How Redistricting Could Reshape The Midterms (Live 10th Anniversary Special)

Summary

The NPR Politics Podcast

"How Redistricting Could Reshape The Midterms" – Live 10th Anniversary Special

October 31, 2025

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Overview

This special live episode, celebrating ten years of The NPR Politics Podcast, brings together NPR's core political team to dissect the seismic changes happening in U.S. election redistricting. Amid a festive atmosphere in NPR’s Studio 1 with a live audience, the hosts dive into the escalating battle over gerrymandering, the return of mid-decade redistricting, political repercussions for the 2026 midterms, and what all this means for American democracy. They also reflect on the podcast's journey and share personal anecdotes with their fans.

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1. Setting the Scene: The Return of Relentless Redistricting

Host & Participants:

• Tamara Keith (White House Correspondent)
• Myles Parks (Voting Correspondent)
• Ashley Lopez (Voting Correspondent)
• Mara Liasson (Senior Political Correspondent)

Main Theme:
A non-census-year wave of "mid-decade" redistricting is accelerating, driven by explicit partisan ambition. The discussion centers on shifting political norms, legislative maneuvers in various states, and the historic departure from efforts to limit partisan gerrymandering.

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2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

A. Redistricting vs. Gerrymandering: What's Happening Now?

• Definition and Distinction:

  • Myles Parks clarifies: Redistricting happens every ten years post-census; gerrymandering is deliberate manipulation for party gain.
  • "What we’re seeing right now...explicity to try to impact who controls the House...that is where we get into uncharted territory." – Myles Parks [03:10]

• Trump's Role:

  • "Donald Trump started this tit for tat spiral of partisan mid-cycle partisan redistricting. He told Texas...‘Go find me five more seats.’ And they did." – Mara Liasson [03:31]
  • After Republicans in Texas redrew maps, blue states like California felt pressured to respond.

• The California Dilemma:

  • California, known for its independent redistricting commission, now faces a referendum (Prop 50) to restore partisan control.
  • "This is the tragedy of this. But that’s a political norm. Nonpartisan redistricting is a norm that has been thrown overboard like so many other political norms in the Trump era." – Mara Liasson [04:01]

B. Where Are the New Maps?

• Voluntary vs. Court-Ordered States:

  • Ashley Lopez: Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina already passed partisan maps.
    • Texas: Five more GOP-favored seats
    • Missouri: One additional GOP seat (pending a possible voter referendum)
    • North Carolina: Already heavily gerrymandered; only one new seat possible

• Uncertainty and the Domino Effect:

  • "I think there are still some states that are looking at doing this...maybe some states start to take another look at this." – Ashley Lopez [07:34]
  • California’s Prop 50, if passed, would roughly cancel out Texas’ GOP gains, but overall trends slightly favor Republicans.

C. Supreme Court’s Shadow and the Voting Rights Act

• Potential Ruling Looms:
  • Myles Parks notes the Supreme Court may weaken key protections, possibly unleashing more aggressive map-drawing targeting Black-majority districts.
  • "If that happens, it is going to make this current redistricting battle look like small potatoes." – Myles Parks [09:06]

D. Voter Reactions and the Erosion of Norms

• On the Ground in California:

  • Many voters are uneasy about supporting what they know is gerrymandering, but see it as necessary retaliation.
  • "I’m not super enthusiastic about...telling my state lawmakers to gerrymander on behalf of one party. But...they feel like something needs to be done in reaction to a presidency that they are not aligned with." – Ashley Lopez [10:29]

• How Voters Feel:

  • Democratic voters are holding their nose but supporting the partisan move, feeling their leaders aren’t doing enough; GOP voters universally opposed.

• Will There Be Backlash?

  • "The short answer is no." – Mara Liasson [11:59]
  • Democracy only works if all players abide by rules. The erosion of nonpartisan redistricting is another broken norm.

E. Structural and Partisan Advantages

• Why Republicans Benefit:

  • More states under GOP “trifectas”—governor and legislature control—make it easier to pass friendly maps.
  • Republican voters are more geographically spread out, maximizing map efficiency; Democrats are clustered in urban/coastal strongholds and easier to pack or crack.

• Minority Rule Risk:

  • "What you don’t want is minoritarian rule, where the party that gets fewer votes ends up with the majority of seats. How do they do that? They do that with partisan redistricting." – Mara Liasson [14:02]

F. The Supreme Court and the Path We’re On

• How Did We Get Here?
  • "We got here because the Supreme Court told states that they could do this. It is totally fine. I think this is going to be like a reality in politics for as long as we don’t have constraints by law." – Ashley Lopez [14:49]

G. Reflections and Big Picture

• Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Quote:

  • Tamara invokes the former governor: “It saddens him to see political parties, quote, trying to out-cheat each other rather than outperform each other.”
  • "He sounds like a man from a different time. And specifically before the 2024 election..." – Myles Parks [16:10]
  • "This is how democracies...dissolve slowly. It’s not like one big crash. It’s like, okay, everything. When people are this comfortable pushing the rules in this direction, this is what happens." – Myles Parks [16:55]

• Will It Ever Reverse?

  • Ashley Lopez expresses optimism that most voters still care about fairness, but feel forced into the “mud.”
  • "I did hear from a lot of voters that they were like pretty disgusted that politics, the game is in the mud. But they’re like, if the game's in the mud, we play in the mud." – Ashley Lopez [17:39]
  • Prop 50 is a temporary move; after the 2030 Census, California plans to return to its independent commission. [18:37]

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3. Quickfire Highlights: Segment 2 – Themes for 2026 Midterms

Panel: Sarah McCammon, Elena Moore, Danielle Kurtzleben, Domenico Montanaro

A. Top Voter Concerns

• Economy:
  • Cost of living, housing, jobs, health care remain top issues—echoes of 2024.
  • "The economy, financial issues once again are front and center." – Elena Moore [22:22]

B. Gen Z and Millennial Voters

• Now make up the majority of the electorate by 2028.
• Feel pessimistic about the American Dream, disillusioned with both parties.
  • "People feel so worried about the future...politically disaffected." – Elena Moore [24:15]

C. Structural Obstacles

• Fewer competitive House seats than ever, due to hyper-partisan redistricting.
• "Margins are closer than they've ever been...less than 10% of the House is up for grabs. It makes it that much harder to find seats you can actually flip." – Domenico Montanaro [28:17]

D. Trump and 2026: Still on the Ballot?

• Donald Trump’s presence looms large; policies like tariffs and immigration will heavily influence races.
• The era is marked by intense polarization, a hardened electorate, and tighter races.

