A Pollster Helps Us Manage Our Election Anxiety

Summary

Podcast Summary: Matter of Opinion – "A Pollster Helps Us Manage Our Election Anxiety"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Matter of Opinion
• Host/Author: New York Times Opinion
• Description: Thoughts, aloud. Hosted by Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, and Carlos Lozada. Every Friday, from New York Times Opinion.
• Episode: A Pollster Helps Us Manage Our Election Anxiety
• Release Date: October 18, 2024

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Introduction

As the 2024 U.S. election approaches, the episode titled "A Pollster Helps Us Manage Our Election Anxiety" delves into the complexities and uncertainties surrounding election polling. Hosts Ross Douthat, Michelle Cottle, and Carlos Lozada engage in a comprehensive discussion with Kristin Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and contributing writer to New York Times Opinion, to unravel the intricacies of polling data and its implications for the upcoming election.

Current Polling Landscape

Ross Douthat sets the stage by highlighting the precarious state of the current polls. The New York Times polling average, considered a gold standard, indicates a near tie between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump across seven key battleground states. This tight race has remained largely unchanged for weeks, leading to widespread skepticism about poll accuracy.

Ross Douthat [00:57]: "The New York Times polling average... shows Kamala Harris and Donald Trump essentially tied across seven key battleground states."

Understanding Polling: What Polls Can and Cannot Do

Kristin Soltis Anderson clarifies the fundamental purpose and limitations of polls. She emphasizes that polls are not precise predictors but tools to gauge public sentiment and underlying trends.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [04:24]: "A poll is to prediction as your bathroom scale would be to measuring ingredients for a baking recipe... it is not built to be precise enough to tell you that you have exactly the right number of grams of flour."

Anderson explains the significance of the margin of error, typically around ±3.4%, which applies to each individual number within a poll. This margin can lead to substantial variation in results, making definitive predictions unreliable.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [06:17]: "The margin of error applies to each individual number in the poll. So... it could be 49 to 43."

Historical Polling Errors: Lessons from 2016 and 2020

The conversation shifts to the historical inaccuracies of polls, particularly in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Anderson outlines the reasons behind these missteps, such as undercounting specific voter demographics and the unforeseen impact of external factors like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [16:58]: "Luckily, making any kind of prediction... it would be irresponsible."

She details how in 2016, polls failed to account for voters without college degrees—a demographic that significantly supported Trump. In 2020, despite improvements in polling methods, unexpected variables introduced by the pandemic continued to skew results.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [18:29]: "The report came away with a handful of potential reasons why the polls were wrong, but no conclusive single one answer."

The Stability and Closeness of 2024 Polls

Anderson discusses the unprecedented stability and closeness of the current 2024 polling landscape. Unlike previous elections where polling averages fluctuated more noticeably in the final months, the 2024 polls have remained remarkably steady.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [12:43]: "What I did was I looked at all the polling averages, national polls... and what you find is that in the last two months of most elections... the polls move a fair amount."

The minimal movement in the latest polling averages underscores the tension and anxiety among voters, making it challenging to anticipate the election outcome.

Focus Group Insights

Focus groups serve as a crucial complement to quantitative polling by providing qualitative insights into voter behavior and sentiment. Anderson shares anecdotes from recent focus groups that reveal the nuanced motivations behind voters' choices.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [32:52]: "When someone is wondering, how could someone possibly be undecided... talking to someone in a focus group can help unpack that a little."

One notable example involves a 60-year-old voter, Kay, who feels compelled to vote for Harris not out of enthusiasm but to avoid inadvertently supporting Trump.

Kay [32:52]: "I can't do that. I think he's an embarrassment. So I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris, but I'm not going to like it... there's going to be wine involved afterwards."

Another focus group revealed voters who dislike Trump personally but still support him politically, highlighting the complex interplay between personal feelings and political decisions.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [34:25]: "If I go to the doctor, I don't care what my doctor's bedside manner is. I just care if he is good at doing the surgery that I need to keep me alive."

Changing Electorate and Younger Voters

The discussion transitions to the evolving electorate, particularly the growing influence of younger voters, often referred to as "Zoomers" (Generation Z). Anderson explores the factors driving support for Trump among younger demographics, contrasting it with past generations.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [29:24]: "A big one is foreign policy... his message of we're gonna focus on the problems here at home... has resonance with a younger generation."

She attributes this support to a shift in priorities, where younger voters are more concerned with domestic issues and skeptical of America's role in global affairs. Trump's disruptive approach appeals to those who perceive the future pessimistically and seek change.

Trust in Polls and Future Implications

Anderson expresses concern over the declining trust in polls, particularly if significant deviations from polling averages occur. She warns of a "polling trust doom loop," where skepticism leads to disengagement, further reducing polling accuracy.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [35:12]: "What worries me... is when suddenly it becomes the polls are wrong intentionally and you get into conspiracy theory territory."

This erosion of trust not only undermines the polling industry but also impacts public faith in data science and expertise, posing broader challenges for democratic processes.

