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- [00:00]
A
Hey there, listeners. Galen here. Before we get started, I wanted to give you all a heads up that we're planning another live show at the Comedy Cellar with Nate Silver and Claire Malone. It's gonna be on September 29, and as summer comes to an end and we get past Labor Day, politics are gonna get more messy. We have a gerrymandering war. We have the New York City mayoral race. We have another government funding cliff by the end of September. So join Nate, Claire and me at the Comedy Cellar to make sense of it all. To laugh, shoot, share some data, maybe play some games. You can get tickets at gdpolitics. Com. See you there.
- [00:38]
B
Yeah, I don't know. Do you even have to bleep yourself anymore?
- [00:41]
A
I still bleep just because, like, people listen with kids in the car. And, like, I wanna be respectful. Like, on the videos, nothing is bleeped. So, like, you can say the C word and I won't bleep it. Not that I expect you to do that, but, like, you know, it's probably.
- [00:57]
B
Unlikely to come out of my mouth, but. But maybe, you know, eventually there's some other words that I could. I could say.
- [01:02]
A
Oh, yeah. I mean. And by all means, say them. I mean, eventually, when British politics or Australian politics get interesting again, maybe that's when we'll fit a C word into the pod because it just, you know, it has a different valence.
- [01:15]
B
Yeah. Their relationship with it is more like the F word here or like.
- [01:20]
A
Or even a term of endearment.
- [01:22]
B
Yeah, well, yeah, it's true. I mean, it's like contextual.
- [01:25]
A
Yeah. So with time, with. With time, I want to take the podcast to London for a little bit. We'll see if it actually happens.
- [01:32]
B
Ooh, that'd be fun.
- [01:33]
A
Yeah. Hello and welcome to the GD Politics podcast. I'm Galen Druke and we've got a podcast full of election updates. Today we're going to kick things off with the latest in the gerrymandering wars. Both Texas and California have approved new maps in their state legislatures. For Texas, that makes it pretty much a done deal. Pending lawsuits. For California, that means the maps now go to the voters to approve. We have some new polling on what California voters think at the start of all of this. Now eyes turn to Missouri, Ohio, Indiana and Florida for more Republican gerrymandering. And to New York, Illinois and Maryland for more Democratic gerrymandering. Next, we're gonna turn to the New York City mayoral race, one of the hottest items in this fall's off year elections. It's getting about as New York as you can imagine. There's more scandals surrounding Eric Adams, including one associate trying to bribe a reporter with cash stuffed into a bag of hers potato chips. Mamdani led his supporters on a citywide scavenger hunt and got panned online for failing to do a single bench press rep solo at a campaign event. And Cuomo is attracting big money from Mamdani skeptic New Yorkers with his super PAC raising more than 1.2 million in a single week. We're also going to check in on the national environment, lest we get to Texas, California and New York centric. And here with me to do all of that is my former colleague and newly minted chief election analyst at Decision Desk hq, Jeffrey Skelly. Welcome to the podcast, Geoffrey.
- [03:11]
B
Hey, Galen, thanks for having me on.
- [03:14]
A
Thanks for coming. I also want to say a big congratulations on becoming a father in the in the time since we left FiveThirtyEight, I created a podcast and you created a human I think you win.
- [03:24]
B
Well, yeah, 2025 has already been kind of a crazy year. Got laid off, kid was born, got a new job and hey, we've got elections because and we still have voting never stops.
- [03:38]
A
So let's talk about that. That's what you're here to do. I want to start by asking like we'll talk about some of the other states, but how reliable are the gerrymanders that Texas passed and California is pursuing? Because I think these get talked about a lot in news coverage as done deal, Texas has five more Republican seats and then if this initiative passes in California, also done deal, Democrats have five more seats in California. Are they really that airtight, these gerrymanders?
- [04:11]
B
So I think the, the one in Texas is interesting because they definitely have turned three Democratic held seats into seats that Republicans will flip in 2026. There are two seats that they made a bit redder that are held by Democrats but were already Republican leaning. And that was in South Texas where we know that there's been a lot of shifts toward the gop and Trump improved markedly on traditional Republican performance in South Texas and you know, because of his growing support among Latino voters in 2020 and then built on that in 2024. So you have Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez in seats there that were already seats that Trump had carried. Now the new map makes them even a little redder. But it is possible that in a Democratic leaning midterm environment, which is what you would sort of expect historically with a rep. President and the White House, that they could hold on. They could survive under those circumstances. But in the long run, it will be difficult for them to win seats that Trump carried by, you know, 10 or a little bit more in 2024. So I think it's, it's either they get three seats, three or four seats, but in the long run, they're in a good, good place to probably get all five. But when you're thinking about the midterm math, it is important, or it could be very important whether they get all five or they just get three.
- [05:36]
A
I think also in our thinking here is what happens to the Latino electorate. Have the shifts that happened from 2016 to 2024 become more enduring or are they temporary? I think there's some polling our friends at Equis Research, where Carlos Odillo, who used to come on the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast, frequently works, they recently put out new research that shows there's quite a bit of softness there amongst the Latino electorate for Trump. And so oftentimes when there are these coalitional shifts, it'll be like, okay, the last ones in are the first ones out of your coalition once things start to sour. These are people who don't have a ton of experience voting for Republicans election after election after election. So I think the, how enduring this new coalition is also. Is. Is also important, right?