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4. Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Voter Cynicism vs. Strategy:

  • "If the game's in the mud, we play in the mud. And this is just where we go from here." – Ashley Lopez [17:39]

• On Democratic Division:

  • Discussion about new-wave, issue-first candidates vs. traditional ones, typified by the New York City mayor's race, shows a party searching for a compelling narrative and identity.

• On Democracy’s Fragility:

  • "This is how democracy devolves...I don’t know how you put the genie back in the bottle." – Mara Liasson [11:59]

• On the Podcast’s Legacy:

  • "I love this podcast because...my friends in the studio make me smarter every single time, which is a gift. Also, I love this podcast because of our audience, who have shared little pieces of their lives with us...We have just been hit with one tsunami of political news after another, and yet we are all still here. We are all still standing." – Tamara Keith [43:58]

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5. Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic | |-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:39–05:25 | Introduction, podcast milestone, redistricting overview | | 05:25–09:25 | State-by-state redistricting moves, political context | | 09:25–15:23 | California ballot measure, voter reactions, structural factors | | 15:23–18:44 | Democracy’s rules, Supreme Court, broad reflection on stakes | | 20:52–36:38 | Segment 2: Key issues for midterms, Gen Z/Millennial focus, party divisions | | 38:19–47:00 | “Can’t Let It Go” personal stories, podcast origin reflections | | 47:00–End | Credits, closing thoughts |

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6. Tone & Atmosphere

• The discussion is urgent, frank, and seasoned with touches of humor and camaraderie. Hosts remain nonpartisan but direct: they call out democratic backsliding and shifting norms without sugarcoating.
• The live anniversary setting delivers warmth, nostalgia, and gratitude to the audience.

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Summary Takeaways

• Mid-decade, tit-for-tat redistricting is a new norm, overtly partisan, and likely to entrench Republican advantages due to geography and state-level trifectas.
• California’s proposed move back to partisan map-drawing is both symbolic and a defensive measure, illustrating a nationwide collapse of redistricting guardrails.
• Supreme Court rulings could soon unleash further gerrymandering, especially at the expense of Black majority districts.
• Voters express cynicism about partisanship, but feel compelled by strategy rather than ideals.
• The panel warns of mounting risks of minority rule and American democracy's slow erosion.
• Underneath it all is a sense of resilience: both among hosts and their listeners, who persist through "tsunamis" of political change, hoping for a less turbulent future.

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Selected Notable Quotes

"What we're seeing right now...super quickly in the middle of a decade and explicitly to try to impact who controls the House of Representatives...that is where we get into uncharted territory."
— Myles Parks [03:10]

"Donald Trump started this tit for tat spiral of partisan mid-cycle partisan redistricting. He told Texas...‘Go find me five more seats.’ And they did.”
— Mara Liasson [03:31]

"You don't want minoritarian rule where the party that gets fewer votes ends up with the majority of seats. How do they do that? They do that with partisan redistricting."
— Mara Liasson [14:02]

"This is how democracies...dissolve slowly. It's not like one big crash. When people are this comfortable pushing the rules in this direction, this is what happens."
— Myles Parks [16:55]

"If the game's in the mud, we play in the mud. And this is just where we go from here."
— Ashley Lopez [17:39]

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For listeners old and new, this milestone episode offers both a sobering look at democracy’s current crossroads—and a reminder of the power of informed, communal political conversation.

Transcript

[Sponsor Announcer]

This message comes from Monday.com, the first work platform you'll love to use. Meet Monday Sidekick, your AI powered work BFF that handles everything for you from daily briefings to risk analysis. Start your free [e-mail] okay, so let's.

[Myles Parks]

Do the first line and everyone say it as loud or as soft as you feel comfortable saying it. This podcast was recorded at this podcast.

[Tamara Keith]

Was recorded at 8:05pm on Thursday, October 30.

[Myles Parks]

Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. Nice. That's it.

[Tamara Keith]

Here's the show. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast live. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

[Myles Parks]

I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting.

[Ashley Lopez]

I'm Ashley Lopez. I also cover voting.

[Mara Liasson]

I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

[Tamara Keith]

And Mara, you have a cold.

[Mara Liasson]

I do.

[Tamara Keith]

But you are so dedicated that you're here anyway.

[Mara Liasson]

I am.

[Tamara Keith]

And we are on stage here at NPR headquarters in Washington. This episode marks 10 years since we started this show. OK. And it's amazing to be here in NPR Studio, Studio 1 with 200 of our most loyal listeners and my parents. So by applause, how many of you have been listening to the pod for more than three years? Okay, how about more than five years? More than eight years? Okay. So who is an OG that goes all the way back to 2015. So no matter how long you've been listening, thank you for being here tonight. And a little bit later, we will reflect more on that milestone. But first, we have a lot to cover over multiple segments with other people you know and love from the podcast crew who will be out here soon. So let's start with the upcoming midterm elections and a big story taking shape that could influence the outcome in 2026, that is mid decade redistricting. And Miles, I don't know if we want to go full Schoolhouse Rock here, but can you just briefly tell us what's going on with this?

