Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Episode 48: Breaking Down the House, with Erin Covey (Cook Political Report) & Jacob Rubashkin (Inside Elections)

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Episode 48: Breaking Down the House, with Erin Covey (Cook Political Report) & Jacob Rubashkin (Inside Elections) · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: There seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction with the Republican nominee,
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: David Flippo, even the current Republican.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty much every Republican in an even remotely competitive
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_03: or potentially competitive race has been running with their hair on fire,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: except for Derek Schmidt.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's very red now,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: but it's one of those places where, again,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: the parts of this country where Trump made the biggest gains in
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: the past decade are also the parts of the country that seem most susceptible
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: to this blue wave.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: [music]
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Geoffrey Skelley, the Chief Elections Analyst here at DDHQ.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're fewer than two weeks out from Election Day.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: How is it possible?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's the final countdown now for the battle for Congress.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Control of the Senate looks pretty up in the air,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: while control of the U.S. House of Representatives looks to favor Democrats.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: But as always, the details matter.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: And with that in mind, we're going to look at the situation in the House.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: In Decision Desk HQ's forecast right now,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Democrats have close to a four and five shot of capturing a House majority.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: On average,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: out of a million simulations,
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: our average seat result is 236 for Democrats and 199 for Republicans,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: which would amount to a 21 seat gain for Democrats from the GOP's current 220
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: to 215 majority.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: But if Democrats do grab the majority, just where and how will they do it?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: So to break down the House,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: I am pumped to be joined by two top-of-the-line House experts,
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Erin Covey and Jacob Rubashkin.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Erin is the House editor at the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter,
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: where she leads their House coverage,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: and Jacob is deputy editor of Inside Elections,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: where he helps run House coverage and hosts the Inside Elections podcast.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Both have appeared on the podcast previously to dig into how it's happening,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: so I'm excited to have them back on.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: So with that, Erin and Jacob, welcome back to the podcast.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having us on, Geoffrey.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, to start out,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: I figured we'd talk a little bit about just you two as,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: as House handicappers, what,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: what you're sort of,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: the lay of the land, I,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: it does seem like things have been,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: have been trending toward Democrats here,
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: uh, or, you know, toward the end of the, the election cycle.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: But I'd be curious to hear sort of what stands out to you both,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: uh, when you're sort of looking at, at the overall situation.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Erin can answer and then I'll just agree with everything she says.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Jacob.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess depending on when you are listening to this podcast,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: our outlook may have changed a bit.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: But at this point at which we're recording,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: currently we have our range set for Democrats gaining between 10 and 20 seats in
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: the House.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: They have 215, so that would put them at 225.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's increasingly likely that it will be on the upper end of that range
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: and could even go even higher.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just because we are continually seeing more evidence
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: that these double digit Trump seats are in play.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we're seeing a lot of Republicans suddenly go on the attack
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: against their Democratic opponents.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think there has been this open question hovering over the House,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: obviously the Senate as well,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: about how much the Republican cash advantage was going to Give them an edge
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: and keep them from blunting their losses.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it certainly has kept some races from, you know, quickly getting out of their hands.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: They have stayed competitive in districts that,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know, are going to be very tough for them to hold in.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, most of these races have not tightened in Republicans' favor.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it is very,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: very hard to see a world in which Republicans maintain control of the House
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: under this current political environment.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: No, I mean, I think that's exactly right.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: Not to do what I said that I was going to do,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: but we also have a current projection of a Democratic gain of 10 to 20 seats.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if that number will go up, but I imagine it might over the next week or so.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think that there is a real sense,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: perhaps,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: that Democrats are going to be able to make some clear headway
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: into deeper Republican territory.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: There are a handful of districts that have been kind of not on the fringe of
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: the battleground,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: but are kind of on the Republican side that Look incredibly dicey for the GOP
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: at this point,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: thinking about places like Montana,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: one in South Carolina,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_03: one two districts that just seem to kind of be moving very quickly away from
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: the Republican Party over the last couple of weeks.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: But overall, again, I mean, this is a map that structurally favors Republicans.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: And despite the Democrats outperforming expectations when it comes to
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: the redistricted seats, that batch of two dozen or so seats that were redrawn.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: Redistricting is still a net positive for Republicans this cycle.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so are we going to see,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Erin and I had this conversation this morning,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: for Democrats to get to The same spot they were after the 06 wave and the 2018 wave,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: that would be essentially like a 20 seat gain for them.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like a 15 to 20 seat gain puts them at that same level.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then the high watermark for the party is,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: of course, after 08, when they got all the way up to 250 or 251.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: When you look at the races they were winning in 08,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Democrats had three out of four districts in Mississippi.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Different world.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: They had both Dakotas.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: They had Travis Childers.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so to get to that, and 250
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: would be a 35-seat gain, which is kind
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: When you put it that way, it doesn't seem as big.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: But when you think about what would that resemble,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: it would resemble kind of an ’08 style environment,
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: which was kind of the peak where they had the Obama enthusiasm,
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: but they also had remaining strength across the South and the Great Plains
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: that has completely dissipated.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: in 2018,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats had about 20 more and more obvious pickup opportunities
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: than they have Now they were starting at a much lower floor.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so comparing if we're just looking at this number of seats that they could gain,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: you can't compare the 41 seat gain that they had in 2018
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: to what they could pull off this cycle because they don't need to win
