1092: Will There Be a Blue Wave in 2026?

Summary

Pod Save America – Will There Be a Blue Wave in 2026?

Date: November 30, 2025
Host: Dan Pfeiffer
Guest: Amy Walter (Editor-in-Chief, Cook Political Report)

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Overview & Main Theme

This episode dives deep into the recent Democratic electoral successes in 2025, the prospects and challenges for Democrats heading into the pivotal 2026 midterms, and the changing political terrain in the U.S. The discussion focuses on key questions: What fueled the Democrats' surprise victories? How do redistricting battles and national trends shape the House and Senate outlooks? And is a true "blue wave" in 2026 possible, or are there hard ceilings for Democratic gains?

Dan Pfeiffer is joined by Amy Walter, one of the nation's leading political analysts, for a granular and candid assessment of the midterm landscape, redistricting developments, coalition challenges, and the party's strategies moving forward.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Democratic Overperformance in 2025 Elections

• Surprise Margins:
  Democrats exceeded expectations in states like New Jersey, Virginia, California, New York City, and Georgia, often winning by double digits and in areas previously seen as battlegrounds.

  • Amy Walter [03:47]: “Definitely surprised by the margins. If you look at the margins at Georgia and New Jersey… to see big double-digit wins there by Democrats, certainly pretty instructive.”

• Motivation Rooted in Anti-Trump Sentiment:
  Democratic voters may be disillusioned with their party, but anti-Trump and anti-Republican sentiment remains the stronger motivator, ensuring turnout even in so-called “off-year” elections.

  • Amy Walter [04:17]: "They may not like the party, but they dislike Trump and they dislike Republicans more. So the party is motivated."

• Caveats About Realignment:
  Neither party should overinterpret off-year results as signs of permanent realignment with Latino or young voters. The composition of the off-year electorate is unique, often more engaged and less representative of a broader voter base.

  • Amy Walter [05:45]: “I think you have to be really careful not to look at the results, say of 2025 and say, wow, okay, well, Democrats... fixed their Latino problem or fix their young people problem… I don't think you can say that.”

2. Affordability and the Economy: The Central Issue

• Voter Sentiments Towards Trump and Inflation:
  While Republicans hoped to avoid blame for affordability crises, most voters attribute rising costs directly to Trump-era policies.

  • Amy Walter [10:42]: “When you ask voters do you think Trump has anything to do with prices going up and 65% say yes, including like a third of Republicans. That is a very tough place to be.”

• Republican Strategic Dilemma:
  The party struggles to present itself as independent from Trump policies, especially given the political costs of distancing from the base.

  • Amy Walter [14:09]: “It is very hard to run against the party of the president in the White House in a midterm year and be successful… Voters want to punish the party in power.”

• Healthcare and Policy Stagnation:
  Republicans are boxed in on big policy issues like healthcare and tariffs, unable to deliver on affordability because of internal divisions and fear of alienating Trump loyalists.

3. Redistricting Battles and Impact on House Control

• Net Effects of Redistricting:
  Initial fears of major Republican House gains have not materialized; updated estimates suggest Republicans might gain only 2–3 seats through current redistricting maneuvers.

  • Amy Walter [24:06]: “[Erin Covey’s] projecting just if the Texas map… is upheld, that Republicans gain just two to three seats in this whole process.”

• Complex State Dynamics:
  Gains in heavily gerrymandered Republican states (Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, Florida) are offset by Democratic advances in other states like California, Utah, and Virginia.

• Lingering Threat from Supreme Court (VRA):
  The pending Supreme Court case on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act could prompt further redistricting, potentially eliminating several Democratic “majority-minority” districts in the Deep South.

  • Dan Pfeiffer [33:07]: “The other thing that hangs over this conversation is the pending Supreme Court decision on Section 2 of the Voting Rights act…”

4. The House Map: Low Ceilings for a Blue Wave

• Polarization Narrows Possibilities:
  There are very few competitive seats: Only 14 Republican-held districts were carried by Harris or are within five points, creating a hard ceiling for Democratic potential gains.

  • Amy Walter [44:21]: “That is just such a small number… there were 48 Democrats in McCain districts in 2010… That does not exist anymore.”

• The Era of Micro-Majorities and Ping-Pong Control:
  The House is set for continued flipping as only a handful of districts are truly in play each cycle. Large majorities are unlikely to return without significant demographic or political realignments.

• Senate and House Tied to Demographics:
  The blue “floor” is solidified by polarization, and the path to larger majorities requires winning in increasingly hostile territory.

5. Latino Voter Trends and Democratic Ground Game

• Interpreting 2025 Gains:
  The notable swing of Latino voters back to Democrats in states like New Jersey shouldn't be assumed in Texas or California due to geographic and policy distinctions.

• Texas as a Bellwether:
  Democratic insiders see opportunities in South Texas if 2024’s GOP Latino gains do not prove durable, but even significant Latino improvement only translates to holding ground, not massive new gains.

• Amy Walter [58:30]: “Hillary 2016 was the high water mark and we're not… their point is we're not going back to that.”

6. Senate Map and Long-Term Strategy

• Tough Slog for Dems in the Senate:
  Winning the Senate requires victories in difficult territory (e.g., Texas, Iowa, Ohio), but demographic trends and turnout volatility complicate the math.

• Expanding the Coalition is Urgent:
  After 2030 redistricting, population shifts will advantage Republicans in states like Texas and Florida; Democrats must organize and invest in these states or risk being locked out of the presidency and Senate control under future electoral maps.

  • Dan Pfeiffer [71:27]: “This is the thing… we have to think much bigger than how do we just win the majority in 2026… They're going to redraw the maps after the 2030 census…”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Voter Motivation:
  "They may not like the party, but they dislike Trump and they dislike Republicans more. So the party is motivated."
  — Amy Walter [04:17]

• On the Redistricting ‘Ceiling’:
  "We're definitely in the low single digits. What happens with Texas becomes really important… So we're definitely in the low single digits."
  — Amy Walter [25:10]

• On Congressional Dysfunction & Future Gridlock:
  "Our politics is now a smash and grab. Now you’ve got a majority, you know it’s only going to be for two years. And so you use it really to get one thing…"
  — Amy Walter [38:18]

• On Media, Money & Outreach:
  "There are such diminishing returns, particularly in this media environment, to linear television advertising. And so we are just dumping money… in these states with small media markets and to what end."
  — Dan Pfeiffer [73:40]

• On the Urgency of Latino Voter Engagement:
  "Latinos are the fastest growing population in the United States. You cannot be losing them… if you're going to win a math where we win a tiny percentage of white noncollege voters [and] are losing ground with Latinos… that is not one that wins."
  — Dan Pfeiffer [78:15]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamps | |-----------------------------------------|------------------------| | Opening and 2025 Democratic Wins | 03:00 – 10:00 | | Affordability, Trump & GOP Dilemmas | 10:00 – 18:00 | | Redistricting: Hype vs. Reality | 22:32 – 32:31 | | Supreme Court & Voting Rights Act | 33:00 – 36:00 | | House Map Ceilings & Micro-Majorities | 42:55 – 52:26 | | Latino Voters & The Texas Puzzle | 53:36 – 59:01 | | Senate Landscape in 2026 | 62:11 – 74:16 | | Media, Outreach & Coalition Building | 73:40 – 77:00 | | The Urgency of Florida & Texas | 70:34 – 72:35 |

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Tone & Style

The tone is candid, analytic, and often wry, reflecting Amy Walter’s data-driven pragmatism and Dan Pfeiffer’s insider humor. The conversation is substantive but accessible, weaving granular political analysis with big picture strategic imperatives for Democrats.

