Brent Buchanan (2:22)

Hey, great to be back with y'. All.

John Bickley (2:24)

So let's start with the 2025 elections. The dust has settled now with those and there's a lot of hand wringing among Republicans about this. A lot of people trying to read into what these elections, actually. But others are cautious about this. They say the doom and gloom might be overblown. These elections took place in Democrats strongholds after all. What is your take? How important, how significant were these elections? What did they actually tell us?

Brent Buchanan (2:49)

Well, I think it's best summed up in understanding that Democrats were energized, Republicans were complacent, and anger remains the most potent driver of turnout. And the anger was definitely on the side of Democrats.

John Bickley (3:02)

Right. And so how did that play out here? What were they angry most about?

Brent Buchanan (3:05)

Well, a lot of it is they don't like Donald Trump. And so that is the base aspect of anger in driving this. But I really do believe that the shutdown played into this. And when you have a mainstream media that is driving a narrative that makes the Republicans the scapegoats in this process, when it was the Democrats keeping government shut down, voters believed it, especially key segments of voters that shifted to Donald Trump in the 2024 election. That ticked off young, diverse, working class that we had talked about with y' all during the election last cycle. Non college educated females, urban voters. All these segments that drove a lot of the shift towards Donald Trump were consuming the mainstream media narrative around the shutdown and making them angry at Republicans. And so most of the vote that occurred in this November election was against Donald Trump, not for the Democrats.

John Bickley (4:02)

Yeah, we actually looked at a study by MRC that 87% of the coverage by the big three networks favored Democrats in terms of how they covered the shutdown. Completely dishonest in terms of what was actually happening on the ground there. Now, you mentioned young women voters shifting toward Democrats. Is this a case of the Republican brand really taking a hit here?

Brent Buchanan (4:23)

Well, we just came out of the field with our monthly national survey. And right now, both Republicans and Democrats are equally viewed underwater by voter. So this is not necessarily the fact that Republicans have fallen off a cliff and people are looking at Democrats. I mean, just think of that meme of, you know, the guy turning to look back at the woman in the red dress. It's really not that scenario. The guy doesn't like either of the women in the red dress is if we're using the meme as the example. But the challenge really is that Republicans were complacent and stayed home. I'll give you a statistic from Virginia. And so looking back at how many raw vote Donald Trump got and Kamala Harris got in Virginia in 2024, fast forward to the election that just happened there in the governor's race, the Democratic Candidate Abigail Spamberger got 82% of the raw vote that Harris received. And Winsome Sears, the Republican nominee for governor, only got 6, 69% of Trump's 2024 raw vote. And I think that in a nutshell, shows you that Democrats were fired up and Republicans stayed home. And so even as we're talking about, about female voters, I think some of that complacency is they're, they're not seeing the change in their affordability and cost of living that they were hoping they would see after the 24 election.

John Bickley (5:40)

One more question about women. We had a couple of key races in which women were at the top of the ticket. Spanberger in Virginia, Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey. Does it feel like women are poised to be high performing candidates in the near future, or does this just happen to be these two elections?

Brent Buchanan (5:57)

I think it just happens to be these election. What's fascinating about those two specifically is that they were roommates in Congress. They both came in the 2018 wave where Democrats took over Congress in Trump's first midterm election. But they're both pretty boring individuals. And so really, I think the takeaway, more so for Democrats should be that elect boring candidates and not radical candidates. Because if you go over to New York City where they had a mayor's race on the same day, Democratic socialist Zorn mondame received only 50% of the vote. And Eric Adams and the mayor before him, his name's blank in my mind right now, both got 66% of the vote as the Democratic nominee. So I think the story is boring versus radical more than it is male versus female.

John Bickley (6:45)

Now, you mentioned Mamdani and also the economy. A lot of people are looking at this election, again, trying to read into it. Is, is this the future for younger voters, the socialist or socialist leaning candidates, because of economic factors? Do you see that being a legitimate threat to Republicans?

