Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Episode 39: Which Factions Are Winning Primaries, with FiftyPlusOne's Primary Project

Transcript

Episode 39: Which Factions Are Winning Primaries, with FiftyPlusOne's Primary Project · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Progressive candidates are on a heater.
0:01
SPEAKER_03: Most of these groups are having,
0:03
SPEAKER_03: I hate to use the word unprecedented, but very high levels of success.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: They actually effectively blacklisted vendors that worked
0:10
SPEAKER_00: with any incumbent challengers at the time, and that didn't work.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: There were two cases where
0:15
SPEAKER_02: EMILY's List candidates went up
0:16
SPEAKER_02: against progressive endorsed candidates and lost.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: So it could be some of these intraparty battles are now coming
0:22
SPEAKER_02: to EMILY's List's doorstep, but they haven't in the past.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Geoffrey Skelley, the Chief Elections Analyst here at DDHQ.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're recording this on Thursday,
0:47
SPEAKER_01: August 6th,
0:48
SPEAKER_01: and you may have been watching on Tuesday,
0:51
SPEAKER_01: August 4th,
0:51
SPEAKER_01: or in fact,
0:52
SPEAKER_01: on Wednesday,
0:53
SPEAKER_01: August 5th,
0:54
SPEAKER_01: for the projection in the Michigan Senate race in the Democratic primary
0:59
SPEAKER_01: between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to talk about The sort of internal party battles and the types
1:08
SPEAKER_01: of groups and organizations and individuals,
1:12
SPEAKER_01: prominent people like a Bernie Sanders or an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
1:16
SPEAKER_01: who have endorsed candidates and whether those candidates have succeeded.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: And really the Michigan Senate race on Tuesday is the perfect encapsulation
1:24
SPEAKER_01: of what's going on in the Democratic side.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: Where you had El-Sayed,
1:28
SPEAKER_01: who is a progressive endorsed by folks like Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders,
1:33
SPEAKER_01: and also like the Working Families Party and other groups sort of associated with
1:37
SPEAKER_01: the left.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: And then you had Haley Stevens,
1:40
SPEAKER_01: considered more of an establishment Democrat,
1:43
SPEAKER_01: had a lot of backing,
1:44
SPEAKER_01: particularly from pro-Israel groups,
1:47
SPEAKER_01: most notably APEC,
1:49
SPEAKER_01: Super PAC,
1:50
SPEAKER_01: United Democracy Project, spent I think it was $32, $35 something million dollars.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: We'll see what the final tally is on her behalf.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: And so she had a lot of outside support that was critical.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: So the Michigan race is kind of a great setup to have a kind of
2:06
SPEAKER_01: a larger conversation about What's happening within the Democratic Party and within
2:11
SPEAKER_01: the Republican Party when it comes to the kinds of groups that are finding success.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: And we've seen progressives gain more success in Democratic primaries in terms of
2:21
SPEAKER_01: the kinds of nominees they're getting.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: And then what's happening on the Republican side.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to talk about this.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so excited to do this with three of my former colleagues
2:33
SPEAKER_01: from FiveThirtyEight,
2:35
SPEAKER_01: Cooper Burton, who is a freelance political researcher and writer.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: Meredith Conroy,
2:40
SPEAKER_01: who's a political science professor at Cal State San Bernardino,
2:43
SPEAKER_01: and Tia Yang,
2:44
SPEAKER_01: freelance news editor and data journalist and my old editor at FiveThirtyEight.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: They essentially,
2:52
SPEAKER_01: the three of them,
2:53
SPEAKER_01: along with FiftyPlusOne,
2:55
SPEAKER_01: published essentially a continuation of what we used to do at FiveThirtyEight,
2:59
SPEAKER_01: which we called it the primary project,
3:01
SPEAKER_01: which was we collected all this data on who was endorsed and who was winning and
3:06
SPEAKER_01: And factor in demographic elements about the candidates
3:09
SPEAKER_01: and positions they had taken.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: And essentially they have gotten together and they have continued on
3:16
SPEAKER_01: with this great project,
3:16
SPEAKER_01: which ran back years and have been doing it for the 2026 cycle.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm really excited to sort of dig into a little bit with a report
3:25
SPEAKER_01: that they published on FiftyPlusOne just the other day where they kind of ran
3:29
SPEAKER_01: through all these numbers.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: So with that, Cooper, Meredith, Tia, welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having us.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having us.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: No, it's great to see all of you.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: I miss working with you guys.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: Likewise.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: It's nice to be getting back together.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Awful.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: So I thought we'd just start out just,
3:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:52
SPEAKER_01: I've done a little intro there,
3:53
SPEAKER_01: but I thought it might be helpful for our viewers and our listeners to kind
3:58
SPEAKER_01: of understand what the goal, like what you're trying to do with the primary project.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I can take that.
4:06
SPEAKER_02: I was part of the original team that started this back in 2018.
4:11
SPEAKER_02: And so in 2018,
4:12
SPEAKER_02: a group of us at FiveThirtyEight writers and editors,
4:15
SPEAKER_02: we wanted to find a way to essentially to quantify some intraparty conflicts,
4:20
SPEAKER_02: basically to see who is actually winning primaries and then use that information
4:24
SPEAKER_02: to understand how the parties
4:26
SPEAKER_03: were being shaped.
4:28
SPEAKER_02: 2018, it was an interesting time.
4:31
SPEAKER_02: There's some parallels between now and 2018 with respect to the successes of
4:36
SPEAKER_02: the progressive movements, which I know we're going to get to in a minute.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: When this project was born,
4:45
SPEAKER_02: a big part of it was trying to build proxies for concepts like progressive
4:49
SPEAKER_02: or anti-establishment.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: Those things are easy to talk about, but they're really hard to measure.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: And I remember doing this with Nathaniel
4:56
SPEAKER_02: Rakich was also part of the original team.
4:59
SPEAKER_02: He and I pretty much led this in 2018, and since it's grown a lot.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: But a big issue we had was, okay, how do we find proxies for those ideas?
5:09
SPEAKER_02: And from there,
5:09
SPEAKER_02: it became a data collection effort,
5:11
SPEAKER_02: pulling together endorsements that could stand in for those political leanings
5:15
SPEAKER_02: across And I should also say,
5:19
SPEAKER_02: I know that your audience probably is familiar with the theory of the party decides.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: The party decides was also top of mind when we were putting this together.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: So the party decides is a book from political scientists that You know,
5:31
SPEAKER_02: essentially makes the case that even though the US shifted its primaries
5:35
SPEAKER_02: and caucuses in the 1970s ostensibly back to the voters that the parties
5:40
SPEAKER_02: and insiders and people,
5:42
SPEAKER_02: you know,
5:42
SPEAKER_02: with money to throw around found a way to make sure that they were still essentially
5:47
SPEAKER_02: in control of who the parties nominated.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: And so another question that we had was, yeah,
5:53
SPEAKER_02: how often is the party deciding still In these races
5:58
SPEAKER_02: where progressives are getting involved,
6:02
SPEAKER_02: that wasn't the only question,
6:03
SPEAKER_02: of course, because we look at other groups and I know we're going to get into that.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: So that's where we started and the goal of our project.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: This year we pulled back on some of the endorsements and the data that we collected
6:15
SPEAKER_02: about the candidates, but that's still the main goal.
6:19
SPEAKER_02: Who are the parties nominating and as an indicator of what the parties are becoming
6:23
SPEAKER_02: and who they're going to be.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, that was fabulous.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if Cooper or Tia,
6:29
SPEAKER_01: if you have anything else that you wanted to sort of say
6:33
SPEAKER_01: about what you guys are trying to do here.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: But I was really excited to see that you had done this.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: I know even if you had to...
6:44
SPEAKER_01: To shrink some of the goals of it in terms of what you were tracking,
6:48
SPEAKER_01: it still is such helpful information,
6:50
SPEAKER_01: especially being able to compare some of it to the past data over time to see sort
6:54
SPEAKER_01: of how things are shifting in terms
6:56
SPEAKER_01: of how often are certain information Influential groups getting involved in things.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: How often are the candidates they're endorsing winning?
7:03
SPEAKER_01: A lot of this,
7:04
SPEAKER_01: as you said,
7:05
SPEAKER_01: Meredith, it says a lot about sort of what's happening within the political parties.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: And obviously a big focus in this cycle has been Israel.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: We're going to get to that, especially within the Democratic Party and the divides there.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: But we'll also talk a bit about the influence of progressive groups,
7:21
SPEAKER_01: groups that focus on both the Democratic side and the Republican side
7:23
SPEAKER_01: on electing women.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: And so we're going to dig into all those things a little bit.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: So just to start out, though,
7:29
SPEAKER_01: I thought we'd talk a little bit about Sort of going through your report here,
7:34
SPEAKER_01: sort of what groups were finding success.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm gonna actually add, put this up on stage now.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: This is your guys' fun big table.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to spend all the time in the world in this,
7:48
SPEAKER_01: but I guess,
7:49
SPEAKER_01: how would you sort of speak to your point, Meredith, about the party deciding?
7:54
SPEAKER_01: Obviously we have seen,
7:56
SPEAKER_01: I think particularly focus on the Democratic side,
7:59
SPEAKER_01: some occasional,
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Choices to endorse by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the House.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: But at least in a couple of instances, they didn't get the candidate they wanted.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: And that obviously got a lot of attention because, A,
8:13
SPEAKER_01: the DCCC decided to endorse in primaries before, I mean,
8:18
SPEAKER_01: endorse before a primary had decided the candidate,
8:22
SPEAKER_01: which they didn't necessarily always do.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: And in at least a couple of cases,
8:26
SPEAKER_01: even though they put their thumb on the scale for a candidate,
8:28
SPEAKER_01: even spin up their behalf, They didn't necessarily get the candidate they wanted.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: So I was curious sort of with the idea of sort of like how much influence do sort
8:38
SPEAKER_01: of these, the party associated groups and leaders, how are they doing?