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Conclusion

Amy Walter and Dan Pfeiffer offer a sobering but actionable take on Democratic prospects in 2026 and beyond. While recent off-year momentum is real, structural obstacles remain daunting—thanks to a highly polarized map, gerrymandering, and shifting demographics. Success for Democrats will require mobilizing core constituencies, adapting media strategy, and investing seriously in long-term coalition and state-building, especially among Latino voters and in Sunbelt states. The age of “blue waves” yielding governing room to maneuver is over—for now.

[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Pod Save America Announcer]

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[Amy Walter]

More than 90 years after Harry and David started selling pears from their Oregon orchard, we still handpick and pack every one of our Royal Riviera pears. What makes these pears so special? Is it the single golden pear in every box that's a joy to unwrap? Or maybe it's that very first bite, as buttery, juicy, smooth and rich as you remember. Get a taste of the best handpicked holiday gifts and get 20% off site wide at haryanddavid.com, promo code PEAR20. That's haryanddavid.com code PEAR20.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Welcome to Positive America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. One year ago, Donald Trump won the popular vote, swept all seven battleground states, and made major gains for Latino voters and younger voters. But earlier this month, Democrats notched big wins in New Jersey, Virginia, and several other states, thanks in part to winning back some of the very same voters who had swung to Trump last year. So what happened? What does it tell us about the midterms next year? Can Democrats actually take back the House and the Senate? And where do things stand with Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to rig the midterm elections? Joining me to break all of this down is Amy Walter, publisher and editor in chief of the Cook Political Report. Amy is one of the sharpest political analysts in the country with a granular understanding of races in every corner of the map. There is no better person to give us a lay of the political landscape as we head into the midterms. Amy Walter, welcome back to Pod Save America.

[Amy Walter]

Well, hello. Can I just say, Dan, that I got cool points from my sister?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, interesting.

[Amy Walter]

Who Said, oh my gosh, my friends heard you. They don't have any idea what I do. But if I'm on Pod Save America now, suddenly I'm cool.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's nothing that says cool like an appearance on a political podcast run by 40somethings.

[Amy Walter]

Yes, exactly. So now we are hip.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

All right, we got a lot to talk about today. I want to get into the 2025 elections, the state of redistricting battles for the House and the Senate. This is an important podcast because it's going to air on Sunday, the historically worst travel day in America. So people are going to get our takes and as they are stuck in airports or in traffic going up and down I95 or wherever else. So we got a lot of talk about here. All right, let's start with the 2025 elections. The Democrats had huge wins. It was a rare positive day for the Democratic Party in the last year or so. One in New Jersey, one in Virginia, one in California, one in New York City, one in Georgia. You know, sort of won everywhere won by bigger margins. People expected. What was your take on what powered those wins and were you surprised? Surprised by the margins?

[Amy Walter]

Definitely surprised by the margins. If you look at the margins at Georgia and New Jersey, Right. You could look, Dan, you know well enough that the focus inside the Beltway is often where it's, where are we closest to? And so Virginia got a great deal of attention. New Jersey doesn't get as much, certainly Georgia didn't get as much. So to see big double digit wins there by Democrats, certainly pretty instructive. I think what I learned from it is first, there is, despite all of the hand wringing among Democrats for these last, well, eight months since the election, that the party is fractured and leaderless and rudderless. Democratic voters want to show up and vote. They may not like the party, but they dislike Trump and they dislike Republicans more. So the party is motivated. I think that was answered question number one. Number two was the question about whether this realignment that we saw in 2024 was a realignment or a dealignment or just a one off. I don't think we can answer that question until we get to 2028. So I want to be very careful how I say this, but I just.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Could you explain why while 2028 is more indicative than 25 or 20 or even 26.

[Amy Walter]

That's right. Just the kinds of people who show up in an off year election are very different than the people who show up in a presidential election. And also, as we know, Dan, in the next Four years, people are gonna move in and out of the electorate, whether they age in or they leave for reasons they didn't.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

For other actuarial reasons. Yes.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

So.

[Amy Walter]

I think you have to be really careful not to look at the results, say of 2025 and say, wow, okay, well, Democrats, quote, unquote, fixed their Latino problem or fix their young people problem, or Donald Trump now has so alienated Latinos that they're never gonna come back to Republicans. I don't think you can say that. What you can say though is that the kinds of people who are showing up to vote and in these off year elections, which a midterm election will have higher turnout than say 2025 electorate. But it suggests that the people who are the most interested in turning out, especially among these voters of color, also happen to dislike what Republicans are selling or what Republicans have done. So if you are sitting in, let's say in New Jersey, there's that the 9th district there, which is one that swung, I think the most of any state of any district last cycle, and it went for Cheryl this time by 20 points. So won by Trump by barely a point, swung to Cheryl by 20 points. I think that has implications for districts in Texas, districts in the Central Valley in California, obviously in New Jersey. So that was instructive. And I do think that this idea, we hear affordability as the watchword. I do think the fact that every candidate talked about that in a way that voters saw as believable. And to me, New Jersey was the best test of this because it is a. Obviously this is a gubernatorial race. Theoretically, the top concern for voters in a gubernatorial race should be what's happening in my state. Do you think things are going well in your state? Do you think they're not? The national shouldn't influence it. But what became very clear was that even as voters in that state frustrated by Trenton, definitely liked the idea of a change from having a, you know, Democrats were in charge of the government for two years, open to that idea, think taxes are too high in the state. It was their opinions about Trump and the national environment that really moved them. And Virginia was the same. I mean, Glenn Youngkin people like, if you look at the exit polls, people like Glenn Youngkin people think the state of Virginia is doing pretty well. That would be a reason if you're a Republican. If you just saw Glenn Youngkin's approval rating and how people felt about Virginia, that looks like a pretty good environment to be a Republican.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I mean, I think the New Jersey, Virginia is like, I Think Spanberger's margin is quite notable. But it's also just historically, this is what Virginia does. Yeah, right. Every year by 2013. And what is this since 1975, the Republican they party that lost the previous presidential election wins the election. We've been flipping, you know, every year.

[Amy Walter]

Every year. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But New Jersey, like, you really hit on something really important about New Jersey, which is if you were mad about affordability based on your own, like financial circumstances, theoretically, you should be really mad at the Democrats who've been in charge of Virginia for the last eight years. And then you have.

[Amy Walter]

Of New Jersey.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Of New Jersey, yes.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

New Jersey, yes. If you live in New Jersey, you should be because. And every election, every election's a change election. It's why Democrats were pretty worried about Sheryl was winning the third. Even in a Democratic state, winning the third gubernatorial election in a row is very hard. Yet not only did you see Democrats turn out for a Democrat, which is notable and important, but you saw a, you know, based on exit polls, which will have all the caveats with them, but 7% of, in the exit poll, 7% of Trump 2024 voters voted for a Democrat. And that's even more voted for Cheryl. But what's even more interesting about that to me is if you are voting in a off year gubernatorial election, New Jersey, you're a pretty engaged political. That's right. Person. And so that, you know, I sort of think of this in concentric circles, right. You have off year, special election voters who are the most engaged of all. Then you go out one circle and you have the midterm election, which has some people who you're still pretty engaged in politics. You vote in the midterm, but you're not, you know, you're not so dialed in that you're not, you're not missing the, you know, special bond election or city council election in your town. Then you have presidential election years, people who come in all the time. And the fact that like these highly engaged voters who voted for Trump switched is despite Democrats being in charge, I think is a pretty notable fact that tells us something about the, at least the political environment where it is in.