Conclusion

The episode concludes with Anderson advocating for a balanced understanding of polls, recognizing their limitations while appreciating their value in uncovering deeper voter insights. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining trust in polling methodologies to avoid exacerbating election anxieties and ensuring accurate reflection of voter intentions.

Kristin Soltis Anderson [36:03]: "I would be perfectly happy if... people walked away with a healthier and more skeptical take on what they can learn about the future from a poll conducted in the present."

Hosts Ross Douthat, Michelle Cottle, and Carlos Lozada thank Anderson for her insights, underscoring the episode's central theme: navigating election anxiety through informed interpretation of polling data.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Ross Douthat [00:57]: "The New York Times polling average... shows Kamala Harris and Donald Trump essentially tied across seven key battleground states."
• Kristin Soltis Anderson [04:24]: "A poll is to prediction as your bathroom scale would be to measuring ingredients for a baking recipe..."
• Kristin Soltis Anderson [12:43]: "What I did was I looked at all the polling averages... in most elections... the polls move a fair amount."
• Kristin Soltis Anderson [32:52]: "When someone is wondering, how could someone possibly be undecided... talking to someone in a focus group can help unpack that a little."
• Kristin Soltis Anderson [29:24]: "A big one is foreign policy... his message of we're gonna focus on the problems here at home... has resonance with a younger generation."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the episode, providing listeners with a clear understanding of the challenges and nuances of election polling as the 2024 U.S. election approaches.

Transcript

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Ross Douthat]

And that's how you ended up with the focus group of conflicted conservative New York Times.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Columnists who the last truly undecided voters in America. The call is coming from inside the house.

[Ross Douthat]

That's right. It's just gonna be me and Bret Stephens in your next focus group doing extensive therapy together.

[Michelle Cottle]

Oh, I'd pay to watch that. I'd so pay to watch that.

[Ross Douthat]

From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat.

[Michelle Cottle]

I'm Michelle Cottle.

[Carlos Lozada]

I'm Carlos Lozada.

[Ross Douthat]

And this is matter of of opinion. We are less than a month away from the 2024 election and through all the chaos, all the drama, all the excitement, the polls have been there to scare us, comfort us, infuriate us, or simply leave us totally baffled about what's actually going on right now. The New York Times polling average, the most trustworthy of all polling aver, shows the gold standard. Why the laughter? We set the bar high. It shows Kamala Harris and Donald Trump essentially tied across seven key battleground states. And that's remained basically unchanged for weeks. So it's a toss up. Or maybe it's not because a lot of people on both sides don't trust the polls, even the polling averages, even the New York Times polling average. Because I know. Because they've been wrong before, maybe especially in elections where Trump is on the ballot. So we wanted some help interpreting the numbers and whatever story they're telling us about voters. What's different from 2016 and 2020? What happens if the polls really get it wrong or if they get it right? So to help with all that, we've invited Kristin Soltis Anderson to join us. Hi, Kristen.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Hello, Ross.

[Michelle Cottle]

Thank you for helping us.

[Ross Douthat]

Yes. So, Kristen, her qualifications for helping us are that we pulled her randomly off a street corner and. No, she is a Republic polster. She's a contributing writer to New York Times Opinion and she also moderates New York Times focus groups. Some of the best focus groups in these.

[Michelle Cottle]

These are what melt my butter.

[Carlos Lozada]

They're super focused.

[Ross Douthat]

Okay. But first we're going to start. We brought you in, Kristen Just to tell us who's going to win. Go.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

I have an extremely satisfying answer for you, which is that you should prepare yourself for a wide range of outcomes. Anything is possible.

[Carlos Lozada]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Jill Stein, aren't there only two outcomes? What's the wide range?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

A wide range of outcomes is that we could conclusively know on Wednesday morning that Donald Trump has been elected. We could know conclusively on Wednesday morning that Kamala Harris has been elected, or we could not know for weeks.

[Michelle Cottle]

Yeah, I'm going with option C because that's just how my life is this year.

[Carlos Lozada]

I'm just saying, which of those outcomes do you find most likely? Kristen?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

I know that's a very fancy way to try to push me into a prediction. I honestly think that at this point, making any kind of prediction, even one that is a not so firm prediction, almost feels irresponsible. Because knowing what I know about how precise polls aren't, seeing how close they are, even if you assume that they are absolutely on the money, it would be irresponsible to make a prediction. And that's to say nothing of the very real possibility of some kind of systematic polling error, which could happen in either direction. So that is why I am deeply reluctant to do anything close to giving a prediction.

[Michelle Cottle]

Okay, that brings me to a very big question I had for you, which is, what do people misunderstand about what polling can and cannot do?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Well, so the analogy that I have been using is that a poll is to prediction as your bathroom scale would be to measuring ingredients for a baking recipe. Like, you just, you wouldn't really do it. And it doesn't mean that your bathroom scale is wrong. It doesn't mean that it is inaccurate. It means that it is not built to be precise enough to tell you that you have exactly the right number of grams of flour. And so if you use your bathroom scale instead of a kitchen scale, you are going to get some kind of baking monstrosity that comes out of your oven. That is not correct.

