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- [00:00]
Steve Kornacki
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- [00:31]
Alan Smith
Meals are back for just $5. Get a savory and sweet sausage, egg and cheese McGriddles plus hash browns and a coffee only at McDonald's for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California.
- [00:44]
Steve Kornacki
And for delivery.
- [00:48]
Yasmin Vasugian
Hey, everybody, and welcome to here's THE SCOOP from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugin. So last night, Tuesday night, here's the SCOOP went live to cover the election, breaking down the key races and ballot measures to watch as the results came in. I am talking late night coffee, some nail biter races and some of our very favorite colleagues here at NBC News to help us make sense of all of it. And of course, it is not election night without Steve Kornacki at the big board. It was a lot of fun. So this morning we are going to bring you a little slice of it. And by the way, we know the news does not stop. So we're going to be back in your feeds later on TODAY with another episode as usual. All right. Here's our special election episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome to here's THE Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vasugian. It is good to have you back. We got a full cast of characters. It is election night here in America. And yes, it is an off election year, but it's an incredibly important election. We're talking about redistricting and we're talking about the first time we're hearing from voters in a major election after Donald Trump is serving his second term in the White House. I got Alan Smith on my left. He's NBC News politics reporter Mel Zanona to my right, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent. And then I got Steve Kornacki sitting down, everybody, because I know a lot of folks were a little bit worried about you standing for so long. Steve is NBC News chief data analyst and he is now seated and resting.
- [02:13]
Alan Smith
I appreciate it, too.
- [02:17]
Yasmin Vasugian
Let's talk through these results. A very, very big night, Steve, for Democrats.
- [02:22]
Steve Kornacki
Yeah.
- [02:23]
Alan Smith
No, and I think surprisingly, the scale of it, especially in Virginia. I Mean, in Virginia, in New Jersey. I think if you had said at the start of the night that Abigail Spamberger in Virginia would win by, you know, 15 points or so, I don't think that was crazy. The polling had been pretty solid for her. There were all sorts of issues, I think, with winsome Earl Sears, the Republican, in her candidacy from the beginning. But to be honest, New Jersey was a state, when you talk to Republicans, they said, yeah, we're underdogs, but they thought they had a chance to win. They came in today believing they had a chance to win there. Jack Cittarelli, the nominee, the Republican nominee there, had come very close four years ago. He only lost it by three points. There was a sense, I can tell you, that was shared by both Republicans and Democrats in New Jersey that Mikey Sherrill had not run a good campaign and that she had made herself vulnerable to attacks from Cittarelli. There was an ad that ran that was simply 30 seconds of Mikey Sherrill doing an interview with a CBS affiliate in New York City, asking her the question, what's the first. First thing you do as governor? And she hems and haws for 30 seconds. That was the entire ad that the Citterelli campaign put together. I know that might be an effective ad. And when you look at these results tonight, I mean, this is gonna be probably a 12, 13 point margin here for Mikey Sherrill in this race. And I think it just. To me, there's no avoiding it in these results. The Trump factor, I think there was just a combination here of voters who were already dug in against Trump, who are super motivated to vote, and then voters, I think, reacting, you know, to a president who had a low 40s approval rating in New Jersey.
- [03:47]
Yasmin Vasugian
So you have Abigail spanberger with this 13 or 14 point spread. You have Mikey Sheryl with a 13 or so point spread. Both Democrats winning their races for governors in New Jersey and Virginia, respectively. You have Zohar Mamdani winning. Winning the mayor's office in New York city, breaking that 50 percentage point mark, which is a very big deal. And then you have the redistricting win in California for Democrats there as well, I believe, with a 30 point or so spread. Voting. Yes. What did you see specifically in New York City, Steve? And California as well?
- [04:21]
Alan Smith
Yeah, I mean, look, California was interesting to me because when this first became an issue over the summer, Newsom made this play, and it's gonna go to the voters, I actually thought it might be close, you know. Cause California voters had passed the redistricting reform Just over a decade ago, Newsom himself was not the most popular in polling in California. And I thought maybe this is a chance, maybe voters are going to see this, a chance where they could vote against Newsom in effect without electing a Republican. Cuz California is still a very blue state. They didn't seem nuts about Newsom. That's not at all what happened here. This just became a referendum on Donald Trump. That's how Newsom conceived it, that's how Democrats campaigned on it. And you looked at Trump's approval rating in our exit poll in California and it almost perfectly matches how if you approved of Trump and you voted no on this, that's about 35%. If you disapprove of Trump, you voted yes. That's about 65%. The New York City one ends up being the closest race of the night. And it is, you know, it's not a nail biter, but it was eight points. It's probably eight, nine points.