[Amy Walter]

November 2020, exactly where it sits right now. And you know, I looked at this poll that came out over the weekend, the CBS poll, and to me, what would worry me the most as a Republican is not simply that Trump's approval rating on the economy is low, it's that when you ask voters do you think Trump has anything to do with prices going up and 65% say yes, including like a third of Republicans. That is a very tough place to be. Right. So when Republicans talk about, well, we need to do a better job on the affordability. Right. We need to tackle this head on. Part of the challenge is that they believe that the president himself and his policies have gotten us to this point. It was when you guys were in the White House, you did have a certain amount of time in which people gave you a benefit of the doubt because they said, look, Obama didn't create this mess. This was there, he walked into it. You got some of that cushion. And I think Republicans started their initial reaction to why are we getting blamed for inflation when inflation isn't our fault is correct. Right. You'd say, we didn't start this fire. This was started before we came into office. We're dealing with the after effects of COVID of the Biden policies and inflation that accompanied that. But voters think that Trump and the White House do have something to do with the rising cost of stuff. Right. So how do you. You can't do the traditional, which I'll just blame it on the guys who came before me. So now you have to really figure out, all right, how do we tackle affordability in a way that voters believe is one, actually working and two isn't just passing the buck.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it's, you know, the Obama comparison is really interesting because it was up until 2012, so we've been in office for four, three years at that point, that people still blame George W. Bush more than Obama for the state of the economy because there was this precipitating event of the financial crisis and the crash of Lehman Brothers and all that that happened before Obama was president. Everyone knew that Trump had this gift wrap for him. Right. Everyone blamed Biden for the economy. Biden's numbers on inflation were abysmal. Came in, focused on a bunch of things that weren't inflation, and then did several high profile announcements to raise people's prices, which is truly one of the more insane things you could possibly do politically. And when you see Navigator Research, the Democratic aligned polling organization, do word clouds of what they know about Trump and what they hear, and tariffs is always giant in the middle. It is the thing that people know and they believe Trump's raising their costs. And it really is a pincer movement here for him because they think he raised their costs. They also think in the CBS poll, they ask you, well, what's the most important issue that you want Trump to focus on? Overwhelmingly, it's inflation. What do you think Trump is focusing on, it's like a fifth of voters say he's focusing on inflation the most. And so he's both causing the problem and then being seen as not trying to solve the problem, which is why his numbers are now as bad as Biden's were right before the election on inflation.

[Amy Walter]

Right. And so if you're a Republican looking forward to 2026, you say, all right, so how can we get out of this pincer that we're in? And as you very well know, it is very difficult, even pre the Trump grip on the party. But it is very hard to run against the party of the president in the White House in a midterm year and be successful. And we see it year after year, right? The Democrats who voted against Obamacare in 2010, they can't pine out that, see, I'm independent. I didn't vote with the, this Obamacare thing. Voters want to punish the party in power. And you will be punished. The thing you can hope for is, yes, those same people don't want to punish you as much because they like you for other reasons. And also your base turns up. So you depress your base when you try to distance yourself from the president. But I think in this case, this is why this healthcare debate has become so fascinating, right? Because in many ways, Trump is correct. He looks at the environment, he sees people are blaming him for high costs. He knows that this ACA extender would be one tangible piece of evidence to show I'm actually bringing costs down. But he can't do it because Republicans or Congress are like, we voted against Obamacare 60 times. Remember that? Remember how we overturned and now you're asking us to extend it. But as a political move, if, if I'm a Republican in a swing district, yes, I would like to vote for something that I say, I actually am here to lower your costs of healthcare.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's. The Obamacare extension thing is interesting because. Well, two things. One, Trump is making it much harder for himself by coming up with these crazy plans that basically are akin to repealing Obamacare. So. Which is quite an unpopular move and one of the reasons why they lost so many seats in 2018.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah, but.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So he could just take the money on the table and just do the two year or three year extension, but that's not available to him. And this is where his lame duck status matters. Because if he was running for reelection in 2028 and he came and said, I need to do this, a rising tide lifts all boats. We gotta do this, they would do It. But here you're. He's not gonna get the swing. The swing Republicans, of which there aren't a ton of, would like to vote for it.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The base doesn't care if Trump is reelected, so. Absolutely not. They care about their own primary. And so you can't do the obvious easy thing, which is this is like the tariffs. Like, it is insane that in an election when affordability is the top issue, the Republicans refuse to open the government or, you know, unshut it down or whatever words you want to use for something that would have benefited them politically. On the affordability issue. I mean, there was that polling memo from Tony Fabrizio, who's Trump's pollster from.

[Amy Walter]

Back in the summer, back in the day. Yep.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Which basically said, like, in the swing districts, the generic ballot would go to Democrats plus 15, which I'm a little skeptical of those numbers, but. And I'm skeptical about who paid for that poll. But either way, Trump's own pollster believes this is very, very bad for them and they can't fix the problem, which does make me think. And we'll get more deeper into the 2020 election in a second, but it does make me think that their best play is not going to be to solve the affordability problem. It's going to be hope and pray the economy, economy gets somehow better and the salience of that issue goes down and try to raise the science of something else. This is correct. The equivalent of Trump in 2018, when the election was about health care in Texas, tried to make it about the caravan of Ms. 13 members, you know, marching on the border. And so I fully expect to see something like that as their M.O. that is, I don't think it's likely successful play, but it is probably. They're more likely play 100% than trying to come up with some sort of.

[Amy Walter]

Than trying to come up with a. I mean, and again, you know, the, The. You know what that issue is going to be. Look, if we had been talking at this point in 2021, there was no scenario in which Democrats were not going to lose lots and lots of seats in that midterm, right after what we saw in New Jersey and Virginia in those elections, and a Democratic base that was so deeply demoralized and just checked out, and a Republican base that was fired up and inflation hitting, which we knew was going to be the sort of real Achilles Hill for Democrats. And then, boom, comes the Dobbs announcement in June, and that's where the race. Right where we went from it being all about inflation to. Yes, inflation is still the number one issue. But now we also have this piece. So I mean you and I know we've got a long way to go in a year. So it's whether it's we. If there's nothing that is happening outside of the control of the two parties that is something that the Supreme Court does or natural disaster war. Yes, I would, you know, if you, if you look at again that CBS poll, what I found interesting is even on the issue of immigration, just specifically, if you just ask big picture way, do you approve or disapprove of what the president's doing in enforcement, not just on is he keeping the border safe but they, they specifically used a word, the words like enforcement and dealing with illegal immigration. And he was only underwater by 2 or 3 points and it's because Republicans support him 9010 on that. Whereas on affordability he's still losing a third of Republicans on those issues. So independents still don't love how he's dealing with immigration which is why it's not necessarily going to save those swing state or swing district Republicans. But if you're in a Republican enough district. Right. A Trump 910 plus that could be enough.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. The turnout differential is enough to EQ over even if you're listening to Independence 30 70.

[Amy Walter]

Exactly. Exactly.

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[Poetry Reader / Narrator]

Twas the Night before Christmas when all.

[Amy Walter]

Through the barn Harry and David's Royal Riviera pairs were wrapped heading out from the the children were nestled snug in their beds while towels of Moose Munch popcorn danced in their heads.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

When what on our doorstep should magically appear.

[Amy Walter]

Harry and David delivering holiday cheer.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Harry and David exclaimed as they drove out of sight.

[Amy Walter]

Happy holidays to all and to all a good bite. Find magical gifts for everyone on your [e-mail].