[Ross Douthat]

Wait, so just, just, just to be clear on the metaphor, in this metaphor, you are, you are weighing the ingredients themselves on the scale. You're not putting your body on the scale and trying to figure out. No, that was what.

[Michelle Cottle]

I roll with the metaphor.

[Ross Douthat]

I just want to understand.

[Carlos Lozada]

I thought she was going a different direction too. Like putting your body on the scale today to predict how much you're going to weigh in November.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

How often do any of you bake? Question before I go any further, because this could explain a lot of This I grill.

[Ross Douthat]

I grill.

[Michelle Cottle]

That is not the same thing at all.

[Ross Douthat]

Okay, so the kitchen scale gives you precision.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Yes. And so your bathroom scale may be accurate. It just isn't built to do certain levels of very precise measurement. It just isn't. And so for a poll even well conducted, you will have a margin of error of + or -3.4% for some of these statewide polls. And what a lot of people don't understand about that is that the margin of error applies to each individual number in the poll. So let's say that I have the new Michigan poll that came out that showed Harris 46, Trump 46. The margin of error of plus or minus 3 or 4 points applies to both of those numbers.

[Carlos Lozada]

So it could be 49 to 43.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Look at that mass at the 95% confidence interval, which I won't, like, go bore everybody too, too, too deep with.

[Carlos Lozada]

That's not boring. That's why you're here. That's fine.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

The idea is just that this is just how statistics work. And so when a poll goes from, hey, last month you had Harris up by two. Now you have Harris up by three. A lot of times someone like me will get asked what has caused her surge in the polls. And I'm like, it could. It could honestly just be complete randomness.

[Ross Douthat]

Okay, but wait a minute, Kristen. This is all very persuasive and convincing, but isn't this why we have the magic of poll averaging? Right. Isn't this. Wasn't poll averaging the genius invention of Real Clear Politics or Nate Silver or whoever you want to give credit for, wasn't supposed to at least minimize this margin of error problem a little bit?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Yes, it is supposed to minimize the risk that you are drawing big conclusions based on one data point that could be an outlier. So polling averages are intended to keep those from driving our understanding of what's going on in the race too aggressively. So whenever a poll comes out that looks very strange, that's why you can always say, keep calm and throw it in the average. Don't let any one individual poll determine your mental or emotional state. That. Just accept that sometimes weird polls happen.

[Ross Douthat]

Unless it's a New York Times Sienna poll, in which case, no.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

In Nate Cohen, we trust. I really do. I'm not just saying that because I'm now a part of the Times family, but I really do think that the Times Sienna polling partnership is really exceptional. And I like that they are willing to put out numbers that sometimes bounce around a lot. I think it causes a lot of people Real heartburn. But in the real world, this is, this is how polling works. It's also important to remember that the vast majority of polling done by someone like me, who is a professional in the field is not intended for public consumption to help people predict elections. To the extent that it is polling done for political purposes at all, it's usually to help a campaign or a client figure out how to change that number. What groups would you need to speak to? What messages would you need to drive in order to make your three point deficit turn into a three point advantage? And that's, I think, another thing people really miss when they say, well, political polling is all broken. A lot of it is happening out of the sight of the public and for purposes that have nothing to do with predicting how an election will go.

[Ross Douthat]

All right, so I want to. I want to get to just one.

[Carlos Lozada]

Tiny thing about the polling averages. Ross, may I?

[Ross Douthat]

You may. You may. Yes.

[Carlos Lozada]

So you know, when you hear the term polling average, it has this sense of authority because it says it's not just a single one. We're taking in, you know, all these different polls. And this should give you, like a better sense of what is actually going on. And when I look at the lists of the polls that are included in the average, not being a professional myself, like, I have no idea what some of these things are, who these places are, who these people are, I've never heard of some of them. And they're there in the average. Right. Like, how many of the polls in these big averages do you actually trust in terms of their approaches and their methods?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

So I try not to be too biased against a pollster that I've never heard of, so long as they are very transparent about their methods. And that is not always a given. And usually for many of these polling aggregators, they are not counting each poll equally. They know not all polls are created equal. And so a very.

[Carlos Lozada]

It's not a simple average. It's like it's a weighted average.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

It's not a simple average. It is usually a weighted average. And this is where things get really complicated. Every pollster has their own unique approach to how they do survey research. So a reminder that this is in some ways as much an art as it is a science. And then you have these aggregators where each aggregator has different assumptions about which polls they trust and don't trust. So a 538 is going to give different weight to different polls than Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin. Then the Times polling average, then Real Clear Politics. So even within that, there are these different averages, and they look different because they are counting each poll as having slightly more or less weight, depending on what the average baker believes.

[Carlos Lozada]

Okay, that. I know that seemed kind of technical, but that really helped me. Thank you.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Okay, wonderful. I live to serve.