- [06:26]
B
Oh, absolutely. I think that's actually one of the other wrinkles to all this is especially heading into a midterm. Like, look, midterm elections recently have had very high turnout for midterms historically, but the electorate is still markedly different from a presidential race. You know, nationally you go from 60 low 60 to mid 60% turnout of the voting eligible population to 47 to 50% in the last two midterms for the midterm electorate. And of course, if Trump is in the White House, you're probably gonna have some more Democratic leaning voters, somewhat more likely on average to turn, because that tends to be what happens. And we know that turnout in places like South Texas, there were a lot of voters who I think we would describe as inconsistent voters or people who hadn't voted before who did show up. A lot of them voted for Trump. Are they going to show up in a midterm election? So it's possible that in a midterm environment that those districts in South Texas are a bit, maybe not, not as red as they look. And Latino voters, especially younger Latino voters, are a group that does not seem to have very locked in partisan views. And so, yeah, I think it's sort of an open question as to how, how locked in they are. Now, this relates, we can, we can transition to the California map. This relates to actually at least one of the districts in California in this conversation. So the way that the California Democrats drew the new map there, and assuming if it does get passed, we'll talk more about that in a minute. If it, if it does take effect, it looks to me like Democrats are in a good position to pick up four of the five Republican health seats that they've targeted and the one that is sort of sitting out there uncertain. Well, I, I should, maybe I should caveat that Darrell ISS district in South Southern California is now one that Harris carried by about three points. So you would think in a midterm environment, Democrats would have a good shot at picking that up. But the one that they actually didn't make Democratic leaning, based at least on the presidential vote in 2024, is where this, where Latino voters really come into play in a big way is the 22nd district in the Central Valley, where David Valadao has a long history of running ahead of the Republican ticket. But then his district, which had traditionally been a Democratic leaning one, even though he's a Republican, and he generally had been holding onto that seat, it shifted pretty markedly toward the gop. And Trump carried it under the current lines by about six points. Under the new, the new map, it would have only gone for Trump by about 2. So I think Democrats are banking on some maybe reversion to the mean for voters, the midterm swing helping them out, but that doesn't mean necessarily that it's going to end up being a pickup for them. So maybe Democrats only get four of those seats if Valada once again sort of outruns the Republican brand.
- [09:21]
A
Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the likelihood of those maps becoming law or going into effect before the 2026 midterms in California. And also this will get into some of those irregular versus regular voters that turn out in the midterms. A new UC Berkeley poll asked Californians what they think. And when you just look statewide overall amongst registered voters, the number of Californians who say yes to instituting these new maps is 48% versus 32% who say no and 20% undecided. So quite a number there of voters who aren't quite sure yet. And I think we can say oftentimes undecided voters, when looking at a ballot initiative, if they haven't been convinced before the date of the election, tend to vote no because they're like, I don't know this is a lot of text and things seem to be fine the way that they are already. There's a pretty big shift when you go from registered voters to, to regular voters, which is defined by this poll as folks who have voted in at least five of the last seven statewide elections. When you look at just those voters, yes on the maps, 55%, so an outright majority versus 34% who say no, and quite a fair fewer who are undecided. Obviously, I don't have to tell you this, but this is pretty divided by party. Democrats are 70% yes. Republicans are, are 72% no. And then independents are a little bit closer, but they still lean towards yes. Looking at that poll, would you say this is a done deal?
- [11:03]
B
I'm not going to say it's a done deal, but I do think from sort of the get go that I've, I, I've thought that it was more likely than not to get passed. I think it's, it's, the framing of this for Republicans is very difficult because Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor and Democrats in California can make this all about Trump. And you're talking about a state where, you know, it's basically a 60, 40 state Democratic Republican. And so if you get most Democrats to line up behind this measure and independents in California tend to lean Democratic, you're probably going to be able to find your way to a majority more easily than those in opposition. So that, that, that I think sort of that fundamental baseline was always an advantage for Democrats. Now I know there has been some other polling, there was another survey that basically found people preferred leaving the line drawing to the commission that California uses over having the legislature have the power. But this is one of the situations where I also think it's going to really matter a lot how pollsters moving forward word questions about this, this ballot measure, any little tweak in the framing could affect the, how, how people, how people respond. Because I think, yeah, on average we know because the commission was approved very strongly by, by voters and propositions in 2008 and 2010 to create an independent redistricting commission that did state legislative and congressional maps there. So in theory those are, those are very strongly supported. But the context of what's happening nationally and how nationalized our politics are and how easy it is for Democrats to just beat on the Trump drum, I think that they're probably in a pretty good position to pass this thing.
- [12:49]
A
Yeah. And you see, even when former President Barack Obama endorsed this initiative, he started his endorsement by saying, you know, in a perfect world, we would have this independent commission and long term gerrymandering is not the answer. But for now, like, this is what we have to do to fight Trump. And if that's the framing, I think in California, especially in California in an off year where Democrats are the most engaged, I mean, that regular voter question of have you voted in five of the last seven elections for an off off year election, you're going to get an even more like, dedicated group of people than that. We're not talking about midterms. We're talking about an election that has popped up on people's calendars only two months before Election Day. And the people who are really paying attention to this story are people who are like, watching what Greg Abbott is doing on MSNBC or whatever. You know what I mean?