[Myles Parks]

Yeah. So I feel like there's a big distinction here that we have to draw because when we say redistricting, what we're that happens every 10 years right after the census. Every 10 years, political boundaries are drawn. What we're really talking about here is gerrymandering, which is when those lines are drawn specifically for the political gain. And I should note that that does happen to some extent every cycle and has basically for the entirety of American politics, because in most states, politicians have some role in kind of like signing off on those maps. And those are pretty self Interested creatures to some extent. But what we're seeing right now, where it's happening super quickly in the middle of a decade and explicitly to try to impact who controls the House of Representatives after midterms next year. That is where we get into uncharted territory.

[Tamara Keith]

Yeah. Mara, I want to talk about the politics of all this because the politics are just on display. They are. It is naked political ambition right here.

[Mara Liasson]

Absolutely. The politics of this is that Donald Trump started this tit for tat spiral of partisan mid cycle partisan redistricting. He told Texas state legislature, Texas Republican governor, go find me five more seats. And they did. And they redraw the maps so that Republicans would have a better chance of winning in more seats in Texas. So then California followed suit. California is a big blue state. Probably the Democrats best chance to eke out some more Democratic leaning seats. And to do that, they have to pass a referendum which will be on the ballot on Tuesday. That overturns the nonpartisan redistricting commission that California voters chose because they wanted to get partisanship out of redistricting. This is the tragedy of this. But that's a political norm. Nonpartisan redistricting is a norm that has been thrown overboard like so many other political norms in the Trump era. And I think the bottom line about the politics of this is it shows how nervous and uncomfortable the Republicans are with their chances to keep the House. If they were confident, they wouldn't be doing this. You could say the Republicans have reason to be confident. Right now, only three Republican House members represent districts that Kamala Harris won and 13 Democrats in the House are in districts that Donald Trump won. So it seems like Democrats should be on the defensive. But what we know from history is that midterm elections are very bad generally for the party in power. And that means the Republicans. And so those are the two forces at work. You've got history, of course, historical rules only work till they stop working. But we know that in the past the party in power does pretty badly. And then we have these structural advantages that Republicans have with redistricting. And we can talk about some of those later.

[Tamara Keith]

Yeah. And Ashley, you are just back from California, just back from a reporting trip there. I want to ask you lots of questions about that. But first, can we just run through all the states? Mara mentioned a couple of them. But I feel like every day I wake up and there's another state that's talking about doing this.

[Ashley Lopez]

Right. So so far I'm going to talk about the voluntary ones because there are some court ordered states in the mix. So out of the voluntary states, obviously we talked about Texas. So far it's been three states. We started with Texas. They've created a five seat, five more seats that are favorable to Republicans. I'm not going to say it's an advantage to them because elections haven't happened yet. And then we have Missouri. They held a special legislative session and they drew up one more favorable seat for the Republican Party. But I should note that there is a voter referendum in the works in Missouri. So that could be like a wildcard in this, that could change things. We just don't know how that's going to pan out. And then there's North Carolina. They also, in a special session redrew their map to create one more favorable seat for the gop and that state was already pretty gerrymandered. So they can only squeeze one seat out of there. Out of the 14 seats, 10 are held by Republicans. And then of course, there's some, we're watching for some court ordered. Ohio, Utah. Yeah.

[Myles Parks]

I would also just note, just getting to Mara's point about kind of the underlying, a little bit of the underlying tragedy here is that while I mentioned that gerrymandering has been a part of American politics for really long time in the recent elections, it actually hasn't affected the impact of the House. There's actually been the last few election cycles, a direct correlation with whoever wins the national popular vote, winning basically that amount of seats in the House of Representatives in the last few cycles, which is like a beautiful thing to see. Right. When the number of votes correlates to the number of Representatives. And so it just seems like we're moving away from that now.

[Tamara Keith]

So, Ashley, we're not in the prediction business. And also people haven't voted yet. And also these maps are based on kind of old census data. But do you have a sense of how these numbers in theory shake out?

[Ashley Lopez]

So, yeah, I mean, I think this is all very up in the air for one reason. I don't think all states are kind of done here. I think there are still some states that are looking at doing this as well. Beyond California, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, like I mentioned, there's the court ordered states. There's also like Illinois has been thrown out there. Virginia, there are other states looking at this and depending how things shake out and one party looks at the numbers and gets nervous, maybe some states start to take another look at this. So we'll see. Right now it does look like, like look, if California, if Prop 50 also, this hasn't happened. Yet if Prop 50 passes and Texas, Texas and California will kind of like even each other out. They'll kind of like cancel each other out. We're looking at a handful of more seats that could be more favorable for Republicans. We just don't know. This is all like guesswork at this point. And I think we're also still a couple months out from when primaries have to start getting like, you know, when.

[Tamara Keith]

People have to put their names in that.

[Ashley Lopez]

Exactly. So we still have some time. But yeah, that's looking like so far a little bit of an edge so far for Republicans.

[Myles Parks]

I don't want to throw one more monkey wrench into this system, but do it. I just want to say, just for these people here, I feel like they're going to appreciate it. Another thing to watch is that in the next year, the Supreme Court is also expected to rule on a key portion of the Voting Rights act that protects minority voting rights. And if that, many people expect that portion to be gutted. If that happens, it is going to make this current, it could make this current redistricting battle look like small potatoes because basically that portion of the Voting Rights act protects more than a dozen currently held seats by black Democrats, mostly in the South. And the thought is that if that thing gets gutted, there is going to be a race in a number of Republican led states to redraw those districts to get those politicians out of office. And so that is going to be another thing. It's possible it doesn't happen in time, possible it doesn't happen at all. It's possible it doesn't happen in time to affect the maps for midterms, but it's just another big thing to watch.

[Tamara Keith]

Ashley, let's go back to California. You were there reporting. This is one of those states that created a nonpartisan citizens commission. People in the state voted to get rid of gerrymandering and it was popular at the time. And, and now it looks like these maps are going to get enough support that they're, you know, like non, nonpartisan Citizens Commission.

[Myles Parks]

What?