[Michelle Cottle]

And for the poll geeks out there, Carlos, you should know that there are people who actually rate the pollsters.

[Ross Douthat]

But who rates.

[Carlos Lozada]

Yeah, but who rates the Raiders?

[Ross Douthat]

That's right. Jinx.

[Michelle Cottle]

You guys are so dorky.

[Ross Douthat]

I swear we are. All right, so, Kristen, but you've been making a very powerful case for a certain degree of, you know, basic humility, agnosticism, all of these things around polling. But I'm just curious, how unusual do you think it is to have an election that is this close?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

So there are two things that make this election unusual, and it is both the closeness of the election and the unbelievable stability of the polling averages. So as a thought experiment, last week I went back and I looked at the Real Clear Politics polling averages going back to the 2008 election. Because many of the other sites have not been around that long. Real Clear Politics has been around since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. I tried to get their 2004 averages, but I couldn't get it to display properly on my computer. Like, the Internet doesn't work the same as it did in 2004, I guess. But what I did was I looked at all of the polling averages, national polls, from Labor Day on. So the final two months of the election, and what you find is that in the last two months of most of the elections of the last 20 years, the polls move a fair amount. In the McCain Obama race, I believe they range anywhere from McCain being up by 3 to Obama being up by 7.

[Carlos Lozada]

Wow.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

In the Obama Romney race, the movement is a little less aggressive, but still they swing like a six point range. In 2016, the polls also had about a five or six point range showing Hillary Clinton either up by one or up by, I think, six or seven. And even last time around, they still had about a four point range of movement in the final two months. And so then I looked at this month and I looked at all the polls that have been done since Labor Day, and the movement was something like Kamala Harris plus 1.4 to Kamala Harris plus 2.2, like less than a full percentage point of movement from her best to her worst in the polling averages. So that, to me, is the feature of the polling in this election that is the most astonishing, both the closeness and the stability.

[Carlos Lozada]

You know, I Have to admit, I follow the college football polls more closely than I follow the presidential election polls. And that's because the college football polls change from time to time. Someone wins, someone loses, and it's different. Right. You know, it's Texas or it's Bama or it's somebody else on top. It took one party actually dumping its candidate to change the makeup of this race according to the poll. So I feel like I've internalized the fact that this is a coin flip election, that it's an incredibly stable polling environment. And so I have a hard time, like, focusing too much on the polls for precisely the reason you outlined, Kristen, that they're just. It's just this extraordinary stability.

[Michelle Cottle]

Okay, so if we know what they don't do, well, what should we be looking to polls for? Tell us.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

What I think polls are useful for is telling us the story underneath the surface. So what are the issues that people say matter to them? What are the attributes that they think Donald Trump has over Kamala Harris or that Kamala Harris has over Donald Trump? I do think it's really interesting that the polls have consistently shown Donald Trump overperforming expectations among black men. And I think it's really interesting that the polls are consistently showing Kamala Harris kind of overperforming expectations among senior women. It's less the prediction, like I've described election polling that intends to try to predict as like going up to the Christmas tree and shaking the presents on Christmas Eve to figure out what's inside. Like, do I get Bob Casey or do I get Dave McCormick, like, what's in the Pennsylvania Senate box? On the other hand, I like understanding what's going on in America through the other questions we ask in a poll. Like, I think it's really interesting that when you ask voters, do you approve or disapprove of the Joe Biden is doing as president? And then in the same poll you ask, did you approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump did as president? What interests me is that there's a difference between people who approve of Biden and people who remember approving of Trump. And that benefits him. That makes people think more fondly of him. That's why this race is so competitive. Those are the kinds of things I look for in polls that make me think they have real value.

[Ross Douthat]

So. So conceding that that is important and valuable, I want to pull us back to the Christmas tree box shaking because, well, I think that who can resist that? But I think that many people's experience of both 2016 and 2020 was just a sense that the polls just did not adequately capture Donald Trump's support. I remember going into 2020, it seemed reasonable to expect close to a Joe Biden landslide. And obviously we got a much narrower election with substantial polling misses, including since we're praising ourselves here at the times all the time in this episode, including by our own times, Sienna polling. So I just want Chris and you to talk about those errors in particular, because I know that pollsters take them very seriously. But, but what is your quick theory of what went wrong in 2020 or 2016 if you had to, you know, explain in the simplest terms why you think polling missed Trump supporters in those elections?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Sure. So I know you said quick, but I'll be a little less than quick to give a little bit of the history, just a little bit of background of polling error over the last few elections. So 2012 was an election where the polls missed by overestimating Republicans. They did so for a number of reasons. In part, missing late movement in the polls, missing unlikely voters, and doing that in part by not calling enough people on cell phones. So polls were very heavily done by landline phone back then. Younger people, voters of color, unlikely voters, were more likely to use cell phones. There you go. So pollsters fix that problem and they get to 2016 and they go, great, we fixed the last problem. And then the 2016 election happens and the post mortem finds that reason the polls were wrong is they were systematically undercounting voters without college degrees, which had been a variable that was not really important in elections past, but had become quite important with Donald Trump on the ballot. So then we get to 2020 and pollsters go, okay, we fixed it, we're waiting on education. We're making sure we have enough of those non college educated voters in our poll. And still, as you noted, they were wrong. And so the industry are APOR is the big association for pollsters. They put together a big commission and they did a big. And the report came away with a handful of potential reasons why the polls were wrong, but no conclusive single one answer. It ranged from things like Covid made stuff weird to Covid, we're still Covid.