[Dan Pfeiffer]

To redistricting, right? So earlier this year, Trump sends out a truth. Texas immediately says they're going to redo their maps, pick up five seats. All of a sudden, other states, Missouri, Indiana are starting to talk about how they're going to do it. Democrats are in a full state of panic that, you know, they're going to be able to rig themselves into a at least permanent majority of sorts. Right. We're just going to be they're going to take the Republic, the slight Republican House advantage. They're going to make it much bigger. We're not going to even even at a good Democratic year, we weren't going to win the House. As we sit here today, a lot has happened. California has passed Prop 50. Some states have redistricted, some Democratic states have talked about redistricting. Courts are involved. Where do you, where does the battle for the House through this redistricting process stand right now?

[Amy Walter]

Who okay, so you don't have to.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You don't go state by state.

[Amy Walter]

I'm not going to go state by state. But I think if we just put it in, I'll start really big and then we can go narrow. Right now, my colleagues here at the Koch Political Report, Erin Covey especially, who's tracking this intently. And if you want to look at her redistricting tracker on our site, it's [e-mail] but right now she's projecting just if the Texas map, even if the Texas map is upheld, that Republicans gain just two to three seats in this whole process.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Does that include Florida moving?

[Amy Walter]

It does. So what would happen if the new Texas map is upheld? So here's what's happening right now between Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri and Florida gets, you say the best case scenario, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. That's like nine seats there, something like that. Nine or ten seats there. But then between California, Utah and now Virginia, which could get you two seats. Now we're talking about, you know, Democrats being able to get five or seven seats. So that's where you net out the Republicans getting two seats out of this.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

A narrow advantage that would be very.

[Amy Walter]

I mean, it's very, very narrow. And so these numbers literally, Dan, like our tracker of how many seats gain or lose.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I know you guys use fractions.

[Amy Walter]

Well, it started at Republicans likely to pick up as many as a dozen seats, which is where we started to net a. Net a dozen dozen seats, which. Your point, when this all first started and it was this concept of California maybe having this ballot initiative to. Okay, well, maybe now they'll net seven or eight seats. Okay, maybe they'll net five to six seats. Okay, maybe now it's four for. Okay, now maybe it's. So we're definitely in the low single digits. What happens with Texas becomes really important. And then, you know, as I said, Virginia and Florida are the only two really outstanding states that. But they, they could also end up canceling each other out if Virginia's pass. And they get two seats out of that and Florida has two seats. Well, there you go.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And what's interesting is the way that some of these things have fallen, which is Utah, which is a obviously Republican state. Democrats are going to pick up a seat there because of a court decision in a very Democratic district that's so Democratic that the guy who held it the last time probably can't win the primary. There's too moderate for the district, which is a wild thing to say about Salt Lake City. And then Ohio, I think this speaks to Republicans challenges here is the Republicans in Ohio cut a bipartisan deal to protect themselves. And so they might pick up a little bit there, but they did not push, they did not gerrymander to the max. So that's interesting. And then Indiana, they're refusing to do it. And I think that to me, tells me two things. One is the reality of gerrymandering. As I said, partisan gerrymanders is. There's real risk because there's this simple mathematical fact that you have a static number of Republicans in the state. And then if you're trying, when you move them into other districts, you are taking some districts and taking them from Democratic to Republican, but you're taking Republican districts and making them less Republican. So in a good year, you know, the wave goes over the levy they've built. And so Republicans are seeing that, not Republicans. In Texas, they don't necessarily do that, but like in Indiana and elsewhere, saying, Trump's not gonna be around, he's not gonna be on the ballot, you know, ever again. Why would we put ourselves at risk here? And it has limited the playing field in a pretty interesting way.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah. And it's also, I mean, when I started covering politics and probably would. Dan, if you remember, in the old days of redistricting, it really was an incumbent protection racket.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes.

[Amy Walter]

Right. That the individual members did have incredible influence because they were protecting their friends, they were protecting their own districts, and they would, to get a deal cut, would say, I'll protect yours, you protect mine. And here we go. Wasn't necessarily the best way of doing. I'm not advocating this is the best way of doing business. But they did have agency in this. And I think what we're seeing. And Kansas did the same. They rebuffed the president as well. What we're seeing in Kansas and Indiana is we are red states. We get it. But we also have our own individual priorities that, as you said, are gonna outlast Donald Trump. And whether it's something as small as, I don't like the idea of taking whatever county and chopping it up five ways. Right. In the hundred years of this, the county, it's never been chopped up before and it should always have one representative. Right. There are those things that still, we think all politics is national, but there is a very parochial part of politics that still exists. And especially if you're a state lawmaker. You think. I'm thinking not just about are we going to win or lose, because in Kansas or in Indiana, like, you're going to be the majority party forever. It is. What do we need to do beyond just winning and losing? So if you're a swing state where you're constantly, you're Pennsylvania and you're constantly thinking about that little edge you have and maybe swinging your state is different from, you know, if you're, if you're a deep red or a deep blue state. And that's why the Virginia ballot initiatives is so interesting too, because like California, this independent redistricting passed overwhelmingly when it was on the ballot and it's now part of the Constitution. But are people willing in the state to say, I'm going to give up my local, what I felt was like a vote for something unique in my state in order to make a broader statement nationally. And I think Democrats have been more willing to do that. I'm also kind of impressed, quite frankly, to see. But Republicans, you're right, they gave up some of their territory, although they're not, they have not put themselves in really dangerous positions. Right. They're not taking the kinds of risks like, oh, we're going to put you, we, you've gone from a Republican plus 20 to a Republican plus 2.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But.

[Amy Walter]

They do have new territory they're going to have to introduce themselves to which no, no member wants to do that they are comfortable in their district. So yes, at the end of the day, I think there is the short term, which is. Okay, let's say that Republicans end up netting a couple seats out of this two, three seats, pad their majority. So now Republicans have a six seat or the other way to think of it is Democrats need to, instead of winning just three seats to get a majority, now need six or seven. But the longer term implications, I think this goes to your point about, you know, you redrew these lines, assuming a certain environment, what is it gonna look like in a presidential year? What is it gonna look like four years from now? And so we don't know that. And you know, you have also really soured the public that already thought that this process is corrupt. Now they think it's just. It's all really looked at as pretty contemptuous.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it's going to be interesting. This will be a very busy year for the Cook political. For Cook Political is when they have to redraw the districts again for before the 2032 elections.

[Amy Walter]

Dude.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And how people handle that.

[Amy Walter]

How people handle that. And also. Okay, just from a software update sort of thing, okay, we think about redistricting every 10 years and like, what do we need to have on the site and what do we need to build and how do we. What we were not prepared to do that for?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, Dave Wasserman needs nine years to recover every time we do this now we're redistricting every five years.

[Amy Walter]

We're only giving him. Right. Like a year.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, North Carolina's redistricted every cycle, hasn't had a new map every cycle for like the last however many cycles.