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: that many more seats.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: We're starting from a very, I mean,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: in fact,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: at the start of this Congress,
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: I remember I wrote something about this for FiveThirtyEight.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: It started the Congress,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: but it was the narrowest margin to start a Congress since 1931 and
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: when Congress kicked off.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you're talking about very thin margins since that always was going
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: to make it difficult for Republicans to hold on to the House.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: But to Jacob's point,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think one of the reasons why our forecast isn't at like 95% for Democrats is that
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: the map is tilted even a bit more toward Republicans.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: So if there were a more sizable polling error or something,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: that's the universe where somehow the GOP ekes things out.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: But at this point, that's what they need, I think, based on everything we're seeing.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess with that,
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: why don't we talk a little bit about people are always interested in sort
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: of What are the races you're watching?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of wanted to separate those out into a few different categories.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought a good place to start would be, okay,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: election night, you know, the first polls close at six in Indiana and Kentucky.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then we get some seven o'clock poll closings in places like Florida and Virginia
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: and Georgia and South Carolina.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so I guess I was curious,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: you know, and you could even stretch it in North Carolina with 7:30 and Ohio at 7:30.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I was curious,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: sort of,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: what are some races early in the night that you'll be watching as bellwethers of
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: a sort?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the obvious one is Kentucky's sixth district,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: because it is in one of the two states where pools close at six o'clock.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to get results there relatively quickly.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is a seat that Trump won by 16 points in 2024.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it really should not be as competitive as it is.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you kind of have a bit of a perfect storm for Republicans here in
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: that one, you have an open seat.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: The incumbent Andy Barr has a history of overperforming.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's now, of course, the Senate nominee in Kentucky.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so that in and of itself made this an easier pickup opportunity for Democrats.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: You have a Republican nominee in Ralph Alvarado,
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: who was Matt Bevin's running mate, the very unpopular former governor of Kentucky.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And Democrats have pretty successfully tied him to Bevin.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say that is his largest vulnerability at this point.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have a strong Democratic candidate in Zach Dembo,
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: a former federal prosecutor who raised a lot of money,
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: defeated
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: state legislator in the Democratic primary who started out with
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: the edge just due to her name, ID and local support.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it looks like Dembo's in an increasingly good position to flip this seat.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's some polling that has him in the lead at this point,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: or at least tied with Alvarado.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that is really going to be,
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: the bellwether for whether or not we're definitely looking at a big blue wave.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I will say just because I think even if Dembo is winning this seat early in
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: the night does not mean that Democrats are suddenly going
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: to be winning all these other double digit Trump seats,
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: because I do think the circumstances here benefit Republicans
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: or benefit Democrats more than they would in some of these other places.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it is going to be one of the first places where we get results.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I brought up our forecast page for the 6th District,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: and we actually do have a polling average there,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: but it's built almost entirely off of Democratic internals.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you do have to take that with a little bit of a grain of salt.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: But of course,
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: the fact that you're not seeing Republicans releasing competing numbers to try
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: to show that the races off the board might also be a little bit of a tell about
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: the potential competitiveness of this seat.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so right now we have Alvarado as about a 7-10 favorite.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: But this race has been trending toward,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: you know, moving closer to that sort of toss up range of things.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: when I think about this district,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: people may remember the sixth in a slightly different configuration was
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: the Amy McGrath seat in 2018.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I will always remember early in the night in 2018, at 538, we had like a live model going.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: And when that got projected for Republicans,
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Andy Barr to hold the seat,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: I remember it initially kind of threw things into a like,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: oh, maybe this night's going to go a little bit differently than they thought.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then the night then proceeded to continue to actually go exactly how we thought.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: It just was Kentucky didn't swing quite as much as it.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: The Kentucky sixth didn't swing quite as much.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this is an interesting seat.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's it is it is around Lexington, Fayette County, which is the blue area of the district.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a little ancestrally Democratic down ballot.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's the kind of place that Andy Beshear did better in the gubernatorial race.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe Matt Bevin did worse.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And Ben Chandler had this seat not too long ago.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's ancestrally a Democratic seat.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: And now it's sort of like, can Democrats make their way back into it?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Jacob,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you have thoughts on the sixth or if you want to pick out your sort
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: of early, early low weather.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, look,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: the other obvious answer is always going to be like your Virginia barometer starting
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: with the second district as the lowest hanging fruit for Democrats and
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: then continuing on to the first district and then all the way over to
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: the fifth district.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: And if we're really in a situation where Democrats are blowing the doors off
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: of this election – Are they winning VA-05?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: Are they flipping that seat with Tom Perriello?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's one answer.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think the other place to look and the place
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: where I am more confident will know more quickly is Florida,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: which doesn't close quite as early, but will count much faster.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think that you also have kind of because it's such a big state,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: you've got a nice little spectrum of races that you can keep track of as
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: to how well Democrats are doing.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: So you kind of start with the 25th and then you go to the 22nd and then you go to
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: the 14th and then
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Then you go, you know, truthfully, probably to the 13th right next door on the peninsula.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, God, what am I doing there?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I was like, Luna, sorry, I was anticipating you were going to say the ninth.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, but I.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: The ninth is further down on the list here, right?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: I think that that one is still really difficult for Democrats.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: That Darren Soto district,
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I imagine they would win Luna's district before they win Soto's seat.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then, right, you start to get into your kind of crazier ones.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: Four to seven obviously has gotten a little bit of attention,
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: but the 27- Democrats would have been
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: helped if Corey Mills had managed