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can tackle that question.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Looking at, we tracked how The campaign committees on both Senate and House did in the Senate.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: The committee didn't endorse formally,
8:58
SPEAKER_00: so we looked at Chuck Schumer,
8:59
SPEAKER_00: who has only endorsed two so far,
9:02
SPEAKER_00: and we'll talk about those, one of them certainly later.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: But as far as the party deciding,
9:10
SPEAKER_00: we can see on this chart,
9:11
SPEAKER_00: and a big caveat looking at this big,
9:14
SPEAKER_00: huge table we have here,
9:15
SPEAKER_00: These are overall endorsement rates that includes incumbents and non-incumbents
9:20
SPEAKER_00: and people who are running in both contested and uncontested races.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: So some people obviously run unopposed, so they don't really have a primary challenger.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: And so just a caveat that these are a little bit different from some of the numbers
9:34
SPEAKER_00: that we'll dig further into later,
9:36
SPEAKER_00: where we kind of look at those most competitive races.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: But that said,
9:39
SPEAKER_00: we are seeing that all of the committees,
9:43
SPEAKER_00: other than Chuck Schumer, we'll get to that, Have pretty high success rates.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: The success rates that we have here reflect Any candidate who won a partisan primary
9:53
SPEAKER_00: and any candidate who advanced in a top two primary.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: So, of course, in California, they have nonpartisan primaries.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: So a little bit different there.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: But we see that,
10:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:04
SPEAKER_00: for example,
10:05
SPEAKER_00: the NRCC, which is obviously the House Campaign Committee, has 100% success rate.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Of course,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: they're only endorsing in 23 races compared to Trump,
10:14
SPEAKER_00: for example, who endorsed almost 200 candidates.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Huge.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: And 97% of those candidates won.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: And we're seeing on the Republican side, it's really Trump decides.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: They didn't clash with him in any race that we tracked at all.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: There are a few cases where they did endorse and Trump didn't,
10:34
SPEAKER_00: but they never endorsed against him.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: On the Senate side for GOP,
10:39
SPEAKER_00: there were two clashes that maybe we can,
10:42
SPEAKER_00: I think we're gonna talk more about them later,
10:44
SPEAKER_00: but there were a couple of clashes there.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Where the incumbent who lost was backed by the NRSC and the challenger was backed by Trump.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: And even though the party made their endorsements quite early,
10:59
SPEAKER_00: traditionally they seek to kind of clear the field.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the traditional role that they play.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: We're really seeing that even as early as they did it,
11:08
SPEAKER_00: it didn't deter Trump from getting in the race and challengers from getting in
11:12
SPEAKER_00: the race.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: So in those two cases,
11:15
SPEAKER_00: for example,
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Trump was pretty critical in even recruiting and encouraging Julia Letlow,
11:20
SPEAKER_00: the challenger to Senator Bill Cassidy to run.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Bill Cassidy,
11:24
SPEAKER_00: of course,
11:24
SPEAKER_00: has a history of voting against Trump and had kind of been one of those members
11:29
SPEAKER_00: that Trump wasn't really happy with.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: And then quickly moving to the Democratic side,
11:36
SPEAKER_00: the DCCCC,
11:38
SPEAKER_00: the House Campaign Committee,
11:41
SPEAKER_00: they also had a pretty strong success rate just based on this, 93%.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: But as you noted, Geoff,
11:47
SPEAKER_00: there are a few really high profile races that they were getting involved in
11:51
SPEAKER_00: and they clashed with progressive groups and they lost.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't all of them.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: I will note that we saw a lot of coverage of these races.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: They were the only two races they had lost up until this analysis,
12:04
SPEAKER_00: which runs for the June 30th primary.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: They since also lost in Arizona.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: That's not included in this analysis,
12:11
SPEAKER_00: but that would make their third race that they had lost in sort of by
12:15
SPEAKER_00: the time we published.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: So they did get a lot of coverage, but the striking thing about
12:22
SPEAKER_00: The establishment versus progressive or anti-establishment candidates was
12:27
SPEAKER_00: that they didn't directly clash in a lot of places.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: And that's because progressives are playing...
12:34
SPEAKER_00: A lot in really deeply blue areas and
12:37
SPEAKER_00: the campaign committees are endorsing specifically in swing districts.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: So those clashes did represent that the progressives are taking the fight to
12:48
SPEAKER_00: the establishment in a couple of those districts,
12:50
SPEAKER_00: but we're not seeing a lot of clashes.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was interesting.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: And sorry, I'm kind of rambling.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: I said this would be short.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: No, you're fine.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: I did want to mention the idea that,
13:02
SPEAKER_01: yeah, basically your analysis was up through the June 30th primaries.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: So we have had Arizona and we just had obviously a bunch of stuff on August 4th
13:13
SPEAKER_01: that we can talk about within the context of these numbers.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: I would guess,
13:19
SPEAKER_01: just because we are going to get specifically into some of the different things,
13:23
SPEAKER_01: I guess we can start to do that.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the things I wanted to ask you about is some of the success of
13:32
SPEAKER_01: the progressive groups, considering we just saw in Michigan wins by, I mean,
13:40
SPEAKER_01: Progressive individuals like,
13:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:42
SPEAKER_01: folks like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
13:46
SPEAKER_01: endorsed in Working Families Party,
13:48
SPEAKER_01: you know, endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, who ended up winning.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, obviously we've seen a number of Democratic incumbents go down.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh, including in the 13th district, Donavan McKinney beat Shri Thanedar in, in Michigan.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that was the, I think the fourth house incumbent to go down on the democratic side.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: And, and each time it's been sort of a more,
14:10
SPEAKER_01: a candidate to the left of the incumbent, um,
14:13
SPEAKER_01: how So far to the left is varied,
14:15
SPEAKER_01: but in some cases you had a very clearly left wing candidate beating
14:19
SPEAKER_01: a progressive like in Colorado's first.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: But clearly there's been some success stories for democratic groups.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: So I liked how you guys put it in your subtitle, progressive candidates are on a heater.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know,
14:36
SPEAKER_01: so as somebody who,
14:37
SPEAKER_01: who once did enjoy playing cards,
14:39
SPEAKER_01: I haven't played in a while,
14:40
SPEAKER_01: but I, you know, being on a heater was, is that's where you want to be.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was curious about sort of what your takeaways from or what you're seeing
14:48
SPEAKER_01: in terms of which groups,
14:49
SPEAKER_01: which kind of endorsers have been more successful and,
14:52
SPEAKER_01: and what that might be saying about, uh, the state of things.
14:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, as you said, I think it's been a very good year for progressives.
15:01
SPEAKER_03: As you can see from this table, this table is only non-incumbent candidates.
15:06
SPEAKER_03: So you can see AOC has kind of the highest win rate,
15:09
SPEAKER_03: but she's also endorsed the fewest,
15:11
SPEAKER_03: so she's been a little bit more selective with her picks this year,
15:15
SPEAKER_03: but overall you can see pretty much every group we're tracking has a 60%
15:20
SPEAKER_03: or 60% success rate.
15:22
SPEAKER_03: So those are pretty good numbers,
15:24
SPEAKER_03: but they're not necessarily all that much higher than The last cycles
15:27
SPEAKER_03: that we've tracked,
15:28
SPEAKER_03: they're about in line with what we've seen the last few cycles going back to 2018.
15:34
SPEAKER_03: But I think the notable thing is the number of endorses,
15:37
SPEAKER_03: the total number of endorses is way higher than past cycles.
15:41
SPEAKER_03: So already just halfway through the primary cycle through June 30th,
15:47
SPEAKER_03: Organization that we track has had more of their candidates win
15:51
SPEAKER_03: than total candidates that they endorsed in 2024.
15:55
SPEAKER_03: And those numbers are pretty close to their 2022 numbers too in the last midterm.
15:59
SPEAKER_03: So I think that's notable too.
16:01
SPEAKER_03: Even if your success rate is staying about the same,
16:03
SPEAKER_03: if the total number of candidates that you're endorsing is getting so high as it is,
16:10
SPEAKER_03: that means a lot more progressives are making it through to the general election and
16:13
SPEAKER_03: beyond.
16:16
SPEAKER_03: I think probably there's two kind of big storylines with progressives this year.
16:21
SPEAKER_03: Number one is, like you mentioned, the challenge against incumbents.
16:26
SPEAKER_03: And I think a key difference this year than in past years and then
16:30
SPEAKER_03: in 2018 Specifically as most of these incumbents,
16:34
SPEAKER_03: like you said, are not all that moderate.
16:37
SPEAKER_03: These are not blue dogs that are losing.
16:40
SPEAKER_03: In fact, almost all of them are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
16:44
SPEAKER_03: That doesn't necessarily mean that they're like super left But these are not noted moderates.
16:49
SPEAKER_03: A lot of them are left of center or even pretty progressive.
16:53
SPEAKER_03: And so these challengers aren't necessarily attacking them broadly from the left,
16:58
SPEAKER_03: but they're really honing in on kind of two specific issues.
17:01
SPEAKER_03: Most important is obviously Israel, support for Israel.
17:04
SPEAKER_03: That's kind of been the biggest storyline that challengers have focused on
17:09
SPEAKER_03: and incumbent support for aiding Israel.
17:12
SPEAKER_03: But then also we see a lot of attacks against age.
17:15
SPEAKER_03: So in pretty much all of these incumbents,
17:17
SPEAKER_03: except for Dan Goldman,
17:18
SPEAKER_03: these are younger challengers challenging Pretty old incumbents,
17:22
SPEAKER_03: you know,
17:23
SPEAKER_03: like 70 plus year old incumbents or members who have been in office for forever,
17:28
SPEAKER_03: like Diana DeGette in Colorado.
17:31
SPEAKER_03: And I think especially following the 2024 election with Biden,
17:36
SPEAKER_03: And his dropping out and all of the conversations surrounding his age,
17:39
SPEAKER_03: I think that has taken on a special salience cycle,
17:45
SPEAKER_03: kind of trickled down to House and congressional races.
17:49
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, those are, That's kind of been the big storylines.
17:52
SPEAKER_03: And I also think it's notable too,
17:53
SPEAKER_03: we've seen progressives kind of expand their footprint a little bit across
17:57
SPEAKER_03: the country.
17:58
SPEAKER_03: I think in 2018,
17:59
SPEAKER_03: in the past couple of cycles,
18:00
SPEAKER_03: a lot of their incumbent challenges
18:03
SPEAKER_03: or just general open primary challenges have been focused We've seen them have
18:12
SPEAKER_03: success in other kinds of districts this year, too.