[Carlos Lozada]

I'm sure, did make stuff worse and.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Covid did make stuff weird, let's be clear.

[Ross Douthat]

But the COVID theory, right, as I understood it, was that during COVID liberals were more likely to be home because they were more likely to be following lockdown procedures and social distancing. Right? And so they were more likely to answer the phone, or at least that was one. That was literally one theory, right? That summer 2020, liberals were sitting home wearing three masks and ready and willing to answer the phone. And conservatives were out at Disney World, which. This is an exaggeration, right, but that's the theory I've heard.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

So that's one way to describe a piece of the COVID made things weird umbrella theory. I think it was really hard for pollsters to make assumptions about what turnout would look like. And as cliche as it is to say it all comes down to turnout. And when you have a once in a lifetime global pandemic, it was hard for pollsters.

[Ross Douthat]

We had to get that quote.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

We had to.

[Ross Douthat]

We had to get that quote at some point in the episode.

[Carlos Lozada]

Kristen, on one question about it, if pollsters are always kind of looking at what just happened, right, and seeing kind of what they got wrong or maybe what they under overestimated, is there a problem of like, if you're always sort of compensating for past errors, that you're always kind of fighting the last war when in fact the electorate shifts, you know, from, in its habits and its motives, you know, from election to election.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

So it's good to fix the things that were wrong last time because those things will probably stay problems moving forward, but it doesn't mean you've solved the problem fully. And that's why I remain so worried about this here, because the conclusion coming out of 2020 didn't give pollsters a ton that was really concrete they could do to fix what went wrong. I mean, something that was, in my view, pretty strange about the polls in 2020 is you would have demographically similar states that were geographically adjacent where the polls were not off in the same direction by the same magnitude. So I think, for instance, in Georgia, the polls were actually pretty good, but in Florida, the polls were way off. In Arizona, the polls were pretty good. But in Texas, the polls had been saying, hey, you know, buy it. Maybe Biden will win Texas. Spoiler alert. Biden did not win Texas.

[Carlos Lozada]

It's the white whale.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

And so that, to me was the thing that was more worrisome is that in the past you've had these clear patterns for what went wrong and what needs to be fixed. And I think coming out of 2020, it was a little bit of a. Well, that was strange, wasn't it? Maybe it'll go back to being better when there's not a massive global respiratory pandemic. And you know, for a firm like mine, we've tried doing Things like this waiting to past vote history. But you do see things in the data that, look, you know, you could be a pollster who looks at your data and says, you know, I don't know that I buy that senior women are breaking for Harris by this much, or I don't know that I buy that young men are breaking for Donald Trump by this much. But anything you do to try to correct for that is just you introducing your own assumptions into the poll. And so that's the other worry pollsters have, is you can be very sophisticated about how you noodle with things, but every time you're noodling with things, are you breaking something else somewhere else in your poll?

[Ross Douthat]

Let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to get a little bigger picture and talk about how the electorate is changing overall in 2024 and beyond.

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[Michelle Cottle]

Okay, so predictions give me a complete nosebleed. It feels like we're running polls constantly, nonstop. So what is it that you are gleaning from all of this? Give me the top line story.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

I like the way you frame this. The top line story. It sounds less like you're holding me to it than a prediction.

[Carlos Lozada]

Less dangerous.

[Michelle Cottle]

Yeah. I don't need you to tell me who's going to win. Like, I'm cool waiting, but what is it that you're seeing?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

I think that this is going to be an election where the gender gap really is the story afterwards. Because for all that we talk about how polarized things are, you know, we can think about polarization in a number of ways, generational polarization, racial polarization. And yet, ironically, young Americans and old Americans may not vote as differently as they have in the past. White Americans and Americans from communities of color may not vote as differently as they have in the past. But underlying that will be that white men and white women vote differently, that young men and young women vote differently, that black men and black women vote very differently and more differently than they have in the past. And so that to me is likely to be a storyline in some way, shape or form. Now, if Harris wins, it will wind up spawning a million think pieces about how Donald Trump leaned into too much macho man, whatever. And a majority of voters are women. And that was mathematically dumb. If Don Donald Trump wins, there will be this a ton of discussion about, you know, has the left done too much to punish traditional masculinity and you know, what's the place for men in America? And this is if you want me to predict like this is what I see coming up in headlines a month from now as the pieces that will.

[Carlos Lozada]

Be you predict over interpretation.

[Michelle Cottle]

Well, the post, all the post election book contracts are going to be on the gender wars and boys versus girls and you know, return of the manly man. I can't remember.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

I am willing to make a soft prediction on that front.