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: to win renomination, I suspect.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll know, I mean, the early mail-in vote in Florida will come in like that, right?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like we will know a lot very early on, right?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: The 27th, we're going to learn a lot when Miami-Dade comes in.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_03: We all remember where we were in 2020 when Hillary only won the Miami-Dade early vote by 60-40.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: Down from whatever,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Clinton had had or sorry,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: when Biden won it by 6040 after Clinton had won it by like 8020.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like that was kind of the first sign in 2020 that things were going a little bit differently.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: We'll get that sign again.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah,
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think Florida will be for a state that has gotten kind of shoved off to the side
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: in recent years.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to be a very helpful early barometer as well.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's the single most important state in terms of determining control of the House.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: There are eight districts from Florida that we have on the board, more so than any other state.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think the next closest one is Texas.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I do really think, and a lot of that is just redistricting in the late primary.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: No one knew anything about the candidates.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's gotten a little bit less love from the national media than it should have.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the new lines, people being a little confused.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it is really fascinating.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think what the Moskowitz district is, is that like Trump plus nine or something?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, these districts on paper, I mean, Republicans drew them to pick up what, four?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that was also a Biden plus five seat.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: These are swinging districts.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is that these are seats that saw some really big swings.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: Florida saw a really big, right?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: Florida went from being a Trump plus three to a Trump plus 14?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: 13, 14?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: So a 10-point swing concentrated in South Florida.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: FL-27 went from being a Biden district, albeit narrowly, to being a Trump plus 20 seat.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: Is that right?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, huge swings.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: 15, I think.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, either way, a gigantic swing.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: So.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: I guess curious just because,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know, obviously Florida, there are a couple interesting things going on there.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, to me, it's interesting.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously,
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Florida, like,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Latino voters in Florida are not gonna be a perfect barometer of what might happen
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: in Texas.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: But nonetheless,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think maybe the ninth district is interesting to me because it has Osceola County
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: or most of Osceola County.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have a larger sort of Puerto Rican, Hispanic origin group of voters.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: And whereas the Cuban American vote is probably still gonna be Republican leaning.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: But I guess if we're in a world where the 27th might be competitive
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: and you saw Maria Salazar run that ad that got all that attention a few weeks ago,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: sort of separating herself from President Trump on immigration issues.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, maybe I'm underrating it, but I guess I'm curious for your thoughts on that.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Correct me if I'm wrong.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that,
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think the Cuban population in South Florida has always been
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: a bit more conservative.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, for sure.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: For Republicans, obviously.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the swings there have been just as big as they were with The swings
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: that we saw in Florida's ninth district, for example, with Puerto Rican voters.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's like it's even though it is, you know, further more conservative.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's any less susceptible to some of the trend lines that we're seeing
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: with Hispanic voters.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: And remember the ninth was redrawn not to rely on Hispanic voters as right.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: The Hispanic CVAP in Florida 9 dropped from a majority down to like 40%.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: The white population went up from like 28 to 40 or thereabouts.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's even, yeah,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: it's like at 30 something percent because the VAP is now 36% Hispanic in the ninth.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it did really drop considerably.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so unlike some of these other seats where you could see a snap back
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: if Hispanic voters really do kind of the pendulum swings back the other way,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: and we'll talk about South Texas maybe on that front,
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: like the ninth is actually a little bit more insulated from those shifts
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: than these other districts.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's like a Trump 17 or something now.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: Or 18, yeah.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Or 18, yeah.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: It depends on the calculation, but yes, it's very...
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's become quite Republican as baseline.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: That makes it redder than some of these other seats we were talking about,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: like the 25th or the 14th that Democrats are trying to hold on to
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: or Democratic incumbents are trying to hold on to.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: I guess sort of maybe as a related point,
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: and maybe I'll ask you to pick somebody not named Jared Moskowitz or Kathy Castor,
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: but sort of with that in mind,
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: is there an incumbent that you think Is most likely to survive that maybe
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: a few months ago you would have been a little bit more,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: you would have been a little more bearish on their chances than
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: at this particular juncture right before the election.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like Jacob and I are going to have the same answer.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Are you thinking
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Don Davis?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: You guys can flip a coin on that.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: You think is most likely to lose in a way you did not expect.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: We could switch it up if you want.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot more of those.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: That gives you a little bit more of a wider realm.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: I really thought Davis was cooked.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: I would have thought that he was one of the most vulnerable,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: and arguably he still is one of the most vulnerable Democrats.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because you have to understand,
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: not only did Republicans redraw the district to be About,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: what was it, 10 points more Republican based on the presidential result?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: But they did it in a way that was specifically designed to hurt Don Davis
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: because they took Pitt County and Greene County out of the district.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: And those were the two kind of Democratic areas.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: And Greene County is Don Davis's home county.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think he outperformed Kamala Harris by...
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: What was it like four points, three points overall district wide in 2024?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: But I think in in Greene County, I think he outran her by like 18.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, his his overperformance was concentrated in the parts of the map that they excised.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I really thought that that was going to be the end for him.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: And call it the environment,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: call it former Governor Cooper at the top of the ticket,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: call it a Republican retread candidate who hasn't been able to capitalize on
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: the opportunity.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: But I think Davis is in a much better shot than he was four months ago.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's worth mentioning he's facing Laurie Buckhout, who is the...
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm pronouncing that right.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I look at it and I'm like... Yeah,
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: because anyway,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: she lost narrowly to him two years ago, but now is running in a redrawn seat.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I also was...