18:16
SPEAKER_03: Obviously still mainly focused on the cities,
18:18
SPEAKER_03: but we've seen places like this past Tuesday
18:20
SPEAKER_03: in Michigan's 7th Congressional District,
18:22
SPEAKER_03: Will Lawrence, who won his primary in mid-Michigan.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: And that's a district focused on the Lansing area,
18:28
SPEAKER_03: which Lansing is a Decently sized city, but it's no gleaming metropolis.
18:33
SPEAKER_03: And that district also includes a lot of farmland,
18:35
SPEAKER_03: a lot of excerpts, and he still did very well.
18:38
SPEAKER_03: And then we also saw it in California's 22nd district where Randy Villegas won
18:43
SPEAKER_03: or moved on to the general election there.
18:45
SPEAKER_03: They're over a more moderate candidate.
18:46
SPEAKER_03: That district includes a lot of Bakersfield,
18:48
SPEAKER_03: but it also includes lots of farmland and rural areas and smaller cities.
18:52
SPEAKER_03: And so we see progressives kind of starting to play more in these districts.
18:56
SPEAKER_03: And I guess TBD on whether they can win general elections in these districts too,
19:00
SPEAKER_03: but at least they're making it through the primary now and maybe areas
19:02
SPEAKER_03: that they wouldn't have in past cycles.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: Can I add something?
19:07
SPEAKER_02: I was going to say also,
19:10
SPEAKER_02: I like that you brought up the geographic Shift in some of these endorsements
19:14
SPEAKER_02: because you just saw probably in Montana that AOC has just thrown a support
19:19
SPEAKER_02: by someone in Montana.
19:20
SPEAKER_02: That is, you know, I think notable too.
19:23
SPEAKER_02: And just to play off what you were saying,
19:25
SPEAKER_02: obviously we don't know how he, well,
19:27
SPEAKER_02: he'll probably win that primary,
19:29
SPEAKER_02: but like you ended, how well they do in the general election is another question.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: But I think it's a strategy that you would do in a year that you're on a heater.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you would see how you can see the influence that you can make in other places.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: Montana is also very interesting in terms of like the politics of it
19:47
SPEAKER_02: and how progressive shapes there.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: But anyway.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd actually miss that AOC had endorsed Sam Forstag,
19:55
SPEAKER_01: who won the first district Democratic primary.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: That's the Western seat around Missoula that is red leaning, but could be competitive.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: You know,
20:06
SPEAKER_01: it's competitive in the general election,
20:07
SPEAKER_01: especially if,
20:08
SPEAKER_01: you know, if the overall electoral environment is favorable for Democrats.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: It could be interesting.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: So I actually admit that she had endorsed in that one.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: You know,
20:14
SPEAKER_01: obviously I noticed that she endorsed in like,
20:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:16
SPEAKER_01: the Michigan Senate race and some of
20:18
SPEAKER_01: the more prominent congressional You'll see it's particularly in some urban centers,
20:22
SPEAKER_01: but I had actually missed that she'd endorsed there and her candidate did win in
20:27
SPEAKER_01: a very crowded primary in that contest.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: So that's fascinating because it does seem like she's been a bit more careful
20:37
SPEAKER_01: and maybe that reflects, you know, things that she's thinking about.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: But if you look at some of these numbers,
20:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:42
SPEAKER_01: as through June 30th,
20:43
SPEAKER_01: she had endorsed in six of the races in question,
20:47
SPEAKER_01: whereas,
20:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:48
SPEAKER_01: the Working Families Party endorsed or I should say They may have endorsed more
20:51
SPEAKER_01: than one candidate in a race, but endorsed six candidates versus 28.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: Bernie Sanders had endorsed 15.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: So she's been a little bit more careful maybe about who she's endorsed,
21:04
SPEAKER_01: but obviously she's had a pretty good success rate.
21:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
21:08
SPEAKER_03: And even one of her endorsees is maybe one that she wouldn't even call
21:10
SPEAKER_03: an endorsement herself, but we counted as part of our methodology.
21:14
SPEAKER_03: She endorsed Johnny Garcia in Texas for his runoff.
21:18
SPEAKER_03: And that was not, you know, a rollout with a big flashy graphic or anything.
21:21
SPEAKER_03: She didn't But she did tweet out explicitly telling people to vote for him
21:25
SPEAKER_03: if they lived in his district.
21:27
SPEAKER_03: And that's because he was running against a very controversial candidate
21:29
SPEAKER_03: who had made a lot of controversial past remarks.
21:32
SPEAKER_03: And so that was maybe a little bit of a different environment.
21:34
SPEAKER_03: But yeah,
21:35
SPEAKER_03: going back to kind of our conversation We had a conversation about party clashes and
21:39
SPEAKER_03: the party decides to.
21:40
SPEAKER_03: And Sam Forstag in that Montana race that you mentioned,
21:43
SPEAKER_03: he's a really interesting case because he's also endorsed by the Blue Dog Caucus,
21:46
SPEAKER_03: which is the most moderate caucus in the House.
21:47
SPEAKER_03: And so you're having these really interesting kind of alignments in some of these open races.
21:52
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, in Montana, Bernie Sanders also endorsed a candidate in Oklahoma.
21:57
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, we're really seeing this play out everywhere.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was thinking that Bernie Sanders had endorsed in a handful of cases.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's even,
22:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:05
SPEAKER_01: maybe coming up here next Tuesday in Wisconsin, I mean,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: Rebecca Cooke is heavily favored to win her primary and going on into
22:13
SPEAKER_01: the general election against Republican Representative Derek Van Orden in
22:16
SPEAKER_01: the third congressional district.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: But I know Bernie Sanders has endorsed her, for instance.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: Which, you know, is interesting because this is a swing seat.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's slightly right-leaning seat in Western Wisconsin.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think she's sort of positioned herself as like an out-and-out progressive, but...
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Something about the way that she has positioned herself was attractive to Sanders, right?
22:39
SPEAKER_01: So that came to mind is what you were saying there.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not the automatic kind of candidate we think of when we think of
22:47
SPEAKER_01: the endorsements that these individuals are making.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: It's not all purely very left candidates, but it does speak to, you know, there's nuance there.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: So obviously we could spend forever on that,
23:05
SPEAKER_01: but I guess I was curious,
23:07
SPEAKER_01: I think you alluded to it, Cooper,
23:10
SPEAKER_01: but in terms of sort of how these groups are doing and how often they're getting
23:14
SPEAKER_01: into things, sort of we can compare back at least somewhat over time.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh, in terms of sort of who is having success.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I guess actually speaking of there, we,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: we see Ocasio-Cortez not endorsing as much,
23:28
SPEAKER_01: although obviously this was for the full cycle, this, this past data.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know,
23:33
SPEAKER_01: for instance,
23:33
SPEAKER_01: it looks like the working families party has had more success in terms of
23:36
SPEAKER_01: who they're getting through.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I was curious about some of the things you may have observed,
23:41
SPEAKER_01: um, uh, in, in these patterns of success and I guess how often they're endorsing.
23:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, definitely.
23:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean, some of it is a little bit hard to compare because as you see on the chart,
23:52
SPEAKER_03: you know, some years we didn't track certain organizations endorsements.
23:58
SPEAKER_03: I will say in 2024, we didn't track AOC because she didn't endorse any non-comments.
24:03
SPEAKER_03: So in that sense,
24:05
SPEAKER_03: you know,
24:05
SPEAKER_03: it's a little bit different,
24:06
SPEAKER_03: but for the most part, I mean, again,
24:08
SPEAKER_03: we're seeing across the board improvements
24:10
SPEAKER_03: for pretty much every single organization.
24:11
SPEAKER_03: Like you mentioned,
24:12
SPEAKER_03: Working Families Party already has more of their candidates winning than they have
24:16
SPEAKER_03: in any cycle we've tracked.
24:18
SPEAKER_03: Justice Democrats has gotten Way more involved than they have since 2018
24:23
SPEAKER_03: when they kind of like swung for the fences in a bunch of these races.
24:27
SPEAKER_03: And I think, yeah,
24:28
SPEAKER_03: these are the highest numbers we're seeing for pretty much every organization
24:31
SPEAKER_03: since 2018.
24:32
SPEAKER_03: And I think 2018 specifically,
24:34
SPEAKER_03: you see those really high numbers in like Indivisible and Working Families Party.
24:38
SPEAKER_03: Again, I think a lot of those were like,
24:40
SPEAKER_03: this was kind of the budding of the progressive movement.
24:43
SPEAKER_03: And so they were kind of just like endorsing everywhere and trying to see what stuck.
24:48
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I mean,
24:49
SPEAKER_03: most of these groups are having,
24:51
SPEAKER_03: I hate to use the word unprecedented, but very high levels of success.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: 2018, I think it's good you brought up the numbers in 2018, because if you look, there's a lot.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: And that was...
25:05
SPEAKER_02: I should say though,
25:05
SPEAKER_02: in 2018,
25:06
SPEAKER_02: we did do also for Indivisible in particular,
25:10
SPEAKER_02: they have like state, the way that they work, right?
25:12
SPEAKER_02: They have their national kind of organization and they have state level.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: And that year we did, they were so active that we collected it at that level.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: But I think the activity is what these organizations were trying to sustain, right?
25:24
SPEAKER_02: They had this momentum.
25:25
SPEAKER_02: Why wouldn't you, while you have people who are essentially like, I want to get involved, right?
25:30
SPEAKER_02: The backlash to Trump's election in 2016.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: You have to cultivate that.
25:34
SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's what those numbers show.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, some of them did arguably quite poorly.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: If you look at Justin's Democrats' win record, it's really low.
25:43
SPEAKER_02: But why wouldn't you want to build a bench?
25:44
SPEAKER_02: Why wouldn't you want to take this momentum and this energy that is newfound energy
25:49
SPEAKER_02: and try and bottle it up?
25:51
SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
25:52
SPEAKER_02: as you can see,
25:52
SPEAKER_02: it wasn't necessarily sustained in the number of candidates they endorsed.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: But the fact that these organizations are still getting involved
25:57
SPEAKER_02: and still being endorsed suggests that was probably a really good strategic choice
26:00
SPEAKER_02: in 2018.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Oh, sorry.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, I was just saying,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: you know, obviously, you know, Justice Democrats got Ocasio-Cortez out of that.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
26:12
SPEAKER_01: to your point about a bench and sort of trying to build something,
26:16
SPEAKER_01: obviously it did pay some dividends.