[Amy Walter]

Cycle. Yeah. Since 1992. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The other thing that hangs over this conversation is the pending Supreme Court decision on Section 2 of the Voting Rights act on VRA. So. So Supreme Court, for people who have not been following this, if you're a Democrat, very, very alarming situation is Supreme Court is reviewing Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, which prohibits discrimination on racial lines. And the specific question is about whether. Is about whether majority minority districts, the districts that are drawn to specifically include mostly black voters in the south, but it could also be Latino voters in the South, Southwest, wherever else is unconstitutional. If they were to, even though they just upheld this pretty recently, but if they were to strike that down, there would be a rash of redistricting that would happen again. Mostly, but not entirely in the Deep south, mostly in the south, because people was like Alabama. These states like Alabama, Mississippi, that Republicans win by 20 points in presidential election years have one or two Democratic districts because they have large, concentrated black populations. They could read all the districts to divide those populations up and ensure there's no Democratic districts in the South. That could happen before the 2026 midterms. But they'd have to move pretty quickly. Yeah, not likely. Yeah, they'd have to basically have a decision like now or January, I think would probably be the end.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because you really have to do it before the primaries in March. How are you thinking about that? And have you guys done any math, any sort of like range of outcomes for what that would mean? Let's say it's for 2028 in terms of net gains.

[Amy Walter]

I know. So we have not done it here. I know Nate Cohn over at the New York Times has done a good look at that, and I think his was something like five seats that Republicans get of it. Now, Texas is an interesting story because in Texas, this Supreme Court fight is not. Is the case in front of the Supreme Court right now is constitutional. On the, on the. I know we have to like parse all of this, but the, the case there is a constitutional argument versus the Voting Rights act argument. So this would not. Right now, what's happening in Texas is separate from this. However, you're right, this would definitely mean fewer seats in the south, black seats in the South. So let's just say now if Democrats were to win the House in 2026, and let's say they have an eight to ten seat majority and VRA struck down, and now we go into 2030 with five or six fewer Democratic seats. Right. You can see how the math now works going into the next election. But the. To me, what it really highlights to Dan is that this idea that the House is going to ping pong every two years between the parties is something we have not really dealt with fully. When I first came to Washington in the early 90s, Democrats had had control of the House, unbroken control of the House for 40 years. And Democrats lose it in 1994. Republicans hold it all the way to 2006. And then after that it just starts flipping pretty quickly. Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Democrats lost in 2010, we won it back in 2018. Yeah, yeah. And then we lost it again in 2020.

[Amy Walter]

Right. And then now you could see Democrats get it back in 26. And then you go, oh, is it going to flip again in 30? So what does that mean for just the body in general? Like, what do you do when you are just constantly ping ponging between majority and minority. You know, historically, at least in the last 30 years, a president comes in with the House, the Senate and the White House gets to do one really big thing, right? Bill Clinton gets to do his budget, obviously for Obama, it's Obamacare. Trump gets to do the tax cut and then this year or whatever, Biden does inflation reduction Act, Trump does the big beautiful bill. You use your majority. I call it sort of a, it's like a smash and grab. Now is our politics that you have, you've got a majority, you know it's only going to be for two years. And so you use it really to get one thing go in, you smash, you grab what you can, you lose. Maybe you can come back four years later, two years later and, and do something else. But it's, it's not a great way to do big things because really what we're doing is one party gets in control and uses that as their opportunity to fulfill the dreams of the base. They get one thing that they dreamed of to get done, they fulfill that one dream. But there's not like a, hey, let's think about the really big consequential issues that are impacting American society. Let's really tackle AI, let's really tackle the disintegration of institutions and what that's going to mean. Let's really fundamentally think about this question of affordability. What does that mean in a world where, right, we've got more billionaires but yet than ever and the gap between rich and poor is bigger than ever. So yes, I don't know that it's not a great way to, to.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And the thing that's really changed here is the way it used to work. As you said, you'd come in, you do your big thing mostly on a party line basis. You would lose the House or the Senate. The President would get reelected, then would do something big and bipartisan with the other side because the, because the other party would be chagrined by the presidential loss. They feel like they should do some sort of compromising and this all sort of fell apart after Obama won in 2012 and Republican, the Republican House bailed on immigration. Like that was the exact model, you know, Obama wins by a bigger margin. They thought John Boehner stands up the next day and says Obamacare is now the law of the land. Every Republican from Rupert Murdoch and Sean Hannity down says we gotta do comprehensive immigration form passes the Senate, gets to the House and dies in part because the House minority Whip lost. Lost the whip lost his primary over immigration. And then now we're just in this world also just the, it's a, you know, there's this house pinging back and forth dynamic. But we also have had two one term presidents in a row, which is not something we've had in a long time.

[Amy Walter]

Which is exactly.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Which is. So now we're just really pinging back and forth.

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Let's actually just pivot to the House writ large here. So we started this conversation about 2025. Democrats are super excited. Trump's numbers are in the toilet. Affordability is the top issue. Trump's numbers on affordability are in the toilet. You know, looking at the 2025 results are winning back Latinos. Things are feeling great for us. People on my side here feel great. They open up Cook Political. They read Amy Walter's latest column which says basically, Democrats are ascendant, but we have a very low ceiling. So my question for you is, why are you such a buzzkill here? Hey, let us have our moment. It's been a long year.

[Amy Walter]

Math is math. Math is math. So part of the reason we're ping ponging back and forth, right, is that there are just so few swing districts and that the House is pretty evenly divided between seats that Kamala Harris carried and seats that Donald Trump carried. And there are very few crossover seats. So if you're in a Harris district, you're a Democrat. If you're in a Trump district, you're a Republican. And there are also very few seats that Trump won narrowly, like usually after, especially this one, which was a close election. Right. This wasn't a landslide in 2024, but there are only 14 districts that, of the 222 that Republicans hold, only 14 of them are districts that Trump lost or won by less than five points.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's a wild statistic.

[Amy Walter]

That is just such a small number. It's like when you look at, not to sort of make you go to PST, PTSD land, but 2010, you know, there were so many. There were 48 Democrats in McCain districts in 2010. Right. Because there were a bunch of districts that, you know, they voted for John McCain for president, but the Democrat was able to hold on because. Right. They were there. They were unique to that district. They were used to voting for Democrats there even as they were voting for Republican for president.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And Obama did better in those districts than Democrats. That's the. Correct. That's because that election's fascinating. Because that's one of the rare times where there are two wave elections in a row.

[Amy Walter]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

2006 was the wave election in 08. And so you had all these people who won on the back of those two waves because normally you have a wave election in an off year, then you have the presidential, the tide comes back in, you lose a bunch of seats. We just kept winning people. And so there was this huge list and now that does not exist.

[Amy Walter]

That does not exist anymore. And the challenge then comes in. So that's 14. I won't call them easy seats, but those are the most fruitful to flip. So even if you win all of those, that's just a gain of 14 seats. And let's say you need six seats to win. So that gives. And you don't lose any of your own. That gives you an eight seat majority. It's not bad. Yeah, it's a narrow majority. So you could have a wave election which would look like 2010, 2018, in which the party outside of the White House wins almost all of the seats between 0 and 5 and those seats, one that are crossover seats and come up with a much smaller number. Now to me, the big question then is could we see a wave that is even bigger than that and that I'm not seeing evidence of that yet, of one in which districts that Trump won by double digits start to go right. That there's a real collapse there because of what? Either because of the political environment or this idea that Trump was just so unique and so skilled at putting together a coalition that just can't hold without him on the top of the ticket. But this is where I'm going to go back to where we started, Dan, from the conversation, our conversation, where we started about Virginia and what we learned from the off year elections. Democrats had a great night at the legislative level too. They picked up 13 seats at the state legislative level, but all of them were in districts that were basically Trump 0 to 5 or were Harris districts. So even on a great night in Virginia, you say, oh my gosh, Abigail spanberger wins by 15 points. They win all of the row races, the statewide races and pick up 13 seats. But the they didn't win in districts that are red. In other words, they're winning all the swing districts, which is what you need to do to win an election. But what you're not doing is dipping into these deep red areas. Those areas are going to stay red. They may be a little less red. And so it's not going to be the kind of election that at least at this point that we're seeing that you can say you're going to See big shifts that would make Republicans absolutely reassess either what they're doing or what they're saying or how they're thinking about their coalition. The other way I think about this is the Senate map is basically getting a win. In order to win control of the Senate, Democrats need to win in Trump plus 10 so states or more. Right. And so winning in Ohio, winning in Iowa, winning in Texas. That's if, if they are winning there, then they are going to be winning a 30 or more house seats too.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Looking at your data, it's like it's so you have 14 Republicans in CC there, Harris won or Trump won by less than 5 points. Another 14 in Trump's districts that Trump won by 5 to 10 points. Right. Which is those are some possibly attainable but hard. But the thing that really is stunning, and this does show why the House will ping pong back and forth and why the days of large majorities are gone for now at least, is 187 of the Republicans are in districts that Trump won by more than 10 points in a year in which he won the popular vote by the smallest margin of any candidate since al Gore in 2000. So this is not Obama 08 or Biden, you know, winning the popular vote by 7 million votes or whatever it was in 2020. This is an incredibly narrow popular vote win. And Even under those scenarios, 187 of sitting Republicans feel that they are in no danger of possibly losing election. Which does go back to the point about why they don't really care about extending the Obamacare tax credits because their only fear is losing the only election they're ever going to lose. Most of them were ever going to lose is a primary.