- [05:21]
Yasmin Vasugian
And you were surprised by that? You thought it was going to be more.
- [05:23]
Alan Smith
I think so. There was more consolidation. I mean, look, we talked for a long time.
- [05:26]
Yasmin Vasugian
Do you think that was the Trump factor? Do you think it was the President's endorsement of Cuomo overnight?
- [05:31]
Alan Smith
Yeah. So I think it's possible that that further consolidated it at the end. We do have the benefit in New York City, the way they released the vote, the first 40% of the vote that came out instantly is vote that was cast well before election day. And you already saw in that, that Curtis Leeway, the Republicans number was significantly lower than it had been in polling. It came further down. Yeah. In other words, he was running at about just under 10%, I'd say nine and a half percent in the pre election day vote. And he's gonna end up somewhere around 7%. So I do think potentially that Trump thing, along with all sort of the anti Mamdani energy, might have resulted in a little more consolidation on election day. There was more consolidation than I thought there'd be. And yeah, I mean it is a solid win for Mamdani. It's high single digits and I think he's gonna be just on the north side of 50%. But there's a lot of opposition to him here too for a Democratic nominee and an overwhelmingly Democratic.
- [06:25]
Yasmin Vasugian
And I think there's this question of does a candidate like and now Mayor elect Mamdani only work in a city like New York, for instance, or San Francisco, or can this type of candidate work elsewhere throughout the country? You've spent a lot of Time with the mayor elect, how does he view his candidacy, and what do you think Democrats are going to take from his win?
- [06:46]
Steve Kornacki
So I think he views himself as someone who's a huge part of the Democratic Party's future, and so do his progressive allies. I think the interesting thing is when you think ahead to the midterms and you think about the kinds of districts that are going to be contested, fewer and fewer than fewer of them after redistricting. Those are the kinds of districts where someone who's more on the center left or center right tends to win. And those are the kinds of districts where Republicans are going to be trying to insert Mamdani as a wedge issue. How does he play in those districts, I think is going to be a huge part of the story going forward. But, you know, talking about the results in New York, I think the bigger thing for Mamdani wasn't the amount of points that he ended up beating Cuomo or Sliwa by. It was the fact that he topped 50%. So if you take Cuomo and Sliwa's totals and combine them, it's still not greater than what he got. And it was the 50% number that he was going to take as the mandate to enact the agenda. If he was at below 50%, that opposition would have been much, much stronger to be able to say, well, you know, look, Cuomo and Sliwa, they split this opposition vote. It was greater than the total of people who voted for you. You don't actually represent what New York wanted. So it was the 50% plus one was just such a huge thing for his ability to govern moving forward. It's very similar to why Donald Trump wanted to win the popular vote. Right? He was able to take office and say, I have a mandate because I didn't just win the Electoral College, I finally won the popular vot.
- [08:03]
Yasmin Vasugian
Who was Mamdani taking a page from? Did he tell you at all who he was looking to as his North Star? And I asked that, Alan, because you spent so much time with him, but also because he seemed to be a combination of former President Barack Obama, current President Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders. He took a page from each one of them.
- [08:23]
Steve Kornacki
He, I think, definitely would say Bernie Sanders. He would definitely say aoc. I think it was so interesting in his speech tonight, the first politician he referenced was Eugene Debs, the prominent socialist from the 19th and 20th century. I don't think he wants to repeat the politics of another politician. You listen to his speech tonight. He wants to be creating something entirely New. He's asked on the debate stage, the NBC debate, who's the greatest modern president? FDR. He references Fiorello LaGuardia. But that's just in the sense of being able to accomplish huge things. So he's thinking about creating a new politics rather than emulating someone else, even someone like a Barack Obama or a Bernie Sanders.
- [09:04]
Yasmin Vasugian
If we're talking about Virginia, Steve, with the exit polls, what was the most important thing to voters?
- [09:09]
Alan Smith
Well, the economy, tops. And we saw this in New Jersey, too. And we've seen this, frankly, in a lot of exit polls now for the last few years. So it's nothing new. It's just that the, I think the sense of the blame that voters have changes with Trump back in the White House. And so Republicans are taking the brunt of it. Republicans took the brunt of it in Virginia and in New Jersey.