26:20
SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
26:20
SPEAKER_03: And I actually interviewed one of their spokespeople last cycle,
26:24
SPEAKER_03: just to kind of ask them about their strategy because last cycle,
26:27
SPEAKER_03: they also didn't endorse any, any non-incumments.
26:29
SPEAKER_03: They really were kind of circling the wagons and trying to protect the gains
26:33
SPEAKER_03: that they had already make.
26:34
SPEAKER_03: And they explicitly said that that was kind of their strategy is like,
26:37
SPEAKER_03: okay, we kind of went full out for a cycle or two.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: And then now we're like, wait, okay,
26:41
SPEAKER_03: let's just make sure we, we, we can stay where we're at and we're not retrenching.
26:45
SPEAKER_03: And then, and then this cycle I've seen them really, uh, Come back out in full force again.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was gonna note,
26:54
SPEAKER_00: discussing the 2018 comparison that as Geoffrey just noted,
26:58
SPEAKER_00: that was the cycle where AOC came in and obviously upset a very high ranking member
27:04
SPEAKER_00: of the house.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: But I think the numbers that we're seeing,
27:07
SPEAKER_00: and as you guys mentioned,
27:08
SPEAKER_00: just the types of races that they're playing in,
27:12
SPEAKER_00: in a lot of different types of areas,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: geographically,
27:15
SPEAKER_00: demographically,
27:17
SPEAKER_00: And in seats that are competitive,
27:19
SPEAKER_00: not just deep blue seats like the one that AOC won,
27:22
SPEAKER_00: it's really emphasized how much these groups have successfully become
27:25
SPEAKER_00: an established part of the landscape.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like thinking back to 2018 after those upsets,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: the House Democratic establishment kind of signaled pretty aggressively,
27:35
SPEAKER_00: we're going to strive to protect all of our incumbents,
27:38
SPEAKER_00: like everyone who's an incumbent, we want to protect them.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: They actually effectively blacklisted vendors that worked
27:44
SPEAKER_00: with any incumbent challengers at the time.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And that didn't work.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: That kind of helped sort of create these progressive networks of vendors
27:54
SPEAKER_00: who would specifically work with progressive candidates and the ones
27:57
SPEAKER_00: that we're seeing that are really active now.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah,
28:00
SPEAKER_00: I think the 2018 comparison is really interesting just to think about
28:05
SPEAKER_00: where progressive groups have come compared to right after that year.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: And obviously you mentioned Trump winning was obviously a big motivation,
28:12
SPEAKER_01: but also you're talking about the aftermath of Bernie Sanders' campaign
28:16
SPEAKER_01: and this sort of new energy on the progressive side of
28:19
SPEAKER_01: the Democratic Party encapsulated or,
28:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:23
SPEAKER_01: sort of really prodded and energized by Sanders' campaign and the Democratic primary
28:28
SPEAKER_01: in general on the presidential side.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: And so all of that kind of coming together,
28:32
SPEAKER_01: you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that this was, this is...
28:35
SPEAKER_01: The timing of all this between those two factors of Trump's victory and Sanders' campaign.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: And speaking of Trump,
28:43
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to kind of shift over because he obviously at this point,
28:49
SPEAKER_01: he said the party decides, Trump decides.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, President Trump has endorsed a lot of incumbents, which helps his overall win record.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: But generally speaking,
28:59
SPEAKER_01: he has done quite well even in open races with only the occasion Occasional loss.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: So I guess what do you,
29:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:07
SPEAKER_01: we know that he has stamped the Republican Party,
29:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:10
SPEAKER_01: very much reshaped it in his,
29:13
SPEAKER_01: you know, to his preferences and Republican candidates.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've talked about this a lot at 538,
29:19
SPEAKER_01: a lot of Republican incumbents retired who didn't want to,
29:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:22
SPEAKER_01: who didn't quite fit the Trumpian mold or they lost primaries or what have you.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: But Trump obviously continues to exert such a large influence.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: I guess, what did you find?
29:33
SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
29:34
SPEAKER_01: he's had a lot of success,
29:35
SPEAKER_01: but sort of what stuck out to you about the nature of that success?
29:41
SPEAKER_02: I'll start and then kick it over to my colleagues.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, the Trump Decides is a great headline for that.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: And we already talked about the two Senate races where he went up against the party and won.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: And the
29:58
SPEAKER_02: You already alluded to this,
29:59
SPEAKER_02: but a big part of it is that he endorses incumbents
30:03
SPEAKER_02: and he endorses uncontested races.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: And I think...
30:08
SPEAKER_02: His record is this high also because he really cares about his win rate.
30:12
SPEAKER_02: There's enough that he says on TruthSocial to suggest that he's watching this closely.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: And as we talk a little bit about in the article itself,
30:19
SPEAKER_02: he'll even endorse against himself if he thinks the winds are blowing the other way.
30:23
SPEAKER_02: It's not often.
30:24
SPEAKER_02: But we have a couple cases that I cannot immediately recall.
30:28
SPEAKER_02: Maybe if my colleagues want to mention them, they can.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: Where he endorsed in a runoff both candidates.
30:34
SPEAKER_02: And that way you win.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the South Carolina governor's
30:39
SPEAKER_01: race on the Republican side,
30:40
SPEAKER_01: because he initially, Pam Evette, she pronounces it EH-vett.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: I continuously was mispronouncing that as ee-VETT.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: Pam Evette, the lieutenant governor, he initially endorsed her.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: She made it to the runoff against the state attorney general, Alan Wilson.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: And then Alan Wilson was leading in all the polls.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: And President Trump came in and endorsed, co-endorsed Wilson.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: And Wilson wanted to win rather easily.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: So I think that that's important to point out,
31:05
SPEAKER_02: like sometimes we are talking about Trump deciding and there's plenty of evidence
31:08
SPEAKER_02: to suggest that like he wins when he gets behind someone.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: I mean, think about J.D.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: Vance's Senate race back,
31:13
SPEAKER_02: you know,
31:13
SPEAKER_02: when that happened,
31:14
SPEAKER_02: how it was kind of down to the wire and he endorsed and potentially explained it.
31:18
SPEAKER_02: But there's also a point where he's kind of following.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: And I think it varies state to state and race to race.
31:24
SPEAKER_02: And the way that we collect this data, it's a little difficult to suss that out.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: The one,
31:30
SPEAKER_02: the Pam Evette,
31:31
SPEAKER_02: you said, okay,
31:32
SPEAKER_02: Pam Evette is an interesting case to me because,
31:34
SPEAKER_02: and I know we'll talk about this in a minute if we don't run out of time,
31:36
SPEAKER_02: but I'm very interested in how often women are winning,
31:39
SPEAKER_02: especially on the Republican side,
31:40
SPEAKER_02: where they are very underrepresented in their party as elected officials.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: And then this is a case where you had him backing a qualified woman and her getting a runoff.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: I think on,
31:52
SPEAKER_02: you know,
31:52
SPEAKER_02: if it were the Democratic Party,
31:53
SPEAKER_02: instead of sort of bailing There would have been a bigger investment because
31:58
SPEAKER_02: that would have been an important race.
32:01
SPEAKER_02: And I could go look it up,
32:02
SPEAKER_02: but there are still 18 states that have never elected a woman as their governor.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to misspeak.
32:08
SPEAKER_02: I'll go check while my colleagues speak,
32:09
SPEAKER_02: but that could be an opportunity to elect their first female governor.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: South Carolina
32:14
SPEAKER_01: had Nikki Haley,
32:15
SPEAKER_01: so they had one, but it's okay because your point stands that like,
32:24
SPEAKER_01: Until, I guess, Lindsey Graham passed.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they actually had a woman.
32:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, the woman.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: So the point is that, like, yeah, the underrepresentation thing stands regardless.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: Right.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: South Carolina, duh.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: Duh, Nikki.
32:38
SPEAKER_02: Nikki Haley.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: And that's actually,
32:41
SPEAKER_02: that suggests,
32:42
SPEAKER_02: and political science research suggests that when you have a woman who has held
32:45
SPEAKER_02: a particular position,
32:46
SPEAKER_02: the environment is just a better environment for women to win.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: So that would have been a place where if you were trying as a party
32:53
SPEAKER_02: to increase your representation of women,
32:54
SPEAKER_02: that's a place where you would have invested.