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of thinking he was doomed,
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: but here we are, and he's actually slightly favored in our forecast.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Do you both have it at lean D now, or it's toss-up or tilt D?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: I have it at toss-up.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: We have it at toss-up as well.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the fact that it is toss-up is honestly a win for Davis,
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: because on paper, that should not have happened, essentially.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I misspoke.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: Greene County wasn't – or sorry,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: Pitt County wasn't ever in the district,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: but Greene County was, and that's what I was thinking of.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: Greene County 2024, Donald Trump plus 18, Don Davis plus one.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: That is a large difference.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: And they cut it entirely out of the district.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: And yet he still seems to be very much in the race.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: also a testament just to how low Republican turnout is anticipated
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: to be in this part of the states.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, obviously there aren't a lot of swing voters in this district.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's very racially polarized.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but like Republicans have been hoping that they would be able
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: to wake those voters up for the past month.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it looks increasingly unlikely that that is going to happen.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: it's not a coincidence that,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: that President Trump is what doing, uh,
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: an event in Greenville,
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: uh, which is in Pitt County,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: you know, where East Carolina is it's.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's not in the first, but it's obviously right next door.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's the TV market.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's everything in that vicinity.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: I assume that that is with sort of those kinds of voters in mind who might be not
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: as animated and they're trying to figure out ways to get,
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: you know, gen up support, gen up, turn up.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, among, among voters like that.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I guess which,
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: which one of you, uh,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: gets credit for,
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: for that one, uh,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: or, or, or,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: in turn,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: is there another,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: I guess,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: another incumbent that comes to mind beyond Davis,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: you know, maybe, maybe this is an opportunity to talk about South Texas.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I mean,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think Vicente Gonzalez, we've had this race and toss up for a while, Texas 34, um,
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think that this race is,
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: in some ways it's closer than I would have expected still given where
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: the neighboring districts are at and how well Talarico is doing,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: how well Hinojosa is doing in this part of the state.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean, I would say that Gonzalez has the edge at this point.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that Republicans had a good recruit in Eric Flores.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: He checked a lot of boxes biographically.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And Gonzalez also was in a district,
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: much of which is new to him,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: and was having to introduce himself to Corpus Christi voters who were previously not
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: in that part of his district.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he, I think,
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Has been a slower, a lower fundraiser historically.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was some concern about like his ability to,
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: to run a strong,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: aggressive campaign,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: but it seems like he's in a pretty good position to win here.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's largely due to the statewide factors and the fact that,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Talarico is going to win this district by a decent margin, I would expect.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: But yes,
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: certainly, I mean,
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: when Republicans redrew this seat,
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: they were hoping that it would be significantly easier to pick up.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's now a seat that Trump won by 10 points in 2024.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: But again,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: the swings that we have seen in South Texas are more dramatic than anywhere else in
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: the country.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Biden also won this district by a couple of points in 2020.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: we have seen that there is going to be significant backlash against Republicans
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: in South Texas after they swung so hard for them in 2024.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: I guess along,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: so we've,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: we've hit Don Davis and we've hit Vicente Gonzalez,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: I guess in sort of a, you know, another, you know, surprise.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Wait, can I, oh, please, please.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, maybe this is where you were going and it is kind of a cheap shot, but Emanuel Cleaver.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's good.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, no, I thought that guy was going to lose.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, it took a bit of a last minute reprieve for Cleaver to hold on.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: I just zoomed in here.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, the map changed.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Basically,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: the map got thrown out and it went through a bunch of rigmarole
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: and it might still come into play for next election,
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: depending on how the statewide veto referendum goes on the legislation
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: that Republicans passed to try to implement a new map that would get rid of Cleaver.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: But he now looks very safe to win re-election for at least one more term.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: I try to avoid talking about Missouri as much as possible.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: I pretend that that doesn't exist.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bit of a Schrodinger's map situation for so long.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't know which map was legally in effect.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's a crazy situation to say the least.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: But we do know what it is now, but only...
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: It took, what,
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: mid-September,
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: basically,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: which is wild, especially in this day and age, given deadlines for various things.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I guess, okay, so that was a little bit of a surprise, a last-minute curveball.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: I guess, what are some other races that have potentially surprised you?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there could be many,
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: just based on the presidential vote,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: given what we're seeing with Democrats being competitive in some places.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously,
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: people are always interested in what sort of races popped up
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: that you were not quite expecting.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: you can line things up in order of presidential vote and be like, yeah,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: it makes sense that this has come onto the board,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: but maybe there's some that have jumped up a little bit higher
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: than you would have expected that go beyond that.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: This you keying me up to talk about Wyoming.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: I am keying you up, Jacob.