[Tamara Keith]

So you've been talking to voters. How do people feel about this ballot measure?

[Ashley Lopez]

You know, the thing that stood out to me is, you know, when I'm, when I'm reporting like, I try to think of like, who's like the ideal person I want to hear from. I'm curious what they want to think. And the first person that came to mind is someone who with Gusto, voted in 2008 and 2010 for the independent Redistricting Commission and is now in this position of, well, I'm a Democrat, I kind of want to react to Texas. So I'm going to have to now take a vote that is telling my state lawmakers to bypass this thing that I voted for. And I found zero people who remember how they voted for the independent redistricting commission.

[Tamara Keith]

It was popular.

[Ashley Lopez]

It was popular. And I think, in theory, a lot of people were like, yeah, this is a good thing. I don't like partisan gerrymandering. I'm not super enthusiastic about the fact that I'm telling my state lawmakers to gerrymander on behalf of one party. But what I heard time and time, time again, from especially yes voters, especially Democratic yes voters, was like, they feel like something needs to happen, something needs to be done in reaction to a presidency that they are not aligned with, that they're very nervous about. And they're very. And for the most part, I mean, there's polling that suggests Amara probably has more to say about this. Like, Democrats are not happy with their leaders. And a lot of it stems from the fact that they feel like Democratic leaders aren't doing enough to react to Trump. Now. They don't have a lot of power. They don't have Congress, they don't have the White House. They're kind of structurally at a disadvantage. But you know, where they have power, they have power in California. And so voters there were really happy. Like, you know, Democratic voters, I should say Republican voters, not so happy. Democratic voters were actually very happy to vote for the measure, uniformly. I heard the same thing. They're happy to counteract Texas.

[Myles Parks]

One thing I think of, and I want to bring Mara in here, is that for a long time on the voting beat, there's been this kind of truism that when politicians do this to kind of nakedly advantage themselves, voters really don't like it. And I guess I'm just wondering, Mara, is there going to be some sort of political backlash to this battle? I don't know if it's in midterms or at some point to all of.

[Mara Liasson]

This redistricting, the short answer is no. And here's the thing about democracy. Democracy is rules. That's all it is. And it only works if both sides abide by the rules. That's it. And when one side decides it's not going to abide by the rules and it's not going to honor the nonpartisan redistrict commissions like in the state of Ohio that voters voted for, but then the Republican legislature just ignored, doesn't work. And in Terms of Democrats being angry at their leaders. What Ashley just said, they don't want their leaders to bring a water gun to a knife fight. And that's what's happening here. So it's a downward spiral. You can't just disarm and say, we believe in good government and nonpartisan redistricting, where Texas and these other red states are going to carve up the maps so that they get all these other districts. So I don't know how you put the genie back in the bottle, but this is how democracy devolves. But I do think that this is not an equal fight. I mean, Republicans have a structural advantage in redistricting for a number of reasons. One of them is that they have more trifectas. A trifecta is when the governor of a state and the state legislatures are controlled by the same party. More states have Republican governors and state legislatures than have Democratic trifectas. So it's easier for them to draw maps that help them in a partisan way. The other reason that the Republicans have an advantage is that Republican voters, where they live, they are just distributed more efficiently. They're sprinkled throughout the heartland for electoral purposes. Democratic voters are clustered inefficiently for electoral purposes in metro areas and on the coast. So they're much easier to gerrymander because they're clumped together in big bunches. So they have a lot of advantages that just have to do with how the population has sorted itself out.

[Tamara Keith]

And we are not even really going to get into what this means for representation.

[Mara Liasson]

Well, that's the other thing. One of the things that what Miles was talking about, how great it was, was when you have the national vote for the House of Representatives actually reflected in the number of seats that each side won, that's great. What you don't want is minoritarian rule where the party that gets fewer votes ends up with the majority of seats. How do they do that? They do that with partisan redistricting. That's how they do that. And that's minority rule. There are states that used to be Wisconsin. We've had to change there. Wisconsin, North Carolina, other states where the Democrats could win a majority of the statewide votes for legislature or congressional delegation and the Republicans could still end up with 70% of the seats. Like, how does that work? It works by stretching the rules to the breaking point or ignoring them altogether.

[Ashley Lopez]

So I was just going to say there's another how we got here story that has to do with the Supreme Court. I know this is one of Miles favorites rants is like. But there are ways to backpedal from this. There were ways to avoid this. Partisan gerrymandering and hyperpolarization, yes, are a reality, but we got here because the Supreme Court told states that they could do this. It is totally fine. I think this is going to be like a reality in politics for as long as we don't have constraints by law.

[Tamara Keith]

And to do something very on brand for me, I'm going to close this out with a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger that I'd love to get you guys to react to.

[Myles Parks]

You're going to do it in his voice.

[Tamara Keith]

I am not. My Arnold voice is a little rusty. I'm out of practice. But he is the former California governor, also the Terminator who, who terminated partisan gerrymandering in California by backing the Citizens Commission. And here's what he said. He said it saddens him to see political parties, quote, trying to out cheat each other rather than outperform each other. But he just sounds like a man from a different time. Like, what does this, everything we've just talked about say about the state of our politics or maybe the state of our democracy?

[Myles Parks]

He sounds like a man from a different time. And specifically before the 2024 election to me, because that, that in a lot of ways was a watershed moment. Not just because Donald Trump is the one asking these states to do this, but the fact that a plurality of voters looked at the fact that he tried to overturn an election in 2020 and said, either we don't care about that or it's not as big of a deal as these other things, or we don't believe he did that for whatever, however way they're justifying that, they okayed it. And I do think that there's a dotted line from that to now. Politicians being more emboldened to mess with the machinery of democracy in ways that advantage themselves. And that's why this doesn't just stop here too. You know, I think, you know, you did a story, was it this week or last week, about the possibility of Trump running for a third term?

[Tamara Keith]

Oh, that was this week.