- [13:45]
B
Oh, no, that's precisely it. And sort of the conversation around what we call differential turnout, which is the thing we talk about in midterms, which is like the idea that on average, someone who identifies more with the, the party that's out of power is more likely to show up than someone who, who identifies with the party that's in the White House. I think in a off off year like a 2025 election could be considered, you might see an even larger disparity on that front. Now, obviously it will be easy to motivate Republicans in California, at least in the sense of saying they're trying to, like, undo Trump, they're trying to, you know, this or that. But we just know fundamentally that Republicans.
- [14:30]
A
In a high turnout election, they're a.
- [14:32]
B
Little less, less likely to show up. Yeah, exactly.
- [14:36]
A
I also want to say, I think there's like a, a trend of people just saying, like, oh, Democrats have done everything to cut themselves off at the knees when it comes to gerrymandering. And I did a whole docu series on gerrymandering which brought me to California. So I think it's worth saying that as far as California is concerned, this was led by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the aughts when California was still mixed in terms of partisanship enough to elect a Republican as the governor of California. And a lot of the effort that this independent commission was fighting against was bias in terms of keeping incumbents in their seats as opposed to any sort of like, Democratic or Republican gerrymandering. So whereas maybe in some other states, you could say that Democrats have hindered their own ability to fight fire with fire, what happened in California was not really actually even led by Democrats. And it wasn't about ensuring that Republicans couldn't gerrymander or that Democrats couldn't gerrymander. It was that incumbents had become so entrenched that even when there was sort of a red wave or a blue wave, nobody was losing their elect their seat in California. So just for some context there.
- [15:45]
B
No, that's exactly it. I believe between the 2002 and 2010 elections, after the last time the legislature was able to draw the maps before the Independent Commission, I believe one seat flipped parties in the entirety of that span in California because they had drawn such an incumbent protection map. And obviously even when the incumbent retired, someone from the same party won. So it was. Yeah, it was a very static map. Even while there were lots of things happening in the electoral environment from year.
- [16:17]
A
To year, the financial crisis, the Iraq war, there were wave elections basically. Yeah, they had 53 season six, 2008, one flipped.
- [16:27]
B
Yeah, and I think it was six when it flipped.
- [16:29]
A
Which, you know, if everyone gerrymanders to hell their states, we could be closer to that circumstance again. I mean, I think even without these mid decade gerrymandering wars, we were already looking at one of the least competitive elections on the books, or at least a midterm election with some of the fewest competitive districts on the books. Let's talk about that actually first and then we can talk about some of the other states. Friend of the pod Nate Silver wrote today on his substack that in an all out gerrymandering war, while perhaps it may be bad for democracy, it's not necessarily bad for Democrats in the long run. And he makes a couple cases there, which is that in the 2010s there was a differential concentration between Republicans and Democrats that made it easier for Republicans to gerrymander, which is to say the most Democratic districts in the country, country were electing a Democrat for president like 95% democrat versus 5% republican. Like that's how the Bronx voted in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. Whereas the most Republican district in the country was still electing the Republican more like 80, 20, you know, 80% for Trump and like 20% for Clinton or independents or whatever. And just because Democrats were more tightly concentrated in cities, it was just easier for. It was less efficient the way that Democrats were sort of spread out. You either want to be have everyone spread out equally or be concentrated to exactly the same degree. That has shifted as cities have become a little redder and rural areas I guess have also become a little redder. Where more Democrats have maybe picked up ground is in the suburbs on top of that. Whereas under the Old coalition pre Trump Republicans were more liable to turn out in low turnout elections, state legislative elections, midterms and the like. They were the more college educated bunch who maybe pay more attention to politics, more strictly partisan, fewer irregular voters, that when it came to getting a trifecta, winning those legislative chambers, Republicans had the advantage. As the coalitions have shifted, Democrats have increasingly picked up an advantage when it comes to these low turnout state legislative races. You know, those two things taken together. Do you find Nate's argument convincing?
- [18:51]
B
I think in terms of the long run, I think Nate is right in the sense that the understanding sort of what's been happening with the electorate and geographical spread of the two parties and where their voters live, I think that's compelling. And I do think that if you're sort of thinking if this is going to continue, there are states that could change their laws by the 2028 to allow them to redistrict again if it came to it. What are we thinking?
- [19:22]
A
Colorado?
- [19:24]
B
Yeah, you know, New York and Colorado. New York is, I think their legislature is trying to pass a constitutional amendment right now to permit the state to redistrict again. Redistrict again. But it wouldn't be able to happen until 2028. Colorado, I know there was talk about a proposition being voted on in 2026 potentially that would then permit potentially a redistricting ahead of the 2028 election. The problem for Democrats right now is just that from an immediacy standpoint, Republicans are in a much better spot to quickly act. And that comes down to in part the fact that a lot of Democratic, a lot of states where Democrats have full control of government, they've adopted either some sort of commission. So Colorado has an independent commission. Virginia has a bipartisan commission. They do have. It's not non politicians, but it's bipartisan. And if you think about those two states as a kind of a good example of where Democrats have in a way somewhat unilaterally disarmed right Now Colorado has a 4, 4 delegation split and it's 8 congressional districts and in Virginia at 6, 5 for Democrats. And you, you know, it would not be difficult to gerrymander Virginia until like a 9, 2 Democratic state or gerrymander Colorado into at least a 62 state. I think 71 might be a little difficult, but 6 2. Yeah, you could do that without much trouble at all. So if you're thinking about Democrats trying to respond to Republican action because Republicans control more states, simply where the state legislature has control and there's no, there's no prohibition on mid decade redistricting and the legislature draws the maps. If Democrats are trying to respond, their problem is they have more hoops to jump through to make that happen. I mean California, they're having to amend the Constitution to try to get around their independent commission. And so that just kind of speaks to the from an immediacy standpoint why Republicans can make things happen more quickly when we're thinking about this midterm election.
