemning the violence in absolute terms. It's disheartening to see left wing provocateurs celebrating and right wing provocateurs describing this as a call to arms. For my part, this right here is kind of the whole ball game. Decreasing political discord and engendering a shared sense of fate amongst Americans is one of the things that I care most about. I hope to never have to cite statistics about political violence ever again here on the GD Politics podcast. And I also, sadly, know that that's unlikely. It's hard to feel optimistic at a moment like this, but I do feel thankful for the positive community that we have here on this podcast. So I want to say thank you and that my prayers are with Charlie Kirk's family. Hello, and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druke, and on today's episode, we are opening up the mailbag and answering listener questions. You all have had some pretty good questions lately, actually. I mean, I'm not surprised. You're a smart audience, but some really good questions that we're going to get into. Also, a reminder that if you do want to get in touch with a question, you can join the paid subscriber chat and share your questions there. I'll prioritize those questions. You can also reach me at GalendPolitics. Today we're going to talk about why Trump's approval rating has been holding up better than in his first term, whether all those spam calls and texts are making it harder to pull, how young voters priorities, not just in politics, but in just about everything, are diverging along gender and partisan lines. We've also got some recent election news, including that special election in Virginia's 11th congressional district, a national election in Norway, and you also all had questions about 20, 26 races, which we're gonna get into. And here with me to answer your questions is friend of the podcast and senior data scientist at the Washington Post, Lenny Brauner. Welcome, Lenny.
- [03:57]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:58]
A
Should we start calling these episodes Letters with Lenny? I feel like we got a good thing going here, you know, like, open up the mailbag with Leonard Brauner.
- [04:06]
B
I mean, that sounds good to me.
- [04:08]
A
By the way, folks may have heard in the cold open, we'll see if it makes it that we are going to be rebranding the podcast. I want to alert people ahead of time because back in my fivethirtyeight days, we rebranded the podcast by which I mean we changed the COVID art for the podcast. And I was never told that this was going to happen in advance. So I was not able to alert folks, like, hey, the next time you look for the podcast, it's not gonna look the same. It just happened one day. Uh, and so I found out along with everyone else. This time I want a smoother transition. So I'm starting to tell folks now it's gonna happen sometime within the next few weeks. I will give people fair warning before that actually happens. But just get ready. You're not gonna see that, like, Galen's dramatic face, sort of like hidden in the darkness with GD politics lit up for that much longer. So enjoy it while it lasts. We got some. But we got some good, good stuff coming.
- [05:04]
B
Are you saying GD politics will no longer bring. Be bringing light into the darkness?
- [05:09]
A
Um, no. We'll always be bringing light into the darkness. You know, I just. It's just who I am, you know? But, Lenny, let's kick things off by catching up on a couple elections before we open up the mailbag. So last Monday we talked about the special election in Virginia's 11th congressional district, which then took place on Tuesday. And we mentioned that it's a district Harris won by 34 percentage points so far. Democrats this year are overperforming their 2024 performance by 16 percentage points in special elections. So do the math. You might expect that Democrat James Walkinshaw would win by about 50 percentage points in that district. If you add sort of the 34 point benefit for Harris over Trump and you add 16 points to that. Well, that was the exact margin by which he won on Tuesday. Lenny, what do you make of that result?
- [06:02]
B
I mean, it, you know, slots in really neatly. Obviously it was the exact average that we of the past special elections of this cycle. So it slots in really neatly into the pattern we've been see seeing all along. It sort of points to the fact that, you know, our average is kind of great. Magical. Magical. So all the things you all covered on Monday still hold the predictive nature of special elections that in the past have been maybe somewhat predictive for midterm performances, for congressional election performances. That relationship we saw sort of deteriorate in the last cycle. And I wouldn't be surprised if the relationship still is no longer as strong as it was in the past. There's a variety of reasons for that happening. But, but you know, I like special elections. I keep tabs on them, I follow them along like a lot of election nerds. But I'm also, I would be very cautious about inferring anything for what that means for the midterms. That being said, they're interesting in their own right and they tell a story about what is happening in American politics. Even if you don't use them for anything that's predictive.