32:57
SPEAKER_02: And instead of just sort of bailing.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
33:00
SPEAKER_02: I'll pass it to my colleagues who want to add anything
33:02
SPEAKER_02: about these Trump endorsement numbers.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me help you try to help a little bit in terms of I wanted to talk
33:09
SPEAKER_01: at least briefly about the National Republican Senatorial Committee's endorsements
33:13
SPEAKER_01: of Bill Cassidy in Louisiana and John Cornyn in Texas.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: And the fact that in the end,
33:18
SPEAKER_01: both of those individuals lost to candidates who whom President Trump endorsed and
33:23
SPEAKER_01: and sort of,
33:24
SPEAKER_01: you know,
33:25
SPEAKER_01: it's always fascinating to see sort of leadership going against each other.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
33:29
SPEAKER_01: President Trump is viewed very much as the leader of the Republican Party,
33:32
SPEAKER_01: but here he is at least Disagreeing and maybe it's even more notable in
33:37
SPEAKER_01: the Cornyn case because Cornyn didn't vote to impeach him or
33:40
SPEAKER_01: to support impeachment like Cassidy did.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: So maybe it's easier to suss out there for why Trump would oppose Cassidy.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: But it's fascinating to see sort of them in conflict.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: And obviously Trump came out on top on that.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think, you know, I mentioned these races earlier.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: I think the Cornyn example,
33:58
SPEAKER_00: like you said,
33:59
SPEAKER_00: is really interesting because Cornyn is not necessarily someone
34:01
SPEAKER_00: who has been anti-Trump in any really notable, reportable way.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: He was really trying very hard throughout his campaign to earn Trump's endorsement.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: And this was an example of,
34:14
SPEAKER_00: we heard a lot,
34:15
SPEAKER_00: there was a lot of reporting about how Republican leadership was trying really hard
34:19
SPEAKER_00: to convince Trump to endorse Cornyn.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: And, uh, I even saw some reports that he had drafted a statement and was going to do it.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: And then, uh,
34:27
SPEAKER_00: sort of at the last minute backed out and,
34:30
SPEAKER_00: uh, you know, it's
34:31
SPEAKER_01: worth, it's worth mentioning.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Tia, not to just wanted to mention, cause you reminded me of that.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: It, it seemed like right after the primary on March 3rd,
34:39
SPEAKER_01: that President Trump might actually endorse Cornyn because Cornyn led narrowly in
34:44
SPEAKER_01: the initial primary vote.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: And then Ken Paxton comes out and says, well, I'll drop out if they pass the SAVE Act.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: And that may have maybe,
34:59
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
34:59
SPEAKER_01: it was a very smart political play because I think it froze the idea
35:02
SPEAKER_01: of Trump endorsing A candidate who was the opponent of someone saying, oh,
35:07
SPEAKER_01: I'll drop out if they pass the SAVE Act when that individual was
35:10
SPEAKER_01: an incumbent senator who would play a role potentially in that.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: And you saw Cornyn turn around and say, well,
35:15
SPEAKER_01: maybe I'm open to getting rid of the filibuster,
35:17
SPEAKER_01: at least in this case, in reaction to all that.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't enough to get Trump's endorsement.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: And then later on, he endorses Paxton instead of Cornyn.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: So a very striking sort of,
35:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
35:28
SPEAKER_01: the series of events there was really fascinating to follow, as you said.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
35:33
SPEAKER_00: I think this is also kind of an example of sort of a counterpoint to the argument
35:38
SPEAKER_00: that,
35:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
35:39
SPEAKER_00: a lot of people make that Trump is just padding his record by endorsing late.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: In some cases,
35:44
SPEAKER_00: actually,
35:44
SPEAKER_00: I saw I think it was some some party leader from Georgia who was like anonymized
35:51
SPEAKER_00: because that's where we are.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: But I saw that someone in Georgia who was pushing for Trump to endorse in that race,
35:58
SPEAKER_00: which he also came in a little bit late there,
36:01
SPEAKER_00: they had said that he kind of waits and gets the most bang for his buck on
36:06
SPEAKER_00: when he endorses.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: And I think that in this case,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: His endorsement probably was sort of the death knell for Cornyn and did make
36:12
SPEAKER_00: an impact,
36:13
SPEAKER_00: not in spite of it being late,
36:15
SPEAKER_00: but in part because of it being late, it got a lot of attention there.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: So that doesn't apply.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: I think certainly there are cases where he kind of waits until he can sort
36:24
SPEAKER_00: of pad his win record and weighs in on a race that he doesn't know as much about.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: But I think in big races like this, everyone is looking for Trump's endorsement.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, just...
36:34
SPEAKER_00: The coverage,
36:35
SPEAKER_00: even in the absence of his endorsement,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: shows just how important he is because we're seeing candidates who are competing
36:42
SPEAKER_00: against each other to be the most Trumpy and who are putting out ads
36:46
SPEAKER_00: that almost suggest that maybe they were endorsed by Trump with photos
36:50
SPEAKER_00: of them shaking hands with Trump or quotes that Trump is-
36:52
SPEAKER_01: They went to Mar-a-Lago.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: They saw him.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: They shook hands.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: They took a picture.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: It's in the head.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: So I would say even in cases where he hasn't yet endorsed,
37:00
SPEAKER_00: we're just seeing that he is the person that the party is looking towards for who
37:05
SPEAKER_00: to get behind.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: And in the absence of his endorsement, a lot of Republicans are kind of scrambling.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: They feel like we're going to continue sinking money into this very competitive race.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Once Trump weighs in, it's done.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: That person is the winner.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Again, not every race, but I think we saw that in quite a few races.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh, go ahead.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, go ahead.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: You have another thing to note.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: Please note it.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of related to what we were discussing earlier with the Cornyn race.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: I think that that is interesting to compare to how he endorsed in two of
37:39
SPEAKER_00: the races he lost, which were...
37:42
SPEAKER_00: There were a few other races that he lost.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: He's only got a few.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: It's quite easy to just run through them actually.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: But two of the losses that weren't kind of under weird conditions,
37:53
SPEAKER_00: such as a runoff,
37:54
SPEAKER_00: a scandal leading to someone dropping out, those were both in governor races.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: And they were both cases where Trump actually endorsed sort of
38:02
SPEAKER_00: the more establishment candidate in...
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, let me pull up my notes real quick.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Make sure I get these people's titles correct.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, in Iowa, he backed Randy Feenstra, who is obviously a sitting congressman.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And in Georgia, he backed Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: Both of those lost to businessmen who raised quite a bit of money.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: And you could argue that they're more outsider than these establishment candidates
38:31
SPEAKER_00: who are currently in office.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: And were backed by the party leadership of their respective states.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: So in both those cases, Trump kind of went with the more establishment candidate and he lost.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: He was not happy with those outcomes, of course.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: His quote on these races was actually really funny and kind of telling.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: He sort of railed against his advisors, blaming them.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: He said he didn't know enough about these races.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: And he also said if he had known more,
39:00
SPEAKER_00: it turns out the candidates who eventually won were,
39:03
SPEAKER_00: quote, much more Trumpy or much more Trump than the ones that he endorsed.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: So.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm really curious moving forward if we'll see this come up in other races
39:13
SPEAKER_00: where it looks like in the cases that Trump decided to go against
39:17
SPEAKER_00: the establishment he won and in a couple of these races that he's pretty upset
39:21
SPEAKER_00: about losing, he went with sort of the party's pick and he lost.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious to see if that maybe empowers him,
39:30
SPEAKER_00: not that he needs more power to endorse whoever he wants,
39:34
SPEAKER_00: but I'm curious to see how that plays out.
39:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, another instance we saw that he didn't win was actually just this past Tuesday.
39:43
SPEAKER_03: It was a very different kind of example though than the racist Tia just mentioned.
39:48
SPEAKER_03: This was in Michigan's eighth congressional district and his endorsed candidate,
39:52
SPEAKER_03: Amir Hassan,
39:53
SPEAKER_03: lost pretty handily to a candidate who had actually dropped out a month ago.
39:58
SPEAKER_03: And Thomas Smith.
39:59
SPEAKER_03: And so there's kind of been all sorts of theories as to why Hassan lost.
40:03
SPEAKER_03: Some people said maybe some voters were turned off by his name.
40:07
SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's no way to really know entirely, but this isn't a district.
40:11
SPEAKER_03: This wasn't a primary field that was very They didn't have a lot
40:14
SPEAKER_03: of Republican elected officials,
40:17
SPEAKER_03: well-known names or anything that were running in this primary.
40:19
SPEAKER_03: And it's also not really a district that's expected to be all that competitive in
40:23
SPEAKER_03: the general election.
40:24
SPEAKER_03: It's definitely been a toss-up district in the past,
40:26
SPEAKER_03: but the incumbent Democrats Christian McDonald's ribbit is quite strong
40:30
SPEAKER_03: and especially in a blue leaning the year.
40:31
SPEAKER_03: I don't think many people are expecting it to be in play that much.
40:35
SPEAKER_03: But yeah,
40:35
SPEAKER_03: Thomas Smith,
40:36
SPEAKER_03: he had dropped out and endorsed a different candidate and then he won very handily
40:40
SPEAKER_03: by almost 20 points.
40:41
SPEAKER_03: And so I think that's just a good reminder that while Trump is quite successful
40:46
SPEAKER_03: and has a very high success rate, he doesn't always win and things happen.
40:51
SPEAKER_03: My favorite part of the story is Thomas Smith,
40:54
SPEAKER_03: when he dropped out,
40:56
SPEAKER_03: he hand wrote a note to the FEC and mailed it to the FEC and was basically like,
41:00
SPEAKER_03: I'm dropping out,
41:01
SPEAKER_03: I raise basically no money and I can't figure out your website,
41:05
SPEAKER_03: your help desk is useless,
41:06
SPEAKER_03: so I'm just handwriting this note and sending it to you guys figure it out.
41:11
SPEAKER_03: Which I thought that was funny and relatable and maybe I would have done
41:14
SPEAKER_03: the same thing if I was in this position.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: I see you got your graphic up.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: Did you have a photo of Thomas Smith on DDHQ?
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Because I saw that some result sites did not have a photo for Thomas Smith.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: We do have one.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: We don't, I mean,
41:29
SPEAKER_01: you know, it happens that sometimes you don't have one, but yes, we did have one.
41:33
SPEAKER_01: I did see that there was something about the New York Times not having one.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, that’s not the throw shade.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't expected to win.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: So it's certainly a funny situation.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: But hey,
41:46
SPEAKER_01: just to keep things moving,
41:47
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to talk a little bit about the success of women's groups.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: And sort of the ones that you honed in on were EMILY's List on the Democratic side
41:57
SPEAKER_01: and then Winning for Women and Maggie's List on the Republican side.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: EMILY's List has been around for a long time as a force within Democratic Party.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: Party politics.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: Winning for Women and Maggie's List are sort of a little newer
42:10
SPEAKER_01: as there are Republicans who are seeking to try to elect more women candidates
42:16
SPEAKER_01: for their party.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: As Meredith was pointing out, they are more underrepresented.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: So I guess,
42:24
SPEAKER_01: obviously,
42:24
SPEAKER_01: Meredith,
42:24
SPEAKER_01: this is something you,
42:25
SPEAKER_01: I think,
42:25
SPEAKER_01: in particular,
42:26
SPEAKER_01: have closely watched and tracked and study in your job as a political scientist.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: So I guess I was sort of curious about your take on how it's gone.
42:38
SPEAKER_01: I've brought the numbers back up here.
42:41
SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
42:41
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
42:42
SPEAKER_02: So these numbers in this table are slightly different than the table above
42:46
SPEAKER_02: because here we are just looking at open seats.
42:50
SPEAKER_02: Open seats are interesting.