- [21:25]
A
Okay, so from an immediacy perspective, it looks like Republicans are focusing on Ohio and Missouri. We've already talked about on this podcast and I think we've even talked about the district around Gary, Indiana. But Florida is perhaps the bigger question. And then on for Democrats part, we already established that New York has to amend its constitution so this wouldn't happen until post 2026. But there's now some questions about Illinois and Maryland. Can they do something? So where do those, where do those big district heavy states of Florida, Illinois, while Maryland to some extent stand just.
- [22:03]
B
To start with the Democratic controlled states, there's. Yeah, basically my understanding is there are three states. I'll include Oregon there as well. Oregon, Maryland, Illinois, where Democrats have full control and the state legislature draws the maps. The problem for Democrats in those states is that they have just about maximized their potential gains under their current lines already. In Oregon Democrats can't do better than 5:1, which is where they're at right now for Democrats in Illinois they have a what, a 143 map. And they, if anyone who has looked at the congressional lines in Illinois, it would take, it would, you'd have to get even more creative to try to pull one more seat out of that for Democrats. So I think that would be a very, it seems unlikely to me that they're going to try to redraw in Illinois. Maryland is 7:1 in favor of Democrats. And you can draw an 8:0 map in Maryland. Yeah, I mean it gets ugly. Maybe you split the Eastern Shore between two districts, but it, you can do it. The problem there for Democrats is that when they sort of attempted to do something like that during the regular redistricting cycle after the 2020 census, state courts essentially said that's not that break. Basically it's unconstitutional under the Maryland state constitution. So Democrats could try again. But I think it's sort of an open question as to whether or not they would get, they'd get stopped based on just the states, the state law and state and understanding of the state constitution. So this again speaks to like the limitations Democrats have because those are States with legislature draws, but they can't really gain. They might be able to gain one more seat if Maryland's able to, to pull that off. But then you've got Florida, where Florida is a little bit of an interesting question because Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor, has been talking about basically pressing the case that Florida should have more congressional districts and that it was undercounted in the census, so they should have been apportioned more. How that would get worked out could potentially be very messy. So I won't go into that too much. I just think maybe this is how the U.S. house of Representative finally expands is that they try to pass a law adding a couple seats to Florida. More likely they just simply, and they have actually gone ahead and started like a special committee on redistricting in the state legislature. They could pursue a map where, I mean, just looking at the contours of the Florida map, they could probably get three, maybe even four seats that Democrats currently control. I believe the state delegation is currently 20 to 8 in favor of Republicans, but a lot. There are a number of south Florida seats that are pretty close and one in the Orlando area that you, you could arguably get rid of one of those for if you're the Republicans. So, you know, if you, if you sort of take maximal gains like R +4 there, and we were just talking about D +1 from those other states, you throw in maybe Texas 3 to 5, Ohio 2 to 3 for Republicans, Missouri 1. Indiana 1 or 2. Indiana is interesting because you could, you could crack, as they say. And packing and cracking are two sort of redistricting terms. Either you pack your opponents, voters into one dish, into mostly concentrate them in one district, or you crack them across multiple districts. Well, Indianapolis is right in the middle of the state, so if you wanted to, you could crack the 7th district held by Andre Carson between a bunch of districts in Indiana and have a 9, 0 map for the GOP there. So you potentially could add two seats there as well for Republicans. And so basically what you're getting here is you're getting to the point where it's like, I don't know, 7, 8, 9, 10 net seats. And that's not even without bringing in what really would be the, the huge question mark is if something were, if the Supreme Court were to say Section 2 of the Voting Rights act is unconstitutional, if that happened. And so states in the Deep south where there are majority black seats that could be essentially cracked across multiple red leaning districts. Mississippi could get rid of their one seat. Alabama could get rid of their two. Georgia could probably reduce theirs from five to three, Louisiana from two to one. I don't know if they could crack New Orleans. That might be challenging. Uh, the point is you can really, I mean, you could really see how this could benefit Republicans in terms of just the net seats won from gerrymandering.