- [06:58]
A
I think that's important to keep in mind. Everyone's always so obsessed about what this says about what's going to happen next, but it is telling us something about what's happening right now. I'm curious though. You mentioned there's a variety of reasons that the relationship between special election results and congressional elections in the next, say midterms or presidential elections, that relationship is breaking down. What are those reasons?
- [07:21]
B
There's one overarching reason which is basically that, you know, higher propensity voters are now moving towards the Democrats at just, I don't want to say unprecedented because I don't actually know what the comparison baseline is, but at like very high rates in the past, higher propensity voters. You know, if we go back a little bit further than the most recent cycles, higher propensity voters have generally been Republicans. Higher education on average, whiter on average, older on average. Those are all markers of more likely to be a Republican voter. But recently, you know, high propensity voters, politically engaged voters, are just becoming incredibly Democratic. This is true on all the sort of, you know, three metrics that are sort of, you know, strongly correlated with being higher propensity voters. Democrats are becoming more white, Democrats are becoming older, and Democrats are becoming, I think the main driver of this are becoming sort of higher educated, or I should say higher educated people are more likely to be Democrats. Those three things together are just like pushing Democrats to perform a lot highly in special elections. And the electorate that we see in general elections, like midterms or generals are just vastly different. You know, a lot more people who are lower propensity voters will turn out to vote. That's obviously more so in the general election than the midterms. And we just don't really know or have a good grasp at what number of those people are, how many of those people will actually turn out. Which is why comparing those two electorates is a bit of a tricky business. I actually have an example with me to go a little bit deeper. I took a look, this was actually for a story I did a few months ago, but I took a look at the March special election in Iowa's hundredth state House district, which had a 24 point swing towards Democrats. So actually higher than the average that we've been seeing in the last cycle. And during that special election, 5,000 people voted. And you know, that's significantly less than the 15,000 people who voted in that district during the 2024 election. But at the same time, you know, while it was a lot fewer people, the percentage of registered Democrats was a lot higher. It was actually 10 percentage points higher in that special election than during the general election. And so because we just don't know how many sort of non Democrats will turn out in the next general, it's just really hard to say exactly what this means. And in fact, you know, that that is causing this relationship to fray a bit.
- [09:24]
A
This actually brings us to a question that I was going to ask later on, but I might as well ask it now comes from a listener named Love Chicago. But to set the scene here historically, one of the accusations that Democrats have made of Republicans, efforts that they would describe as trying to make the vote more secure, say voter ID laws, purging voter rolls or Things like that is Democrats would say they're trying to prevent maybe lower propensity voters from casting a ballot because historically that would have been beneficial to Republicans because they had higher propensity voters in their coalition. That may no longer be the case. Right. The higher propensity voters may be Democrats and the more marginal voters who might not be up to date on voter ID laws or sort of keeping up with their registration, maybe those people are more likely to be Republicans now. So this is Love Chicago's question. Trump is going to try to end mail in ballots. Seems like this will hurt Republicans as much or likely more than Democrats. If Republicans are still the party of working class and less engaged voters, college educated, highly engaged Democrats will show up and vote regardless what gives. I would say normatively we should just want whoever wants to be able to vote and has is eligible to vote to be able to vote. But would, you know, limiting mail ballots be shoot Republicans shooting themselves in the foot?
- [10:49]
B
I think it depends on how much you think this is driven by sort of, you know, the parties being self serving and how much you think it is parties, you know, actually believing what they are saying and sort of wanting the best possible outcome for the sort of, you know, small d democratic process that's taking place. I think technically that is correct. If you look at the 2024 election, right. We know that non voters and low propensity voters for the first time since we've been keeping good data on this, were more likely to have favored Trump than Harris or the Democratic candidate. I guess if we look further back and that's sort of a new development. But these things aren't constant. I mean, I know that one of the questions that we may come up with later is sort of about realignments. And the point that I'll make then and the point that I make now is that these things are always fluid. Things change, things happen in one election, they might change later. It's really hard to make these sort of things. I mean it's hard to make predictions haha, but it's sort of even harder to make like broad based predictions about the nature of the electorate, you know, four, eight years down the line. But sure, if we look at the 2024 election, then that probably would have been the case. You know, obviously mail in ballots was a really partisan issue. A lot more Democrats voted by mail. But the Democrats that voted by mail compared to the Republicans that voted by mail, are probably more likely to, you know, then end up voting in the general election in person because they're higher propensity voters. That being said, people who vote by mail are generally higher propensity voters. So, you know, it's just hard to disentangle all those things.