[Myles Parks]

I mean, that, that's not. These are the sort of things that would be insane 10 years ago, but it is a slow, as. How do you put it? Basically, this is how democracies kind of dissolve slowly. It's not like one big crash. It's like, okay, everything. When people are this comfortable pushing the rules in this direction, this is what happens. And I don't know where it goes.

[Mara Liasson]

From here, you know, we have to give Donald Trump his due here. I mean, this is his project and he is quite happy pushing the edges of the envelope. He asked states to do this and he has no compunction about the rules. He famously said in 2015, I can stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any voters.

[Ashley Lopez]

I will say, I mean, this is uncomfortable for me because I don't usually like being the optimistic person here. I think a lot of this is strategic. I don't think that everyone's values have changed because I will say every voter I talked to that was like, I don't love partisan gerrymandering, but I think in this case it's important. That means that people still do care about, you know, whether or not the game is fair or politics are fair or democracy is fair. It's just right now, strategically, this is where a lot of Democrats find themselves. And, you know, I don't know where we go from here, but I will say I did hear from a lot of voters that they were like pretty disgusted that politics, the game is in the mud. But they're like, if the game's in the mud, we play in the mud. And this is just where we go from here. But I do think everyone, I heard uniformly folks say, I do wish this.

[Mara Liasson]

Were just banned federally and Prop 50 is only temporary. Yeah, you should say that it's temporary. It's for what, three cycles?

[Ashley Lopez]

It's 2030 after the census, they will go back to the independent redistricting commission. So it will be 2026 and 2028.

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Yeah.

[Tamara Keith]

All right, well, it is time for a quick break and we will be back in a moment with more from this special live episode of the NPR Politics Podcast.

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[Sarah McCammon]

We are back after some musical chairs with a new group here on stage in NPR Studio One. Hello, everyone. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics.

[Elena Moore]

I'm Elena Moore. I also cover politics.

[Danielle Kurtzleben]

I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House.

[Domenico Montanaro]

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Well done.

[Sarah McCammon]

So for this segment, we're going to talk about some of the big themes of the upcoming midterm elections, the things we're keeping an eye on and what might happen next fall. Domenico, I want to start with you. You are our polling expert here. What are voters saying so far about the big issues on their minds?

[Domenico Montanaro]

They're the same issues, really, that a lot of people have been talking about. Obviously, cost of living is a huge piece of it, whether you can afford where you can live, whether you have a job that pays well and is doing better than inflation, if you can afford your groceries. Same sort of issues that we heard about in the 2024 campaign. Now, obviously, during the shutdown that's been taking place, health care has also been something that's been highlighted, and that's because Democrats feel like it's an issue that works for them. They have much better polling numbers on healthcare than Republicans do. And they also see it as a huge issue, the fact that there would be tens of millions of people seeing their premiums increase at the beginning of the year and Republicans again running on immigration and crime. You see that a lot in these 2025 elections that are coming up on Tuesday as well.

[Sarah McCammon]

Now, Elena, you spent a lot of time talking with younger voters who were a big and growing share of the electorate. What are you hearing?

[Elena Moore]

Yeah, I mean, we should say the reason I'm like so obsessed with this is because this group, Gen Z and Millennials. So people under 45 are going to make up more than half of the electorate in 2028. So it's a huge chunk of potential voters. And they're kind of a political question mark, especially the latter half, the younger, the young, so to speak, as they would say. And yeah, like Domenico said, I mean, the economy is front and center. It's what pushed a lot of them to shift towards Trump in the 2024 election. And so what I've been seeing talking to people for the and this year is that the economy, financial issues once again are front and center.

[Sarah McCammon]

Yeah, you've been talking to the truly youngs as opposed to the truly youngs. I don't know, the old millennials.

[Elena Moore]

Right. Only in this beat do I feel old, but I do.

[Domenico Montanaro]

So Gen Z, Gen Z and Millennial combined is a pretty big group now, and they're kind of pushing 40, right?

[Ashley Lopez]

They are well past 40.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Past 40. Wow.

[Sarah McCammon]

And so on the economy, Elena, I mean, that was such a big issue last year. Domenico says it's a big issue now. I mean, what are you hearing from those under 40s about the economy specifically?

[Elena Moore]

Yeah, I wanted to do a story specifically on this because for years now, I've been here over six years and the great Mara Liasson has this phrase. I think it was a story. I don't know. She used to always be like, generations screwed. And I was like, oh, my God. Because, you know, Gen Z and millennials have like a hard financial hand. Like, it's really hard to buy a house, it's really expensive to, you know, start out. And, you know, people have a lot of student loans, et cetera. And so I was like, I want to put a call out, out that Apple, just like, how much have financial concerns shaped your life if you're under 40? And so we put it out in five days. We got over 1100 responses. And it's not a representative sample necessarily, but we got people from almost every state in the country. And really, Sarah, like, the big takeaway is like, what we're saying. Like, people feel so worried about the future, they feel increasingly pessimistic that they will not have the lives their parents had. The so called American dream. Having a better life than your past generations who brought you there. And they also feel like politically disaffected. Like no one sees the plight that they have.

[Sarah McCammon]

I think what's so interesting is we've been talking about this really since the millennial generation, which was hit hard by the recession of 08. And it hasn't really gotten much better.

[Elena Moore]

Right. It's like Those people graduated during recession and the youngest of this Gen Z generation watched their parents lose their jobs and then everyone lose their jobs during COVID and now no one can afford housing.

[Danielle Kurtzleben]

But I think the thing that gets really flattened in these conversations though is that there's a big, when we say voters care about the economy, that conflates a lot of big things together. Because what Domenico is talking about is a very, is very real concerns about shorter term cyclical things, for example prices. I realize tariffs aren't cyclical, but they are a thing that can actually be turned on and off. There are cycles to unemployment and people can look at those things and rightly or wrongly connect them to the president. But what you're talking about seems to be more structural things, right? The education system, can I buy a house? Is there housing supply? Is this economy built for this generation or that generation? And so the thing that I always wonder, and I'm curious if you have a thought on this is are those structural issues driving how people vote? Or I mean, if you think there ain't no way I'm ever gonna afford a house, why would it matter who I vote for?