- [09:30]
Yasmin Vasugian
So if we're looking at Mel, Virginia, you're on Capitol Hill every day. We are now in the longest government shutdown in US History. Economy is the number one issue for Virginia voters. Right. Who have also been affected by these Doge cuts. You had the president putting out on true social that it's obvious that this is not only because he's not on the ballot, but because of the shutdown. Is the shutdown going to end?
- [09:54]
Mel Zanona
Well, the suggestion there is that Republicans are getting the blame for the shutdown, which is something that Republicans have not admitted on Capitol Hill. So that was a really fascinating post for him. The question about the shutdown ending, I think going into tonight, we thought that by tomorrow Democrats would have a pretty good night tonight and that it would help soften the ground for them to essentially cave, come to a bipartisan deal, finally reopen the government. I think after tonight, after such big wins, we, I think progressives are going to have a lot more to say about the idea of them caving. So it actually might prevent a opening of the government, especially after they're looking.
- [10:27]
Yasmin Vasugian
At the results, because Democrats are going to say, democrats, we're doing the right thing.
- [10:30]
Mel Zanona
Yeah. The voters are behind us. Our message is breaking through. They want us to fight. Even in a place like Virginia where there are furloughed workers right now not getting paid, still voting for Democrats. And if Republicans are getting the blame, they want Trump and Republicans to come to the table, not the other way around. So that's, it's an open question of whether this is going to force an opening or prolong it even more.
- [10:48]
Yasmin Vasugian
And Steve, the spread in states like Virginia, Virginia and New Jersey speaks to Kind of the enthusiasm with the Democrats right now. Right. Because there was an expectation, if we looked at New Jersey, for instance, that if Mikey Sheryl had a smaller win, maybe four or five points, Republicans could feasibly see that as a win, that they had made gains in New Jersey, maybe New Jersey would feasibly be up for grabs in the next presidential election. But in fact, not only did that not happen, she had a pretty big spread, as did Abigail Spamberger, which is even more messaging to the Republicans.
- [11:18]
Alan Smith
Well, yeah, I mean, look, the last two elections before this in New Jersey, where Trump losing by six points last year, that was actually his second biggest improvement in any state in the country. He'd lost it by 16 points back in 2020, got it all the way down to six last year, and Cittarelli had only lost it by three points back in 2021. And what was so interesting about it was in Trump getting it to six and in Cittarelli getting it to three, they each had basically totally, not totally, but they had very different coalitions, very different strengths that allowed them to do that. And so the Cittarelli campaign was on trying to combine those two things. And what was that? Well, Cittarelli's strength in 2021 was the suburbanites, the suburbanites who the Republican Party had been losing since Donald Trump had become the nominee, the face of the party back in 2016. Chitterelli did very well with them in 2021. And the other thing that he wanted to get were the non white gains that Trump made in 2024, particularly with Hispanic voters, but also with Asian American voters. That's how Trump got it down to six points. And if you could combine those two things, you win New Jersey. So that was what Ciadorelli's campaign tried to do. And you're just looking at these results and you're seeing, well, first of all, those suburban gains that Cittarelli made now that Trump's back in the White House, I don't think a Republican's gonna be making them. He was able to make them when Trump was the ex president. And I don't think people were not sure at all he was running again in 2024. And the non white gains. Was this a Trump specific thing that happened in 2024 or was this a broader movement toward the Republican Party? Well, let's see. Here's a candidate not named Trump with no Trump on the ballot, running in the same state, in the same place, and we see a complete reversion to the pre Trump level of Republican support.
- [12:55]
Yasmin Vasugian
Go ahead.
- [12:56]
Steve Kornacki
I just wanna toss in for a second. I mean, Steve will have a better sense of this than me, but the historic nature of, you know, a statewide general election, you're a candidate like Cittarelli, you're entering election day thinking you have a chance to win. The polling's 2, 3, 4 points, and he's now gonna lose by 13 to 15 points. I mean, that's incredibly rare to see a polling miss that substantial in a statewide general election.
- [13:19]
Yasmin Vasugian
But do you think that's a polling miss, or do you think that was a judgment miss by Jack Ciadorelli and his team?
- [13:25]
Alan Smith
Democrats are surprised. I've talked to Democrats.
- [13:27]
Yasmin Vasugian
Oh, really? Democrats are surprised.