[Amy Walter]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And so they're not really concerned about the other thing. And the reason we're in that position is that a combination of polarization and gerrymandering, or mostly polarization, how do we get there?

[Amy Walter]

Yeah, I do think it's a lot about polarization, but gerrymandering too, that went and benefited one side or the other. But the fact that you just have so few people willing to give the other party the benefit of the doubt and split their ticket means that you just are, you're just not going to get these crossover kinds of districts that when we were starting out in politics were just so commonplace. And so you're right, if, if each party has, you know, 180 plus seats sitting in deep red, deep blue, we're going to fight over the same 30 seats every two cycles. And the, the only way that changes is either one. There is a big decoupling at some point and it does feel as if this is, to me, the really great paradox of our time is that people are less aligned to party than ever. Our politics is not as linear, meaning terms of thinking about a scale of conservative to liberal. I think there's a recognition of voters being more heterodox on policy than politicians are. So there is this ability to sort of cobble together a coalition of voters that looks very different than what we have seen in the last 30 years.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And I'd add to that a decoupling as we've, we've become less racially polarized. So, like politics is a little bit detached from, at least from demographics in that sense.

[Amy Walter]

There we go. All of that should expand this playing field.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it's interesting. It expands it at the presidential level, but not at the House level.

[Amy Walter]

Not at the House level where you're able to. Yeah. Draw these districts that take out any of the uncertainty. Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

In the Senate too. Like now, what do we have? One Republican, Susan Collins in a solid blue state and no Democrats in a solid red state. Is that correct? Yeah.

[Amy Walter]

Yep, yep. So Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, because they ping pong back and forth, you know, those are right. How many other states have split delegation? Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's Maine. Maine's the other one.

[Amy Walter]

There we go. But we had that. Is that it? So it's just three. I think that's. I think that's right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That I can think on the top of my head. Yeah.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah, that's. That's pretty, Pretty dark.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, pretty, pretty. Well, it's dark for Democrats because we can't. We're very good at winning lots of electoral votes and not so good at winning lots of states. And so that, you know, really puts a ceiling on the debt, which we can get. We can pivot to the Senate. Actually, before we pivot to the Senate, I do want to go back to just one thing on the House map. There was this Politico story the other day that was about Texas. And you know, Texas, as we mentioned, as this question, is, is the, is the, is the current redistrict, you know, redistricting, gerrymander map going to be tossed out? Then go back to the old map, but it had a bunch of Democrats from Texas and D.C. saying that they are optimistic about winning seats in Texas under the current map. Texas map, where if it were to stand in place, the one that Trump wanted, because of the shift in the Latino vote they saw, particularly in New Jersey, now, there's a lot of bloviating from the people in charge of winning the House and Senate on both sides at this point, because you want donors and people to believe you have a chance to win. But there is this interesting dynamic in Texas, which is they did draw those maps, largely assuming that the 2024 gains Trump made with Latinos, particularly along the Rio Grande Valley, are like that is those are Republican gains, not Trump gains. And I do always point out that according to exit polls at least Beto o' Rourke won Latinos against Greg Abbott the last time he was up in a midterm. And so there is this world in which they made this bet in Texas that Latinos were going to operate at a 2024 level and they may not going forward. Are you but looking at your guys, essential, I would say for everyone's watching, essential race ratings at Cook Political. If you want to know where to donate your money, where to, what races to watch, you should look at those race ratings. But I don't think you guys have any of those races in the toss up or lean, lean Republican category. Or maybe one, maybe Myra Flores.

[Amy Walter]

I think maybe the one right now. That would be one. To your point, that's she fits into the Trump. Again, this is under the map that is on pause. But is the redistricted map is a Trump plus. I think it's like plus 8, 9, something, 10, something like that. Okay, so that would be interesting. That is definitely one to keep an eye on, right? To say it's one thing. So I think there are two conversations when we're talking about Texas and Latinos. The first is Republicans said we can gain five seats with this map. That five seats depends on winning, knocking off two Democrats in South Texas based on, as you said, the performance of Donald Trump in that area. So you could argue that at the very least, Democrats are able to hold those two. And Republicans come out of Texas winning three seats.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Plus three.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah, plus three instead of five. The other is that you could look at, okay, again, this is a Republican health seat, the 15th district, and say, well, that also should be considered more competitive if these numbers with Latinos hold up across the country. And as we know, the results in New Jersey are about New Jersey. They may not translate into the Central Valley. They may not. It's that whole like Latinos are Latinos everywhere and they're obviously not so Rio Grande or San Antonio or this is, this is not what it's like saying, like all women vote this way. All right. It is very much so. We're not saying all Latinos are going to vote a similar way, but I do think that and the folks over at the Eckies Project just put out their big survey of Latino voters and their bottom line is their assumption is that the vote will look a lot more like it did in 2022 than it did in 2024. In other words, Democrats are gonna do better with Latinos. But it's not like it won't look like it did in 2020. It won't look like it did pre basically pre Biden, we're not going back there.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, 2016.

[Amy Walter]

Exactly. Hillary 2016 was the high water mark and we're not. Their point is we're not going back to that 20. At least right now they don't see it. Don't look at that as the baseline number that if Democrats don't hit that, they have failed. Look instead at how Democrats did in 2022. And I think that is Texas is going to be a great place to see just where that number ends up.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

When we come back, more of my conversation with Amy Walter. But before we go, if you're someone who lives and dies with every single poll, is obsessed with what is happening in our politics, feels overwhelmed by all that's happening, I would highly encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter, the Message Box. I try to cut through the chaos in American politics, explain what's actually happening, give you real strategies to fight back against MAGA extremism, including where to donate your time and money and how to win arguments with your MAGA curious uncle. Message Box is all about how Democrats can rebuild our coalition, rebrand our party, and most importantly, win elections again. Yes, Donald Trump is making everything more expensive. But I'm gonna do something different. I have a special offer for Positive America listeners. If you sign up today, you will get a 30 day free trial. Your first month will be free. Go to crooked.com yeswedan and yes, that website does hurt my soul every time I say it. But please go to crooked.com yeswedan for a 30 day free trial. If you've had your eye on any crooked merch, this weekend is the time to get it. We have a great deal going. Grab gifts on sale from our new friend of the pod, hoodies and stocking stuffers. The whole site is 25% off this weekend only. Head to crooked.comstore to shop the sale.

