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- [00:01]
A
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12 month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.
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B
This morning I welcome Andrew Wilson who is the political director for the Lincoln Project and a nerdy pollster, which I love. So welcome. Thanks for being on.
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C
Good morning. Thank you for having me.
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B
Okay, so many questions about all these numbers that we're seeing. Like his approval rating is in the shitter.
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C
Yes.
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B
If you'll pop up the latest one. So overall approval 33%. Republicans inexplicably at 68%, Independent 23 and Democrats 3. Talk about these numbers and if he can rebound from these numbers, well, I'll
- [01:22]
C
tell you right off the bat, he cannot rebound from this. I can't think of a good example of a president rebounding from this kind of polling ebb. I've never seen it. But you know what you pointed out, Republicans especially, so they're at 6830 something approval. So it's interesting because for a very long time Donald Trump has had this rock solid hold on Republican voters. And you're not seeing Magaz drop off, you are seeing Magas. They are, they are a slightly smaller share of the Republican Party than they were in March. But you're seeing these non maga Republicans really turning on Trump. And it comes down to the economy and Iran. It's pretty much that simple. And we'll keep seeing them fall off. Right. They're not excited about anything that he's doing. They think he's distracted with the DC projects and the war in Iran, the ballroom. And so you saw independence on there. That is a devastating number for any candidate. If you're looking at 70 plus percent disapproval on any issue, on any candidate, you're screwed. With independence. He if you look at the whole matrix of issues with independence, it's 2 to 1 against on almost every single thing. And that was a huge part of his 2024 coalition. That's just gone now.
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B
And they were, people came out to vote for Trump that normally didn't come out to vote. And I've seen where the enthusiasm to go out to vote is much higher on the Democratic side. Are you tracking that?
- [02:57]
C
Yes, I am tracking that. In fact, I think that's probably the most important metric that we're seeing right now. We're seeing these generic ballot numbers, which is when a pollster asks, are you going to vote for Republicans or Democrats sort of generically in November of 2026? And that has Democrats at about plus six in a lot of these aggregators. But I don't think that really captures how well Democrats are going to perform. I think enthusiasm is a much better metric. And you can see that play out in Texas. For example, James Talarico is leading John Cornyn and and Ken Paxton in a potential matchup. And that comes down to the fact that Republicans are demoralized across the board. They feel terrible. They don't want to get out and vote maga. Republicans were never really going to go out and vote in mass numbers because Trump's not on the ballot. That's really important to them. So Democrats just have a massive enthusiasm lead now. Could they blow it? Could the leadership really stomp on it? They could absolutely blow it. And I don't want to make it sound like just because Republicans are in a really terrible position that Democrats are suddenly going to be winning all these elections. They really do have to play up the messaging on the economy. But enthusiasm is really on our side this time, I can tell you. You know, a lot of these people you talked about who came over to vote for Trump, who normally vote, were voting with their wallets. They were thinking about inflation, they were thinking about the economy. And now they've seen what Trump has done and it's completely reverse course, which
- [04:32]
B
is music to my ears. Okay, Kylie, I know this is out of order, but pop up the James Talarico, because here's the thing in Texas, I watch Texas because I live in Oklahoma, but when I saw this, the hypothet numbers that he is leading Corbyn by seven and Paxton by eight, I was stunned by that.
- [04:54]
C
I'm also stunned by this. This is Texas. For just so everyone remembers, they keep
- [04:58]
B
putting Ted Cruz in office. You cannot trust these people.
- [05:02]
C
Yes. And you know, this is, this is one of the things that we've seen throughout this year, especially in Texas, is a lot of those Hispanic voters who came over to Trump. We were seeing last summer that they were already falling off in significant numbers from Republicans. And so one interesting thing that We've been looking at a lot is the redistricting in Texas. It's predicated on the idea that Republicans can hit the same number that Trump got in 2024 with Hispanic voters. All the polls say that's not possible. So what they've produced is another dummy mander that actually might make it easier for Democrats to hold onto and pick up seats in Texas.
