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- [00:00]
Galen Drake
I don't know if you've experienced this working from home, but you never know how much of a gremlin you are until you start fully working from home.
- [00:08]
Mary Radcliffe
So I've been working from home also for like five or six years and the one thing I miss the most is I am a shoe girly. I have like so many beautiful high heels and they just like sit in my closet.
- [00:19]
Galen Drake
Same, same. It's the worst.
- [00:22]
Mary Radcliffe
I have like, no opportunity.
- [00:24]
Galen Drake
We can do a GD Politics special. That's just Mary's heels.
- [00:29]
Mary Radcliffe
You are not putting my feet on the Internet.
- [00:48]
Galen Drake
Hello and welcome to the GD Politics podcast. I'm Galen Drake. I've lived through a lot of news packed with weeks over the past decade of podcasting, and I'm sure many of you have probably lived through them with me. And even by those standards, the back half of June has been a doozy. Remember when the LA immigration raids and protests were leading the news? Yeah. That was only two weeks ago. Since then we've had a military parade, nationwide protests. Israel went to war with Iran. The US bombed Iran's nuclear facilities. There was a record breaking heat wave. A socialist won the New York City mayoral primary. The Supreme Court ruled to severely limit nationwide injunctions, amongst other things. The US stock market hit an all time record. And of course, we're not done yet. President Trump is hoping to get the One Big Beautiful Bill act passed by July 4th. So today we're gonna talk about some of that news and how Americans are reacting to it. We're also gonna check out a new analysis of sponsor special elections since Trump took office. Yes, Democrats are overperforming, but not to the same degree everywhere. Hear with me. To tackle all of this are two of the industry's best data journalism hands. Mary Radcliffe, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:03]
Mary Radcliffe
I don't know if I would call myself Best, but thank you, Galen.
- [02:07]
Galen Drake
Take the flattery, it's a Friday. Also here with us is Lenny Brauner, data scientist at the Washington Post. Welcome to the podcast.
- [02:16]
Lenny Brauner
It's great to be here.
- [02:17]
Galen Drake
It's so great to have you. So, as I mentioned, it is a Friday to pull back the curtain here. We're recording this episode a little bit early and in fact, we were about to kick things off, talking about public opinion on the Iran strikes, but then the Supreme Court dropped its final decisions of the term. So we're going to briefly begin there, acknowledging that this is not a Supreme Court podcast and we are not judicial scholars, but we do know something about what Americans think about these things. So the big case of the day is that the court ruled to significantly limit, but not totally do away with nationwide injunctions that lower federal courts have the power to impose. So for instance, whenever the President puts out an order and it's immediately paused, that's what's going on. It's something that presidents from both parties have railed against. This means that injunctions could now be piecemeal across the country or, or to get a nationwide injunction, the complaints may have to be class action lawsuits or brought by states themselves. Alternatively, plaintiffs could try to take their cases straight to the Supreme Court. The case at hand was about Trump attempting to end birthright citizenship, which had a nationwide injunction against it. This new ruling is on pause for 30 days, during which time new cases are likely to be filed and frankly, by the time you're listening to this, have probably already been filed. Majority opinion did not touch the merits of ending birthright citizenship. So one of these things is very processy and the other thing is quite clear cut or at least probably easy to understand for Americans. But I'm going to ask first, do we know how Americans feel about nationwide injunctions? Because people are making a big deal of this. The President himself, you know, held a press briefing to talk specifically about this. But are Americans tuned in? Lenny?
- [04:10]
Lenny Brauner
I mean, I don't know if they know specifically about federal injunctions, but there has been a discourse, you know, for a while now about the relative power that the different branches of government have. And generally speaking, most Americans don't believe that the courts have too much power. They generally believe that it's the president who has too much power. So a recent poll from the AP that was released in May, so this year quite recently, said that half of Americans think that the President have too much power. Vers. Only 30% believe that the federal courts have too much power. Similarly, 30% believe that Congress have too much power. That being said, that's not quite true amongst Republicans. They're, you know, they do have. Republicans do see that slightly differently. In that case, they think half of Republicans think that the federal courts have too much power, while only 20% believe that the President has too much power.
- [04:59]
Mary Radcliffe
Lenny, when was that survey done?
- [05:00]
Lenny Brauner
Again, this was May.
- [05:02]
Mary Radcliffe
I wonder the extent to which that would flip. If we had a survey when a Democrat was president that when your own party holds the presidency, you might be, you might say, oh, the courts who can mess with my president's executive orders hold too much power. And when your party's out of power, I wonder if there's a Flip flop there.
- [05:26]
Lenny Brauner
I would totally believe that I wasn't able to find a similar one from earlier, though. I'm sure they exist. But I was sort of, and you're right, when we cut this down or look at this through like Democrat versus Republican or independent or whatnot, that's probably true, but I was sort of interested in what the top level numbers there were too.