42:52
SPEAKER_02: In the women in politics literature,
42:54
SPEAKER_02: we're more likely to watch open seats because that suggests a concerted effort and
43:00
SPEAKER_02: To nominate someone in a place that it's not always competitive, right?
43:04
SPEAKER_02: But that there is no incumbent.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: And so if you're nominating or supporting women in those races,
43:09
SPEAKER_02: it suggests that there's a concerted effort to do that, to get women in the game.
43:14
SPEAKER_02: And I guess we could start with the fact that EMILY's List through
43:19
SPEAKER_02: the June 30th primaries is doing worse than in previous years.
43:24
SPEAKER_02: So EMILY's List, I've got to say what the acronym stands for.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: Yes, please, please.
43:30
SPEAKER_02: Early money is like yeast.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: It helps raise the dough.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:36
SPEAKER_02: That's where the name comes from.
43:38
SPEAKER_02: And it's because one of the reasons historically that women had
43:41
SPEAKER_02: a hard time winning elections is because they lacked support in the primaries.
43:46
SPEAKER_02: And the point being,
43:47
SPEAKER_02: if you can get women through a primary,
43:49
SPEAKER_02: they can win because research does show that when women run, they win.
43:53
SPEAKER_02: And so their problem is that helping them get the support they need to run,
43:57
SPEAKER_02: and women do,
43:58
SPEAKER_02: research has shown,
43:59
SPEAKER_02: survey research and other focus groups and things,
44:02
SPEAKER_02: note that women need more encouragement.
44:06
SPEAKER_02: I think that's shifting,
44:07
SPEAKER_02: especially the Democratic Party,
44:08
SPEAKER_02: where we have lots of women as role models and evidence that women can win,
44:13
SPEAKER_02: but historically women need more encouragement to run,
44:15
SPEAKER_02: even though they do win when they run.
44:18
SPEAKER_02: So EMILY's List this year has a win record in these open primaries
44:22
SPEAKER_02: of just 73% compared to 81% in 2024, 85% in 2022, and 84% in 2020.
44:27
SPEAKER_02: We want to wait till the end of the primary season to draw stronger conclusions
44:30
SPEAKER_02: about what potentially is going on there, but as is the case today,
44:43
SPEAKER_02: In Michigan that we just saw,
44:45
SPEAKER_02: there were two cases where EMILY's List candidates went up
44:48
SPEAKER_02: against progressive endorsed candidates and lost.
44:51
SPEAKER_02: So it could be some of these intraparty battles are now coming
44:54
SPEAKER_02: to EMILY's List's doorstep that haven't in the past.
44:59
SPEAKER_02: We will,
44:59
SPEAKER_02: by the time we publish this,
45:01
SPEAKER_02: the story about women at the end of the primary season,
45:03
SPEAKER_02: we will go back and look at previous cycles.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: But my memory is that progressive groups and EMILY's List endorsed together a lot of
45:12
SPEAKER_02: the time in 2024,
45:14
SPEAKER_02: 2022, and 2020, and that there are going to be more cases in 2026 where they didn't.
45:20
SPEAKER_02: I don't think there's going to be a ton,
45:22
SPEAKER_02: but there are more that that could suggest that one
45:25
SPEAKER_02: of these factions is having more success than the other,
45:30
SPEAKER_02: although EMILY's List isn't a faction on its own, right?
45:34
SPEAKER_02: Their point is endorse pro-choice women, right?
45:36
SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
45:37
SPEAKER_01: That's what they do.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: With the Michigan case,
45:40
SPEAKER_01: were you getting it with the Senate race and then- The eighth district too.
45:46
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, the seventh district, I mean, sorry, the seventh, right?
45:49
SPEAKER_01: Bridget Brink.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: Bridget Brink.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah,
45:53
SPEAKER_01: fascinating in the sense that it will be interesting to see,
45:57
SPEAKER_01: and I look forward to seeing it,
45:59
SPEAKER_01: but looking at sort of where did they diverge and then seeing sort of- What
46:04
SPEAKER_01: the outcomes were in those places.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the individual context matters.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: Looking at that,
46:09
SPEAKER_01: and we mentioned this earlier,
46:10
SPEAKER_01: this race,
46:10
SPEAKER_01: the William Lawrence, progressive winning,
46:13
SPEAKER_01: at the end of the day,
46:14
SPEAKER_01: it was sort of the view that sort of two more sort
46:17
SPEAKER_01: of moderate center left candidates combined for 56% of the vote while Lawrence won
46:23
SPEAKER_01: with a plurality.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: So perhaps if one of the other two had dropped out, the one who stayed in would have won.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: But of course,
46:32
SPEAKER_01: That's a,
46:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:32
SPEAKER_01: it's a collective action problem because they almost got about the same percentage
46:36
SPEAKER_01: of the vote.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: So convincing one of them to drop out was going to be very difficult to do.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: And it was sort of going back and forth being like,
46:42
SPEAKER_01: no, you drop out, no, you drop out, no, you drop out.
46:45
SPEAKER_01: And neither did.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: And Lawrence ended up winning and he might've still won a head to head race.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: We can't know for sure,
46:51
SPEAKER_01: but obviously on the face of it, you can see why he might've lost a head to head.
46:56
SPEAKER_02: But I will say,
46:59
SPEAKER_02: Having tracked EMILY's List now for several cycles,
47:02
SPEAKER_02: I think it says something that they weren't able to clear the field for a candidate.
47:08
SPEAKER_02: This number is very rare for EMILY's List to lose, period, and to lose by this much.
47:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think it's notable that they stuck behind her, but that's a big loss for them.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and just as an example,
47:24
SPEAKER_01: one of the things that happened in this particular race was that Elissa Slotkin...
47:29
SPEAKER_01: U.S.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: Senator from Michigan, she endorsed Matt Maasdam and not Bridget Brink.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that sticks out to me as interesting because you had a woman senator.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: And an EMILY's List endorseee.
47:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes, somebody who EMILY's List has endorsed many times.
47:45
SPEAKER_01: Matt Maasdam, a retired Navy SEAL.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, Elissa Slotkin has a national security background in the intelligence services.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: Just an interesting break there.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: And that choice may have played into Maasdam’s strength and the fact that neither
47:59
SPEAKER_01: of them could sort of get ahead of the other.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: Because I know Brink actually led the field in fundraising here, right?
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Which to your point, women had struggled, sometimes have struggled with fundraising in the past.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: And she was out here leading the way and not from self-funding as well.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: Because I looked at that.
48:14
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
48:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would say that this is an outlier.
48:17
SPEAKER_02: I think EMILY's List is one of their strengths and one of the reasons that on
48:21
SPEAKER_02: the Republican side,
48:22
SPEAKER_02: and we can talk briefly about them in a minute,
48:26
SPEAKER_02: but one of the reasons they say that they want to create an EMILY's List of
48:29
SPEAKER_02: the right is because they are so effective at coordinating and organizing.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: Success breeds imitation, you know?
48:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
48:37
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
48:37
SPEAKER_02: So in the one year here,
48:39
SPEAKER_02: although it doesn't, yeah,
48:41
SPEAKER_02: in 2020,
48:42
SPEAKER_02: we only tracked Winning for Women,
48:43
SPEAKER_02: but GOP groups did much better and it had a lot to do with, um,
48:49
SPEAKER_02: Elise Stefanik get investing in women and saying she was going to create
48:53
SPEAKER_02: an EMILY's List of Right.
48:55
SPEAKER_02: But I think now would be a good time to just note that while you can see
48:58
SPEAKER_02: that Maggie's List and Winning for Women did do better than they had in the past,
49:03
SPEAKER_02: well,
49:03
SPEAKER_02: with the exception of Winning for Women in 2020,
49:05
SPEAKER_02: but did better in the past in these open races,
49:08
SPEAKER_02: the Republicans are nominating very few women overall.
49:12
SPEAKER_02: And that has a lot to do with the fact that Republican women are just less likely to run.
49:16
SPEAKER_02: So right now at this point,
49:19
SPEAKER_02: This is a summary table that doesn't include governor's races,
49:21
SPEAKER_02: but I'll give the high-level statistic.
49:23
SPEAKER_02: Women are 44% of Democrats' nominees right now and just 18% of Republicans.
49:30
SPEAKER_02: And right here,
49:30
SPEAKER_02: we have it broken down by the House and the Senate and excluding governor's races
49:33
SPEAKER_02: because for past races, we're using Center for America Women
49:36
SPEAKER_03: in Politics.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Center for America,
49:39
SPEAKER_02: Thank you to them, to CAWP.
49:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, at Rutgers, that's right.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: And so we got to thank them for this data.
49:45
SPEAKER_02: But this shows that the Democrats are still nominating a lot of women.
49:52
SPEAKER_02: The big sign here where there's a decline is in the Senate races and the race
49:58
SPEAKER_02: on Tuesday in Michigan with Haley Stevens isn't going to help that number right now.
50:02
SPEAKER_02: Women are just 27 percent of Democrats’ nominees in the Senate,
50:06
SPEAKER_02: a big decline from previous years.
50:08
SPEAKER_02: But those are a lot of, you know, there are a lot of cases.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: Just one third of the Senate is up for reelection every year.
50:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, two years, so a couple races can really move that around.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: And so we'll have to check back in with that at the end of the, at the end of the cycle.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, obviously this,
50:23
SPEAKER_01: this gets it,
50:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:23
SPEAKER_01: there are some of the fundamental differences of the party in the,
50:26
SPEAKER_01: in the gender gap.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: As we know, uh, women are more likely to identify or lean toward Democrats.
50:31
SPEAKER_01: Men are somewhat more likely to identify or lean toward the Republicans.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: And we see this in, you know, every exit poll of every major national election.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
50:40
SPEAKER_01: it's not a shock that you also have,
50:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:43
SPEAKER_01: if you look at like Democratic primary voters, usually they are majority women.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the day,
50:48
SPEAKER_01: that's, you know, helps explain why Democrats have been closer to 50-50.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: They obviously have.
50:53
SPEAKER_01: They haven't been 50% in terms of who they're nominating, but a bit closer.