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B
Um, okay. I keep seeing this a lot with this gerrymandering that they're going to pick up all these seats. And then I will see different things that say, well, actually they're not going to pick up the seats that they thought they would, that these districts, they're redistricting, trying to get out the Democratic lean, but it's turning out through polling. There's. The Democrats are still going to lead. Is that what you're seeing?
- [06:10]
C
Yeah. Florida is a great example of this, and there's a few reasons why. One is like, they've already gerrymandered the hell out of a lot of these. These states.
- [06:19]
B
Yeah.
- [06:20]
C
And you, you can't necessarily squeeze them too hard. And what happens, especially in Florida, is you have these districts that are, have really strong Republican leans, but in order to make another Republican district, you have to take some of that constituency away.
- [06:34]
B
Okay.
- [06:35]
C
So the, the Republican liens in these districts become smaller and smaller, which it might create more Republican districts, but it does create more pickup opportunities for Democrats, too. And if you look at races like the Miami mayoral race, if you look at these special elections that we had in April, the idea that Republicans are going to defend themselves only by gerrymandering, I don't think it's going to work out. And you can see in the polling, again, just when you lose that number of independence, you lose the sort of protective floor that you had to do these sort of dummy manders just, it comes back to bite you on the ass. And I think we're all blessed by the incompetence of the Republican Party in many ways. And Trump, if they were, if they were a slightly more evil and more competent party, I think we'd be in a lot more trouble.
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B
Which JD Vance is more evil and more competent.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Terrifying.
- [07:33]
C
It is terrifying. But, you know, I think the polling tells us something interesting, interesting about that. And there's some sort of cultural anecdotes here, too. I think with Trump's approval, where it is, where it's going, and we've thought for a long time that he had a floor and now he's below that floor in his polling with where it's going. He's not a kingmaker anymore. He can't influence the future of Republican politics in 2028 like he wants to, I don't think. And you see that with somebody like Tucker Carlson, he cynically believes that Trump has no more to give to the right wing movement in the US which is probably true, and that's why he's tossing him aside. It has nothing to do with some principled anti war position. It's all a cynical play. And I believe it's about J.D. vance or Marco Rubio. But yeah, J.D. vance is scary and evil, but he is gonna have to live with Trump's economic record, which the polling tells us is just nobody likes it.
- [08:32]
B
Well, and Trump fucks him over every single day, putting him in charge of fraud. Like, come on. Okay, Kylie, pop up the clip with the betting markets about the future 2028 candidate. It's number four. Okay, so here's the thing which I don't give Kelsey a ton of, but it's where people's heads are.
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C
Sure.
- [08:55]
B
Okay. J.D. vance, 37%, Marco Rubio, 25, Tucker Carlson, 7, Donald Trump Jr. 5 and Ron DeSantis, 4. I would hang my head down in shame and never come out of the fetal position if Don Jr. Was pulling ahead of me in any metric. That is so fucking embarrassing for Ronald DeSantis.
- [09:21]
C
Oh, well, it's, it's embarrassing, but boy, has he dealt with a lot of embarrassment in the last few years. I mean, if you remember his Republican, Republican, his bid for the Republican candidacy was awful. Just blunder after blunder. And of course, I think he's going to run again. I think he'll make another pass at it. Lord knows where he'll get the money. But, you know, Don Jr. He could run. He really could. He could probably energize the MAGA base, I think. I think the one thing that's interesting is, you know, he's Trump's losing non MAGA Republicans. And yeah, the share of MAGA Republicans has gone down, but he still has a very high approval rating with Magas and they're still out there, although he's just facing like a historical problem where the base of MAGA is just getting older and older and it's slowly dying off. And we all talked about that in 2016. You know, eventually this, this coalition will die off and it's happening now.