[Elena Moore]

Yeah, well, I do think that it's the really unique thing about these two generations, especially Gen Z, is they really are driven by issues over party. And we've been seeing that for years. But it was, I mean, put on display last year when we saw this big shift to the right with Trump. And so I think it's a very like message driven in some ways. I hate saying this vibes driven group. You know, it's like a lot of people did not feel like the Democratic Party was seeing their economic concerns. And so yeah, I think it's, I think it's in many ways an issue thing and people are willing to forego maybe traditional political norms in order to defy the status quo.

[Domenico Montanaro]

But I think that's what's different now than 2018. You know, the first midterm that Trump was president for, where Trump lost, you know, 40 seats in the house this time around, one, I think people are a little more used to Trump, but I think on the Democratic side we've seen really bad numbers for Democrats themselves about how Democrats think about Democratic leaders. I mean, our polling had about 30 points different where Republicans had like almost 8 in 10 Republicans had a positive view of Republicans in Congress and it was only like less than half of Democrats who had a positive view of Democrats in Congress. That's very different than 2018. And when you need an activist base to get out in an election year, that's a midterm or an off year election, that's a real wild card for Democrats.

[Sarah McCammon]

Okay. Speaking of midterms and Trump, Danielle, you cover the White House, and of course, Trump won't be on the ballot in 2026, but.

[Ashley Lopez]

Or will he?

[Sarah McCammon]

Or will he? I mean, and this is the thing, right? In midterm elections, especially midterms, right after a presidential election, this is often seen as, you know, a referendum on the party in power. Typically, the party in power doesn't do so well. What are you seeing? How is this shaping the conversation?

[Danielle Kurtzleben]

I would imagine Trump is more on the ballot than he was in 2018. Yeah, it is true that people are more used to Trump, as Domenico was saying, but then again, Trump is taking so much more power and taking responsibility for so many more things than he was back around 2018. You think about the tariffs he did back then versus now, it's a pinch of dirt versus a mountain. And so if you are voting and looking at that ballot and thinking about what member of Congress do I want to vote for, and if you're voting for a Republican, you are likely voting for someone who is going to cede their power to Donald Trump. Tariffs, for example, are something the Constitution lays out for Congress. Congress has handed that to Trump. So I think Trump is very much.

[Domenico Montanaro]

On the ballot, and we're in a more hardened political era. I mean, the fact is, you know, Trump has, we always say, a high floor and a low ceiling when it comes to polls, because, you know, he started out, it was probably his best polling numbers when he started out the second term here, and those just cratered in the first few months of his presidency. And they flattened out to where they had been basically through the entirety of his first presidency, around 39 to 42, 43%. And with independents, it's in the low 30s. And independents are such a key in midterm elections in those swing districts. The only problem for Democrats, even though this should be the kind of thing that's like a layup for the party out of power, is that structurally, we've seen more flips in the House in the last 20 years than we did post Reconstruction. The last time that we've had this many changes of control of power was after the Civil War, through Reconstruction. And the margins are closer than they've ever been. So when you've got those kind of structural changes where the districts have been redistricted to the point where you've got, like, you know, less than 10% of the house that winds up being up for grabs. It makes it that much harder to find seats that you can actually flip.

[Sarah McCammon]

I want to go back to another major issue for voters and another issue where Trump has taken decisive action, and that's immigration. Domenico, you mentioned crime and immigration being at the top of voters minds yet again. We have now seen the administration carry out its ongoing massive immigration crackdown. How do you expect this issue to shape the message going into 26?

[Domenico Montanaro]

Well, immigration is huge. And I think that one thing that we've seen in polling is that the numbers of people who think that Trump has gone too far has now gone over a majority of people. You even hear some Republicans in Congress who will say that, you know, I want him to go after the hardened criminals. I don't necessarily want him to go after the guy who's picking strawberries or working, you know, as a dishwasher and paying taxes and otherwise being a good person and good citizen without being a citizen of the country. And so I think that that's one area where there might have been a lot of people who weren't sure how far Trump was going to go. But. But when you talk to people and why they say that they disapprove of Trump, the deportations is one thing that you always hear. And I'm gonna be really interested on Tuesday to see, for example, in New Jersey, where Trump won over a lot of Latino voters and was able to close the gaps in some of the bigger counties in North Jersey, what are those numbers gonna be like on Tuesday in the places in the counties with high Latino populations? And how does that wind up changing?

[Sarah McCammon]

Right. You know, I was really curious about that after the 2024 election. And I spent some time in Pennsylvania talking to Latino voters who supported Trump, many of whom had recent ties themselves or their family members to immigration. And what I did hear was this sense that, well, you know, he's going to go after the criminals, not us. So I too, am really curious about where that lands. You know, speaking of those elections on Tuesday, New Jersey, Virginia, there's a big mayoral race in New York that's getting a lot of attention. Elena, what are you watching there?

[Elena Moore]

Yeah, we have to talk about New York because it's in me and Domenico's contract to always talk about New York if we're gonna be on the pod. That's just how it is. And so, yeah, I mean, I'll start there, which is, I think, well, all of these elections are the first time that Democrats are gonna, you know, potentially get like, a big win. Since the big loss of 2024. So that's one thing. And I think New York City is a really interesting example because it's a place where we're seeing the Democratic divides and rift on full display. You know, Zoran, mom, the Democrats nominee for mayor in New York is running against Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of the state. And Mamdani is very much running as a new generation Democrat in some ways. You know, he's 34. He's a Democratic socialist. His central campaign platform is like, I want to make New York less expensive. He talks about housing, groceries, all the things we were just saying, really. And he's gotten really popular. So I'm really curious to just. Just see what it's like for Democrats because they are still sorting through what their vision of for 2026, for 2028 looks like. Right. Other than we are not Trump.