- [05:43]
Galen Drake
Also, we have seen time and time again that the Supreme Court is pretty political in terms of how it releases its decisions. Like, they always get the press coverage of what a bipartisan, you know, term the court is having. How interestingly they've divided along different ideological lines. Or look at Amy Coney Barrett. She's quite the maverick on the court, which, I mean, I think that's probably still the case. If you look at the data in totality of this Supreme Court term. Amy Coney Barrett has surprised people at plenty of turns, but they save some of their most sort of partisan, ideologically divided decisions for it's always a Friday in June. And then the, and then all of a sudden all of those, the coverage of like, oh, look how congenial and bipartisan the court has been this term sort of fades to nothing and you get some of these dissents and responses that we saw today that were just like, basically like the justices slinging mud at each other. I don't know, maybe this is strategic in the sense that nobody is paying attention right now. And so Americans are also not going to be paying attention that much to how the law surrounding nationwide injunctions have changed. But I also wonder if after more high profile decisions come down, people change their mind. Like in the aftermath of Roe or Roe being overturned, would Americans have said that the Supreme Court has too much power versus right now? People are thinking that, you know, mainly about Trump in May.
- [07:17]
Lenny Brauner
One thing I do want to flag here real quick is that the survey actually separated between the federal courts and the Supreme Court having too much power. Oh, so amongst Republicans, 25% of Republicans think the Supreme Court have too much power, but half of them think that the federal courts have too much power. And versus for Republicans, it's the other way around, where 17% of Democrats, excuse me, think that the federal courts have too much power, but 33% of Democrats think the Supreme Court has too much power.
- [07:43]
Galen Drake
So you're telling me that Americans don't have strong philosophies about the separation of powers, they just want their party to win.
- [07:51]
Lenny Brauner
Shocking.
- [07:52]
Mary Radcliffe
I just wanted to say one little thing about the partisanship of the Supreme Court because our Friend Cooper Burton pointed out to me that there's this big poll that's done every year by researchers at Harvard University and Stanford University and the University of Texas. It's called SCOTUS Poll. And what they do in that poll is they sort of like outline a lot of the big cases that are before the court in that session in sort of easy to understand language and ask what voters think about those issues. And this year, in every case, SCOTUS poll asked about the court's ruling aligned with public opinion. Every single case.
- [08:34]
Galen Drake
Now, I, including these most recent cases.
- [08:37]
Mary Radcliffe
Well, we have to carve out birthright citizenship because the SCOTUS poll did not ask a question about limiting nationwide injunctions. They asked a question about birthright citizenship. So technically, that question maybe doesn't match what the court actually decided on. But it is true, even in this poll, and it's true broadly in the polling landscape in general, that a pretty significant majority of Americans say that birthright citizenship should stand. So in the SCOTUS poll, it was 64% said that birthright citizenship should stand. But we don't have public opinion about the nationwide injunction sub issue specifically. So just flagging, you know, in terms of interpretation of the court as partisan, like, maybe they're not quite as partisan as we think.
- [09:24]
Galen Drake
Yeah, I think that makes sense, as in, like the Supreme Court is not as partisan as partisans would like to believe. But I mean to say, maybe that they're more political in the sense that they save their potentially unpopular opinions or most divisive opinions for last, so they don't get negative coverage all throughout, like May and June. They just save for a Friday in June when nobody is paying attention. Because, I mean, yes, like, I think throughout time we've said the Supreme Court is dividing in interesting ideological ways. The majority of Supreme Court decisions are still unanimous or do not fall along the six three split or whatnot. But it does seem that there's this strategy of waiting for a Friday in June, though.
- [10:11]
Lenny Brauner
I don't know if this strategy is that good. I feel like if you dropped your most contentious decisions early, like, yes, maybe the, the discourse would be the entire time about, you know, the political nature of these decisions, but also those decisions, you know, they'd be coming, more and more decisions would be dropping, and so the news coverage would have to, would have to move on versus now. We're probably going to have a lot of stories about these decisions for a while.
- [10:33]
Mary Radcliffe
I think there's a, I think another side to that coin, though, where if you hold your controversial stuff until the end of the term. You don't spend the entire term suffering criticism for doing all that controversial stuff which might frame the news coverage in a where if you came out with some opinion that was actually quite reasonable, people would interpret it as partisan or political or what have you, even when it isn't. And so they're saving that criticism till after the, like other serious stuff of the term has already been absorbed.
- [11:04]
Galen Drake
To that end, Mary, I'm curious if you could just run through some of the places where the court's decisions aligned with public opinion for folks who are curious? Sure.
- [11:16]
Mary Radcliffe
Yeah. So we had a decision that came out today on whether parents should be able to opt out their children of instruction on gender and sexuality. 77% of respondents to the SCOTUS poll agreed that schools should have to give parents that option. That includes majorities across the political spectrum. On whether states should require websites to verify users ages to view adult content, 80% of respondents agree should that states should be able to do that, including over 75% across the political spectrum, 75% of Democrats, 77% of independents, 88% of Republicans.
- [11:56]
Galen Drake
Get ready to scan that driver's license, girls. On whether can't be anonymous anymore.
- [12:02]
Mary Radcliffe
On whether states should be able to ban transgender minors from obtaining certain medical treatments, 64% agree states should be allowed to do that. This one is split across the political spectrum. So only 30, 38% of Democrats agree, while 90% of Republicans do and 63% of independents. And we can go on. Right. So these are some of these big cases we heard today. The Supreme Court is on the side of the public in, in all of these things.
- [12:30]
Galen Drake
We got lots more public opinion to talk about. And I've also promised you guys that if we get through everything, I'll open up the mics for more Zoran Mamdani hot takes. So let's motor along and let's talk about the US Strikes on Iran, which we have not had the opportunity to dig into on this podcast so much because of everything else that was happening this past week. So we've talked for a while about how the Republican Party has become significantly more isolationist in the Trump era. But there's a question about how durable those feelings are, because according to polling from the Washington Post, before and after the US bombed Iran, Republican support for bombing Iran jumped 30 percentage points once Trump made his move. So, Lenny, this poll comes from your newsroom. What's going on here?