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B
But
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C
poor Ron DeSantis. I mean, you almost feel bad for
- [10:19]
B
the guy, but it's kind of impossible to pull back from him. I mean, he's Just so repulsive. Okay, that's an interesting point because I wor. And we've talked about it a lot on this podcast, that the growing number of young people that are Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate brothers. I mean, they're all in white supremacy, homophobic misogyny, like, they are the absolute worst bigots on the planet. So if you have the old MAGA dying off, this seems to be a pretty robust group. Are you seeing any numbers on that?
- [10:59]
C
Not necessarily. I do see why it's part of the conversation, and it does make sense. It's not a high propensity voting group, so if they don't feel enthusiastic about voting for somebody, they won't come out and vote. I don't think a lot of these young men, the Nick Fuentes types, are excited about J.D. vance, unfortunately. I have seen some Nick Fuentes lately and he does not like J.D. vance. He calls him a fatty and all this, et cetera, whatever racialized comments about his wife and all this stuff. That's. Yeah, but you know, that's how the, that's how that movement operates. And I, I, it is a scary prospect because like I said with Tucker, it's a cynical play at these, at these particular kind of voters. They're young men, they consider themselves independent, they consider themselves anti war, they consider themselves anti Israel. And a lot of these Republican candidates and Republican influencers are seeing that and they're taking advantage of it in a way that Democrats aren't necessarily able to do because we're having this conversation about Hasan Piker on this side. So, you know, there's, they're not necessarily capitalizing on it, and they're letting, they're letting some of these influencers and Republicans and conservatives run away with it in a dangerous way because they're obviously going to steer it into real anti Semitism and the scary Hitlerite shit that they do all the time. But, you know, this is another area where Democrats really need to step up and start talking about this in a substantial way, especially leadership.
- [12:27]
B
It's just unbelievable that they don't. And when you take like a snippet of a Candace Owens or a Tucker Carlson Nick Fuentes, they make sense in that moment. You don't. If you just clip it, which people on social media, that's all they see is the 32nd where they make absolute sense. And when they're outpacing Republicans, especially leadership in messaging, like, you suck at messaging. Yeah. You know, there's just no two ways about it. Okay. And here's something I've been fascinated by since day one when Trump's approval rating started to really go down.
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C
Sure.
- [13:02]
B
These Republicans that have put up zero fight for to him, they are now facing elections themselves. Are they ever going to cut bait with this?
- [13:18]
C
Well, I, actually, some of them have cut bait. Some of them have kept it and run. There are more than 30. I think we're approaching 40 Republican Congress Congressmen who are either not running or resigning.
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B
Oh, right.
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C
Not seeking reelection.
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B
Cowards. They say we're not doing it, they'll just slink off.
- [13:36]
C
Well, they're scared they're going to blow all their cash and never have another chance to run again. And if I'm a Republican consultant, I might say, keep your powder dry and don't spend your money on this election because you're going to get blown out. The Republicans, the party in general, the base of the party who have gone along with all this, I just don't see the moral hangover coming. Instead, I think a lot of them are just going to start ignoring news like they did before. During COVID It was a lot of the, you shut your ears to whatever you don't want to hear. And a lot of Republicans, I don't have the number right here, but there was a recent poll that found that a lot of Republicans find themselves ignoring news specifically about Trump. And that's what you'll, that's what you'll get. You know, the more they disapprove of Trump, the less they'll pay attention and the less likely they are to vote. So it's a bad recipe. If you're running for office as a Republican, you have no good options.
- [14:39]
B
Well, it's funny because I keep reading these articles that Susie Wiles is so mad because she wanted Trump to campaign for the midterms and give the economic message, and I'm like, are you fucking kidding?