- [12:12]
A
I think that makes sense. Okay, so moving on to another election, we're going to jump across the pond for a second, which is perfect because you're our informal European correspondent. Norway had a national election earlier this week. The Labour Party and its allies held onto a majority in parliament with 87 of the 169 seats. At the same time, the right wing populist Progress Party doubled its vote share compared with 2021 to 24% of the vote and will beat out Conservatives to be the second largest party in Parliament now. Okay, before I ask you for your take, I'll just say why do we care about Norway? Well, you know, it's another democracy voting in 2025 and we don't have a ton of national elections globally this year. We had a lot in 2024. So it maybe gives us a sense direct how the public in different democracies are feeling. And we have seen a lot of patterns repeat themselves across western liberal democracies. And so it maybe makes sense to look at how some other countries are voting. Even if you only want to get a sense for, you know, American politics.
- [13:24]
B
I do love that, like, you know, it's, you have to make the case to Americans that they only should care about other countries as they relate to, you know, what, what it means for America.
- [13:33]
A
Well, you know, or if you just really care about Norway too, that's totally fine. I'm supportive of caring about Norway. But Lenny, you track European politics pretty closely, especially Austrian politics, which is where you're from. What did you make of this result?
- [13:48]
B
An interesting tidbit here is that actually, you know, the government that they just had was a minority government, sort of. It was a labor government with a centrist party. And then they were being propped up or like the government was being held up by some of the more smaller left wing parties or especially one of the smaller left wing parties. And you know, now they're, they're, the actual coalition just has an outright majority. If you look at the results, the Labour Party actually gained seats. I mean, the left bloc in general gained some seats here, lost some seats here. But it is interesting that the government party gained seats. I mean, that's not really something, you know, we've been seeing, especially last year, where a lot of government parties sort of lost, lost elections. The minority partner did end up losing quite a few seats, which I think is sort of more in line with what we've been seeing elsewhere. But, you know, if you, if you want sort of my broad take, I guess there's like two general thoughts that I have. The first one is, is that the selection campaign was really focused. I mean, it was focused on, I would say, two issues. It was focused on the wars, but it was also focused really intensely on cost of living. And you know, I don't think this.
- [14:42]
A
Is, I've never heard of an election focused on the cost of. Before you explain that concept to me, Lenny.
- [14:46]
B
I think that is, I mean, this is not a very insightful take, I think, on my bit. But like, I do think it's interesting that, you know, this is obviously not the first election in the most recent set of elections that have been focused on the cost of living. You know, obviously this was an issue during the 2024 presidential election. This is obviously a large issue in the New York City mayoral election, both during the primary and ext. Expected to be an issue during the general also we've seen it be an issue, I mean, especially in cities for more local politics. That being an issue in a lot of places. Cities have obviously seen a high increase in the cost of living. And I just think this is an interesting pattern and a pattern that I don't think is going to go away anytime soon before this problem isn't really being solved by anyone particularly well, as far as I can tell, at least not in big cities. And so this is going to be an interesting pattern and it'll be interesting to see which parties are able to sort of make hay out of this issue or use it to their advantage. You know, we've seen a lot of, I would say parties or candidates that are further to the left than the norm use this issue to their advantage in a lot of places. You know, maybe Zora Mandani is an example of that. But also, I mean, you said earlier that I follow Austrian politics particularly closely. There's two cities in Austria where the Communist Party did particularly well, running basically solely on a cost of living, using only cost of living as their main issue and really not focusing on anything else. And I'm sure if you looked at another few, a few other cities, they that would probably be true there also.