- [13:22]
Lenny Brauner
I'll answer your question in a second, but I do think what you just sort of suggested or what you just raised here sort of does, should make us think a little bit harder about this issue polling that we're doing that we talk about a lot. I mean, I realize that, you know, this podcast and also a lot of the discourse that happens amongst election nerds is about issue polling a lot of the time, and that it's an interesting piece of data, like pieces of data we use to sort of inform decision making, and also lawmakers use it to inform their decision making. But I think we should have a deeper discussion about how valid some of this data is. You know, there's a lot of reasons to think that, you know, the information that we're garnering from these issue polls maybe isn't as strong as we like to believe. First of all, we have no way to validate this. You know, we actually don't even know if people actually believe this. With election polls, at least when it comes close to an election, you know, we know whether we're right or wrong. But with issue polling, a lot of the time, we don't. I mean, ever so, ever so rarely, there is a referenda where the issue poll actually matters for an issue that people are actually sort of voting on. And then we see that actually some of the issue polls are not great. So I think we should have this broader discussion first. That being said, to answer your question, what is going on? What did we just see is that, you know, a lot of voters don't have strong opinions about a lot of things. This might be true in particular for foreign policy, though maybe that's not actually the case in this case. And they take their cues from elected officials, party leaders, who they trust and who they see to make decisions. And so their public opinion is malleable on these issues.
- [14:38]
Galen Drake
Yeah. So we've had on the Forebearer podcast to this conversations about how reliable issue polling is. And it is tricky. And it does seem like there are two camps of issues where, like, there's one camp of issues where Americans understand the issue and know how they feel, and it's relatively straightforward for them to respond. And it's hard for politicians to really change that. I mean, I think you saw that with maybe, like, the Republican Party and immigration in the 2000 teens and. And the like.
- [15:07]
Mary Radcliffe
Whereas abortion. Abortion is a great example of this. Like, even in the years since Roe was overturned, public opinion on abortion has moved, like, four points.
- [15:18]
Galen Drake
Yeah. Whereas, like, I don't know, the canonical example was, like, how Republicans feel about Russia in 2016 and 2017, where all of A sudden, Republicans didn't feel so badly about, you know, the enemy that their sort of beloved Reagan had vanquished. And so it seems like sometimes issue polling is giving us little because it. Well, it's not giving us little. It's telling us how Americans feel right now. But that's also frequently subject to change. Like, Lenny, wouldn't you say that the opinion before the bombings still mattered, even if it changed practically overnight?
- [15:58]
Lenny Brauner
I think that would be true if we knew that that was actually the opinion before the bombing. I mean, there's plenty of examples where there are referenda that happen, where the referenda results are completely different from what you would have expected based on the polls beforehand. I mean, there's all these, in particular, these gun control referenda that happened in 2016 that were on the ballot in California and in Washington, Nevada and Maine, where the actual issue there, which was background checks, I think in all four cases, if I remember correctly, ended up massively underperforming the polls that happened prior to election Day. In California's case, I think the issue ended up underperforming by 30%. In Washington state, it was something similar. In Nevada, it was more than 30%, 36%, I think. And in Maine, it actually ended up losing, even though before the actual referenda, people expected it to have 83 or 84% support. So I think there are many examples here where when people actually vote on these issues that we are polling beforehand, the actual results end up being vastly different. So I guess I would agree with you that if we knew that these polls were accurate or if we knew that they reflected public opinion, maybe they would be useful. I think that's entirely unrelated to the Institute or, you know, the new, the media organization that's running the poll.
- [17:09]
Mary Radcliffe
So I want to make a case for why this shift we talk about shift, particularly among Republicans on the Iran bombing, I want to make a case for why that actually might be useful information and might actually reflect something real. So just a little pushback on this, like, issue polls are bad in general kind of idea. So two things. So first of all, Galen, you're totally right that before an event like this happens, people don't necessarily have, like, really strongly held opinions about it. They're sort of have a reflex opinion. But what happened is the strikes actually did occur. And as a result of that, you've got prominent politicians, people that folks trust on tv, making their case for it, right? You can't turn on conservative media without seeing Pete Hag, Seth or Mark Rubio or J.D. vance or, or Donald Trump making the case for why this was a good idea. Now, if you're a Republican and those are figures you, that you respect and support, they are persuading you to their cause, which is politics. They're doing politics. And, and the result of that politics is reflected in the survey data. The other thing I would flag is that BEF the, in that same Washington Post poll before the strikes, 30% of people said that they weren't sure whether they supported or opposed this. After the strikes, that dropped down to 17%. So as people get more information, their unsureness drops and they choose a position based on that information. So I actually think this movement might be real. It might mean something about politics. It also might mean something just about partisanship. I don't want to dismiss that, but I think the movement reflects people being good Bayesians, adjusting their opinion based on new information, particularly from trusted sources.