- [13:29]
Alan Smith
They're now gonna tell you we had this all along. I was talking to Democrats before this. And again, the thing you would generally hear from Democrats is she's run a terrible campaign.
- [13:39]
Yasmin Vasugian
Really?
- [13:39]
Alan Smith
Yeah. Oh, you heard this from. And they would say she's run a terrible campaign, but I think the Trump factor may be enough to save us. That's what you would hear. I think they thought. I think most Democrats I talked to, if you pushed them, thought she would win, but they thought she would underperform. And Republicans were hopeful they would win.
- [13:58]
Mel Zanona
Yeah, I mean, they were even looking at the state saying, if we have a good night tonight, Republicans in New Jersey, this might be competitive in 2028. I still think that was probably a fool's errand for them, but that's how they were thinking about New Jersey heading into tonight. And by the way, Republicans have really tried to spin this as well in Virginia. It was a bad candidate. She ran a terrible campaign. That's a lot harder to say with Cittarelli because he's someone who.
- [14:20]
Yasmin Vasugian
Endorsed by the president, was endorsed by.
- [14:22]
Mel Zanona
The president, who was up against a candidate that they thought ran a bad campaign on the Democratic side and someone who came up short very closely, though, in a past governance.
- [14:30]
Yasmin Vasugian
I mean, the president put out on true social just hours before polls closed in the state of New Jersey, that there's a big turnout in New Jersey for my guy Jack Chadrelli. And of course, I'm paraphrasing here, there's a lot of enthusiasm. Republicans are gonna take it, and that's exactly not what happened.
- [14:45]
Mel Zanona
Right.
- [14:46]
Yasmin Vasugian
So if you are. Are in the Capitol, you're a Republican, you're a Democrat, how are you seizing this moment and what are you learning from this moment? So let's start with the Dems, right? How are you seizing this moment in this momentum to take you into the midterms? What are they going to do? Especially if some of them thought the way that Steve just talked about, which is Mikey Sherro wasn't a very good candidate, but maybe we can bank on the fact that people just don't like Donald Trump.
- [15:07]
Mel Zanona
Yeah, I do think that that is probably going to be the message that Democrats take away from tonight. That being said, I think there's also a risk for, for Democrats and only running an anti Trump campaign when they won back the House in a blue wave in 2018, that was the first midterm after Trump's first election. They ran on an issue, they gave voters something to vote for that was health care. You see them trying to replicate that now with the shutdown fight. But I do think the affordability issue is something that was the through line between Mamdani, Sherrill and Spanberger. I think that'll be the big takeaway for Democrats. For Republicans, there's a split right now. Some of them see this as a five alarm fire, especially in some of these swing districts.
- [15:42]
Yasmin Vasugian
I mean, are they thinking we hug the President more or we back away?
- [15:45]
Mel Zanona
That's exactly the debate. Do we hug him more, hug him less? You had some of these Alex Bruchewitz, he's like a far right influencer, conservative online guy. He says it's the reason why Republicans had such a bad performance this night is cuz they didn't hug Trump enough. So that just really shows the split in the party right now.
- [16:03]
Steve Kornacki
And Trump's not gonna let any Republican hug him less tightly.
- [16:06]
Mel Zanona
That's the problem. Right? That is the sort of existential crisis for every Republican.
- [16:10]
Yasmin Vasugian
Can we talk California exit polling and how Governor Gavin Newsom right now in California.
- [16:15]
Alan Smith
Yeah, I mean, look, I think he's actually improved his standing, you know, in the course of this campaign. And again, I thought when this began that this might actually hurt him. I thought that it might open him up to the charge that hey, California's got all these problems and you're busy worrying about congressional maps and control of Congress. But I mean, part of this, I think one of the lessons here is the degree to which, I mean, this is nothing new, but I think it's just accelerating even and deepening even more, the nationalization of politics. I mean, we can have an election in California, California, an election in Virginia, an election in New Jersey, but national politics shape it just so much now. I mean, it's hard for me to look at all these results, we're talking about this and not see Trump as the common thread, talking about who's Gonna run Trenton, who's gonna run Richmond, whether maps are gonna be redrawn in California, even playing into this New York City race as well. So ultimately, yeah, I mean, voters are national politics minded.
- [17:09]
Yasmin Vasugian
Gavin Newsom has remade his image right on the national stage with this win in California. But also the way in which he's been communicating, I would say, over the last year through his podcast and the people that he is willing to speak to. Right. Is this now a turn to 2028?