[Carlos Lozada]

Speaking of books, you wrote a book nine years ago called the Selfie Vote.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

I believe you reviewed it and you were kind. Thank you.

[Carlos Lozada]

I did review it. I read my review again this morning to see if I was kind or unkind.

[Ross Douthat]

He was a little anxious.

[Carlos Lozada]

I was largely kind and I'm very happy about that. Otherwise this would be awkward. But you were talking about millennial voters and their political preferences back when millennials were still young. Sorry, no offense.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Yeah, I know we're not cool anymore, it's true.

[Carlos Lozada]

But you wrote that millennials perceive Republicans as close minded, old fashioned, racist, rigid. But you also said there were ways that Republicans can appeal to younger voters. And a lot of your suggestions were, I think, thinking about a Republican party that no longer necessarily exists. It was all very technical stuff. College debt and criminal justice reform and technical careers and education reform. But looking back, how do you think about what the party has done with younger voters, especially now that you see younger black and Latino voters more interested in the gop.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

So you're right. The book I wrote nine years ago, it came out, I think within a week or two of Donald Trump going down the golden escalator. Like the words Donald Trump do not appear in the book. It exists in an alternate dimension where Marco Rubio becomes the Republican nominee in 2016. Like, that book is on Earth 3, but we're here on Earth 1. And you're right that Republicans, by and large, did not do some of the things that I talk about in the book. Interestingly, I mean, Donald Trump, for all that he is Mr. Tough on Crime, he did sign into law criminal justice. So there are weird ways in which Donald Trump has been a deeply imperfect or highly unusual person to execute some of these things. I remember at the 2016 convention when he was accepting the nomination, I believe in his speech, he talked about being. He wanted to be a president for LGBTQ and used that full. He mentioned that in his speech, and I thought it was only about a year or so after the selfie vote had come out. I said, if you had told me that we had a presidential nominee who was really adept at using social media and would talk about being a president fighting for LGBTQ rights in his acceptance.

[Carlos Lozada]

Speech, he read your book.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

This is not how I would have seen that going. But okay, so you're right. And I think if you look in the data, you do see that millennials who are now no longer young voters, we are approaching middle age rapidly.

[Michelle Cottle]

Wow.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

We still, as a generation. It's great. It's great. But we still, as a generation, lean more Democratic than the Gen Xers who came of age in the kind of Reagan or more centrist Democrat era, and as a whole, tend to be kind of the Trumpiest generation. Now. I still believe very firmly that the things that happen when you are young place a significant imprint on you and your political views even as you age. I mean, think about somebody who's turning 18 in time to vote in this election pretty much since they. I mean, unless you were nine years old and reading the New York Times, I mean, it's gotta be the case that Donald Trump has been the central political figure of your entire political consciousness. And so for them, they find things appealing about Donald Trump or unappealing about Democrats that just look very different than what the conversation was during, say, the Romney Obama wars of a decade ago.

[Ross Douthat]

So give us some detail on that. Give us the zoomer vote. If Donald Trump overperforms among Zoomers in just saying the word zoomer sort of bothers me. I can't figure out why you can stop among Generation Z, what are the Trumpian. What are the forces driving support for Trump among younger Americans?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

So a big one is foreign policy. Interestingly, one of the issues where you see the biggest generation gap, and this is particularly among Republicans is that older Republicans still have a very kind of cold war, American projection of power can be a good thing type mindset. And for younger people, especially young Republicans, there is a belief that America is not good at doing good around the world. And so we are much better off just staying at home focusing on the myriad of problems we have here within our own borders. And I think that is in some ways a kind of under discussed reason why many young people gravitate toward Donald Trump. That his message of we're gonna focus on the problems here at home, we're not gonna try to go police the world. That really does have resonance with a younger generation who would probably not in a poll ever tell me that foreign policy was their number one position. But it's that mindset of, I'm gonna take care of the stuff that's wrong here first. And for a young that really does believe the American dream is less accessible to them than ever, that kind of darker message in some ways is resonating with them, which is a big change from the Obama optimism that millennials gravitated toward and then maybe felt a little burned by later on. But Donald Trump's message of the future is going to be terrible unless you put me in charge. A lot of young people think the future is going to be terrible. And they may not love Donald Trump necessarily, but they still kind of like that. He has this very intentional, disruptive type approach.