• 28:43
  I am keying you up.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: How can I not?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of people were like, whoa,
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: when we saw that inside elections had moved Wyoming's at-large seat
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: from solid- That's a charitable interpretation of the noises they were making.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no, no, I was just saying, people were just like, whoa.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Look, you know, Maybe Chuck Gray is not the strongest candidate in the world for the GOP.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Wyoming, though, obviously is a very Republican state.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I was curious, you know, at least I'm curious about the sort of what you were seeing there.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: What I was seeing was polling that showed that Chuck Gray started in
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: a uniquely weak position for a Republican, not only in Wyoming, but in any state.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: District that you would even think of as competitive.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: This is somebody who has a very divisive reputation within his state.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: You have to remember in Wyoming, Wyoming is still a two-party state.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's just the two parties are the Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Republicans.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: And right now, the dominant party is the moderates.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's a change from the last couple of years when the dominant party has been
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: the Freedom Caucus.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: And,
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: and Chuck Gray was essentially the last man standing when he won this nomination for
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: the House seat back in, in, I believe in August.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was a, you know, crazy crowded race.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: I brought up, just brought up the results, you know, very, I mean, you went with 25%.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: Statewide.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I know it's not a big state population wise,
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: but it's, it, you know, it really was a fragmented race.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: So he's very divisive.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: He's deeply unpopular.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: That was another thing that I saw in the polling was that he is incredibly unpopular.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_03: Again, one two party state and he's just in the he's in the wrong party.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing that I saw was that Trump is not particularly popular either,
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: even in a state that he carried by 47 points.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: He's barely above water.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: And there are two other candidates on the ballot.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: There's a there's a libertarian and there's a Constitution Party candidate,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: I believe, on the ballot.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: And all of that.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know uh combines to create an environment that I just want to keep an eye
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: on you know uh look the Democrat Lisa Kenney, she's a former state senator
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: from Laramie, she hasn't raised a lot of money she's not
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: the best candidate um I think that if there were like a, if there were a Gary Trauner
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: who nearly won this district 20 years ago
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: if he were running This would look even more interesting to me.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: And the other thing is in the days after we moved that race,
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: we saw a couple things that made me feel a little bit vindicated.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: The first being- Oh, absolutely.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: You moved it and then I saw the news on this.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, sorry, I'm queuing you up.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, no.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a new independent expenditure super PAC for Chuck Gray funded
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: by his father who has bankrolled all of his campaigns thus far.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: Not only is the IE spending money,
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: they are running negative on the Democrat,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: Lisa Kinney,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: which is I'm sure the first time that her name has ever been in a TV ad, right?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: That is a risk in and of itself to elevate your Democratic opponent in a state like Wyoming.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then Chuck Gray himself rolled out an ad that you could run.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody on Twitter said Rebecca Cooke could run this ad in Wisconsin 3.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: It was all about how gas prices are too high and groceries are unaffordable and whatnot.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: We need to focus on getting costs down and Wyoming families are feeling the squeeze.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: And oh, by the way, Chuck Gray is going to be the one to help you out with that.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's not the kind of like red meat MAGA ad that you run if you think
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: that you can just cruise on the state being the most Republican state in
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: the country.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's just not.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think there's something going on here.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: I really do.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think the Democrats are going to win this race.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that similar to how West Virginia 3 back in 2018 was
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: a Trump plus 50 district that had a lot of economic challenges and it ended up being
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: a 15 point race.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: If this is a 15 point race, I wouldn't be shocked.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: And there is a world,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: of course,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: where maybe it's smaller than that because those two sort of alternative candidates
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: that some Republican voters might be willing to To vote for as a none of the
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: above sort of choice with a libertarian and a constitution party candidate,
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: that at least is – that's interesting to me from sort of the perspective
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: of does he win like 52-40,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: 50-40, 50-39 because a lot of other vote goes to those two candidates.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I'm not sure.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: Can get to 40% in Wyoming.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think that a good Democratic performance in that state lands somewhere between 35% and 40%.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like a truly excellent,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: like it hasn't happened since the 2014 superintendent race kind of thing.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: In 2006, Gary Trauner got...
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like 47%.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: In 2008, he ran again against Cynthia Lummis and he got 42 or 43%.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: Obama was only losing by 30 some odd percent at the top of the ticket.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: So it's gotten a fair bit more Republican in the intervening years.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: But if Lisa Kinney could get to 35% it would be the best Democratic performance in
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: over a decade.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: 40% it would be like something's really going on here.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: For Democrats, where's Dave Freudenthal when
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: you need him, right?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: The last Democrat to win statewide, two-term governor.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's like in his mid-70s, I think.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: So unlikely to have mounted a bid.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: But you do wonder about, and this is just pure hypothetical,
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: but it just crossed my mind when we're talking about a state like Wyoming.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: obviously Democrats have, or,
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Democrats and sort of anti-Republican independents have tried to coalesce,
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: sort of do fusion sort of action in some Senate races.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it's curious me,
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: given Chuck Gray's sort of positioning,
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: Could this have been an opportunity for that sort of maneuvering on the House side?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously there are what, six at-large seats in the country.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: So six states with only one district.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: So functionally, it's a statewide election, unlike most House races.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so I just,
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: it crossed my mind is like,
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: this might've been a place where they could have tried that.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously that's not panning out, but it's interesting to think about.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what I told Jacob on the podcast this morning.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we're on the same page.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think this would have been a good place for that gambit.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: No, I think that's absolutely right.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: Where's Liz Cheney mounting her comeback?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, she's probably a little too toxic.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think so.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: At this point, she's a little too connected.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: She endorsed Kamala Harris, I think.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: Might be trouble in Wyoming.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think about...