- [26:43]
A
All right, well, we're going to keep our eyes on this because I think it's important how this all plays out. And we will see whether an all out gerrymandering war ends up with more bipartisan support for reform or just far less competitive maps overall. But let's move on and talk about the New York City mayoral race. First, a break Today's podcast is brought to you by metaculus. We talk plenty about betting markets on this podcast as a way to gauge the likelihood of future events. Metaculus is just like that, except you don't actually have to bet your own money. At Metaculus, you can get better at predicting what's coming next on current events, public policy, geopolitics, AI and more, all while contributing to greater clarity on critical issues. You can even win cash prizes for accurate forecasts and insightful comments. And I've read your emails, listeners. I think you would clean up right now. You can forecast the likeliest 2028 Democratic nominee Gavin Newsom has the best odds with a 21% chance on metaculus. That tweeting must be doing something on the Republican side. J.D. vance has the best shot with a 50% chance. There's a $15,000 prize pool for accurate predictions on this and other political questions. If you want to expand beyond electoral politics, you can also make predictions on things like when the first general AI system will be unleashed on the public. The community at Metaculus says February 2033. I don't know, that seems a bit soon. I'd put it more at like March of 33. To join in the action or just gauge the conventional wisdom, head to metaculus.com potus that's M E T A C U L U S.com P-T U S metaculus.com potus As I mentioned at the top, the New York City mayoral race is being just about as New York as you might imagine. And we're not even post Labor Day yet. So let's start by sharing the current polling average according to Decision Desk HQ. And it is as follows. Mamdani has about 40% support, 39% to be exact. According to the polling average, Cuomo has 25%, Curtis Lewa has 15%. Eric Adams has rounding it's about 11% and Walden has one and a half percent. Folks don't need to focus on him. So as long as Cuomo, Sliwa, and Adams all stay in the race, is the New York City mayoral race a done deal for Zoran Mandani?
- [29:22]
B
I think so. If the field remains sort of this fragmented, I don't see how any of the, if all these candidates remain in the race, I don't see how you end up in a situation where one of them can break through sufficiently to, to catch mum Donnie. And part of that comes down to the fact that they're all pretty disliked. Like, if you're, if you're trying to figure out what you want to do as someone who oppo if oppose Zor Mandani, like Andrew Cuomo, disgraced former governor. Favorability in the, like, you know, roughly like an average of like negative 20 in the last five polls. Eric Adams kind of viewed as corrupt. He's at negative 40 on average in the last five polls in terms of net favorability. And Sliwa is actually the sort of the least disliked of that bunch at negative 15 on average. But he's a Republican in New York City, and this is, it's not 1993 or 1997, you know, and he's also.
- [30:25]
A
Just like a perma candidate, right? Like, he's a perennial point.
- [30:30]
B
Yeah, yeah, he's a perennial candidate. He's talked about, apparently he's taking off his beret some now trying to be. Look like a more serious candidate. But yeah, it's that, that, that's the thing. If, if all these candidates remain in the race, I don't see how Mamdani loses.
- [30:44]
A
Is there any sense that they might not all stay in the race? Earlier on, there was some talk of like, Trump could give Curtis Sliwa a job in his administration. He could somehow wrangle Eric Adams to, like, get out of the race, and then all of the anti Mamdani support goes to Cuomo. I haven't heard anything about that materializing. Have you heard anything?
- [31:09]
B
No. I think it's one of those things where in theory it could work. There's space for like an, an anti momdani coalition to rally around one candidate. You know, if you sort of compare Mamdani's vote share with the not Mamdani vote share of those other three candidates. And when, when he's included Jim Walden as a fourth candidate, most of those polls put not Mom Donnie ahead and sometimes over 50%. And then it gets back to, okay, but you have to it's a collective action problem. You've got to have candidates drop out. They have to agree to drop out. They have to agree to endorse each other. And you also need voters to follow, which I don't think is also a guarantee here. Right. Like if Donald Trump is seen as having anything to do with this and there's been talk about him coming in and maybe behind, you know, doing something like offering Kirstle a job or encouraging people to vote for Andrew Cuomo. Don't, you know, not publicly endorsing Cuomo because that would be a really bad move, I think, for Andrew Cuomo and in a blue city like New York City. But it's sort of one of those things where the moment you try to figure out a way to get candidates out or to have someone kind of come in and tell candidates what to do, it just, it's unclear how any of that would work. I think also like Eric Adams has no intention of getting out and he's actually raised more money than Andrew Cuomo, at least, you know, as a campaign directly in terms of private funds. He doesn't have any public matching funds, which he's suing the, the city Finance board over. But I think that speaks to the fact that Adams has resources and he has no interest in getting out.
- [32:52]
A
Yeah, I mean, from the perspective of the issues, I think folks are pretty well aware that Mamdani won the Democratic primary in large part on arguments about affordability. As we've moved to the general, has the issue landscape changed? And I guess more to the point, is there an issue on which any of the anti Mamdani candidates have been able to settle on as Mamdani's sort of weakness in this general election.
- [33:23]
B
To me, it seems like they've had a really difficult time finding that they, you know, constantly raising issues in Mamdani's platform about, you know, things like government run grocery stores. I mean, some of that stuff doesn't pull well. But in sort of the larger context of affordability and how Mamdani has made his case to voters, they, they just don't seem to have quite made, made the argument. I know, I know Cuomo has been trying from sort of this is not so much an issue or, but more of a like how, how you're viewed by sort of everyday New Yorkers on the street. He's sort of tried to pitch himself in a way where he's, he's actually kind of active and out there and trying to do social media stuff and, and, and meet voters when I think before, during the primary, he was sort of like, where's Andrew? Is Andrew even in Newark? New York City was sort of the vibe during the primary. So. So from. From that perspective, he's, I think, trying to affect how people view him, you know, influence and sort of person, the personality and. And that sort of thing. But he's starting from, as I talked about, the favorability numbers. He's starting from a poor place. It's just very difficult to see how you. How you change that with, you know, about two months to go.
