Podcast Host (Ad Reader) (3:55)

polling when you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Notice how some homes sell faster in your neighborhood? It's not luck, it's local. Know how RE Max agents know their streets, schools and communities inside and out. And with RE Max, those local pros are everywhere. Which means when you're ready to buy or sell, you'll get trusted neighborhood insight that puts you a step ahead. Reach out today RE Max the Experts Close to home each office independently owned

Newt Gingrich (4:55)

and operated before we had AT and T Business Wireless coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable. Once our driver had to do a 14 point turn to get back on route. A 14 point turn. An influencer even livestream the whole thing. Not good for business. Now with AT and T Business Wireless, routes are updating on the fly and deliveries are on time. And the influencer did get us 53 new followers though. AT&T business Wireless Connecting changes everything. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock.

David Winston (5:46)

So your team always gets the win.

Newt Gingrich (5:48)

Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by grainger for the ones who get it done.

David Winston (5:56)

Foreign.

Newt Gingrich (6:02)

I'm really pleased to welcome my guests Dave Winston and Myra Miller of the Winston Group, friends of mine that I've known for many years, studied from, learn a lot from them every time. And I'm delighted that you two would join me to talk about this fall. I'm curious because I know you both have strong feelings about how elections operate. Looking ahead to November, what do you think this election is going to be about for the average voter?

David Winston (6:32)

Well, in this particular election, given what happened in 2024, in terms of Republicans winning everything, the key issue and that was clearly inflation in the economy. And so for this election coming up, it's a sense of, okay, so how have we done in terms of the economy? Again, electorate was very unhappy with the Biden economy and they're looking to see the Biden economy fixed. And so to some degree it's going to be a measurement of what's the progress been made in terms of fixing the Biden economy. And that'll be the context. And the question is obviously what scale of fixing is the electorate looking for at this point?

Myra Miller (7:13)

Coming out of the Biden administration, The cumulative level of inflation over that four year period was over 21%. So that was a very high bar for President Trump to have to take on, given those cumulative increases that people are still carrying. And it's much higher in certain household expenses like food and electricity. And as David was saying, there's progress that has been made in closing that gap between prices and wages, but there's still quite a bit more to do to give people relief and that they feel that progress in the economy.

Newt Gingrich (7:47)

Do you think they have enough time in the real economy to improve things enough that by the time people get around to voting in September there will be a better sense of the Trump economy? Or do you think that with the war, the price of oil, et cetera, that they are really in danger of running out of time?

Myra Miller (8:08)

Well, time is always something that we can always raise more money, but we can never get more time back. In a way, what choice do we have? They have certainly made progress. So it will be important to talk about the accomplishments that they have made. But I think it's also incumbent upon them to define what they want to do. What more do they have in terms of robust economic policies from here on out?

David Winston (8:30)

And I think the sense of can it be in September, can it be in October, does it have to be in July? That I don't think is the dynamic at an individual level. It is the sense of somebody going into the grocery store, sort of looking at the prices and saying, you know, actually, I'm in a position where I think I can better handle when I check out the grocery bill that I'm going to have. So that could be August 1st, that could be October 15th. It's just that moment when they decide that they're in a better position to really handle cost of living.

Newt Gingrich (9:02)

This really comes back to a point that Myra had made, which was that the 21% increase under Biden becomes kind of a floor. And I got the sense that voters didn't just want to stop the rate of increase, but that in their heads, they actually wanted to see some rollback. They wanted to see things become more affordable, not just slow down the rate of becoming unaffordable. Do you think they actually have to improve prices below what they were when Trump took over in January last year, or do you think they're just stopping? The rate of inflation's enough.