[Sarah McCammon]

Okay. But that's New York.

[Elena Moore]

Right.

[Sarah McCammon]

And I feel like the Midwesterners on the stage should remind everybody. Right, Danielle. That the rest of the country isn't New York.

[Danielle Kurtzleben]

I am loath to say that we should draw lessons from the New York mayoral race, but I'm going to say that, yes, we can draw a lesson from this, because Zoran Mamdani, to me, is a wildly talented politician.

[Sarah McCammon]

Right.

[Danielle Kurtzleben]

He has been putting out these videos where he looks authentic, funny, relatable, etc.

[Ashley Lopez]

Etc.

[Danielle Kurtzleben]

Etc. Like a real person. Right. To me, right now, a big issue the Democratic Party has is not just left versus center and old versus young. Those things very much apply, but it's very much about how the party views selling policies. Because the question is, do you focus group things to death, pull people to death and say, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? We'll do it? Or do you put someone out there who can sell things and who can say, you know, what's a policy? You might like xyz. And you think about Bernie Sanders. How many people had heard of Medicare for All before he stepped onto a national stage? Like, not a thing that was even on people's radars. Now has it happened? Absolutely not. But my point is, if you can get other people who are good salespeople, assuming Mandani is out there for the Democrats, it's not so much about what policies are people gonna like, it's what policies can we sell people on? And the Democratic Party needs to figure out the balance there.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Yeah, I mean, selling policies and selling themselves are really important factors all the time in politics. Right. And I think that there's this sort of juxtaposition that we've been seeing about how Democratic leaders want to talk about Zoran Mamdani versus some of the other people who are running in this race. I mean, I thought it was funny watching cnn. A couple weeks ago, Dana Bash had Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on, and she asked him, does Mamdani represent the, quote, soul of the Democratic Party? And he immediately started talking about Abigail Spamberger and Mikey Sherrill and saying that they are, you know, also part of the party. And Abigail Spanberger is the, the Democrat who's running for governor in Virginia and Cheryl, the Democrat who's running for governor in New Jersey. And Cheryl, almost every ad that she's in, you see her with a bomber jacket on. She's a former Navy helicopter pilot. So she's playing that playbook to say she's tough. She's playing up her military roots. And Spamberger is taking this sort of reserved approach, talking about how she's for tradition, tradition of service. It's a very different way that all three of them are selling themselves. And I think that there are gonna be lessons to be learned from each of their campaigns.

[Sarah McCammon]

Danielle, what else will you have your eye on as we look ahead to Tuesday and to next year?

[Danielle Kurtzleben]

I'm not just saying this because I cover it a lot, but I'm really curious how much Trump continues to lean into his whole trade and tariffs worldview and policy package because he just struck this trade deal with China. He says we don't know the exact details of it, but apparently China is going to buy a bunch more soybeans from the US which will help a lot of American farmers, which will ease up some pressure on Trump and a lot of red state senators and House members. So if this deal holds, then. Well, that's the problem. We don't know if it's gonna hold, actually. Cuz the last deal that China and the US Struck in Trump's first term didn't stick. China didn't live up to its end of things. Right. So my question is, does Trump stick with his tariffs? Does he at some point throw this trade deal out the window because he gets mad at China one day and try to raise tariffs again? Does he keep trying to raise tariffs on other countries if the Supreme Court blows up all of his tariffs? And the arguments for that are next week, does he try to impose other tariffs that are more legal? And do voters punish him for that? Because he really likes imposing tariffs. He likes going to these countries and writing those letters and making deals, or at least attempting to make deals, but feeling like he can throw his weight around. He likes it. Voters don't love it. And it is the one issue or one of the few issues that Republicans in Congress have been very, very willing to push back. Somewhat willing. Let me rephrase that. Somewhat willing to push back against him.

[Sarah McCammon]

On with our thanks to Elena, Danielle and Domenico. Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

[Mara Liasson]

Hey.

[Myles Parks]

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[Myles Parks]

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[Tamara Keith]

Chairs, we are all back. I'm Tamara Keith, and it is time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.

[Myles Parks]

I'm myles parks. Sarah McCammon and Mara Liasson are back on stage with me for Can't Let It Go. Mara, let's start with you. What can't you let go of?

[Mara Liasson]

Well, this is what I can't let go of. This week at npr, we try to produce compelling stories and compelling podcasts, and we even have a word for some of these. It's called driveway moments. You're sitting in your car listening to something on NPR in your driveway, and you don't get out of your car because you don't want to miss a single second. So my friend Marvin Krislov had a slightly different kind of driveway moment this summer. He was driving in the Berkshires. It was a dark and stormy night, he was listening to Northeast Public Radio. And before we hear Marvin tell his story, the most important thing for you to know is that Marvin is okay.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I careened down an embankment, went through the wooden fence, and then I ended up upside down with airbags. And here's the thing, the story kept playing. So even as I was going through this crash tumble, I was listening to the story and I was sitting there with the airbags deployed and I continued to listen. I even unbuckled. And I was thinking, oh, this is such an interesting story. Maybe I should continue to listen to it. And my friend. And then the police came and I was somewhat sad. In fact, I was sad that I could not hear the end of the story.

[Sarah McCammon]

Wow.

[Mara Liasson]

The moral of that story is, if you are having a driveway moment and you are not in your driveway, please pull over.

[Tamara Keith]

Did he like, go look up the story so he could see how it ended?

[Sarah McCammon]

That is high praise. I'm so glad your friend is okay, Sarah.

[Myles Parks]

What can't you let go of?

[Sarah McCammon]

All right, mine is a little like less of a happy story, but did you guys hear about the research monkeys on the loose in Mississippi?

[Tamara Keith]

Oh, yes. Uh huh.