- [34:41]
A
Yeah. As everyone has gotten a little more sort of active in the race, and it seems like nobody's getting ready to drop out, the politics have gotten interesting. I'll read one of my. One of my favorite tweets from the past month or so of Mandani, Cuomo, and Adams all being on the campaign trail. It's quote, madani calling Cuomo, Habibi Cuomo calling Mamdani, Paisan Adams calling himself Dominican. Ethnic politics will never die in New York City. Add to that that the Adams associate who was like a volunteer on his campaign, Winnie Greco, who was accused of giving a reporter, or gave a reporter a hearse, potato chip bag of cash. Her attorney said, quote, the cash was a, quote, gesture of friendship and gratitude in Chinese culture, not a bribe. And Winnie Greco herself went on to say, it's a culture thing. I don't know. I don't understand. So I don't know if there's anywhere else in America that could have this kind of ethnic back and forth in 2025 without sort of wild accusations of sort of racism or whatever it is. But things are getting a little weird in. In New York City lately.
- [35:53]
B
Yeah. In our latest newsletter of the Bellwether, which is the newsletter I have over at Decision Desk hq, Substack, I wrote about it this way. I was like, the stories with Adams, they're bordering on farce. Because, I mean, the idea that an Adams associate would just hand a bag, a potato chip bag with another little bag inside of it with, you know, a few hundred dollar bills, it's just.
- [36:16]
A
It's just like to a reporter who's like. I mean, not to be, like, teaching anyone how to bribe someone here, but, like, I'm sure reporters at the city, the outlet that this person worked for, are not making a lot of money. But in New York City, a couple hundred dollars on a potato chip bag is gonna do absolutely nothing for you. And the story that you're gonna write about it is gonna do way more for your career. Than the like three, whatever. However much money was I saw reporting that it was over $100 in cash. Like, like what are we doing here if you're gonna bribe someone? I don't know. What did Eric Adams get? He got some like first class Turkish airline tickets. He got, you know, he got, it was definitely worth more than a hundred dollars or so. I wanna ask though, in all of this, the sort of Democratic establishment has been slow to endorse Mamdani, Notably New York Governor Kathy Hochul has not endorsed. House Minority Leader Jeffries has not endorsed. I think that there's some fear that Mamdani is bad for the Democratic Party's brand and that they don't want to be seen as tied to a Democratic socialist who has some of these ideas in the lead up to the 2026 midterms. Are those concerns founded and how do you see this playing out? Like, do you think that the governor of New York just never endorses, period?
- [37:41]
B
I think my general view of this is that Mamdani could be a useful foil for Republicans in the 2026 midterm election and I'm sure that they will try if he is the newly elected New York City mayor, to bring up radical Democrats this radical Democrats that bring up Zorami Mamdani and maybe any kinds of policies he takes that seem to provide an ample target to mention in advertising and pitches to voters about how what radical Democrats are doing in New York City, they'll do Next in Washington D.C. kind of thing. But at the end of the day, I do think Democrats are maybe exaggerating the extent to which Mamdani is going to capture voters attention to that extent. Like I think the fact of the matter is midterm elections are about presidents, about the president office as a general rule. And I think for Democrats, they have Donald Trump in the White House to target. People are going to be mostly thinking about the president and things going on with the, you know, the federal administration rather than what's happening in New York City. You know, New York City is not representative of the country to say the least. So I would say that I can understand why some high level Democrats are keeping their distance because I do think getting back to some debates I know you recently covered, moderation can be more effective in winning in elections, at least that that I, I'll take that side of the argument on that at least to some extent. But again, running in like New York City versus a swing district in the House are two very different things. And I think at the end of the day the, the larger story is going to be Donald Trump and what's been going on with the country as a whole, rather than what's happening in New York City. So while I understand the reticence around Mamdani and among some Democratic leaders, I think if you're sort of thinking about the context of the next election, the 2026 election, I think they might be overstating the importance of keeping their distance to, to that extent at least.
- [40:07]
A
Right. I think there's also a couple things happen where like I think it can be valuable to, for them to keep their distance because it helps them establish that they're a moderate in for example, like New York State is not, I don't know, California when it comes to how progressive the state is or whatever. And so it can help folks establish their own brand by being like, I'm a Democrat, but I don't support this. But also having him on the scene, I wonder if it serves another purpose, which is like when Donald Trump was taking a whole bunch of positions that were somewhat outside of the Overton window at the time, like building a wall at the southern border or whatnot, what ends up happening is Democrats say, well, we don't want that, we can't do that. They, they kind of take like the 180, they keep taking the 180 position and it sometimes forces them into their own spot where like okay, well they don't seem to really have a policy on immigration or they don't really seem to have a policy on affordability or whatever, you know, and inflation during the, you know, during the Biden administration. And if Mamdani keeps taking these like radical positions on affordability that just force Republicans to be like, oh hahahahaha, like you know, city run grocery stores and free buses and like blah blah, blah. And then it's like, okay, well what are you doing about affordability? Like what are you doing about inflation? And so it's like, even if these policies are radical, sometimes just being like against it, against it, against it can be a trap in and of itself when your median voter is more worried about affordability than like whether the mayor of New York is a socialist.