- [19:03]
Lenny Brauner
Yeah, I mean, I do want to caveat that the opinion I, you know, earlier expressed about issue polling, that was the most intense version of this opinion that I don't actually hold myself. And I do want to say an addition thing to what you just said, Mary, which is, you know, I can't look into the minds of a lot of the people who are polled here, but I would be, you know, I would be shocked if one of the reasons that people said they didn't didn't support the polling was fear that the US Would be pulled into a broader war here. And so far this hasn't seemed to have happened. And so I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of people were opposed to this bombing, worried that this might happen. And then when it played out in the way that it did, they were sort of fine with it because the end result wasn't as bad as they had anticipated a priori.
- [19:43]
Mary Radcliffe
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I mean you can actually see that in this same Washington Post poll that we're discussing. So the poll after the bombing asked how concerned respondents were about the possibility of the US getting involved in a full scale war and even after the, the events, although of course this, the survey was taken on the, the 23rd. So it was very shortly after we hadn't gotten through Ceasefire and all of that stuff. 74% of respondents said they were very or somewhat concerned about that outcome. So that like, I think that is absolutely right, that that is like one of the factors that's playing into people's opinions on this.
- [20:20]
Galen Drake
Some folks are taking this poll and other similar polls like, there was also an Economist poll out in the field when the bombings happened, and you see public opinion sort of turn at a right angle almost. So Republicans and Democrats don't feel all that differently. Neither of them are really supportive of bombing Iran. And then the bombing actually happens. And Republicans veer strongly towards favoring the bombing, and Democrats veer not as strongly. They're already not very supportive, but against the bombing. And that happens, like you said, without knowing that it would result in a ceasefire or. Or that the US up until this point at least, would not be dragged into a larger conflict in the Middle East. So it does seem like there's a lot of partisan signaling going on here, which is also just information. Like, this actually relates to the topic we were just talking about, which is, when your party is in the White House, you don't think the presidency is too strong. When you have a majority on the Supreme Court, you don't think the court is too strong or whatever it may be. And so actually, to your point, Mary, that's kind of how politics is designed to work in. If Americans were responsible for doing, like, a. A mobile referendum on whether or not there should be nationwide injunctions supported by lower federal courts, like, that's not how representative democracy works. Like, these people are supposed to figure this out for us so that we don't have to. Like, we're literally spending public funds hiring them to solve our problems so that we don't have to. We don't have to worry about them. You know what I mean? You know what I mean?
- [22:04]
Mary Radcliffe
Yeah.
- [22:04]
Lenny Brauner
Oh, yeah. You know, you raised this exact discussion with. With Lisa Murkowski when you had her on, which is the question of, like, how much should politicians follow public opinion and to what extent should they be trying to, you know, do what they think is right and then convince the public that what they did is right. And like, to your point, we live in a representative democracy. We can't expect people to have views on all these issues that politicians are being paid to make decisions for. I mean, like, I, you know, we all follow this stuff for a living, and. And I'm sure there's tons of issues that we don't have strong opinions on, because it's, like, impossible to have strong opinions on everything. And so I think all of us very naturally take cues from people that we trust. In this case, you know, we're living in a time of, like, sort of hyper partisanship. So it makes sense that a lot of people trust the political parties that they follow in particular. And so we take These cues and we embed them in our own thinking. And I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that.
- [22:55]
Galen Drake
Yeah. Well, Lenny, thank you for always coming on this podcast and gassing up my previous podcast episodes that you'll always get invited back. But I think that that is important to think about in the context of not just how we form our own opinions, but also in the way that politicians wage politics. Right. Like Lisa Murkowski's answer was, well, it's a combination of both, which. Well, fair, but that, you know, you got to look at what Americans actually think in order to sort of form your policies or. Well, sometimes what we're talking about here is that those beliefs are not strongly held and they're maybe based on the last thing they heard from their partisan side, but that you could actually somewhat easily convince them of something else if you made a strong case for it. And there are plenty of issues in American life that, while we live in a very polarized environment, don't get fully politicized and we don't have a lot of priors about, like, issues like, I don't know, take going back to the New York City mayoral race, like housing or groceries or whatever. Like, you talk a lot about them. You can convince people of things, especially if no one's on the other side saying, oh, we shouldn't have this or we should have that or what have you. And so some of the biggest opinion shifts that we see in American life are when only one side of an issue is getting talked about and promoted. Like the rally around the flag effect happens because opposition ceases to voice its opposition oftentimes. And so, yeah, you kind of got to fight it out in public in order to find out what Americans really think.
- [24:31]
Mary Radcliffe
There's also something I wanted to flag here. So I keep this database of polls that just has like everything I ever see so that if I ever want to go back and find out, like, hey, do I know anything about what Americans think about some specific topic, I can go check it. So I looked this morning. So it's today is June 27th. The so called 12 day war started on June 13th. Since the 2024 election, before June 13th, I had logged five polls that asked questions about Iran specifically. As of this morning, I have logged 34 polls that asked questions about Iran specifically. So 29 surveys since the first Israeli strikes on Iran, whereas prior to that we weren't talking about this at all. So I think this goes to sort of Lenny's point about public opinion being malleable. To your point, Galen, about having to both follow the polls and also guide, like, listen to the people, but also guide the people toward, like, solutions that make sense. I think this is one of those issues where you can't rely on public opinion because there's just not enough data to know really what the public thought before this became something where politicians were actively working to shape people's opinions.