50:59
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time,
51:00
SPEAKER_01: the fact that you do have groups like Winning for Women
51:02
SPEAKER_01: and Maggie's List pushing this on the Republican side,
51:04
SPEAKER_01: the Republican side is clearly more,
51:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's still a lot of women in the Republican Party.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: And so if you're sort of thinking about Being closer to sort of the representation
51:14
SPEAKER_01: within the party, obviously Republicans are falling relatively short on that front.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: And so you were talking about,
51:22
SPEAKER_01: I think there's also some literature that suggests
51:25
SPEAKER_01: that conservative candidates do well in Republican primaries, shocker.
51:30
SPEAKER_02: And women
51:31
SPEAKER_02: are less conservative.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: And that there is a tendency to look at women candidates as being more liberal,
51:37
SPEAKER_01: sort of just how they're interpreted as candidates essentially.
51:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
51:42
SPEAKER_02: Which is why you see a lot of the more high profile women in
51:45
SPEAKER_02: the Republican Party I'm no longer around,
51:49
SPEAKER_02: but Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert take on especially conservative,
51:54
SPEAKER_02: not only talking points,
51:55
SPEAKER_02: but policy positions to try and overcome that deficit,
51:59
SPEAKER_02: the belief that they're less conservative.
52:03
SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
52:03
SPEAKER_02: to your point,
52:04
SPEAKER_02: that probably has a lot to do with the fact that Republican women have
52:07
SPEAKER_02: a hard time emerging from primaries
52:09
SPEAKER_02: where primary voters are probably
52:12
SPEAKER_03: ideologically
52:12
SPEAKER_02: conservative.
52:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:15
SPEAKER_02: Should we also show where women are winning?
52:17
SPEAKER_02: It's another big gender gap, inter-party gender gap for Democrats and Republicans.
52:22
SPEAKER_02: It's the orange table with the lean, district lean, yeah.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, this guy.
52:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:28
SPEAKER_02: So Democrats are nominating women everywhere.
52:33
SPEAKER_02: I really like this toss-up number.
52:34
SPEAKER_02: In toss-up races, 54% of Democrats' nominees are women.
52:37
SPEAKER_02: So that suggests that despite some high-profile discussions about
52:41
SPEAKER_02: whether Democrats are looking for an everyman to lead their party,
52:45
SPEAKER_02: there are still lots of women being nominated.
52:46
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're looking for an everywoman, actually.
52:49
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
52:50
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
52:52
SPEAKER_02: And then on the Republican side, just 15% of their nominees in toss up races are women.
52:56
SPEAKER_02: So far less investment in women in those kinds of places.
52:58
SPEAKER_02: And then in those places that are where you are almost guaranteed
53:02
SPEAKER_02: to win these solid Democratic for Democrats and solid Republican for Republicans.
53:07
SPEAKER_02: A disparity there as well.
53:08
SPEAKER_02: So 44% of Democrats' nominees in these solid blue places
53:11
SPEAKER_02: that they're almost guaranteed to win are women,
53:14
SPEAKER_02: but in solid red places, just 14% of Republicans' nominees are women.
53:18
SPEAKER_02: So this is also why when you look at who represents the parties in Congress,
53:23
SPEAKER_02: the Republicans are still overwhelmingly men,
53:25
SPEAKER_02: and it's because they're not nominating women in places where they have
53:28
SPEAKER_02: an easy shot.
53:29
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it has to do with Trump,
53:31
SPEAKER_02: those cases where there would almost have been a guaranteed woman winning.
53:35
SPEAKER_02: He endorses against her even if she does have party support from like Winning
53:39
SPEAKER_02: for Women or Maggie's List.
53:40
SPEAKER_02: And then there you have a coordination problem.
53:43
SPEAKER_02: But I don't think Trump coordinates with anyone.
53:45
SPEAKER_02: This may be something Tia was alluding to earlier when she was talking about Trump's strategy.
53:50
SPEAKER_02: I don't think he consults the women's groups.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, just to get to the final and obviously something that has played a huge role
53:59
SPEAKER_01: in particularly Democratic Party primaries,
54:02
SPEAKER_01: which is the role of pro-Israel groups and,
54:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:08
SPEAKER_01: obviously,
54:10
SPEAKER_01: On Tuesday,
54:11
SPEAKER_01: we saw a very high-profile case where the candidate,
54:14
SPEAKER_01: the provisional groups were backing Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary
54:17
SPEAKER_01: for Senate in Michigan.
54:18
SPEAKER_01: Lost.
54:19
SPEAKER_01: Ended up being a very close race, closer than the polls suggested.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: Primary polls, not always.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: There's higher average error in primary polls, so it's...
54:29
SPEAKER_01: You know,
54:29
SPEAKER_01: you got to be open to the possibility,
54:31
SPEAKER_01: but because it was such a close race in the end,
54:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:34
SPEAKER_01: I think the polling miss got to get more attention than a polling miss where
54:39
SPEAKER_01: if it was 20 points in the polls, but it was an eight point lead in the end.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: This time it was a 13 point lead in the polls and a one point win.
54:45
SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, Stevens lost.
54:48
SPEAKER_01: And so I guess I was,
54:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:50
SPEAKER_01: Looking at the success rate of these groups,
54:54
SPEAKER_01: and I guess also their choice to intervene and how they intervene,
54:57
SPEAKER_01: obviously they intervene to a degree sort of not seen at a level not seen before in
55:01
SPEAKER_01: the Michigan Senate race, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily representative.
55:06
SPEAKER_03: No, that's right.
55:07
SPEAKER_03: And I think like vibes wise,
55:10
SPEAKER_03: if you're just like reading the news coverage or on social media,
55:13
SPEAKER_03: it seems like these pro-Israel groups have done very poorly.
55:17
SPEAKER_03: They faced a lot of very high profile losses.
55:19
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's kind of somewhat of a narrative that's emerged.
55:22
SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure that's totally backed up in the data though,
55:25
SPEAKER_03: at least not completely,
55:26
SPEAKER_03: but it's a little hard to know because these, we tracked three pro-Israel groups.
55:30
SPEAKER_03: So AIPAC, DMFI (Democratic Majority for Israel), and then J Street.
55:35
SPEAKER_03: And all three of these groups for different sort of reasons,
55:40
SPEAKER_03: it's somewhat hard to like kind of get an overall like number of like the number or
55:45
SPEAKER_03: the share of their candidates that they endorse that won.
55:48
SPEAKER_03: And they just make it difficult.
55:50
SPEAKER_03: So for AIPAC and DMFI in particular,
55:54
SPEAKER_03: they move their money around a lot through like shell packs
55:57
SPEAKER_03: or they direct their donors to kind of direct their money
56:00
SPEAKER_03: towards these other super packs or kind of, Like dark money groups.
56:04
SPEAKER_03: And I want to stress that this is not unique to them.
56:07
SPEAKER_03: They didn't come up with this idea.
56:08
SPEAKER_03: This is something that a lot of special interest groups do.
56:11
SPEAKER_03: It's actually pretty normal, but that obscures their spending.
56:15
SPEAKER_03: And so it makes it kind of hard to understand what candidates They're supporting
56:19
SPEAKER_03: or opposing all the time.
56:21
SPEAKER_03: And then also sometimes they will spend money in a race opposing a candidate,
56:25
SPEAKER_03: but they won't then explicitly endorse or support a different candidate.
56:28
SPEAKER_03: So that happened in New Jersey's 11th district of
56:32
SPEAKER_03: the special election primary earlier this year,
56:34
SPEAKER_03: where they spent millions of dollars to oppose Tom Malinowski,
56:37
SPEAKER_03: but then they didn't support like a different candidate and
56:40
SPEAKER_03: a more progressive candidate ended up actually winning.
56:43
SPEAKER_03: And so in that sense, it's like, well, do you count that as a win for AIPAC or not?
56:47
SPEAKER_03: I mean, the candidates- They opposed loss.
56:50
SPEAKER_03: Well, right, but in one sense, they were successful.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: To your point, it's hard.
56:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, in one sense, they were successful.
56:55
SPEAKER_03: They were successful, but they were unsuccessful.
56:57
SPEAKER_03: So it's very difficult to kind of get an overall picture,
57:01
SPEAKER_03: but it is true that they have faced a lot of high-profile losses in the races
57:05
SPEAKER_03: that they've spent the most money and that have gotten the most coverage.
57:08
SPEAKER_03: DMFI, if you want to go back down to that chart, They're a little bit different.
57:14
SPEAKER_03: So they are pretty ideologically aligned with the Democratic
57:17
SPEAKER_01: Majority for Israel.
57:18
SPEAKER_01: I think you may have already said it, but Democratic Majority for Israel.
57:21
SPEAKER_01: Obviously you get into all these AIPAC,
57:23
SPEAKER_01: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
57:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
57:25
SPEAKER_01: there's a reason why we all, we use the acronyms because they're along, but anyway.
57:29
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of letters.
57:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
57:32
SPEAKER_03: But DMFI, I mean, they're very ideologically aligned with AIPAC for the most part.
57:35
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of cross endorsement of the same candidates,
57:39
SPEAKER_03: but they are much less known in the kind of the national consciousness.
57:44
SPEAKER_03: They're not playing the same role as like political boogies.
57:47
SPEAKER_03: And I think a big reason for that is that they aren't endorsing in some
57:53
SPEAKER_03: of these more higher profile.
57:54
SPEAKER_03: They are in some, like they endorse Haley Stevens.
57:56
SPEAKER_03: But if you look at this list, I mean, a lot of these names are not household names.
57:59
SPEAKER_03: And a lot of these names are not even names that maybe people
58:02
SPEAKER_03: who are covering politics would know off the top of their head,
58:05
SPEAKER_03: like Marni von Wilpert, Donna Miller, Shannon Bird.
58:09
SPEAKER_03: These are not names that have garnered a lot of high And
58:17
SPEAKER_03: so
58:22
SPEAKER_03: that points to
58:23
SPEAKER_03: a pretty high success rate.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: And then if you,
58:27
SPEAKER_01: if you look at J Street,
58:28
SPEAKER_03: J Street is a little bit different from these other groups,
58:31
SPEAKER_03: ideologically, at least they're a little bit more liberal.
58:33
SPEAKER_03: They're still pro-Israel, but they endorse more moderate candidates.
58:37
SPEAKER_03: They have had a lot of success too,
58:39
SPEAKER_03: but the reason it's a little bit different It's a little bit hard to tell
58:41
SPEAKER_03: for them is because very frequently they endorse multiple candidates in
58:45
SPEAKER_03: the same race.