[Michelle Cottle]

So what you do in addition to all this polling that I love are these focus groups. So if we have a little time, can we please talk about how you pick focus groups? Like, what has come out of these, that you're just like, wow, because polling is great, polling has its place. But I also like to dig in. And that seems to be what you get the kind of space and chance to do with these groups.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

So I love focus groups because hearing directly from voters in their own words, not in a closed ended, do you approve or disapprove of Joe Biden? Do you like Donald Trump or not? Like Donald Trump, you get to hear the why. And that's often the most important part. I love that. It also gives me ways to explain a segment of voters that has texture to it that people can go, oh, okay, I get that. So one example from a recent focus group we did that I have been using extensively over the last few weeks to explain to the extent there are any undecided voters or people who are still weighing whether or not they're going to turn out, like, what's that mindset like? And there was a focus group respondent in one of our times groups named Kay. She's in her 60s. She had voted for Biden in 2020, but we had recruited her to the group because she had said she was not 100% sure what she was going to do in 2024. And so we wanted to know, okay, well, what are you going to. And she said, look, at first I just wasn't going to vote, but then my friends told me that if I just stayed home, that would be effectively like voting for Donald Trump. And I can't. I can't do that. I think he's an embarrassment. So I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris, but I'm not going to like it. I'm not going to enjoy it. It's not going to be fun. There's going to be wine involved afterwards. And when I give that anecdote, I hear lots of people who are like, yes, K has nailed it. That is how I feel as well.

[Michelle Cottle]

You go, K. And it just gives.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

That context for when someone is wondering, how could someone possibly be undecided or possibly not 100% sure of what they're going to do? Talking to someone in a focus group can help unpack that a little. I had another focus group very recently. I'm actually not sure if this one is public yet, so this might be a little bit of a sneak peek. But we had one of our respondents who was describing, you know, back in May, we had done a focus group of women who had said that they had voted for Trump in 2020, but now weren't quite so sure. They didn't really like Donald Trump. Most of them had grave concerns about Biden's mental acuity, and that's why they were so depressed about the election. But so we wanted to re interview them. So we got these same women back for another focus group and we asked them how they were feeling. And many of them had ultimately decided to go back to Trump, even if they had had misgivings about January 6th or, you know, his demeanor or his legal challenges or what have you. But one of them, she described it as, if I go to the doctor, I don't care what my doctor's bedside manner is. I just care is he good at doing the surgery that I need to keep me alive. And that's why I stay with Donald Trump. And that explains this. You know, in a poll, I would find 7% of voters say they're voting for Donald Trump, but they also personally dislike him. But a focus group tells me what's their thought process there that they dislike Donald Trump, they don't find him to be a good human being, but they want to elect him to the highest office in the land, make him the most powerful man in the world. Again, a focus group lets them talk me through that.

[Ross Douthat]

All right, so let's end here, Kristen. And I just want to ask you again, allowing for the fact that, you know, there's limits to what polls can tell us, if either candidate, I'd say especially Trump, but if either candidate performs radically differently than the current, you know, 50, 50 polling average, what do you think the repercussions are for not just sort of your industry in particular, but how the public thinks about data science, expertise and so on. Is that something that worries you? Or would you say, look, you know, polls have always had these limitations and it's just good for people to recognize those limits and not put too much obsessive weight on them.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

I would be perfectly happy if, even if the polls are exactly right, if people walked away with a healthier and more skeptical take on what they can learn about the future from a poll conducted in the present. What worries me, though, is when suddenly it becomes the polls are wrong intentionally and you get into conspiracy theory territory. Oh, the polls are being manufactured unscue the polls. Those are the sorts of things that make me nervous. Because what that then does is it actually is, it becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy if there's a certain type of voter who's very hard to reach because they don't trust the polls and then the polls are wrong and they go, see, I knew those pollsters were full of it. Then it becomes even harder to reach those voters in the future. And so that to me is the polling trust doom loop that keeps me up at night.

[Ross Douthat]

Maybe what you need is for a bunch of people on the political left to come around to that perspective, which can balance out corrosive polling skepticism on the right and make polls more accurate.

[Carlos Lozada]

So once no one trusts the polls, the polls become good. Ross, Is that what you're saying?

[Michelle Cottle]

I don't even know what you're talking about.

[Ross Douthat]

I. I'm saying, you know, a little. You just need some corrosive. Anyway, I'm not saying anything at all. All right, all right. But really, the last question, who's gonna win?

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Nope, nope, nope. Good try.

[Ross Douthat]

Come on.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

I appreciate the effort, Ross.

[Ross Douthat]

Okay, Carlos, can you try? You have dulcet tones in a sort of insinuating manner. Can you ask?

[Carlos Lozada]

I think, I think.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

No, I wanna know who Carlos thinks will be the new coach of the Florida Gators. When.

[Carlos Lozada]

Oh, your Gators.

[Ross Douthat]

All right, all right. This is spiraling out of control.

[Michelle Cottle]

She's not gonna let you bully her.

[Ross Douthat]

Yeah, we're ending it here. We're ending it here. With deep thanks. With deep thanks to Kristen.

[Michelle Cottle]

Well done.

[Ross Douthat]

Who we will, you know, in gratitude. Thank you so much for this illuminating performance. We will be sure to blame you for all unexpected outcomes that transpire in a few weeks. So thank you.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Thank you for having me.

[Carlos Lozada]

Kristen, you're the matter of opinion Honorary Pulse.

[Michelle Cottle]

As a parting gift, you get a copy of Ross fantasy novel.