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: What Democrats tried to do in North Dakota in 2022 with Cara Mund,
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_03: obviously that wasn't the year for a Democrat or an Independent to vote.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: win North Dakota,
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: but North Dakota,
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: you know, a similarly very Republican state and Democrats got behind an independent.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I wonder if they had done something like that in Wyoming this year, could it look different?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, obviously a hypothetical that we'll not get to see play out,
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: but it will be interesting to see if Chuck Gray wins,
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: if he will face future primary challenges and other interesting internal fights
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: among the Republican factions in a very Republican state.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Erin, I guess it's tough to follow Wyoming,
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: but is
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: there a race that sort of surprised you that has come onto your board?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be one that is going to flip or something.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: But nonetheless,
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: or maybe it is one that's going to flip,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: but you thought it was a surefire flip for Republicans after redistricting
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: or something.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then,
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: has come back onto the board in a way, you know, anything in that sort of range.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, there are so many good candidates for this prompt.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I would say New York's 21st district has come online.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: At a speed at which has been surprising to me.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, this is a seat in the North Country of New York that [Elise] Stefanik holds.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: She won reelection by 20 something points in 24.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Trump won this district by 21 points.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: He won it by like 16 points in 2020.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: This was just not really a seat that I thought was going to be
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: a real pickup opportunity for Democrats,
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: despite the fact that you had a candidate there in Blake Gendebien,
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: who had been running since the beginning of 2025,
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: when we thought there was going to be a special election,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: which would have certainly given Democrats more of an opening
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: that unique circumstance.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right, just for context for people who may not remember,
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Elise Stefanik was supposed to become, what, ambassador to the UN?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was the expectation.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's never it never happened.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: And part of that was,
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: a growing concern that maybe
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: a special election there would be would be more interesting than anyone wanted.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then my memory now, I guess it was also the conversation she was going to run for governor.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then that didn't happen.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then she decided not to run for governor.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then she Upton retired.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that left Bruce Blakeman by himself.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: Basically,
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: there's a lot of things where Elise Stefanik looked like she was going
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: to be doing something else.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then she is not doing anything else.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, her intense loyalty to the president was not mutual.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so multiple career paths did not pan out for her over the course of the past few years.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I even was like blanking on that.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh yeah, and she was the governor.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's been so long.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then, yes, yeah, yeah.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: But now she's just retiring.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now she's just retiring.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's an open seat.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: And a big part of the reason that Democrats are competitive here,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's really three factors.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: One, you have a Democrat in Gendebien who is a dairy farmer.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: He's got the right profile for the district, has been raising money all cycle.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so he has the resources to spend quite a bit of money on TV ads,
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: even though this is an expensive place to run a campaign because it's spread out
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: between a bunch of different media markets.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Two,
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think the issue of tariffs and the trade war with Canada is uniquely resident in
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: a district that runs along much of the northern border
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: and is much more economically dependent on that relationship with Canada.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then three,
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: you have maybe one of the most insane candidates,
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: at least from an entertaining perspective,
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: And Anthony Constantino, professional boxer, sticker mule CEO, amateur rap artist.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: He has a whole album called Thank You, Mr. President Trump, I believe.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's just variations on that theme.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: Featuring Roger Stone.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: Featuring Roger Stone.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: I did not know this.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: I knew of him,
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: obviously,
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: and remember the primary,
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: and I believe he beat a state legislator, Robert Smullen, in the Republican primary.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I did not know about the rap.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: He is just such a character.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: The local Republican establishment despises him.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe Stefanik has endorsed him still.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Trump has endorsed him, though, which is how he was able to win that primary.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he's also independently wealthy and has been able to self-fund his campaign.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: But he is just so uniquely polarizing as a candidate.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Image is way underwater that that has given Democrats an opening here.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I mean,
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is also a seat that, you know, 20 years ago was fairly competitive.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Obama carried it in 2008.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Owens, yeah, Bill Owens held it until he lost in 2014, I guess.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think he survived ’12.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: it's not,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: it's very red now,
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: but it's one of those places where, again,
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: the parts of this country where Trump made the biggest gains in
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: the past decade are also the parts of the country that seem most susceptible
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: to this blue wave.
• 42:02
  Yeah.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's a good one.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I guess, uh,
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: obviously,
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: you, you, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to me about this.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if there are there,
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: are there maybe any other races you you'd be that there were on your mind as,
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: as particularly interesting or, uh,
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: you know, uh,
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: unexpected, um, any,
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: any category of sort of they've,
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: they've,
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: they've jumped out at you, uh,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: In a way that, I mean,
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: it could have been expected,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: I guess,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: just at the end of the day, what are some other interesting races for you guys?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I have an answer here and I promise I'm not just vamping,
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: but I did just get the FEC alert that Chuck Gray has loaned his campaign $376,000.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: Perfect timing.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: Today to close out the race,
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: which I don't know why he would need
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's an ad campaign, presumably.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that's about what one week of TV costs in Wyoming.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: I will say he called me fake news in a so-called rating outfit in the press yesterday.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: And to that,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: I just have to say I have 376,000 reasons now why you and I might not see the race
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: so differently.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: Look, I think Kansas, too, is a race that I've been talking about for a while.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: But now I think funnily enough,
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: I think both Erin and Kyle and Miles have moved while we
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: at Inside Elections have not yet put it on the board.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: The candidate there,
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: Don Coover, is just like he's unlike any other candidate that I've ever met.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: He's got this really fascinating background.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: He's kind of done everything.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: He's a veterinarian, but he's also a West Point grad and former army intelligence officer.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: He's lived through unspeakable tragedy.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: He has been at the cutting edge of some really kind of crazy science,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: cloning technology, things like that.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know,
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think with with everything kind of coming up Kansas in the closing weeks of
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: the race with that Senate race,
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think anyone should lose sight of the possibility that
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: that race could get interesting, especially because I think Derek Schmidt.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty much every Republican in an even remotely competitive
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: or potentially competitive race has been running with their hair on fire,
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: except for Derek Schmidt.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think that I've seen anything out of that campaign.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: In a way that we're talking about Wyoming, right?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: And Chuck Gray is cutting himself a $376,000 check and his dad's running ads,
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_03: hitting the Democrat.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: And Mike Flood over in Nebraska 1 is running negative on his opponent.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking about Nebraska 1 as the comp here.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's a good comp.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: Nebraska 1 is less Republican by a little bit.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it does have Lincoln,
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: which I assume is a contributing factor to it being a little, little less red.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's got, I mean, it gets into like the Omaha suburbs too.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: But the, the,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: the Republicans are activated a little bit more in Nebraska one than they are
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: in Kansas too.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, yes, they're definitely taking it more seriously.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think, I mean, Schmidt, it looks like he's on TV with some positive now.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's not gone in the attack against Coover who has this really hard hitting Going
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: after his handling of sex abuse cases when Schmidt was Attorney General and tying it
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: to Epstein.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think he kind of has all the ingredients for a bit of a sleeper race
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: that is probably not going to get any outside Democratic investment at this point.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't mean it's not...