David Winston (9:45)

There are two pieces to this. So it's not just simply prices. It's prices in relationship to wages. And so at the end of Biden's term, our prices that outpace wages by 4.8%, about 5%. That's closed. What Myra is starting that from is starting with January of 2021, how much had prices gone up? Now, what you've seen, what Trump has been able to do in terms of so far, again, he inherited a 4.8% difference between wages and prices. Trump's reduced that to 2.7%. That's a significant drop. Having said that, the challenge here is, yes, he's closed that margin, but people weren't looking for simply closing the margin. They really want what Biden did to the economy fixed. And quite frankly, in terms of what Trump has said, in terms of what he was handed is absolutely correct, and the electorate agreed with him, which is why Republicans won in 2024. But the challenge isn't to marginally improve things, it's to really fix that situation. So what you're talking about, it's a combination of both prices and wages, and having wages begin to catch up to

Myra Miller (11:01)

prices and to follow up on what David was describing. From the voter perspective, their construct is not from the beginning of Trump's term forward. It really does go much Farther, back to January 2021 forward because of those cumulative price increases that people are still carrying.

David Winston (11:17)

There's an anticipation, actually. The new CPI Consumer Price Index numbers from BLS come out tomorrow. So we'll get what, how much the initial phase of the Iran conflict has increased because of gas prices, but also there is an understanding from the electorate that they expect to see that number jump to some degree. And so that won't be a shock. It'll be unfortunate, but it won't be a shock. From the point of view of that was clearly something that's going to stick in terms of price increases, the expectation is that it'll fall off once the

Newt Gingrich (11:50)

conflict gets war may actually buy Trump a little bit of time, because people have an instinct that some of the skyrocketing oil prices, et cetera, that this is an aberration brought about by a particular event, and when that event disappears, that in fact will be back to much more like business as usual.

David Winston (12:14)

Yes, in large part because prior to the Iranian conflict, they had seen gas prices actually drop significantly. And so there was a sense that that was where gas prices were going. And so you have this dynamic that they had seen before in terms of other conflicts that they tend to go up. So the expectation is it will go down or some other commodity. That might not be the case, but given the history of what they've seen so far in terms of gas prices, that would be expected.

Myra Miller (12:43)

But that is all contingent upon a very speedy resolution in the Strait of Hormuz.

Newt Gingrich (12:49)

You two probably do the best job of any firm of institutionally having a sense of what Republicans can't do very well. Having worked with you for many years, it's really extraordinarily frustrating. You and Myra were deeply involved in John Boehner's 2010 campaign when the whole theme was where are the jobs? And he actually stuck to it and drove it home. And by the election, it actually mattered. And proud as I am of our 1994 victory, he actually gained more seats. I mean, it was a spectacular election, but then you all did research, and correct me if I got this wrong, but in 2018, even though Trump had cut taxes for everybody, and even though the Democrats had voted against the tax cuts, people didn't believe it because the combination of the liberal news media and the Democrats communicated a falsehood. Better I tell people they sell a lie better than we explain the truth, because you have this big, beautiful bill, and in fact, people are getting several thousand dollars. I think the number may be as high as 3,500. And every single Democrat in the House and Senate voted no. And yet my guess is people don't believe they're getting the money and they don't believe the Democrats voted no. I mean, how do you two explain this?

Myra Miller (14:20)

I'll Start with your pointing out about our track record of highlighting what Republicans don't do well. Well, it's because we see many of the same mistakes repeated many times over. And it's frustrating because neither party actually acts upon the lessons learned that they could from past elections. But to your example, about 2018, yes, it was very frustrating in that election because Republicans actually had a good economy to sell. The 2017 tax cuts and Job act worked extraordinarily well. And in the exit polls in 2018, voters actually believed that the economy was doing well. Republicans, and you pointed out that liberals always sell lies about Republican policies, and that's always going to be the case in that instance. Republicans, especially there toward the end, chose to talk about other issues, immigration being one, to try to motivate the base. And it distracted from what could have been an economic election. And it might not have changed the overall outcome, but it could have mitigated the defeat.