Brent Buchanan (7:03)

I think economic is missing the point. It is opportunity. And so, yes, things are expensive, but it's really this dream that you were promised that you can buy a home, start a family, have multiple children, have two cars. That dream is completely out of reach for anybody under the age of 40. Potentially most people under the age of 50, that dream is out of reach. If you go back and look at what the average age of a home buyer was just a few years ago to now, it's gone from 33 to 40. That's the largest jump that's ever been seen. And so it is this consternation that younger voters are feeling that what? The bill of goods that they were promised is completely spoiled. And they're willing to shake up the system. They were willing to shake up the system with Donald Trump and they're willing to shake up the system with somebody like Mamdani. And you really saw this play out in the 2016 election also. It was a precursor to all of this and the fact that, that there was a decent overlap between Bernie Bros. And Trump voters. There were a number of younger voters, mostly male at the time, who voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and then voted for Donald Trump in the general election. And it's this challenge that these institutions that were built to benefit boomers and the Post World War II construct have completely failed anybody under the age of 40.

John Bickley (8:32)

Yeah, I know your pollsters have looked at that issue. The trust in institutions in general. Is this just continuing to get worse? This idea that we need to burn it all down because so many people have lost confidence in our major institutions.

Brent Buchanan (8:45)

They'Re willing to burn it down because it doesn't work for them now. And if it's burnt down, it probably still won't work for them, even if it's not rebuilt to benefit them. And this is one of the things I go into in my upcoming book, America's Emotional Divide, is the impact that this degradation of institutions has had on our elections. And, and I see this in our focus groups too. And it's a big problem when, when you have a multi generational focus group, whether it's mixed parties or just Republican voters, the older voters talk about the world as it existed 20, 30 years ago, as if that exists today. And the younger voters look at them like they have three heads as they're talking in these focus groups because the world they're experiencing is totally different than the one that boomers and older generations got to benefit from and are still benefiting from. And that's why you're seeing these backlashes in places like New York City.

John Bickley (9:40)

So does that create just a more volatile situation politically? Like you said, there's overlap between Bernie Bros. And Trump supporters. Does that mean voters like this could actually swing in very drastic directions?

Brent Buchanan (9:53)

Yes. And they're willing to do it every two years if they don't see results quickly. And so that was one of our largest takeaways from these 20, 25 elections, is that Republicans have got to get on their game about delivering on affordability. And you saw Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who's an incredible strategist and great at messaging, working for the President, that said that the President is going to focus on affordability in 2026. And that's exactly what Republicans have got to do. You know, one of the first things you saw come out on this was going after price, supposed price fixing in the beef market. And I think you're going to see a whole lot more of those type of truth Post and Trump press conference discussions on these pieces of affordability. Because the coalition that elected Donald Trump, a lot of them have fallen off because they don't feel that that's been delivered on for them.

John Bickley (10:46)

Now, some of the praise for Mamdani's campaign is that he actually offered ideas no matter how bad some of them are. Whereas Cuomo, Eric Adams, before he dropped out, they weren't really offering anything new. It's more status quo or just sort of stabilizing what already exists. Is there something to this strategy for Republicans, new ideas and how do you do that in a way that's actually responsible?

Brent Buchanan (11:11)

What's challenging for the Republicans is that you're in control of the government, so you actually have to go do it. The Democrats can come up with the ideas because they're not the ones that have to go implement them. At this point. I think it's going to be really fascinating to see what happens in New York City if Mamdani and the people that he's putting in charge actually go work to implement these ideas or if they do it very surface level because a lot of what they're proposing is incredibly expensive in an already massive bureaucracy. I believe New York City has 300,000 employees. Just the city government and so the ability for him to deliver, that's the challenge. It's really easy to be in the opposition and on the outside and make these claims and ideas. It's actually a lot harder when you're governing to go implement some of these bolder, broader ideas.