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

All right, let's go to the Senate real fast here as you so the Democratic path to a Senate majority, which I think most people thought was off the table earlier this year or pretty close off the table. There has been a lot of optimism and I think measured optimism from the people who don't have a very specific political interest in making people optimistic about it. That Democrats, we've been fortunate in Republican recruiting failures like the beginning of the year. We think Brian Kemp's running against John Ossoff. We think, you know, the governor of New Hampshire is running again running against what we thought would be Gene Shaheen at that point, you know, Republicans can't recruit their best candidates. We get some really good recruiting wins in Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown. But our path, for some people know, is we got to defend open seats in Minnesota, Michigan and New Hampshire, we have to defend John Ossoff in Georgia, have to beat Susan Collins in Maine, win in North Carolina, which Susan Collins theoretically should be for all the reason we talked about, a very winnable race for us, although she has defied partisan dynamics before. Have Roy Cooper win in a state that Trump won by a little, by a few points in 2020 and where we haven't won a Senate race since 2008, I believe was Kay Hagan was the last one, but have won statewide a couple times now, Roy Cooper, Josh Stein, et cetera. And then we have to win two of the following four, Texas, Ohio, Iowa or Alaska. And the big asterisk I put for Alaska is you need Mary Peltola to run for that. She was the statewide Rep of those four, all of which Trump won by double digits and all of which have been trending Republican over the last eight years here. What is your assessment of the Democratic path and if there is one, do you think is the most viable path right now?

[Amy Walter]

Right. So the Ohio seems the next most vulnerable for Republicans simply because you've got a very well known and well established brand in Sherrod Brown. The current Republican isn't particularly well known there. He's more of a traditional Republican. He kind of comes out of a Mike DeWine style Republican, which in some ways you'd say, oh, well, that makes it a safer bet. Right? Because if anybody remembers the last Senate race in the state, that was the Bernie Moreno race, which was a lot closer than people had expected against Sherrod Brown. There, of course, was J.D. vance. There was a lot of hand wringing by Republicans when he first ran about his campaign. They didn't think he was running a strong enough campaign. He wasn't a good fundraiser. So that there's not.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

J.D. vance, I would say, just notably underperformed every other Republican in the state by a fair amount. Even if we did end up winning by.

[Amy Walter]

Exactly. And so there are two ways to look at that. One is even when you have candidates who don't run great campaigns as Republicans in the state, they're still able to win against well known, well established and well funded Democrats. The other way to say it is, yes, but you could also make the case that the last two elections have been relatively decent ones for Republicans. And the last time that the environment was as weak as this for Republicans was 2018. And Sherrod Brown won in 2018 in Ohio. Of course, he was the incumbent then. But you also think about a place like Ohio and go. I just don't see places where the Trump brand is receding enough to get you over the finish line. Iowa, to me is really fascinating because you've got a state where there are clear implications, really. In Iowa, you've got. There's been real consequences to Trump's tariff policy there. Right. This is a farm economy. The soybean farmers getting hammered and ranchers and cattle. And I just saw a tweet, I think it was today or yesterday from Senator Grassley upset at an appointment to one of the bodies that HHS Secretary RFK Jr. Oversees who wants to ban pesticides, which again, just another blow to farmers in the state. Right. They are just getting really pummeled by the policies of this administration. If you look at off year special elections in that state, Democrats have outperformed by significant amount in Iowa. So it seems like there's some weakness there for Republicans. I think the hardest part for Iowa and even Democrats will privately admit this as well, is as an open seat, it actually may be harder for them to win than if Joni Ernst were still there because she just had a lot of that baggage. Now, the one thing I'll say, Ashley Hinson, who is the Republican nominee, is a very strong candidate. She's a former TV reporter, so she's got some name id. She is very polished and a very good campaigner. But she also has a voting record. Right. She's not an outsider. You know, part of what made Joni earn such a great candidate when she won this seat in 2014 was she was known just. All right, she was known as the castrating pig lady. Right. Like she.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

For people who were not around in 2014. She has a farming background and was a veteran, but I believe she was a veteran, but also ran an ad about castrating pigs, which in a time before things went truly viral politically, this was an ad that everyone knew about and was quite, quite excellent.

[Amy Walter]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But I spent the last 11 years. Now, that's the castrating pig lady. Yes.

[Amy Walter]

Right. That is the lady who knows how to make. She'll make Washington squeal. Right. So everybody got a little squeamish. So they're like, ugh.

[Poetry Reader / Narrator]

But.

[Amy Walter]

So Hinson does not come in with the outsiderness. Right. She still will have to carry the baggage of all that's going on in Washington. So while I think she does not have some of the obvious weaknesses. And for Ernst, that was this last viral moment where at a town hall, she told folks who were worried about Medicare cuts and Medicaid cuts causing people to die. And then she said, well, you know, everyone's gonna die. So I am very, very intrigued by Iowa. There's a very big Democratic primary, though, and we have to see the caliber of candidate that comes out of that primary. Now, Texas, you know, the shorthand is, oh, well, if Paxton wins, that puts Texas in play. Here's the thing. And you and I will probably be talking about this for years, for the next couple of years. But I also look at. At who's in solid. So Florida. There's really no effort being made by Democrats to win Florida. We know that Democrats haven't won Florida in a while. It's a tough state. It's an expensive state. But to not put Florida and Texas in play two years before a presidential election, if you're Democrats, you're looking at the electoral College map going into 28 and then going into 32. Like, if you're not competing in those states.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

What.

[Amy Walter]

How are you.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What are we doing?

[Amy Walter]

What are you doing? You know? Right. Like, at some point, if you. You can write off, you can say, all right, fine, we're not. Ohio's not a swing state anymore. Iowa's not a swing state anymore. Fine, fine, fine. We're going to get. Give up those ghosts. You can't also say, well, Florida, we got to get. We're going to give up there. And Texas had so expensive, and it's take a lot of money to move just a point. So we're just gonna go all in on, you know, Georgia, North Carolina. Sure, yeah. Arizona, Nevada. Great. But that's not enough, Especially as the Midwest continues to become not just more competitive and that blue wall gets smaller, but those states are literally shrinking. Right. New York is gonna have fewer electoral voters.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is the most important thing.

[Amy Walter]

Yes, yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is so important. This is the thing. This is one of the things I worry about in the Democratic party post the 2025 election is we have to think much bigger than how do we just win the majority in 2026 or even how we just win the White House in 2028. Although those are high priorities for us, is they're going to redraw the maps after the 2030 census. The most likely scenario as we sit here today is that Florida, California is going to lose some seats, Texas is going to lose some seats. The blue wall is going to lose some seats. Florida and Texas are going to gain 5 to 7 net electoral votes. And so the blue wall path no longer exists for us. Like, that does not exist. And so we are going to have. And in the coalition which we currently have will be. Unless we can improve, we can actually make those gains we saw in 2025. Latino voters will not be sufficient to ever win a national election. And so we cannot cede Florida and Texas going forward because what we have to, we have to believe the Democrats can get back to something that looks like Obama's 2012 coalition with Latino voters and white voters, frankly. What, you know, we. Because if you cannot do that, you cannot win.

[Amy Walter]

You can't win a national election.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You cannot. You. Yeah, like we, the Republican electoral advantage is going to get so severe that we cannot do that. And so that is the argument for running vigorous Senate races in those states in 26, in 28 and 30.