David Winston (15:20)

The other thing, too, and this is actually Myra's construct, the Democrats, after the ACA, the Affordable Care act was passed in 2010, literally celebrate that every year. And they just did. Again, when was the last time we actually did a celebration of the original Tax Cut and Jobs act, the big beautiful bill? We sort of did a little bit. Hopefully we will this summer. But they do a better job of constantly reminding what happened in terms of that particular piece of legislation, and we just haven't done it at the same scale. That's been a real problem. The other thing, too, is that we get wrapped up in pieces of it that tend to be macro and not specific. One of the things we ended up doing, a particular focus group and people, when they realized that, in fact their standard deduction was going to go from 30,000 to 16,6, it was like, how come nobody's ever said that to me, told me about that? So a fundamental piece of what was in the Tax Cut and Jobs act, people were unaware that that was going to go away. And once they were told, they were like, well, I don't want to see that happen. You know, how do we stop that? How come nobody's talking to me about that? That's the challenge when we talk about the tax, but in sort of broad terms, but not personalizing it to the point that people can understand how it's going to impact them. Anybody who's listening to this, if you want to go sell the tax cut Talk, because again, 90% of the country uses the standard DED. And so to show you the level of sophistication, some people, when you mentioned that to them that in fact they were going to have all this additional income that was going to be taxable. Not only did they get that concept, but they said, well, that could push me up into the next bracket. So we're going back to Kemp era tax bracket creep. Right?

Newt Gingrich (17:12)

You had pointed out that while the Republicans wanted to talk about immigration and the economy, in 2018, health care had become the top issue. And the Democrats were just killing us on health care by about 3 to 1. Do you see this as becoming another election where one issue will dominate everything?

David Winston (17:33)

One issue is dominating everything. And the challenge to us is, are we on that issue? And to your point, what happened in terms of 2018? Because again, health care was a cost function, so it was impacting people's financial situation, situation. And interestingly enough, the high point, if you take a look at exit polls in terms of people thinking the economy was excellent or good, was actually in the 2018 election. So there was some sense that the economy improved, but we never took credit for it. Again, if you remember, the Friday before the election, there was this remarkable jobs report that even Jared Bernstein says this is about as good a report as you can get out of the jobs report. So, you know, you have to imagine people like Brady and Ryan were like, well, that's what we were hoping we could get right. But there were other elements occurring at that point in terms of you had the caravan going. And so that was the sort of day to day story that got driven over the weekend, as opposed to this is the best jobs report we could have gotten. So. And that was the problem that Barack Obama had back in 2010. He was focused on health care. But when we went into the election, we were in the 19th consecutive month at 9% unemployment or higher. That was the issue. And he got punished not because he was necessarily right or wrong on health care. It's. He was just on the wrong topic completely.

Myra Miller (18:59)

And to highlight those two elections that David was just talking about, comparing 2018 to 2010, in 2010, Republicans won independent voters by 19, and in 2018, Democrats won them by 12. And both of those were wave elections. And so the independents swung very differently in those two and made a huge difference.

Newt Gingrich (19:22)

When we come back, we talk about the state of the Democratic Party and what the recent elections in Georgia and Texas say about the midterm election. How, how would you describe the current political position of the Democratic Party?

David Winston (19:43)

Awful. Their problem is they don't have a purpose outside of Donald Trump. Basically, that's their whole discourse with the electorate. And that's fine for their base. Their base loves to hear that stuff. The problem is independents don't. And so you see that they have unfavorables in the mid-60s as a result of that. One of my sort of favorite things to sort of talk about in terms of the electorate at this point is sort of the distribution of it right now in terms of looking at it. And this is from exit polls. 24% of the electorate are conservative Republicans, 16% are liberal Democrats. This is from the 2024 election. 16% are liberal Democrats, and 60% is everything else. So the problem they're running into is that everyone else, their negatives are just incredibly high. And as you know, when you attack, what do you do to your own unfavor? You drive up your unfavorables as well. They're in a difficult position. The only thing they've got going for them is, truth be told, our side is having not a dissimilar problem right now. They're not an alternative.