[Sarah McCammon]

So what happened, for those who didn't hear about this, is a truckload of rhesus monkeys used in research was being transported from one facility to another. The truck carrying them turned over and a bunch of the monkeys got loose. And now at the time, the driver apparently mistakenly believed that they were both aggressive and infected with diseases like Covid, hepatitis C and herpes, which is the one that I can't get my head around. So Tulane University, which operated the research facility that they apparently were coming from, later said to be clear, the monkeys were not carrying diseases. But at the time people thought they were. And there was a lot of concern in Jasper County, Mississippi, where this all happened. Can we play the 911 tape?

[Myles Parks]

We got 21 monkeys that was on this. Got five of them on the run. They may have to neutralize something out here in a minute.

[Tamara Keith]

So that tape is a little hard.

[Sarah McCammon]

To hear, but he said there were monkeys on the run and they were preparing to, quote, neutralize them.

[Tamara Keith]

Is that the happy ending?

[Sarah McCammon]

Like I said, it did not.

[Tamara Keith]

Maybe there's a few monkeys on the.

[Myles Parks]

Run for the monkeys. I'm not worried about the people. I'm mad at the people for neutralizing them.

[Sarah McCammon]

They weren't even infected. I don't know. Obviously I will. I cannot let that story go.

[Myles Parks]

Wow.

[Tamara Keith]

Yeah.

[Sarah McCammon]

What about you, Myles? I hope it's something happier it is.

[Myles Parks]

Actually much happier for me personally. So what I cannot let go of is that this week, my toddler thought Steph Curry was me. That if you know me at all, that is the peak of existence, folks. I love basketball more than anything. And so Sunday mornings, which has now become kind of one of my favorite times, having a toddler, my wife and my baby play at the playground. And right next door is a basketball court where I play pickup basketball, which is really special for me because I grew up going with my dad to the YMCA and watching him play pickup basketball. And so now I get to have this moment where I'll be, like, playing, and then I'll sit a game out and, like, my daughter will come over through the fence and we'll talk and we'll have this moment. But then now, when I take her to the playground, which we go to a lot, anyone who's playing basketball, she points at and she's like, da, da. Like, well, I'm with her. And she still thinks those people are dada. But this culminated this week. I have a bookmark with Steph Curry on it, and she brought it over to me, and she pointed at it and she said, dada. And I was like, heck, yeah.

[Sarah McCammon]

Yes, Obviously.

[Myles Parks]

That was great. That's literally what I. I can't let go of, and I will never let go of it for the rest of my life.

[Mara Liasson]

That's great.

[Tamara Keith]

Does she think that the word dada actually means basketball?

[Myles Parks]

I think we're not gonna investigate it. She, I feel like, probably has just seen me drain some three pointers out there, and so it just, like, the shot looks really similar and you're dealing the ball around.

[Tamara Keith]

Exactly, exactly.

[Myles Parks]

I've won a lot of championships or something. I don't know. I don't know. We're not gonna dig too deep. Okay.

[Sarah McCammon]

She's a perceptive being.

[Tamara Keith]

Take the win, Tam.

[Myles Parks]

What can't you let go of?

[Tamara Keith]

So what I can't let go of is this podcast.

[Myles Parks]

Aw.

[Tamara Keith]

I'm not quitting.

[Myles Parks]

I promise. No, you can't let go of the podcast. Literally. No.

[Tamara Keith]

I wrote some great work, and I'm an embarrassment to myself. Here we go. I love this podcast. I've been doing this for 10 years, so I better love this podcast. And I love it so much because it is truly like, just going into the studio and hanging out with my friends, because that is what it is. And it happens to be that my friends in the studio make me smarter every single time, which is a gift. Also, I love this podcast because of Our audience, who have shared little pieces of their lives with us through timestamps. We have met your babies. We played a role in some marriage proposals. We celebrated retirements and graduations. We hiked to so many mountains like, so many mountain tops. Props all over the world. And can we just say that it has been one hell of a decade in political news. So much has happened, so much has changed. And you've been there with us through it all. So I have a prop. In 2017, I made these shot glasses. It was July of 2017. And they say we survived the first six months of 2017. And I possibly bought them in bulk. And there may be a lot at my desk still, but, like, if only 2025 me could have gone back in time and warned sweet, little naive young reporter me that surviving the first half of 2017 was really only the beginning, you know, that would have been a hot tip. You know, we have just been hit with one tsunami of political news after another, and yet we are all still here. We are all still standing. So I would like to raise a tiny and empty glass to 10 years of the NPR Politics Podcast. And. And I love Morris Kauf.

[Sarah McCammon]

She's a trooper.

[Mara Liasson]

That can be edited out.

[Tamara Keith]

And to another 10 years of the NPR Politics Podcast. May we someday live in less interesting times.

[Myles Parks]

All right, that is it for this very special live 10th anniversary edition of the NPR Politics Podcast. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Our editor is Rachel Bay. Our producers are Brent Baughman, Casey Morell, and Bria Suggs.

[Tamara Keith]

Our audio engineers tonight are Neil Tiefold and Andy Huether. Thanks to Alaina Moore, Ashley Lopez, Danielle Kramer, Kurtzleben, Domenico Montanaro, and all of you for joining us on the show.

[Sarah McCammon]

And special thanks to Krishnadev Kalamer, Beth Donovan, Bill Wright, Stacey Foxwell, Tracy McIver, and the entire NPR facilities, marketing and security teams for their help in getting this event off the ground. I'm Sarah McCammon.

[Danielle Kurtzleben]

I cover politics.

[Myles Parks]

I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting.

[Tamara Keith]

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

[Mara Liasson]

And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

[Sarah McCammon]

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

[Myles Parks]

This podcast was recorded at.

[Domenico Montanaro]

So we're saying.

[Myles Parks]

Exactly. Okay. And then. So we'll say this podcast was recorded at. Then Tam will say the time, and then we'll do the next part. Okay, so we don't do that. All right, we're gonna try that one more time. This is great. You guys are doing awesome.

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