- [16:05]
A
Well, and to add to that, one of the big policy questions within the maybe cost of living and equality or fairness issue bucket was Norway's wealth tax, which has been in place for over a century. And taxes not obviously just income, but actually taxes folks assets and shares and The Conservative Party and the Progress Party, which is the right wing populist party, were arguing to either lower the tax or the right wing populace were saying get rid of it altogether. And it seems like labor won that argument in part by making similar arguments to what we hear the left making today. Arguments against sort of like the billionaires on the 1% and the like. And Norway is a country that also doesn't have a massive deficit and doesn't have difficulty, you know, financing its public services because it has the largest, I believe, sovereign wealth fund in the world at $2 trillion. So it's, it is a very rich country that even has some of the same arguments that we have here in America, but has landed in a very different place when it comes to taxing wealth.
- [17:16]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there's sort of a deeper point here also of like, you know, one of the defining political conflicts of the 20th century, especially the second half of the 20th century, was sort of focused on organized labor and labor versus capital and sort of this, this discussion. The wealth tax plays, I think, a particular role in that discourse, especially as we compare it to sort of income tax and the focus that, you know, a lot of these left wing parties had about increasing the income tax for higher income earners versus, I think, sort of losing the battle in a lot of places about wealth tax or taxes that tax capital directly. And we're seeing this discussion sort of come around a little bit now going where a lot of left wing parties are realizing that maybe focusing on income taxes was maybe a losing issue for, or like they should have moved on quicker towards things that are taxing sort of wealth and capital more directly.
- [18:04]
A
You mentioned you had one other takeaway from this election before we move on.
- [18:08]
B
Yeah, I think it's the other thing that you mentioned, you know, when you initially posed this question, which is the rise of the far right. You know, the far right, they doubled in size in this election. They're now the second biggest party in Norway. And we're seeing a similar trend throughout all of Europe. We're seeing maybe a similar trend throughout the entire west, even though we're seeing maybe a slightly different trend in countries that have proportional representation compared to ones that are more majoritarian. But if we take a look at polling in a lot of large European countries, we can see that the far right is effectively polling at first. We have the Reform Party in the uk we have the alternative for Germany in Germany. We have the National Rally in France. And so we'll obviously see whether these parties can carry that momentum towards their next sets of elections. A lot of these countries don't actually have elections elections for a while now, at least not, you know, elections at their highest level of government. But it is possible that we're looking at a turning point in sort of European or maybe Western politics where the far right parties are going to overtake the Conservative parties as sort of the main party on the right.
- [19:09]
A
Yeah. In fact, the Wall Street Journal recently published an article noting that this is the first time in post war Europe where the right wing populist parties are leading in the polls in all three of Europe's largest economies, which you mentioned, uk, Germany and fr.
- [19:26]
B
I will say, you know, the far right has been running Italy for a while now, so I guess the fourth largest economy has. Was moved. Moved along that process a little bit quicker.
- [19:34]
A
Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. With all that said, are there any other elections on your radar at home or abroad?
- [19:40]
B
Yeah, I mean there's the Moldovan parliamentary election month which is obviously super exciting.
- [19:44]
A
How did I forget any predictions there?
- [19:48]
B
Oh no, there is the Arizona 7th that's happening later this month also special election and you know, the French government, you know, just lost a little vote of no confidence and resigned. And so it's entirely possible, though I don't think super likely for the reason I just mentioned, which is that, you know, government parties don't like calling elections when they are definitely going to lose. And obviously that is actually what Macron did recently and you know, lost his majority in the French parliament. But it is possible that we'll be see having French parliamentary elections soon again.
- [20:17]
A
Well, maybe I'll have to take a trip to France, like twist my arm. We'll definitely have to do a joint trip to Austria for the next Austrian election.
- [20:25]
B
Definitely.