- [25:49]
Galen Drake
Today's podcast is brought to you by you, the listener. This podcast is made possible because of paid subscribers. At GDPolitics.com paid subscribers get access to about twice the number of episodes. They can join our private chat and send in questions. They can also get access to the videos. And most importantly, they ensure that we continue to be guided by our principles of trying to understand the world and politics with curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor. When you become a paid subscriber, you can also connect your account wherever you listen to podcasts and never miss an episode. Join the GD Politics podcast community today at gdpolitics. Com. In fact, do it right now. We will still be here when you get back. That's GDPolitics.com and thank you. So this became something of a philosophy of polling lesson or even a philosophy of politics lesson, which I love. And we're also not done with it because we're about to move on to more issue polling. Like I said, President Trump wants congressional Republicans to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill act by July 4th. We talked about what's in it before on this podcast. The biggest recent update is that one of the biggest Medicaid changes that was meant to save money and limit benefits was ruled by the Senate parliamentarian not to comply with the reconciliation rules. We'll see how the details get sorted and whether or not they meet their deadline. But when it comes to public opinion, again, we're going to rely on issue polling here. It seems like Americans have made up their minds. So I want to quote some analysis from CNN and then maybe we can apply the lessons we were just talking about to it. So they write across four recent polls from the Washington Post, Fox News, KFF, and Quinnipiac University, the legislation was on average, 24 points underwater. On average, 55% of surveyed Americans opposed it, while 31% supported it. That makes the bill more unpopular than any piece of major legislation passed since at least 1990, according to the data crunched by George Washington University political science professor Chris Warshaw. So this is not exactly issue polling because it's asking about a whole package that includes a bunch of issues. So there's Already a sort of partisan political sheen on top of it. Because if people have heard anything about this bill, they know that it's at least proposed by Republicans. Lenny, as the issue polling skeptic, does this tell us anything?
- [28:39]
Lenny Brauner
So I think it tells us more because one of the issues that I didn't raise earlier with issue, with issue polling, that is also a, I wouldn't say a problem, but something we have to remember is that, you know, political parties stand for a combination of issues because individual issues can be really popular, right? It could be really popular to spend more on Social Security, and it could be really popular to, to balance the, the deficit or balance the budget. And maybe those two things are in conflict with each other. And so it's the job of political parties to create coherent, ideally coherent policy platforms that then voters decide which of their priorities are more important. And in this particular case, we actually see that happening with this bill. Obviously, like you said, we see that amongst Republicans it's more popular than amongst Democrats. So people are taking their partisan priors and placing them here. But amongst the individual issues, some of which are kind of in conflict with each other, people have very nuanced opinions. And so I do think we can actually see here exactly that effect happening, which is that people sort of apply their priors based on whatever they believe and are able to differentiate between, you know, just sort of blindly thinking like, this is something I support, and seeing it in context of this whole bill.
- [29:48]
Mary Radcliffe
I mean, I think also this issue has been much more discussed in recent weeks and months. So I think people have a better sense of, of how they feel about this than they would about something like bombing Iran, which probably most people don't think about at all. So, for example, there's a YouGov CBS News poll from early June that asked about just some of the outcomes of this legislation. And I think shows that people really, actually do have a better understanding of this than they would have about a nuanced foreign policy issue. So, for example, they asked whether the legislation being proposed would increase or lower the federal deficit. 55% of respondents knew that this bill would increase the federal deficit. 18% said it would lower the deficit. The rest either weren't sure or thought it would have no impact. So you've got a majority of people that understand, yes, this is one of the outcomes. Same thing with increase, decrease or not impact. How many Americans have health insurance? This survey, 50% of respondents knew that this bill would decrease the number of Americans that have health insurance. Only 16% thought it would increase the rest either weren't sure or no impact. So I think people have better sense of what's happening here than in something. Something like foreign policy.
- [31:02]
Lenny Brauner
I agree. And I think there's actually another. So the Washington Post poll here, they asked about, you know, the work requirements for Medicaid, and in the sort of standard question here, 52% supported that and 33% were opposed. But then the Washington Post poll, like, specifically asked about, you know, whether it's acceptable or unacceptable that millions of people would lose coverage under these changes. And in that case, 44% said it was unacceptable, and only 33% said it was acceptable. But if those requirements are not mentioned, then 63% say that it's unacceptable for people to lose coverage. So I do think, you know, some of this polling, it suggests that people are, you know, think about these kinds of stuff and understand sort of like, that there are pros and cons to specific policies, and, like, maybe they have priorities and maybe they have views that are in conflict with sort of. Maybe these individual parts of the bill are in conflict with parts of their. Parts of their preferences, but support other parts of their preferences. And people make, you know, very smart decisions on this.
- [31:55]
Galen Drake
What do we make then of the example of the Affordable Care act becoming popular basically the day Obama left office? You know, on one hand, we're saying that Americans are sort of thinking more deeply about this. On the other hand, it does seem like there is still a gut partisan reaction.
- [32:14]
Mary Radcliffe
Yeah, I think the Obamacare example is really interesting, and I haven't looked at the data, so I am making an educated guess right now, but I would think that prior to Obama leaving office, Obamacare would have been fairly popular among Democrats, middlingly popular among Independents, and very unpopular among Republicans.
- [32:34]
Galen Drake
You got it.
- [32:35]
Mary Radcliffe
But when Obama left office, suddenly the reality of, like, what would happen to you if this thing went away started to hit those groups that weren't particularly favorable to Obamacare in. During his presidency, and they were like, no, wait, actually, this is great for me. I changed my mind.