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: An interesting race.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's, that's, that's really fascinating.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: I noticed that that had been moved recently by a few outlets and it's,
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: you know, it's, it's one of those races.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: I was looking at it and I was like,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: I was honestly trying to remember, I was like, is Wichita in that seat?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: 'cause I've been looking at Sedgwick County a lot and it's not,
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: it's in the fourth, but it's like, yeah.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: Most of Lawrence is in the third.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so they cut out most of Lawrence and they gave it to the third,
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: but there's some of Lawrence and then Topeka is in the second.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because remember,
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: they tried to,
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: they made the third less Democratic,
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: and that's why the first obviously reaches around there.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: Some creative cartography.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: But not the most creative for what it's worth.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: We've, we've, we've seen far more creative cards.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence is in the first now.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, there you go.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: They, they, yeah, that's right.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: They, they have that little arm that reaches in and grabs it.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: That makes sense.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, I guess, Erin, I don't know if there's, uh, one that pops to your mind.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's, I don't know.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be like Kansas second, but you know, something of that nature.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, in other race, I would keep an eye on North Carolina 13.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of North Carolina districts because the state has been,
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know, gerrymandered to the max by Republicans.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got all these districts that.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have like everything likely are here in our.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, that reason that is unwarranted.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, um,
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like these are all kind of Trump +13 to +18 seats that in a very tough year
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: where Republican turnout just falls off a cliff.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if Cooper is,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: winning by 10 points,
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: um, then yes, that they Democrats have a shot conceivably in all of these places.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think 13 provides a better opportunity for Democrats because
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: the trend lines there are better than most other parts of the state.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's got the outer edges of Wake County, um, and.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: The exurbs of Raleigh are growing very rapidly.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the few districts that trended left between 2020 and 2024.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: Those places are
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: very interesting.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: They are, yeah.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: The other one is North Carolina 11 is another one in the state,
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: which is obviously now quite competitive and one where Democrats have the edge,
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: it appears.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: then Paul Barringer,
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic nominee here,
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: he has more cash than some of the other Democratic candidates.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the other districts and I think is running a campaign
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: to more intentionally appeal to some of those,
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: softer Republican voters and independents that he would need to to win this seat.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I would I would keep an eye on this seat as you're looking through all
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: the North Carolina races, though,
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: obviously,
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: everyone's,
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: focused on the Richard Hudson race because it's fun going after the committee.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Committee party chairman, the party committee chairman of the opposing party.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think 13 might have the best opportunity for Dems, but we'll see.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're all, I mean, they're all kind of in the realm of possibility.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: I have one final race for you as we were talking about it.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I wondered if either of you would say, but you didn't.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it gives me an opportunity to bring it up.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: Which is great.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: The more the merrier.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: Look, we got a lot of seats here that we could talk about.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: 435 of them.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: in fact.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I was curious what you guys are making of the second district in Nevada,
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: which seems competitive.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's, I mean,
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: it would be,
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still,
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: personally, you know, it's a stretch to imagine Democrats actually flipping it.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: But there seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction with the Republican nominee,
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: David Flippo,
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: even the current Republican, Mark Amodei, like, I'm not voting for him.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what did he say in that Wall Street Journal article?
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to pull this up so we get the quote right.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like, there's not any love lost.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I remember in the primary,
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: he was supporting, I forget, actually, well, you know, I can bring it up.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: [James] Settelmeyer.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: Settelmeyer, who was a former state legislator, right, who had his backing in the primary and
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a whole thing about, well,
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: Flippo's really from the Vegas area,
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: and we don't need another congressman from the Vegas area.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: So this is what the current congressman said.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: “I'm proud of the fact that I'm a Republican,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: but that doesn't mean that I'm going to step in front of basically
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: a fraud freight train and go, well,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: it's a Republican freight train,
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: so it isn't going to hurt when it splatters me all over the track.”