- [41:41]
B
I think that's a great point, Galen. And this actually is something to also consider for Democratic leadership is that clearly there are parts of the Democratic base that are very upset with the status quo. And there are a lot of people in the Democratic base and elsewhere who are extremely worried about the cost of living. And it's not a talking point. It's not an area of concern that's going away. Right. And here's a guy who's really speaking to it. And part of his success, I think, was clearly founded on making it such a, you know, a key focus of his primary campaign. So there are probably lessons to be learned from his campaign. For Democrats looking ahead to the 2026 election. Now, you know, they don't have to necessarily propose the same sorts of things Mamdani is, but I think the sort of rhetoric around affordability and, And. And how you talk about those issues and. And try to actually connect to voters who are worried about it is something that. That Democrats can use based off the Mamdani example.
- [42:45]
A
Yeah.
- [42:46]
B
With.
- [42:46]
A
I mean, maybe sometimes pie in the sky ideas can get you in trouble, but also sometimes pie in the sky ideas mean that you're attracting voters attention to something and you get to set the terms of the debate. I mean, this also reminds me of the 2016 Democratic primary, where Bernie Sanders kept being like, we need Medicare for all. We want universal health care, blah, blah, blah. And then Hillary Clinton's response would be like, we can't afford that. We can't do that. And so even if, like, the answer was basically correct, that, like, okay, Bernie Sanders, even if you become President of the United States, it's unlikely that we are going to have Medicare for all taking all of those steps to explain that and try to get primary voters on board with understanding why this is unreasonable when they're just pissed off that, like, health care and groceries cost too much. While it may be intellectually true, it is not sort of, like, spiritually fulfilling when it comes to the political arena. So, yeah, like, sometimes just saying can be effective in politics, I guess, is what I'm saying.
- [43:44]
B
Yeah. I mean, I think it helps to have some sort of underpinning to that, which I think is, you know, Mamdani can make these pitches because he. He seems genuine in what he's, you know, know, it's not just out of left field. Right. And I think people would say that about Donald Trump talking about immigration. You know, he's come across as very genuine with his views on that and how he wants to try to address issues related to that. So even when sometimes the policy stuff gets a little confusing or mixed up about it, people kind of know where he stands and so forth. Mandani to know where they know where he stands on affordability, which is he's trying to figure out ways to make the, you know, cost of living go down to make life more affordable, make it a Little easier for people to get by. And whereas people who are opposing him are just sort of trying to, they're trying to explain themselves. And there's that old saying in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing. And so they find themselves a little bit in that situation, I think.
- [44:39]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about the national environment before I let you go, because you've recently written about this. Specifically, you wrote a piece called Democrats and Republicans Both have Reasons to feel optimistic about 2026. But let's start by setting the table for a second. Over at Decision Desk hq, your generic congressional ballot average shows Democrats leading Republicans by about two and a half percentage points. How does that compare with past midterm cycles? Does that put Democrats in a good spot?
- [45:11]
B
I think it does in the sense that it's still relatively early in the election cycle and what we tend to see over time, on average, the party that is not in the White House tends to gain in the generic ballot as you get closer and closer to the actual midterm election. And so if you think, well, there's a chance that that could happen again, then that's probably good for Democrats to already be slightly ahead at this point because if they can gain a few more points, you know, if it's D plus 6 or 7 or something by the time you get to the midterm election, that's a really good sign for them in terms of, of outdistancing Republicans and having a chance at winning a majority and perhaps winning even with all the redistricting chatter, winning a decent number of seats to have at least a little breathing room when it comes to a House majority.
- [46:02]
A
So that sounds like some relatively positive news for Democrats. I want to bring in some negative news for Democrats. I think Democrats got sort of like slapped by the New York Times last week when they published an article entitled the Democratic Party Faces a Voter reg Crisis. The party is bleeding support beyond the ballot box, a new analysis shows. They went on to write, quote, of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections, and often by a lot. They go on to say that four year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from. And when it comes to trends in terms of who those people are, they say, quote, the shifts previewed democratic weaknesses. In 2024, the party saw some of its steepest declines in registration amongst Men and younger voters. The Times analysis found the two constituencies that swung sharply toward Mr. Trump, end quote. So how worried should Democrats be about that Times analysis?
- [47:11]
B
Oh, I think they have plenty of reasons to be worried about that. I mean, people are choosing actively to say I belong to this party when they register to vote, or they're taking the time to say I no longer belong to that party and now I belong to this party in terms of actually going through the trouble of switching that. And so if people are disproportionately switching from one side to the other, that at least signals some trouble for the party that's losing voters. So I, I think it, it's, it's unquestionably not good to be on that side of the trend.
- [47:49]
A
Fair. Fair.
- [47:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know that, I mean that, yeah, that's the kind of brilliant analysis that people pay me for. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah. I, I think where it gets a little harder to say. So if, you know, I, you know, I'm sort of thinking in terms of the next election. Right. I don't know if this really says much about the midterm elections, for instance, but it may say more about the 2028 election and sort of understanding where the electorate is moving forward.
- [48:16]
A
Yeah. I was going to ask actually how you make peace between, okay, like the country is leaning towards Democrats by two and a half percentage points and we just got off a four year period where Democrats were losing ground. Is it just like, okay, this kind of usually happens. There was a really unpopular Democrat in the White House and maybe, and I know historically speaking it doesn't usually happen to this degree, but we just got off of a four year period with a really unpopular Democrat in the White House. So like, are Democrats now turning a corner? And that generic ballot is like a leading indicator where this, whereas this is maybe like a, we're looking at data of what has already happened, or does it mean something else?