- [32:56]
Galen Drake
Well, and one of the most unpopular points of Trump's first term was when the Senate was on the verge of repealing the Affordable Care Act.
- [33:05]
Mary Radcliffe
Yeah. The reality of what would happen if that piece of legislation went away served as a pretty strong signal for people to change their minds.
- [33:15]
Galen Drake
It will be interesting to see how this progresses this week. By this week, I mean, the week of July 4th, it would probably be politically convenient to get something passed like this over, you know, a holiday week. We were just talking about the significance of media scrutiny and negative coverage, but we will see if it happens. Lenny, let's talk about that analysis that you did on special elections. You crunched the latest numbers on how Democrats and Republicans are doing, and it gets at sort of questions about the national environment and also, of course, how we might expect the parties to do in the midterms next year. I don't think folks will be surprised to hear that Democrats are overperforming, but you can give us a specific number. And then I also want to talk a little bit about the geographic differences that you found. So the floor is yours, Lenny.
- [34:13]
Lenny Brauner
Absolutely. So, you know, the Democrats are doing very well in special elections. They're overperforming how they did in the 2024 election by 13 percentage points. This is the median. The mean is a little bit skewed higher due to some very outlier election. So we're talking about the median, and that is a lot higher than their overperformance in any special election cycles in the last couple years. So as context, in 2017, 18, they were overperforming by 6 points, which at the time, this is compared to the 2016 election, which at the time was seen sort of like a lot, a very strong overperformance. And you know, part of this is explained by the fact that Democrats did do particularly poorly in the popular vote in 2024 compared to how they usually do versus in 2016. Hillary Clinton obviously won the popular vote. So part of this difference is explained by the differing baselines in each of those cycles. But even if you take that into account, their current overperformance is significantly higher than their overperformance in previous and sort of comparable cycles.
- [35:11]
Galen Drake
But it's not the same across the board.
- [35:14]
Lenny Brauner
No, it's not the same across the board. So that's a really good point. They're generally doing better in redder areas. So as an example here, if you only take the median in in states that Kamala hires one, then they're only overperforming by six points or eight points, depending how you count the outliers a little bit, versus if you look at states that Donald Trump won, they are overperforming by 21 points. So there's a real big difference between their overperformance in blue states and in red states.
- [35:43]
Galen Drake
Lenny, when you first told me this, I was like, oh, okay. I have my own theory for why this might be be happening. I'll share it here. And then I'm curious. Mary and Lenny, for your thoughts is like we talk all the time about how we're becoming hyper polarized, super partisan, what have you. And maybe mean reversion doesn't get talked about enough, which is when you have sort of uncontested parties in a lot of these states and a lot of these communities pursuing their projects all the way to, in some cases the extremes, you're going to have eventually a backlash, you're going to eventually have Democrats start winning in Kansas, you're going to eventually have Republicans start winning in, you know, the Northeast or what have you. Also, Democrats in blue states have less of a reason to be pissed off and turn out because their local environment is still blue than folks in red states who are not maybe not only pissed off about the federal environment, but also pissed off about the state level. So it's like, is this mean reversion? Are we, are we starting to see that in the reddest areas of the country people want an alternative and in the bluest areas of the country folks don't feel so badly?
- [36:59]
Lenny Brauner
So I think that's possible. But I do think we also can't really differentiate between what you called mean reversion. You know, people in places where one party is really strong sort of maybe get unhappy with that. And we can't really differentiate that from just like coalitions are changing. And you know, the results that we were seeing over the last couple years were built on one particular set of sort of coalitions for the two parties. And these are currently shifting. You know, there's a racial depolarization solely happening. There's education polarization happening. And so as a result, you could imagine Republicans doing better in places like New York, which are, you know, pretty diverse, versus Democrats starting to do better in whiter places that have a higher proportion of college educated whites like Kansas, like Alaska, like Montana. So like, you know, I think part of that is what you described a reversion to or, sorry, an aversion to the party that is currently in power and maybe running the state in a way that you were unhappy with. But I think part of that is just like the normal cyclical aspect of politics, you know, that, you know, parties change, their coalitions change, the people they are supporting, change. And then sort of one final point on this, I think all of this, what you described and what I described are true, is true. But you know, we do have to remember that these special elections, the electorate in those special elections and is like very strange. It's not at all like a presidential election. It's obviously all the caveats that you always hear it's not at all like a midterm election. And so like they're self selecting for a group of higher educated high propensity voters. These are the voters that are currently moving towards Democrats. In fact, the Catalyst report that we, I think, discussed recently showed that the high propensity voters are, the really high propensity voters are the only group of voters that Democrats did better with in 2024 compared to in 2020. And so these are the people who are turning out to vote.
- [38:38]
Galen Drake
Yeah, I think that's 100% true. Which is why in some ways the regional differences is most interesting to me, because across the different regions you would still expect, I mean, obviously different people live in different areas, but you would, you got, you kind of got to explain why Democrats are doing so much better in red areas than blue areas, even if the special election electorate is unique.