[Amy Walter]

Even if you say, right, even if you say, okay, so we lost. And it is a lot of money. You're right. It's a lot of money to put into two states that literally just a million dollars gets you nothing. Right. A million dollars in Iowa can actually get you something. So I get the math of that. I really, really do. And yet I also take your point that if you're not gonna at least just say, let's just play here, let's see what we can do. This is the. And nobody wants to do that because. Right. You say, well, you spent way too much money on Florida and Texas and you didn't spend any money. You didn't spend enough in Ohio and that's why we didn't win this control of the Senate. Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I think that is such myopic thinking because for two reasons. One, maybe we could spend less money in these other states where we are just basically running a bailout program for local television stations by running. There are such diminishing returns, particularly in this media environment, to linear television advertising. And so we are just dumping money, mostly super PAC money at a huge cost markup into these states with small media markets and to what end. And also you can run vigorous races for less money now if you are good at communicating.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah, like poor Maine do we need. How much more can you put into the state of Maine? Right. Like there's just nothing else.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, it's gonna be, it's gonna be an absurd amount of money spent there. An absurd amount of money spent in Georgia. All these races. And it's diminishing returns because there is just this closed minded thinking about how to spend money in presidential campaigns where the only thing of true value is linear television because it's the only thing you can go to your donors and say, we bought this many ratings points and this commercial is going to run this many times during this football game. It just, it makes no sense, particularly at a time in which this is. Now I'm on my soapbox that I am at every time I see a donor, but is if you are a younger person, 40 and under. There are two elements here. One is, you were raised your entire life to not believe ads. You lived in the. You. You. They were. You skipped them, you fast forwarded them, you swipe them. You don't know them. They. Your. Your source for, like, when you like, what is to me, the McDonald's, I'm loving it commercial for people younger than me is an influencer saying they love McDonald's or whatever product they have. That's. It's very different. And the other thing is, if you, if you are a young person who does not watch sports because the only way to really reach people right now is sporting events, then you have no way to reach them in the linear television ad because Netflix doesn't take political ads and TikTok doesn't take political ads. So 80% of the time that they're doing things. And most streaming television services do not take political ads. And so you just can't reach these people. And it is voters under 40 in 2024. We couldn't reach voters under 45 in 2028, we can't reach voters under 50. We can't reach voters under 50 in 2032. This is the world. And so you just have to think more creatively. Like, we haven't talked about Zoran Mandani in this. I think people are overreading the importance of his win, both as a positive and a negative to the House and Senate midterm. But there is a lesson here, which is if you are good at content and you understand the media environment, you can dominate attention for much less money than you would spend. So if we could have. And there are some interesting candidates, particularly in Texas, who are good at attention, and particularly both Talarico and Jasmine Crockett, if she were to run, we can talk about them. But. But they are people who could. There's a way in which you could spend less money and still win and at least spend less money and run vigorous races. And so like, and just we have to expand the playing field or we're never like, it can't be that every single cycle we have to draw an inside straight to get to 51 seats. Like, that is not a viable. That's not a viable approach to a party with true governing ambitions. Like, you can't win because the next. You know what, you know what also sucks? The math.

[Amy Walter]

Next segment. It always sucks for Democrats because it's not getting there. As you. We said at the beginning, there's nobody sitting. There's one Susan Collins, that's it. And if she.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And we gotta beat Dave McCormick and Ron Johnson and then that's it. And then we gotta go to a state that Trump won by a lot to win like that is where it is. Yep. And maybe the other seat in North Carolina, I guess.

[Amy Walter]

But that is the full. But that's still saying that the playing field for the Senate is the same five or six seats every single cycle and that becomes limiting. But you're right, if you're thinking more broadly about, well, how do you build an electoral college coalition? That electoral college coalition also is likely the one that's going to win you some Senate. It's not going to necessarily win you in a state like Iowa, but it is one that you could take to Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia. Right. I mean that is those booming growing states. That's the next step.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Latinos are the fastest growing population in the United States. You cannot be losing them. And by large or not, you're not going to win if you're going to win a like a math where we win a tiny percentage of of white non college voters, the largest population currently and are losing ground with Latinos. The fastest growing population is not one that wins. All right, real quick because we are getting to the end here. There is an election coming up in a couple weeks in Tennessee. It's a special election in the 7th district where Mark Green retired for a variety of reasons in the middle of the cycle. This is a district that Trump won by like 21 or 22, I think.

[Amy Walter]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Democrats are somewhat optimistic. Republicans seem quite concerned. Where do you think things stand in that race and what are you looking for?

[Amy Walter]

What I'm looking for is the bigger question. I don't think Republicans lose this one. That would be a very, very big upset. It is. Is it in the realm of possibility? Sure. But as you said, It's a Trump 22 district, so the margin here is gonna matter. I think if you're Republicans, you're really desperate to make sure that this is a double digit win. Right. Because it's one thing to say It's a Trump 22 district and we won it by 10. It is not as dramatic as a Trump 22 district that we barely eked out. Because I think if you barely eke out a race in a Trump, 22 district. If you're a Republican running in 26, and you see those numbers, I mean, it's quite notable, by the way, that this is coming, that this election is coming right before the holidays. Well, right after one, and then right before the other big holidays, because we all know members go home over the holidays. They make a lot of decisions about what they're going to do in the next year. They sit down with family, they do the whole like, is, is my life what I want it to be? Do I really want to go through this again? And if you're coming in with these are the following things you're dealing with already. You know, the whole health care thing we talked about, you look at the 2025 elections and, and what happened there, and then if there's a really close race in a district that Trump carried by 22 points, where Republicans poured in money and look, they aren't ignoring this, they're actually playing here for real. What does that say to you? If you're a vulnerable Republican or even potentially vulnerable, or have a potentially competitive race, do you want to go through with it? Do you want to come back and, you know, do you have the, the sort of fire in your belly to go through a real race? And there will be a lot of people who say, I don't think so, not really worth it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's a bunch of people on that bubble that we talked about who won by eight points or 12 points, who haven't probably run a, run a real race in a long time, haven't done a lot of call time at the nrcc. They don't really want to campaign. They may be probably older because it's the United States Congress and everyone's older and they don't want to do it. And this is, it's interesting because I.

[Amy Walter]

Think that's where it has the biggest impact. If it's, you know, it's not so much the winning and the losing. I mean, the losing. If Republicans watch this, that would be just shock. Like, this is world ending for the moment, but even a very narrow win, it says you should not feel comfortable. And you gotta get yourself in that plate, that headspace, if you're a member thinking about reelection, that this is not gonna look like 2024 and it's not gonna look like any other race maybe you've been in.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Amy Walter, it is always so much fun to talk to you about politics.

[Amy Walter]

Talking about this has been great.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I've been talking politics with you for a very, very long time now, and I highly recommend everyone check out the Koch political report. It is. It's the bible for people who follow politics very closely. It's how I track what's happening in the racist. It's how I track what's happening in redistricting. Amy is you are no better person to have this conversation.

[Amy Walter]

Thank you. This has been really great. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Happy Holidays to you and to everybody listening.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, by the time you listen to it, they will have had a happy holiday hope from their holidays.

[Amy Walter]

Yes. And I hope that the driving and the airport is doing okay or at.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Least better because you got to hear us.

[Amy Walter]

There we go. Thank you. Very well done.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Thank you, Amy.

[Amy Walter]

Bye.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's our show for today. Thanks to Amy Walter for joining. John, John and Tommy will be back in your feeds on Tuesday.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

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[Amy Walter]

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