- [14:52]
C
That's all an astroturf. You know, the, the, the. We heard this in 2018, right, that Republicans were going to run on the platform, they were going to avoid Trump, and that's their, that was going to be their winning strategy. They said the same thing a few months ago, that they were going to avoid Trump and that, you know, they were just going to talk about the Republican Party platform, which, you know, I'm sure it's just wildly exciting for voters, but that doesn't work. You can't do that with Donald Trump. He is at the center of the party at all times. You know, Republican politics is all about making Donald Trump happy. It's all about, you know, kowtowing to him on every issue. And you know, the ads sort of write themselves for Democrats, right? Like we are looking at these 26 races that we're targeting. But just Eli Crane, for example, he's a Republican in Arizona. His district has a lot of ranching and logging and agricultural farming, stuff like that. A lot of those people are getting screwed because of the tariffs. He didn't do anything about that. And for a Democrat running against him, it's an easy layup. All you have to say is you're getting screwed because this guy didn't do anything about it. And I think a lot of Republicans see that. They see that they're going to get blown out and that's why they're dropping like flies out of these elections. That's why they're looking at the same polls we are. They see the same numbers and they're terrified.
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B
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- [18:09]
C
I wish I could say that's true. I wish I could say he could get beat. He has a. He's like Ted Cruz. He's got this power over these people and there's a major incumbency bonus that you get for being in office for that long. And he's got, he's got money. He's got the Republican Party relatively behind him. But there is a world where some of these districts that look really safe For Republicans, these R +10 districts where Republicans have been holding the district since 1996, there's a world where we see some major upsets, some big surprises across the board. And there was, I think Ken Griffin or Citadel CEO, came out the other day and said Democrats are almost certainly going to win the House. And I was thinking, wow, that's such a profound insight. Wow. So intelligent. I think the reality, you know, I think what's really going to happen is Democrats are going to bring the Senate much closer. I think that is what we're looking at. I think it's, you know, Lindsey Graham maybe.
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B
Do you think Platner will knock out Susan Collins?
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C
Yes, yes, absolutely. I am. I'm very confident that Grant Platner is going to win that race. You know, Mills dropping out was good for him, good for the party. You know, Mainers love him. If you look at the polls, you know, Mills wasn't unpopular. She was a popular governor, but she was over 80. And that's a big problem for a lot of voters these days. You know, Collins is extremely vulnerable. And Republicans are going to have to start triaging with cash because so many of these races are at risk. And, you know, Collins may not get enough money to stay competitive.
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B
Really?
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C
Yeah. Well, I mean, she'll get a lot of cash and Republicans are, of course, very flush with cash, but, you know, the spend is going to have to be much, much higher across the board because they are playing defense on so many more seats.
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B
Do you think that'll come into, come into the conversation in Texas with Pat? Yes. Okay.
- [20:20]
C
Yes, absolutely. You know, it really depends on how the primary shakes out. But look, with Tal Rico ahead at this point in the polling is astonishing in Texas. And he's not ahead by. He's outside the margin of error. So all these polls have, you know, 2.5 to 3.5 margin of error. Usually, you know, he's up 7 on, on Paxton. That's outside the margin of error. So that means that even if the poll was, you know, off by three or four points, he's still ahead by a winning margin. So that it's hard to understate how wild that is in Texas. And of course, he's doing amazing with small dollar donors right now. I don't have his FEC sheet pulled up right now, but he is doing really well. And when you have to play defense in an election, you have to triage. And they have a huge war chest. Republicans have a massive amount of money, but what they see in the polls is national widespread, deep discontent across every major metric, across all the important demographics. For them, especially independent voters, that is going to be their Achilles heel. When the sitting president is when it's three to one against the sitting president in approval among independents, the alarm bells could not possibly be louder.
- [21:49]
B
And I love that for them, all of them. All right, Andrew, thank you. This was fascinating. I'm going to stay in tune with all this. I'm going to keep watching. And I'd love to have you back on closer midterms.
- [22:00]
C
Yes, of course. Thank you so much for having me.
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B
Thanks for being on.