- [20:25]
A
Anyway, let's open up the mailbag. Our first question comes from Joe. Joe says Trump's approval rating feels like it's not declining at the same pace as his first term, despite what seems like more controversial actions. It seems like views on his various issue handling questions are declining faster though. I think he's referring here to things like tariffs, the economy, cost of living, even immigration, crime, etc. Could this be because polls are waiting toward Trump recalled vote now when they weren't post 2016 election? And to give some context here of Trump's broader approval rating, right now he's at net negative 8 according to Silver Bulletin. In 2017 at this time he was at net negative 3 15. Lenny, what's going on?
- [21:15]
B
I think the question of whether this is Caused by waiting to pass. Recall is actually, I mean, it's a good question. An interesting theory. I hadn't thought of this.
- [21:21]
A
We've savvy listeners.
- [21:22]
B
Yeah. We could sort of take a small look at what at different pollsters and see whether we can identify a difference. So, you know, two pollsters that don't use recall weighting are Gallup and Quinnipiac. And you know, if we take a look at the polls, like there are these polls for these different pollsters in let's say, February and August, because, you know, maybe we sort of wa until the initial bump had sort of subsided a little bit. I'll mind you that on Silver Bulletin, the sort of decrease between February 15th and August 15th was 6.1 percentage points in Trump's approval for the two pollsters, Gallup and Quinnipiac. It was 5 percentage points drop for Gallup and an 8 percentage point drop for Quinnipiac. If we now compare that to pollsters that do, you know, wait on past recall, like economist YouGov or Reuters Ipsos, it was a 10 point drop in economist YouGov and a 4 point drop for revenue. Reuters Ipsos. So all of this is a very long way of saying, like, that's kind of inconclusive, but it's not at all obvious that that is what's driving it. Though I do think it is a, you know, very good question.
- [22:22]
A
I think it's a very good question. I'll also say that overall, there are more pollsters that are waiting by recalled vote today than there were in 2017. In fact, pretty much none of the high quality pollsters were rating by recalled vote back then. I think there is reason to question, given the polling error in 2016 and the polling error again in 2020, whether Trump's approval ratings for that entire first term were accurate. I mean, I think directionally they were accurate. But was he as unpopular as poll suggested the entire time? We could probably have a whole debate about that. There, there is probably some reason to believe that his approval was being undercounted.
- [23:08]
B
I totally agree. You know, I've been on this podcast before and made the claim that or, you know, made the point that we should be reading a little bit less into both issue polling and I think approval polling for exactly that reason. You know, for presidential horse race polling, we actually, you know, get a sense for whether the answer, whether the pollsters were right or wrong. But for a lot of these other polls, we kinds of polls, we generally don't. And I think, you know, for all the reasons that horse race polling might be sort of biased towards Democrats right now, sort of left to its own devices before pollsters do their waiting. There's, you know, reasons to think that the same is true that for issue and approval baiting polls. Polls. So I think you're absolutely right. Like, maybe we should not read as much into these polls in general. In fact, you know, the New York Times, Nate Cohn had an interesting piece come out on Wednesday, sort of describing slightly different outcomes you have if you ask people whether they support a policy or whether that policy should be implemented. This is in the context of the New York City mayoral election. So the question was like, should this policy be implemented in New York City? And the effect was, at least for, I think, four out of the five issues that were being pulled that people sort of approved of this issue at higher rates than they actually wanted to see them implemented. And so I don't actually want to get into details about these particular questions, but I do think that it shows that there is a difference in how people think about whether they approve of a policy or whether they actually want to live under this policy themselves. And I think that should sort of guide us when we talk about issue polling in general. And I think that should also guide us when we talk about approval polling.
- [24:36]
A
Yeah. So on one hand, you take this evidence and you say, well, maybe it gives us more reason to focus on actual hard data like election results, like the special elections we were just talking about. But those also come with all kinds of caveats.
- [24:50]
B
And so uncertainty is everywhere.
- [24:53]
A
Galen, we come back to the conclusion that if you want to understand how Americans are feeling, this is the best way to do it, even though it is flawed to varying degrees. Okay, next question.