58:45
SPEAKER_03: So if you take a look at Illinois 7, they endorsed four different candidates in this race.
58:49
SPEAKER_03: And so inherently that means at least three of your candidates are going to lose.
58:53
SPEAKER_03: So that makes kind of an overall takeaway.
58:56
SPEAKER_03: Number are kind of hard for them.
58:57
SPEAKER_03: But if you look at,
58:58
SPEAKER_03: there's about 25 races through Tuesday that they endorsed in and they,
59:04
SPEAKER_03: one of their preferred candidates won in about 20 of those.
59:07
SPEAKER_03: So that's still a pretty high success rate if you factor They're in just
59:10
SPEAKER_03: at least one of their preferred candidates winning.
59:13
SPEAKER_03: But again, they kind of choose their battles too.
59:16
SPEAKER_03: They did not endorse in the Michigan Senate primary.
59:19
SPEAKER_03: They're kind of like casting a broad net
59:22
SPEAKER_03: and New York's 12th congressional district's primary,
59:25
SPEAKER_03: For example,
59:25
SPEAKER_03: there were kind of three main candidates that were kind of all in the mix.
59:30
SPEAKER_03: They just endorsed all of them, said, we're kind of cool with whoever wins here.
59:33
SPEAKER_03: And so in some ways that's kind of a cop out.
59:36
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's like, okay, well,
59:37
SPEAKER_03: does your endorsement mean anything if you're endorsing everybody
59:39
SPEAKER_03: or endorsing nobody?
59:41
SPEAKER_03: But that's pretty rare.
59:41
SPEAKER_03: Usually they kind of pick one or two candidates that they really try to support.
59:48
SPEAKER_03: But I think importantly,
59:49
SPEAKER_03: when you're comparing across these groups,
59:52
SPEAKER_03: the three groups that we tracked at least,
59:55
SPEAKER_03: There were a couple,
59:56
SPEAKER_03: a handful of instances where a J Street endorsed candidate went up head to head
1:00:01
SPEAKER_03: against like an AIPAC or a DMFI endorsed candidate.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_03: A lot of times there was overlap between the three,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_03: but when like solely endorsed by one of those groups and
1:00:11
SPEAKER_03: the J Street candidate won four out of five of the times.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_03: So that means that J Street candidates are,
1:00:16
SPEAKER_03: when they're going up against
1:00:17
SPEAKER_03: the more Hardline pro-Israel group endorsed candidates.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_03: The J Street candidate is usually coming out on top, which is a mark in that group's favor.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: And I think that says something sort of larger about what's going on in
1:00:29
SPEAKER_01: the Democratic Party right now,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_01: because J Street is,
1:00:32
SPEAKER_01: as you note in your article,
1:00:34
SPEAKER_01: a bit more, well, I think it's viewed as more progressive.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_01: And while it is pro-Israel, it favors a two-state solution.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_01: It would like to find a way to stop the conflict.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe everybody would like to find a way to stop the conflict,
1:00:50
SPEAKER_01: but they have different views on how to do that.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
1:00:54
SPEAKER_01: AIPAC and DMFI,
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: I think,
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: are viewed as more sort of like,
1:00:57
SPEAKER_01: you know, we will support Israel on whatever Israel wants to do.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_01: And J Street is maybe not quite in the same boat.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_01: And so the fact that their candidates would have won some of those head to heads
1:01:08
SPEAKER_01: and knowing that right now, I mean,
1:01:10
SPEAKER_01: there's a reason why AIPAC is using shell packs and that sort of thing to not make it
1:01:15
SPEAKER_01: as clear in terms of associations between candidates and AIPAC
1:01:18
SPEAKER_01: because APAC is becoming increasingly a toxic word in a lot of Democratic primaries.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: You know,
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: it's obviously one of the reasons that Stevens was even in the race
1:01:28
SPEAKER_01: in Michigan is because she got so much outside support from APAC.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_01: But AIPAC wasn't running any ads about Israel in those campaigns.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: And AIPAC’s Super PAC,
1:01:40
SPEAKER_01: United Democracy Project,
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: their whole M.O.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_01: in Democratic primaries has been to not run anything having to do
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: with Israel because they know that it's not playing very well right now within
1:01:49
SPEAKER_01: the Democratic Party.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_01: And so it's striking.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_01: I think it's interesting.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: And obviously it would be nice if we had a larger sample size,
1:01:55
SPEAKER_01: but it is interesting that in four of those five cases that J Street,
1:01:59
SPEAKER_01: who certainly does at times disagree with AIPAC,
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: that they've tended to win those head to heads more often.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, definitely.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_03: And I also think it's important just to note quick too,
1:02:09
SPEAKER_03: like we've been talking mostly about democratic primaries here in relation to AIPAC
1:02:14
SPEAKER_03: and these Israel groups, but AIPAC endorses Republicans as well.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_03: They endorsed 60 plus incumbent Republicans.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_03: Most of them won.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_03: That didn't were like cases that we've already talked about,
1:02:23
SPEAKER_03: like Ken Paxton and John Cornyn's race in Texas.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_03: But they did endorse one Republican challenger,
1:02:30
SPEAKER_03: and that was Ed Gallrein in Kentucky against Thomas Massie.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_03: And that's like the most expensive primary ever in history.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_03: And so that was largely due to AIPAC's money that they pumped into the race.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_03: And so we see them playing mostly in Democratic primaries because I think that's
1:02:46
SPEAKER_03: where the main schism on Israel-Palestine is right now.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_03: Republicans are a little bit more united in favor of Israel, not entirely.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_03: But AIPAC is also,
1:02:55
SPEAKER_03: there's a bipartisan organization and they're playing in Republican primaries too,
1:02:59
SPEAKER_03: or at least nominally in support of incumbents.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: So I think that's notable too, is they're not...
1:03:07
SPEAKER_03: They're not reserving their fire just for one party.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously there was a lot to this.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to thank you guys for taking the time to talk to me about
1:03:16
SPEAKER_01: because there was just a lot of different parts.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_01: But I think that just speaks to the breadth and depth of what you were trying to go into here.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_01: And because there is a lot of interesting stuff about what's going on within the parties.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_01: And obviously you could, I mean,
1:03:29
SPEAKER_01: we could,
1:03:30
SPEAKER_01: in a world where you guys had more time and resources and we had more time for
1:03:33
SPEAKER_01: the podcast.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can go into all kinds of things with groups like Club for Growth or,
1:03:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's just like so many ways of looking at this.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_01: And we know that sort of interest group politics has been,
1:03:47
SPEAKER_01: the party decides people I think would argue that interest groups are a part of
1:03:50
SPEAKER_01: the party,
1:03:51
SPEAKER_01: but sometimes these days the interest groups and the party are at odds
1:03:54
SPEAKER_01: with each other.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_01: So maybe that's a thing to finish on.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you have any sort of final takeaways about where that stands
1:04:04
SPEAKER_01: at this point with the data through June 30th and what we know at this point.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_02: I think we'll make sure in our final analyses for all these groups,
1:04:16
SPEAKER_02: we'll have different stories for the record
1:04:17
SPEAKER_02: so everyone can digest them individually.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_02: We'll think about, yeah, what does this mean for the party?
1:04:22
SPEAKER_02: Are they unified or are they not?
1:04:23
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that is a great place to end because the purpose of this project was
1:04:27
SPEAKER_02: to better understand how unified the parties are.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_02: And I think that we'll make sure to make that part of our conclusion when we're
1:04:34
SPEAKER_02: through the primary season, which we're almost there.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we just got to get through August.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and early September.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay, Massachusetts.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, don't forget about Delaware.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_01: Rhode Island, you know, they exist.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_01: They have September primaries.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_03: Don't sleep on Delaware.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_01: Don't sleep on Delaware.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_01: The last one to go, I believe.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, hey, thank you so much for coming on.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_01: Again, folks can find the great write-up about all this on fiftyplusone.news.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_01: Their blog,
1:05:06
SPEAKER_01: they published all this and they were continuing this project that we had done
1:05:10
SPEAKER_01: so much with at FiveThirtyEight.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_01: And so it's a fabulous resource on trying to understand what's going on within
1:05:16
SPEAKER_01: the political parties and the role that these groups play in terms
1:05:19
SPEAKER_01: of driving what kind of candidates are winning nominations and what does that say
1:05:23
SPEAKER_01: about the parties.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_01: So this is really great.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_01: Again, we've got Cooper Burton,
1:05:27
SPEAKER_01: freelance political researcher and writer,
1:05:29
SPEAKER_01: who I know I think is now doing some work specifically with FiftyPlusOne.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_01: Meredith Conroy,
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: political science professor at Cal State San Bernardino,
1:05:37
SPEAKER_01: and Tia Yang, freelance news editor and data journalist.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_01: And my former editor, it was really great working with you over the years, Tia.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: And at Cooper, obviously very great working with you as well.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_01: I know I edited a number of your pieces too.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
1:05:51
SPEAKER_01: I miss working with you guys,
1:05:52
SPEAKER_01: but I'm so glad you're still doing just really fabulous work like this.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_01: So I really appreciate you coming on.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, have us back.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for having us, Geoff.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_01: No, I'd love to have you guys back at the end of the primary season so we can talk
1:06:07
SPEAKER_01: about sort of the final,
1:06:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: final tallies and sort of what does that say about what's going on within
1:06:15
SPEAKER_01: the political parties?
1:06:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_01: I loved having you guys on.
1:06:21
SPEAKER_01: So thanks for taking all this time to talk with me about it.
1:06:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm Geoffrey Skelley, the Chief Elections Analyst at Decision Desk HQ.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_01: I also want to thank Eric Cunningham and Stephen Stover for their help on this episode.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_01: And you can check back in with us next week.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_01: We'll be talking about The goings on and today's political either.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_01: We haven't nailed down what that episode is going to be just yet,
1:06:43
SPEAKER_01: but it's going to be,
1:06:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:06:44
SPEAKER_01: it's either about primaries or something else in this in this genre
1:06:48
SPEAKER_01: of what is happening with the parties.
1:06:50
SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much, Cooper, Meredith and Tia for joining me.