- [39:01]
Lenny Brauner
I mean, that's a really good point. So I, one of the things I looked at was why this is happening. And so I picked out a special election in Iowa, I think the hundredth House district there. And I took a look at the partisan sort of like the registration of the people that voted. And so in the special election that happened there in March, 42% of the people that voted were registered Democrats compared to only 33% who voted registered Democrats that voted in that district last November. So there's a 9 percentage point gap in party registration for Democrats between the special election and November. And so one thing I didn't look at, which now that you asked this question, I should have and I might do, is whether this is a similar difference that we're seeing in those blue states. So is it an electorate composition difference or is it that registered Democrats are just less likely to vote for the Democrat in the special election? I don't have the answer, but now I'm very interested in trying to figure that out.
- [39:48]
Mary Radcliffe
Well, one thing I thought was really interesting in your piece, Lenny, looking at that hundredth state House district in Iowa, you noted that was like the electorate for the special election was like a third of the size of the electorate for the general election. So if you stick with that like engaged voter theory, Galen, I think that might also partly explain this. So if you've got a huge number of like low engagement voters in that area, that might incline that geography or region toward Republicans. As we've noted that lower engagement voters have shifted toward Republicans. So if you've got a very large number of low engagement voters in marquee elections like presidential election, you might see a Republican area. But in low turnout elections, special elections, things like that, a lot more voters.
- [40:39]
Galen Drake
Will drop out and just those highly engaged, more Democratic voters turnout. And so it looks like wilder swings than what you see in a place that has more even engagement across the board.
- [40:53]
Mary Radcliffe
Yeah, that's just a hypothesis. I mean, I would be interested to see, you know, what like the L2 data said about that.
- [40:58]
Galen Drake
But we should, based on today's episode, we need to start like a whole new segment called Just a Hypothesis where we just throw out ideas about politics and, you know, someday they might get answered and someday they might not, but at least we put them out there. Okay, so, Lenny, ultimately you also address what this portends for next year and how reliable special elections are as an indicator for midterm performance.
- [41:24]
Lenny Brauner
Yeah, so historically it's actually a pretty good indicator. I mean, I feel like we often dismiss special elections as this indicator. Not as good as polling or whatever. Like slightly better than how much money candidates raised, but less good than polling or whatever. And so I was sort of surprised that maybe we should start a ranking of like indicators for elections or something like that.
- [41:45]
Galen Drake
Isn't that what a forecast model is? That's what a forecast model is.
- [41:49]
Lenny Brauner
I guess that's true, but some data updates more frequently than others. I feel like that's one of the biases towards polling. Either way, this is a completely separate discussion.
- [41:57]
Mary Radcliffe
We're very philosophical.
- [41:58]
Galen Drake
I know, I know. I think it's like an end of the week kind of thing.
- [42:02]
Lenny Brauner
It's also so hot. I feel like that's contributing towards this. Either way, historically speaking, special elections are a very good indicator for the House popular vote. And so I, you know, in this piece we list out the most recent sort of House elections in 2017 or the cycle in 2017, 18 Democrats overperformed the in special elections by 6 percentage points. The House popular vote was D plus 9 in 2020. They overperformed by 2 percentage points. And the House popular vote was D plus 3 in 2022. Is Republicans that overperformed in the special elections by 4. And in fact they won the House popular vote by 3. So like historically and like the down ballot has sort of taken a look, a longer look at this and the fact they show that this relationship holds basically until the 1980s, which I think is when they can get reliable data for special elections. But it looks like this relationship is falling apart a little bit. So in 2024, Democrats were winning the House popular vote by 2 percentage points. Excuse me, the special elections margin by 2 percentage points. But they lost the House popular vote again by 3 percentage points.
- [43:03]
Mary Radcliffe
The shift by 2 percentage points. Right. In special elections.
- [43:06]
Lenny Brauner
Yes, thank you. Sorry. I know you're absolutely correct. I think I misspoke basically every time I was talking about this right now. But you are correct. It is the shift. So, you know, I think there's a question here about why this is happening. And I think part of why this is happening is what we said before. You know, there is this selection effect in these special elections towards high educated, high propensity voters. Those are more Democratic, though, interestingly enough. You know, these high propensity voters used to lean Republican and this relationship still held. So I think what we're seeing here is that this relationship between high propensity voting and being a Democrat is just becoming like stronger and stronger and stronger. And just sort of a quick loop back to the discussion we had earlier about opinion. Like, sorry, about issue polling. It's these same people, sort of high engagement voters, high educated voters who have very strong opinions about issues when people, when they're asked about them. And I think that might be one of the explanations for why we often see the liberal opinion doing particularly well in these, in these issue polling even. And then when it comes to referenda, they end up maybe like, not performing quite as strongly.
- [44:10]
Galen Drake
So it all, it all comes back around. Thank you for taking us full loop, Lenny. I said, I promised that if we got through everything, I'd open up the microphones for more. Zoran Mandani, New York City Mayoral primary Hot take. Guys, the floor is yours.
- [44:29]
Mary Radcliffe
New Yorkers are so obsessed with themselves. You always want to talk about yourselves.
- [44:33]
Galen Drake
You can also give us a hot take on the Pittsburgh mayoral. Rosemary.
- [44:38]
Mary Radcliffe
I mean, I, I have those, but I, I'm sure listeners did not pay close attention to the Pittsburgh mayoral primary, even though it's really interesting. Okay, I have, first of all, everyone freaking out about the national Democratic Party because of a particular candidate in New York. Can we just all calm down? Four years ago, everyone was like, eric Adams is the face of the Democratic Party moving forward. He's going to be the president. And I don't think that take aged all that well, folks.