- [25:05]
B
I thought you were going to say the. The best. The best place to figure out how or the best way to figure out how Americans are feeling are coming here, listening to this podcast.
- [25:12]
A
Well, obviously, I mean, that goes without saying. God damn it, GD it. Okay, Michael asks, has anyone studied whether the massive increase in spam calls or texts is related to a drop in the accuracy of polls? On the podcast, you've spoken about how low social trust is driving the drop in poll response rates. However, it seems reasonable to me that many people who don't pick up the phone from unknown callers are simply doing so out of a rational desire not to talk to spammers. Case study. This morning, I got a call from an unknown number from Gallup, New Mexico. I hesitated for a second, thinking it could be the pollster. Ultimately, I didn't pick up the phone and when I checked the voicemail, it was a robot telling me my account had been compromised and it needed immediate attention. I'll just say here I have, I don't think ever been pulled in a presidential election before.
- [26:01]
B
Well, this clearly shows the polls are rigged if you've never been polled.
- [26:04]
A
But, but now that we've got this New York City mayoral election that everyone's paying attention to, I've been polled by the Siena College New York Times poll. So of those like 1250 respondents, I was one of them. And then also Vera Insights. So I've been polled to twice for the New York City mayoral race in the past two weeks after never getting polled nationally.
- [26:27]
B
Is this what it feels like to live in Wisconsin?
- [26:29]
A
This must be what it feels like to live in Wisconsin. Lenny, is spam destroying polling?
- [26:34]
B
Well, I kind of want to push back against the premise a little bit, right? Like, polls aren't that inaccurate. They've had some pretty good cycles. Like, you know, obviously they, they've, they've been biased a little bit in the last couple cycles, but their actual like average error is still pretty low especially. And if you look at outside of presidential polling, they've been even better. I think we have a weird sense for how accurate polls should be. I will also add that given how few people respond to polls, it's kind of magical that polls are as good as they are. Like if you, if I knew nothing about polling and you would tell me that, oh, like 1% of everyone you will call picks up like the, the phone and then ask me, like, how accurate do you think the polls are going to be? I'd be like, oh, they'd be terrible. But like, it turns out they're actually not terrible. They're actually pretty good. So that is impressive. And I mean, you know, shout out to all the pollsters that do all the work that goes into turning these like, really strange samples that they get.
- [27:17]
A
Into some good applause. Applause for the pollst is letting applause.
- [27:21]
B
I'll, I'll add one more thing, which is, you know, response rates have been falling for a lot longer than spam calls have been an issue. So while I think, you know, anecdotally and also personally, I think that is probably part of the cause problem, right? Like, I don't pick up phone calls from numbers that I don't know and that has to do with spam, but maybe that generally has to do with lower social trust. I agree with all that. Right. Like, this problem is like outdates all of that. So like, I don't think it's sort of the sole cause or really maybe even the driving factor here.
- [27:49]
A
Okay, next question. Daniel says there's been a lot of reporting about Democrats low popularity in polling. I'm wondering if this is even a good use of polling, like asking a Jets fan how they feel about their team. You may not like your team, but it's not like you couldn't quickly be won back over. I'm curious if the popularity polling isn't tied more directly to people's sense of power or powerlessness.
- [28:13]
B
So I think there are a few things here. I think it is an interesting all.
- [28:16]
A
Right, and that's the end of today's preview. Head over to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber and hear the full episode. We get into what to make of Democrats record low unpopularity. We also talk about the gender gap, particularly amongst young voters, and new polling that shows the gap extends well beyond politics. We also do the math on Sherrod Brown's odds in Ohio next year, get into the role Americans abroad play in American elections, and even answer a listener who is running for office himself who's wondering if ChatGPT is good at forecasting election results. Like I said, head over to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes, can join in the paid subscriber chat, and most importantly, keep this podcast going. When you become a subscriber. You can connect your account to wherever you listen to podcasts so you'll never miss an episode. There's a link in the show notes explaining how to do that. Again, head over to GDPolitics.com see you there.