- [48:58]
B
Voter registration numbers do tend to be more of a lagging indicator in the sense that someone, especially when you're thinking about someone switching parties, someone could have been registered as a Democrat in Pennsylvania in 2012 and they only bothered to switch their registration over to Republican in 2021, 2022, but they've been effectively a Republican since Trump came on the scene. Maybe they didn't vote in the primary in 2016, but they, because they were so registered as a Democrat but now, but they've been voting Republican in the general election regularly. So in that sense it's like, okay, now we're just. The registration number is essentially reflecting reality more than, than it did previously. But again, at the same time, for new registrants, the choice to, you know which party you're picking. If, if somebody votes for the same party two or three elections in a row, especially when they're on the younger end of things, that tends to lead to a stickier commitment, you might say a firmer commitment to that party in the long run. So that's like, why, on the one hand, when I think about the 2026 midterm elections, I don't think these numbers particularly say that much. Also because fewer people turn out and we know that Democratic leaning voters are probably gonna be somewhat disproportionately more likely to turn out because there's a Republican in the White House. But where the big question is, is this the sort of thing that continues as we move toward 2028? And I think, on the one hand, I think Democrats can be hopeful that, well, Donald Trump's president, again, he's not terribly popular, maybe this will be bad for the Republican brand and therefore the Democrats will benefit. On the other hand, the other complication in all of this is that more and more people are registering as independent. Like, if you look at voter registration numbers back in the day, the share of people who identify who registered as independent or not affiliated with no party has really shot up among. And that actually is challenging for sort of making sure you understand, like, where those people stand. Because we know in terms of like how people actually vote, few people are independent. There just not a lot of people are actually truly independent voters. Most people lean one way or the other. However, independent voters in one state, say, like a California, might lean Democratic. Independent voters in another state, perhaps in North Carolina, might lean Republican. Or at least they're more 50, 50. And so kind of what happens with those voters? And a lot of those voters are younger to begin with. People are registering for the first time, registering as independent. I think that's where it's just sort of like, okay, this trend is bad for Democrats. Increasingly, people have got to win over people who register is independent, which makes them harder, maybe harder to know exactly where they stand on things. And that's where it's like, I think a real open question about what this could mean for the next presidential election in particular.
- [52:01]
A
So it's bad for Democrats, good for Republicans. How good for Republicans is maybe a question of how many of those independents, long term, end up voting with the Republican Party. Obviously, many of the young people who have recently registered with the Republican Party. And the piece went into like how young men particularly are increasingly registering with the Republican Party. That is downright good for the Republican Party, bad for Democrats. But there's maybe some caveats around the other pieces of information. So we have already talked here about some reasons that Democrats should feel optimistic, some reason that Republicans should feel optimistic. Are there any other parts of your analysis, your piece that you want to shout out before and let you go?
- [52:41]
B
Yeah, I mean, I just, I think just generally the party that's not in the White House does tend to do better in midterm elections. And that's something that I think Democrats are counting on. And Donald Trump does not have a particularly high approval rating, seems to be in the mid-40s, depending on the average you're looking at, but kind of on average of the averages he's in like the mid-40s. So he's not in a place where presidents have been who traditionally bucked the midterm losing seat trend on the House side. And remember, the House is actually a national election. All 435 seats are up, whereas the Senate, only about a third of seats are up every two years. So it's kind of harder to say. To use Senate numbers is indicative of sort of the national mood. But for Republicans, you know, we've talked about redistricting. That is a potential benefit for them. There's no question that they could pick up a few seats. I'm not sure that they can pick up enough to undo, you know, if Democrats are in a position where we would expect them to win like 25, 30 seats or something. You know, redistricting is not going to save the day for the gop, but it obviously could much reduce a potential Democratic majority if that's how things pan out. And I think the other thing Republicans have going for them actually is that they're not defending a lot of Democratic leaning seats. And I think when we tend to see the largest swings in midterm elections is when the President's party is holding a number of seats that the other party's presidential candidate carried in the last election and coming in under the current line. So this isn't even using the new Texas or California maps. Republicans are, are looking at a situation where they've got 220 seats and only seven of those lean toward the Democrats.
- [54:26]
A
And so that Harris won only seven of those seats.
- [54:29]
B
Yeah, exactly. Well, sorry, what I should say is Harris only won three of them and the other four were slightly less Republican than the country as a whole. So I'm looking at like, if, if Trump won by about one and a half percentage points nationally. That's the situation. And so that's a really rough number for Democrats in terms of just having targets to go after. It means they're gonna have to win some red leaning seats in order to win a majority. Now, that will probably happen to some extent because we saw in 2018, for example, they flipped a bunch of Republican held seats that were in at least somewhat Republican leaning turf. But at the same time, knowing how polarized things are, if turnout's relatively high for a midterm election again, and you do get sort of both bases largely out, it could be tough for Democrats to make inroads sort of beyond seats that maybe are, you know, up to about five points to the right of the country. But I think for Democrats, the real fundamental thing is that they're going to have to win and win some, some at least light red seats to win a majority. And because they're going to have fewer light blue seats to pick off than a president's party usually has to defend.
- [55:45]
A
All right, we're going to leave things there for today. Thank you for joining me, Jeff.
- [55:49]
B
Absolutely. Hey, thanks for having me.
- [55:51]
A
My name is Galen Druke. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes access to the videos and can also join our paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. Most importantly, you ensure that we can keep making this podcast. Also, be a friend of the POD and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts, maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.