John Bickley (12:01)

Like you said, politically speaking, it would be wise for Mamdani to sort of slow walk or appear to implement some of these policies, but not really do it. But he does sound like he believes he has a mandate and he seems like an ideologue in terms of how he's speaking after the election. If he leans in, we might see some of these results of the policies pretty quickly. Now in terms of the big with.

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John Bickley (12:52)

What trend or trends do you feel like are not being emphasized enough in recent weeks? What do you feel needs to come to the awareness of Republicans? What could be some potential pitfalls for them in the coming years?

Brent Buchanan (13:03)

Well, it's in delivering on affordability is the number one thing that they've got to do. They have an opportunity to bring in immigration narrative to that because a lot of the reason that the prices of housing and the prices of food and other things are just simple supply and demand economics in the sense that when you bring in a whole lot of demand and you don't increase the supply, you increase the cost. And teaching basic economic narratives along with the immigration problem that continues having to be fixed. We saw this in our October survey where voters who had been trending towards Republicans were actually doing so. We were seeing in their open ended verbatim responses that they were saying that they really appreciated the crackdowns on immigration and getting rid of folks and they were for the deportations because they saw the economic benefit of doing so to them. And, and I think that's one good opportunity for Republicans. You know, another pitfall is that when Donald Trump's name is not on the ballot, there is a large segment of voters that are not going to show up. And so that becomes incumbent on the Republican nominees for these various offices to take on the, the mantra of why those people voted for Donald Trump. They wanted to break the system. They believed that he was not part of the system. And they're going to have to, Republicans are going to have to position themselves in that way. They're also going to have to embrace Donald Trump because listen, Democrats hate Donald Trump and they think he's on the ballot in terms of whatever Republican candidate is there to bubble in. And so Republicans need to embrace Donald Trump. Republican candidates need to embrace Donald Trump because if not they're going to be seen as being disloyal to him. And the segment of voters, as I was mentioning in Virginia, where the Republican nominee performed so poorly in vote share compared to Donald Trump, you know, that is just a challenge that these people are going to stay home. And I hear Republican consultants say, well, don't make it about Donald Trump because then it'll fire up the Democrats. Well, listen, the Democrats are already fired up. We need to fire up our folks too, because anger is the largest emotion that exists to create turnout. And if we don't find a way to make our folks angry, and I think the Mom Donnie situation gives us that opportunity, not for attacking him as a person, but explaining to voters what his policies are. We asked a question in our November survey that'll be coming out shortly and we just listed out three of his policies, three of his socialist policies, and then asked, do you believe that this makes Democrats more radical, less radical, or about the same? And 55% of midterm voters say that makes them believe Democrats are more radical. And Republicans win elections when voters believe that the Democrats are more radical and extreme than the Republicans. And that's the narrative that has to be created.

John Bickley (15:51)

You know, there's been a lot of political hay made of the anti woke movement. Do you think that still has legs for Republicans? You're mentioning the radical nature of somebody like Mamdani. Can that work or has that already lost some of its luster?

Brent Buchanan (16:05)

Well, I write about this in the book where I believe the culture wars help push it over the edge for Donald Trump, but that was only because he was also speaking to the economic aspects. And if he had only ran the culture war and not talked about the economic and inflation and affordability issues, he would not have earned the right to push it over the top with the culture wars topics. And that's one thing that the Republican nominee in Virginia did, was basically ignore the economic pieces and talk only about transgendered men and girls, bathrooms and sports, which works, but not in a vacuum, not by itself. And so that's where I see these anti woke and the transgender agenda. And those things are helpful to push it over the top, but they can't carry all the weight.

John Bickley (16:53)

Yeah, well, like you said, immigration ties to housing affordability, for example, if you have a lot of people competing for a pretty low supply of housing, it dries up costs. There is a way for Republicans to better tie that messaging to economic issues, like you said, might really be effective. For now, we'll see how these two parties approach the final stretch of this very, very eventful year. Brent, thank you so much for talking with us.

Brent Buchanan (17:16)

Great to be with you all.

John Bickley (17:18)

That was Brent Buchanan, CEO of Signal Polling Group. And this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

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