- [17:23]
Mel Zanona
Oh, absolutely.
- [17:23]
Yasmin Vasugian
This is a moment. I mean, it already was.
- [17:25]
Mel Zanona
Yeah.
- [17:25]
Yasmin Vasugian
Let's be honest. Yeah.
- [17:27]
Mel Zanona
Well, he's not only positioned himself now very effectively as the face of the Trump opposition, he's also expanded his donor base. He has 100,000 new people who. He has their mailing list. Yeah, a mailing list, yeah. So this is definitely a turn for him where he can now say, I led this fight successfully against Trump and make a good case for 2020.
- [17:46]
Yasmin Vasugian
Is he well liked in the halls of the Capitol, Gavin Newsom?
- [17:48]
Mel Zanona
That depends. Nancy Pelosi is one of his top allies. There are some other people who he rubs sort of the wrong way, but.
- [17:56]
Yasmin Vasugian
Everyone, I can't reveal that information right.
- [17:59]
Mel Zanona
Now, but I will say he is someone that a lot of Democrats are looking more and more to, especially with that communication. What he's been doing on Twitter, for example, punching back at Trump, that is something everyone wants to see in their Democratic leadership right now.
- [18:13]
Yasmin Vasugian
How much are we gonn hear the words Zohra Mamdani, Socialist, Zohar Momdani, coming from Speaker Mike Johnson?
- [18:20]
Mel Zanona
Too many to count. If I'm going to go to the GOP leadership press conference tomorrow, I would. I'm going to bet 20 times.
- [18:25]
Yasmin Vasugian
I mean, are they going to use this between now and the midterms? Is this going to be part of their politicking?
- [18:31]
Mel Zanona
This is going to be their chief strategy, I would say. I mean, this is probably the only good thing that happened for Republicans tonight. Is Mamdani winning? They're going to try to yoke every single Democratic candidate to Mamdani. I don't know that that totally works. The NRCC did have some intern polling that shows Mamdani has an 80% name ID and that he has really low favorability. So maybe that does work, but they're certainly gonna try in the Republican Party.
- [18:56]
Yasmin Vasugian
Steve Kornacki, what is your biggest takeaway from election night as we look ahead to the midterms and beyond?
- [19:05]
Alan Smith
So we had a finding in our poll on Sunday, our NBC News poll, that I think a Lot of people I know there was a lot of skepticism about, and that is, we ask about the generic ballot. Which party do you want to see control Congress? In the 2026 Midter, we had the Democrats leading by 8 points on that. There are some other polls that have the Democrats up, but generally not by as much. One of the stories this year has been in a lot of the polling in the spring and summer, the generic ballot was staying pretty close and Republicans were taking a lot of heart from that. Because if you went back to Trump's first term early on, the generic ballot opened up in 2017, 2018 for the Democrats, and it stayed there. And there was the blue wave in the 2018 midterms. So into the fall of this year, the generic ballot was pretty tight. And Republicans were saying, see, it's gonna be different in 2026. The generic ballot is tight this time. The Democrats have this massive image problem. And we saw in our poll on Sunday that Trump's numbers had fallen, that Trump got very low marks on the economy and that Republicans and Trump were blamed more than Democrats on the government shutdown and that the generic ballot margin had opened up. When I see the results in Virginia tonight, but when I really see those results in New Jersey and in parts of New Jersey that were supposed to be politically competitive and were politically competitive in the last election, they are entirely consistent with a generic ballot that has the Democrats ahead by eight points. So I know there might be a tendency to look at this and say it's just Virginia, it's just New Jersey, and it is. I mean, caution is always warranted with these things. But these are the kinds of results, when you look inside these states to the more politically competitive sort of bellwether parts of these states that you could say there's a lot of places, a lot of swing districts next year that have these same characteristics. And I think that plus 8 Democratic lead in the generic ballot. I'd say that looks like an accurate finding right now.
- [20:55]
Yasmin Vasugian
Steve Kornacki, it's been a long one. Thank you.
- [20:59]
Alan Smith
Got it.
- [20:59]
Yasmin Vasugian
Alan Smith, thank you. Mel Zanona, thank you as well. It has been quite an election eve. We thank you all for joining us at. Here's a scoop from NBC News. We'll see you later on Today, everybody, because we're bringing you another pod dropping this afternoon. If you like what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. All right, that is going to do it for us with this special episode of here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'll see you later on today after a very quick nap.
- [21:39]
Mel Zanona
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