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: That is a retiring member of Congress.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well, here's the thing, Amodei,
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: is quietly one of the more kind of candid members and has been for a long time.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I remember back in 2019 when the Trump Ukraine stuff first got going
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: and somebody asked him,
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: he kind of got a little out over his skis and he was like, yeah, sure.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like I didn't beat Trump if like the evidence were.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then he had to kind of walk it back.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: But that is not a man who's afraid of getting a quote in the news.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think he and Cornyn are in a competition about who can take a bigger hammer
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: to their successor as the Republican nominee.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: Because I don't think – I think that's a big piece of what's going on here
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_03: that Amodei is so vocal.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: And any microphone that he sees,
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_03: he's more than happy to speak into it and say how much he detests David Flippo.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: But also, TBT is a good candidate.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, she's got – Teresa Benitez-Thompson.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: She's a former state House Speaker.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: Am I remembering that correctly?
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: Or Minority Leader?
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she was up.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: She's also a former Miss Nevada.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_03: She is well regarded by her peers.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: She beat a much better funded candidate,
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_03: Gregory Kidd,
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: in the primary, who had actually been essentially the de facto Democratic nominee.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: He ran as an independent against Amodei.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: So he was somebody who had a lot of money and who had run a lot of TV ads in
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: the district in a previous cycle.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: And she beat him pretty resoundingly in the Democratic primary,
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: which to me demonstrates her, you know, her political skills.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know,
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: Flippo doesn't really help himself with a lot of the stories that are out there.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is a competitive race now at this point.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: I would still give Flippo the edge, but definitely it's competitive.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's right.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the fact that we're talking about it is,
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: that's the kind of seat that We shouldn't be talking about if things were going
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: a bit better for Republicans.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is also a seat where Wedgewood polled early on.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, we can bring that up.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Wedgewood polling,
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: which has been, well,
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: was found out by FiftyPlusOne and some of my old colleagues at 538
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: that essentially they were fabricating data and then they copped to it basically in
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: an effort to get ahead of Of the story,
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: trying to sort of spin it the way they wanted to.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: But yes, that's been a fun thing.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: We had some conversations about that yesterday when everything broke on Tuesday, October 20th.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone in the political community was sort of groaning about that, to say the least.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I actually had forgotten that this was a seat
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: that they had, they had had some input on, um,
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: for what it's worth,
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: if people are wondering,
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: they have been removed from, from our polling averages and forecasts in every way.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: So the fact that this is still like a three in four shot for Republicans and that,
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_02: that kind of thing is not factoring in is,
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: is, you know, maybe telling about the state of the race.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, but I do think that I,
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: early on, like over the summer, I was a lot more skeptical of this race.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point there was like, maybe just the Wedgewood poll and there might've been another.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: A Dem internal that was also out there at that point.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: But that was a part of the reason I was so skeptical because I was like,
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know who this pollster is.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't trust them.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to see some real data here before I believe it.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's so, I mean, it's such bad news.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think we need kind of a wholesale reel that reevaluation of how we talk
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: about polling and, you know,
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: Present polls as members of the media and people who people look to
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_03: to understand this kind of thing, especially as we get into the 2028 primaries.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_03: We know how big a role polls play in those races now,
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: especially when it comes to even things like getting on a debate stage.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_03: There will be qualifications that candidates have to meet in the presidential primary.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: And you really don't want to be in a universe where candidates
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: or their supporters are standing up kind of fake polling places,
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: fake polling firms to try and get their candidate onto a debate stage.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because look, I would get...
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to call out Adam Hamilton specifically because I think
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: that other campaigns did it too.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: But like there are real campaigns who were sending out Wedgewood polling as like real –
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, real surveys.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_03: The Hamilton campaign,
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_03: again, not to pick on them specifically, but like it's the one that I remember.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: they said two major pollsters,
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: Emerson College polling and Wedgewood polls show Hamilton leading Marshall
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_03: by two points.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_03: That was like a press email, a press release.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, campaigns are not going to do their due diligence if the numbers are good for them.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so it falls on us, right, to be discerning and to be vocal when things don't add up.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're already talking about approaches for,
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: obviously if someone is essentially actively misleading folks
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_02: that they are legitimate based on sort of the series
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: of questions they've been asked.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's a little more trying,
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: but we are certainly going to be trying to figure out some ways
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: to avoid this happening.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, for what it's worth, this is not the first time.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: We've had fake pollsters.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's a long history of this in the last, I guess, 15, 20 years.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the problems now is that we have fewer polls and fewer polls
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: from institutions that are not aligned in some way with one of the parties.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's the concern is that a fake poll might matter a little bit more
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: than it should in this environment.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, maybe that's an appropriate place to end on a very happy note about the state
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_02: of polling in this country.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: But Erin and Jacob,
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_02: this has been a great run through of some fascinating races,
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: some House contests that folks should be watching early in the night,
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: later in the night, ones to be watching.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe a Democrat is not going to win Wyoming,
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: but maybe the margin there is going to be telling about some aspects
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: of candidate quality and the overall environment.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: there's, there's just obviously with 435 races, there's so much to watch.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I think that this was a really,
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_02: really good, uh,
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_02: rundown of,
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_02: of some key things to watch and some,
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_02: some races that maybe weren't on people's radars.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I really appreciate, uh, you, you both taking the time to speak with me about this.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this was fun.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: Always great to get into the weeds.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_02: And again, it's Erin Covey from the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_02: She's the House editor there.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: And Jacob Rubashkin, who's the deputy editor at Inside Elections.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: You can check out the ratings and analysis from both of them.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: I highly recommend them.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: They are much reads.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: So again, though, I'm Geoffrey Skelley, the chief elections analyst here at Decision Desk HQ.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_02: And again, Erin and Jacob, thank you so much for your time.
• 58:47
  Thank you.
• 58:49
  [music]