Myra Miller (20:51)

And coming out of the 2024 election, we saw a huge drop off in the number of self identified Democrats. And this started before Kamala Harris. So this wasn't only about her. In 2020, Democrats had comprised 37% of the electorate at the presidential level. And that dropped down to 31% in this last election. That represents about 10 million fewer self identified Democrats. And Democrats came in behind independents who were at 34% of the electorate. So to the question about is there ever room for a third party in that election? Democrats actually were the third party coming in behind independents. And that was not only true nationally, but in five out of seven competitive states. So for Democrats, the starting point is, are there enough of you and are they going to be able to start regaining some of those Democratic voters that they have lost? Now, the gubernatorial elections in Virginia with Abigail Spamberger last November and with Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey should be very concerning to Republicans because given the results there, it appeared that they were recreating some of that old Biden coalition from 2020. Spanberger won independence by 19, Sheryl won them by 13. So that should be a warning sign to Republicans that perhaps in some areas Democrats have started to come back. But as David was saying, even though Democrats talk about they want to highlight affordability and highlight policy choices there, they really never get around to doing it. And they're nothing more than simply opposing Trump.

Newt Gingrich (22:25)

I follow a guy named Seth Keshel, who is probably the leading student of voter registration in America, which is sort of a narrowly focused way of living. He tracks by counties, precincts, you name it. And he said that in every single one of the swing states, the Democrats have been losing ground and Republicans have been gaining ground. Now, that doesn't mean if you lose the independence in a sweep, that you're protected, but it does mean in terms of very long term party identity. I mean, I remember when I first started running during Watergate, we were at 17% ID with Republicans, and we were so weak that the Republican National Committee actually ran a series of ads entitled Republicans are People too, which I think was sort of the low point of Republican advertising in my lifetime. You do get this sense when Trump turned during the State of the Union and said, you people are just crazy, I thought he was intuitively understanding a branding opportunity. It strikes me that a lot of the things they do are so out of the mainstream that it gets harder and harder to for the country to reach where they are.

Myra Miller (23:43)

They certainly have plenty of those figures. But then you look at Jon Ossoff in Georgia, who's turned out to be a much more formidable incumbent than Republicans had thought, or an Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan, and in North Carolina, Roy Cooper, even Spamberger in Virginia. I know her governing style has turned out to be very different than how she portrayed herself in the campaign. But you do have these more moderate Democrats who managed to carve out some successful campaigns in the midst of those more radical figures like you named.

David Winston (24:17)

And again, going back to the Barack Obama example and then comparing that to the current Democratic Party, the problem with Barack Obama in 2010 is if he's on the wrong topic, right? This is what the country wanted to hear, what you were going to do in terms of the economy. And Democrats have that same problem. They're off on all these other issues and they're not really focused on the economy. They've tried to in some ways. And this is where you did see the success of both Spamberger, but particularly Cheryl in New Jersey talking about cost of living issues. Again, she was focused on electricity in terms of New Jersey. And so the challenge that they have is their base, the progressive base, wants to go off on all these variety of government programs and how we're going to expand government programs. And what people want to figure out is what are you going to do in terms of increasing my wages so I can better handle cost of living. And ultimately the Democrat solution is government giving you more money. And Republicans concept is let's invigorate the economy so your wages get increased. And so that that's sustainable.

Newt Gingrich (25:21)

Could we explore a little deeper the whole issue of how many independents there are, whether they're genuinely independent and whether they in fact migrate back and forth between the two parties?

Myra Miller (25:34)

We have seen an increase in the percentage of independents over the last few elections. In 2020, independents comprised 27% of the electorate. By 2024, they were 34%. So that was a huge jump in the percentage of independents. And we are also seeing independents outpacing at least one political party, or in some cases both in many of the competitive states. So Arizona being one that trajectory, we'll see if that holds for 2026, but I anticipate that it will. They are becoming an, I would say an existential threat to both political parties. I think Democrats have felt that more than Republicans, but Republicans are vulnerable to the impact of independence as well.