- [45:11]
Galen Drake
Like, what is it like cream cheese left out in the sun on Monday.
- [45:15]
Mary Radcliffe
Of this week, to paraphrase a Republican senator recently talking about the federal budget that we discussed earlier, that take is yogurt, not wine. Anyway, so that is my first point, is everyone needs to, like, just calm down a little bit. But like a charismatic populist candidate winning an election is not Like a surprise. Does anyone remember Donald Trump? But I will say, like the anecdote. There's one piece of anecdote I'm willing to believe that convinces me this might mean anything at all for the, like, national party or Democrats writ large, which is data that comes from Run for Something. Amanda Lippman, who runs Run for Something a few days after the primary, I think this was on Thursday, so two days after the primary, mentioned that she'd had over a thousand young people reach out about running for office after Mom Donnie won in New York. So to the extent that it was is impactful, I think perhaps it is just an energizing moment for the left to throw some candidates out there, most of whom will lose in primaries, I'm guessing, because the primary electorate in Iowa is not going to look like the primary electorate in New York City, and things are going to be very different. So. But an energized party is an energized party.
- [46:41]
Galen Drake
I mean, one piece of data that piggybacks off that, that I don't think we got to quite on the podcast that we did previously or the live chat that I did with Nate and Michael last week, is that it almost looked like there were two different elections going on. In the places where Mamdani did well, particularly well, there was a 30% increase in turnout, whereas in the places where Cuomo did well, there was no increase in turnout whatsoever. And so, you know, we talk about turnout versus persuasion or whatever, and progressives always talk about how the way to win is juicing turnout. And at the very least in this primary, it looks like Mamdani really juiced turnout.
- [47:23]
Lenny Brauner
I mean, I agree, but I think he kind of did both. Right. I mean, I feel like before this election, a lot of people were framed this election as like, you know, old New York vs. New York or something like that, and that, that Cuomo would win all these Eric Adams voters. And sure, that mostly held, right. But Zoran Mandani did well in places that, you know, I'm not sure anyone expect him to do as well. Obviously, maybe he didn't win those places, but, you know, he closed the gap by like 10 percentage points in places that are like, you know, very African American, very Hispanic. In New York City, obviously he won places that were majority Asian American, which Andrew Yang had, had. Had won in 2021. So, like, he did both, right. He obviously juiced turnout, but he also expanded his coalition in a successful way.
- [48:04]
Mary Radcliffe
Yeah, and I actually want to flag because, like, I think the biggest story of the New York City mayoral primary for me personally is just like, what the hell happened with those polls? And this turnout issue is actually a big, a big part of the explanation for what the hell happened with those polls, because so just like a little peek behind the curtain, when most pollsters are polling New York City for the mayoral race, they're focused on what's known as triple prime voters, that is voters that have voted in all three of the last three mayoral elections. They're using those triple prime voters as the base of their likely voter model. Now, if you've got a candidate that's motivating pretty significant turnout among voters that would not be classified as triple prime. If your likely voter model is oriented around triple prime voters, you're not going to catch that movement. You're not going to see what's going on here. So I think this is like a lesson for pollsters building likely voter models in the future, not just for races where you have a particular, like charismatic candidate, but for pollsters to spend some time listening to the electorate about whether or not they say they're going to vote. Because if you're relying exclusively on the voter file for that and something like this happens, you're going to get burned.
- [49:20]
Lenny Brauner
I mean, one thing that I think that I was sort of interested in, based on what you just said, and sort of based on other elections that we've observed, is that usually in the past, you know, it's the populist, populist right wing candidates that historically underperformed the polls. Sorry, excuse me, overperformed the polls. That was true with Donald Trump. But we have like a long history of this happening, you know, all over the world basically. And we, you know, we just don't have as much history with populist left wing candidates. There obviously have been examples of that in the past, also in most recent past, but usually they actually don't underperform their polls. And so I curious to see whether this is a pattern that will sort of happen again if we see other candidates that are similar to Zoramdani or whether pollsters can adjust based on what you just described.
- [50:00]
Galen Drake
MARY okay, well, with that, Lenny, I think we are going to close the microphones again on New York City mayoral hot takes and we are also going to close this episode. So thank you so much for joining me today, Mary and Lenny, thanks for having me.
- [50:17]
Lenny Brauner
Galen, thanks for having us. And I guess no pizza discussion next time.
- [50:21]
Galen Drake
Yeah, oh yeah, we're gonna do a good use, bad use or gdbd needy on the Papa John's near the Pentagon that seems to always predict whether or not we're going to war.
- [50:33]
Mary Radcliffe
We could all just say whether we're gdbdy and give no explanation for it and let this let the listeners respond in the the chat.
- [50:42]
Lenny Brauner
I'll put it this indicator has predicted like nine of the last two wars or something like that.
- [50:47]
Galen Drake
I'll put it in the I'll put it in the paid subscriber shot and people can weigh in.
- [50:52]
Mary Radcliffe
But with for the record, I'm needy.
- [50:54]
Galen Drake
Needy, not data. Okay, all right. We'll see. We're gonna we'll discuss it when we do our Debt episode. My name is Galen Druk. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@geniepolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and access to the videos for the podcast. You can also join our paid subscriber chat, as I mentioned, and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. Also, Happy Pride. Be an ally or a friend of Dorothy, I mean a friend of the pod and go give us a five star rating. Maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.