[Ross Douthat]

And we weren't going to talk about the fantasy novel, Michelle. All right, let's leave it there for real. And when we come back, we've got an extra special extra spooky Hot and cold.

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[Ross Douthat]

And we're back with a special edition of Hot. Because today we are collectively so hot on our subscription feed of special bonus episodes.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Yes.

[Michelle Cottle]

Woo.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Red Hot.

[Ross Douthat]

That's right.

[Carlos Lozada]

Bonus episodes. So hot right now.

[Ross Douthat]

So, as you may have heard from us or from excited people all over this nation of ours, we've launched a subscription feed that will feature bonus episodes of this show. Just for our matter of Opinion super.

[Michelle Cottle]

Fans, and because we love you so much, we're giving you a little taste of a special episode. We dropped in our subscriber feed this very week.

[Carlos Lozada]

If you want to hear the whole thing, all you have to do is go to Matter of Opinion on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And of course, enter your New York Times login.

[Ross Douthat]

And if you don't, for some unaccountable reason, already have a subscription. And after this little taste that we're giving you, you just have to have the entire bonus episode in all its unhinged, All Hallows Eve glory. You can check out the link in our show notes and get yourself subscribed.

[Michelle Cottle]

And trust me, it's worth it. It's completely fantastic.

[Ross Douthat]

It is the best bonus episode we've ever done.

[Carlos Lozada]

All right, let's hear this taste of bonusness. How old were you when you watched the Shining?

[Ross Douthat]

Not that young. I read it before I watched it. I read a lot of King as a teenager, and it was, like, the right level. Like, it scared me, but I enjoyed it. Like, we would, you know, go on vacation in Maine, which is the perfect place, obviously, to read Stephen King. I remember reading the Stand.

[Michelle Cottle]

That's not really horror.

[Ross Douthat]

I mean, it is, but not really. But, like, the. I mean, this was long before COVID obviously, but there was this moment, sitting reading the Stand on the beach, and, like, the super flu is taking over America, and you're like, look, I'm, like, looking around at the beach. I'm like, I'm surrounded by, you know, plague vectors. That was a formative memory.

[Carlos Lozada]

I saw the Shining when I was way too young to see the Shining. My older sister was having a party with some of her friends.

[Michelle Cottle]

Anything with Kubrick is gonna.

[Carlos Lozada]

And so I, like, snuck into the family room or wherever they were watching the movie and, like, watched it with them. I had nightmares for weeks.

[Ross Douthat]

Right, and you realized it was about how we faked the moon landing. And you never recovered your faith in America after that. Have either of you seen the documentary about. About the Shining and the fan theories about the Shining? Oh, I highly.

[Michelle Cottle]

Wait, you don't watch horror, but you do read the fan theories?

[Ross Douthat]

I'm like the guy in Whit Stillman's Metropolitan.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Yes.

[Ross Douthat]

Who says, I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get the authors and the critic. Anyway.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

No.

[Ross Douthat]

Room 237, if you like. Or fear the Shining. It's worth. It gets into just sort of the weirdness of Kubrick, but also, like, the escalating weirdness of the fan theories. Because there is a whole fan theory that says Stanley Kubrick worked for the US Government faking the moon landing, and the Shining is his confession of guilt.

[Carlos Lozada]

Is it true? This is the thing that you hear about the Shining, that Stephen King wanted Jon Voight rather than Jack Nicholson to play the lead because he felt that with Nicholson, he kind of looked mad from the beginning, whereas the whole point. The whole point was the slow descent into madness and he wanted someone different.

[Ross Douthat]

I don't know if that's true. I know King didn't like the adaptation and made there was like, I think a King produced miniseries. Not a great miniseries at all, I don't think. But that is, to me, the thing that I can't quite get over in the movie. As someone who read the book first, it just seems like you're watching the movie, you're like, well, this guy's a lunatic. Why would you hire him from the start, Right from the start.

[Michelle Cottle]

Why would you go out to the middle of nowhere?

[Carlos Lozada]

Well, that's not gonna happen to me. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's from the very beginning.

[Ross Douthat]

Okay, so we're gonna do a special bonus episode just of Carlos and I attempted. Michelle, you're welcome to no imitating. That was a good. That was a really good. That was a good Nicholson.

[Carlos Lozada]

I'll take it.

[Ross Douthat]

Matter of Opinion is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Phoebe Let and Andrea Betanzos. It's edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carol Sabaro and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. Our executive producer, as always, is is Annie Rose Strasser.

[Carlos Lozada]

Once upon a time, Amazon Music met audiobooks, and listeners everywhere rejoiced. Oh, yeah, because now they could listen.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

To one audiobook title a month from.

[Carlos Lozada]

An enormous library of popular audiobook titles, including Romantasy, Autobiographies, True Crime, and more. Suddenly, listeners didn't mind sitting in traffic.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

Or even missing their flight.

[Carlos Lozada]

Amazon Music Unlimited now includes Audible Download.

[Kristin Soltis Anderson]

The Amazon Music app.

[Carlos Lozada]

Now to start listening terms apply.