David Winston (26:21)

Let me give you two examples in terms of just how much independents can bounce back and forth. In 2006, when Democrats won back the House, they won independence by 18. When Republicans took back the House in 2010, we won independence by 19. That's a 37 point shift in terms of the margin. And that gives you a sense of scale here. The other thing too, to note, when we won in 2010 by 19, we won 242 seats. In 2022, we actually lost independence by 2. Added party ID that favored us by 3. That was the largest party ID advantage that we've had in the history of exit polling. But we lost independence by 2. And we only came up with 222 seats even though we had the best party id advance the history of exit polling, but we lost independents by two. So the difference between winning independence by 19 and losing them by two was the difference of 20 seats in terms of the majority. And the reason for that is the outsized influence independents have because in the competitive districts, they play a central role in deciding in those competitive districts who wins. But think of it that way. The difference between 2010 and 2022 was 21 points in terms of independence, and that was the difference of 20 seats, 242 to 222.

Myra Miller (27:46)

We're going to see in these Senate races independents yet again having a huge impact. And Colorado is actually a state where independents are having a huge impact, not only at the statewide, but even at the local level. And a few months ago there was an interview with a very well known Republican campaign operative in Colorado, and he was talking about the impact of independence in those elections. And he said campaigns and candidates are going to have to in his words, totally retool how they do things because the political parties are in danger of becoming bit players now. I am not seeing either party at this point really develop effective strategies to deal with that. But it's coming now.

David Winston (28:31)

And if I may, the issue that drives independence the most is the economy. And that's why when we were talking about earlier, before strategies for Republicans, that they need to have an independent strategy and an economic strategy in terms of laying it out. That's because the two are so intertwined. You really can't do an independent strategy without an economic

Newt Gingrich (28:51)

coming up. 2026 midterm election predictions and what the Republican strategy should be. I hate to do this because I was speaker of the House, but we should probably start with the Senate, where you have a manageable number of seats. What's your sense on the Senate side of what's likely to happen?

David Winston (29:18)

There are some challenging seats. Probably the most difficult seat on the Republican side was what it was actually back in 2020 as well, and that's Senator Collins. Senator Collins won either 18 or 19% of the Biden vote in 2020 to be able to win Maine. So she's capable in that regard. But I think part of the challenge here is looking at what's happening in North Carolina. How's that evolving? It's a state that is becoming more and more purple over time. But as Myra was pointing out, somebody like an Ossoff, we're going to win against an Ossoff if we have a more compelling direction and vision of a future and what that economy is going to look like. Because just painting him as a leftist, it's not necessarily the strongest argument because we did a survey there recently, and when you took a Look at Ossoff vs. Warnock, people thought Warnock was farther to the left than Ossoff, yet Warnock managed to win that election against Herschel Walker. So just painting somebody as a leftist in some of these states is a reason for people to look at you. But then you have to give them the reason why to vote for you. And so looking at the Senate, I still think it's a bit of outreach for Democrats. But some states have popped up here, like Ohio suddenly has become competitive and North Carolina Cooper actually has a lead outside the margin of error. And when you take a look at Alaska, I just have difficulty in terms of Alaska. But at least some of the surveys I've seen has shown that's been close as well. So. So there's a possibility here. And this gets back to. Let me do the broader Republican strategy. And I'm actually stealing some ideas from Ira here and this and that is basically, there are two things that every Republican campaign should do at this point. One, they need a clear economic strategy to figure out how they're going to educate their electorate in terms of what the big beautiful bill did in terms of preventing a tax increase on. Right. And quite frankly, the standard deduction we were talking about earlier is the key fact within that. The other is they need a key strategy laid out in terms of how they're going to win independence. If a campaign doesn't have both those in place, they're just making life difficult.

Myra Miller (31:42)

I think I would add to that for the Senate. Looking at the strategy that Senate democrats used in 2022, when many of their incumbents there was obviously an unpopular Democratic president that created headwinds for them. And they managed to define their incumbents like Cortez Masto in Nevada, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, Mark Kelly in Arizona. By defining the incumbents with an effective ad strategy and putting real dollars behind it, that created this positive framing of the incumbents and what they had done for their states. And it worked pretty well in terms of insulating them from the effect of Biden.

Newt Gingrich (32:18)

I have to say, by the way, when you're talking about strategies, after the 2012 election, I sat through a briefing with Linda Duvall about what happened. And she said, you know, Obama figured out the economy wasn't good enough to run on, and he couldn't convince people it was good enough, but they would believe that it was George W. Bush's fault. And so he spent the whole year making sure that every time Romney talked about the economy, Romney was reinforcing that George W. Bush had done it. And I thought it was one of the most interesting and sophisticated strategies I'd ever seen. Taking a fact you couldn't get away from and reframing the fact to your advantage.

Myra Miller (33:13)

Well, in that election, the economic question that the Romney campaign posed was, are you better off than you were four years ago? And four years prior to that had been the collapse of 2008, 2009. President Obama had not been part of that. And so in a way, he was insulated from the effect of those previous policies. But the voter mindset in that timeframe was, well, at least he seems to be making some progress. It's not completely his fault. But that question that the Romney campaign posed was really the wrong question. It was about, has he made progress? And the answer was yes.

Newt Gingrich (33:49)

The other part of that is he had, as we just discussed earlier, he had Boehner's example that the right issue posed with the right focus and intensity could be devastating. I'm not sure if it quite occurred to Romney and his consultants that that would be a useful model. It's just a part of the ongoing frustration of Republicans tend to be more honest but dumb and Democrats tend to be more dishonest but really smart. I'm not asking you two to comment, but it's sort of my summary of a lifetime in public life.

David Winston (34:26)

In terms of that particular contrast into 2012, there was a group of voters who in the exit polls were defined, the economy is not so good and Obama won those by a significant margin. That group flipped in 2016, and that was the group of voters that elected Donald Trump. Again, Hillary Clinton didn't see him coming because again, they had sort of had him in their fold back in 2012, but they're not so good in the terms of the economy. Trump won that argument where Romney had lost it and 2012. And to Myra's point, the Romney campaign, if you remember at the convention, that was the, you know, are you better off than you were four years ago, gave the electorate the one piece of moment that in fact, Obama had outperformed Bush in terms of pulling things back. Having said that, the other thing to remember too is then Obama went 30, 30 consecutive months of 9% or greater unemployment. So it wasn't like he was a wizard at it, to say the least. But.

Myra Miller (35:31)

And framing that economic construct in that way allowed Democrats to portray Republican policies, especially tax policies, as the failed policies of the past. And that still haunts Republicans to this day.

Newt Gingrich (35:45)

The right question was, is it good enough? And Obama would have lost. Is it good enough? But anyway, I want to vote. Thank you for joining me. But I also want to put in a little bit here that maybe sometime later on this summer we could have another chat. I always find it so fun to talk to you two, partly, I guess, because we have such a long shared experience now, going back to when Myra was getting her Girl Scout badge in public life. So thank you so much for spending some time with me today.

Myra Miller (36:16)

Well, if we don't see you in Bern, we'll at least see you on Riverside.

David Winston (36:22)

Good talking.

Newt Gingrich (36:24)

Thank you to my guests Dave Winston and Myra Miller. Newt's World is produced by Gingrich360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnesy Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich360. If you've been enjoying Newtworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on substack@gingrich360.net I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newts World.

Podcast Host (Ad Reader) (37:04)

This is an iHeart podcast.

Myra Miller (37:06)

Guaranteed Human.