(Almost) everything you wanted to know about politics (but were afraid to ask)

It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Mara Liason, Senior National Political Correspondent. This is a special episode of the podcast because we're recording it with a virtual audience. Now we're going to answer questions from our virtual audience here. We've also good questions that were sent in ahead of time. And let me just say that out of those pre-submitted questions, the topic that probably came up the most was election integrity, including vote by mail. So let's start there. It is convenient that Miles Parks is a co-host of this podcast and also knows all the things. Dot wrote in asking, "Will I be able to vote by mail and have it counted?" While Kathleen wondered, how worried should we be about mail-in voting? Miles, we got a ruling from the Supreme Court this week that helps answer those questions, right? Yes. I mean, the answer is voting by mail will look the same in 2026 as it did in 2024. That Trump's executive order attempting to add all these new rules and regulations to how people can vote by mail has been blocked for this election cycle at least. So let's just start there. It's an important level set that I genuinely as I cover this stuff every single day. And the last couple of weeks have been very confusing for me. They have been very confusing for the entire American public. I talk to voting officials every day. This is basically all the questions that they're getting are about voting by mail and then broadly just federal interference in the process, right? So there's one part of it is that the executive order is not going into effect. So it's going to look the same as previous election cycles. That isn't the same as people's confidence in it. There are real signals that it's possible that fewer people will choose to vote by mail this election cycle. There was a recent poll that just came out this week from UC San Diego that asked a bunch of different questions about trust in elections. And one of them was about specifically voting methods. And it asked about all these different how people vote and which gives you the most confidence in the accuracy and integrity of elections. And returning your ballot by mail was under 5%. The amount of people who said voting by mail is that the thing I'm most confident in versus early voting versus voting on election day or using a drop box. And so to Democrats, what that tells you is that even if Trump didn't prevail in the Supreme Court, he did achieve one of his main objectives, which is to reduce people's confidence, not just in mail and voting, but in the integrity of elections. The more people don't trust the results, as Donald Trump has said many times throughout his entire career, any election he doesn't win is by definition rigged and fake and fraudulent. That's something that he also wanted to accomplish, which I think he has. Definitely. We just don't know if that's going to advantage him, right? Because I think one of the other things is that the people who are most helped by these sort of by accessible voting methods are low propensity voters, which are Trump has done very well with those voters, right? And so I guess it's very unclear what the political media has. Many of Republicans vote by mail, even though he firmly believes that voting by mail helps Democrats. He believes that, but there really isn't evidence to that. Is there a mile? There isn't. There isn't. And frankly, the people who are most motivated to vote are going to vote no matter what method is available to them, and those people are Democrats. This election cycle, it seems like. You know who votes by mail, President Trump. Yeah, right. Also older people, rural voters, people who might very likely be Republican. I would say though, if people do want to vote by mail, it's not a bad practice vote early. You know, there are there always post office delays every election cycle vote early, potentially use a drop box. There are variables when it comes to mail voting that aren't related to misinformation, but there are things people can do to make it more likely that your vote counts. Yeah, make sure to check that envelope. All right, and we also got a bunch of questions about polling accuracy, like this one from Mari. She says, I'm so skeptical of polling anymore. How do we know what's really going on? Mari, I feel like this is firmly in your lane. There are good polls and bad polls. She's right to be confused because there are so many polls, but I would say that the most important thing to remember is that polls are not predictions. It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future, but polls don't even try to do that. What polls are doing is a snapshot in time. They're telling you if the election was held today based on the pollster's best guess about who the electorate is. Here's what would happen. And there's a margin of error. Every poll has a little methodology section that you can read. Sometimes the margin of error is very big. You have to watch for whether a poll is a nonpartisan poll or a partisan poll. If it's put out by the Republican or Democratic party, you should take it with a grain of salt. Also, there are polls that are just higher quality. They sometimes have a bigger sample. So polls can help us in a lot of ways. Polls tell us things over time. If you watch Donald Trump's approval ratings in polls going back to when he was inaugurated, you're going to learn a lot about what's happened to people's feelings about him. So the biggest poll that matters, of course, is the poll on election day. You hear politicians say that over and over again. But that's true. But the other thing that is important to remember and we do a swing voter focus group here at NPR. Focus groups are small samples of voters in person. They tell us why they're feeling certain things. They're not statistically significant. They generally illustrate what polling tells us. Big polls tell us what voters think focus groups tell us why they think it. All right. I'm just going to let it stand. Well, actually, I'm not just going to let it stand there. There have been actual literal fake polls. This is one of the things that I cannot let go of. This election cycle is that there have been polls that have been put out by imaginary organizations that like one of them was like, oh, we're just doing a social experiment to see if we can move the way people think by putting out a totally fake poll. It is wild. But polls do change the way people think. And that's why we have been flooded with polls in the last couple of cycles. In other words, the more polls, let's say, usually was on the Republican side, lots and lots of Republican-sponsored polls that showed the Republican in the lead. And that was supposed to affect people's opinion. They want to vote with the winner. I do think that this gets back to, I feel like polling averages are a better way to at least, like, as opposed to looking at one single poll and deciding this is exactly what is happening. Sometimes the averages are. They can be skewed. They can be skewed for sure. But I think it's at least a little bit more of a fail-safe in terms of getting a little more context. I think the answer is that we have lots of sources of information about what is happening. We interview people. We have focus groups. There are polls. There are a lot of different inputs. And you have to sort of weigh all of those inputs and also understand that as Mara says, we can't predict the future. Things change. And also things that look one way may not be as real as they look. Like, yard signs, for instance, can be a great indication of a popularity of a candidate. Or they can be completely meaningless. Exactly. They could just be a sign of who bought those houses on that one block, right? Yeah, or crowd size. Can be meaningful or it can be completely meaningless. Like, yeah, there's a lot of cross-currents. Okay. Here's another great question that we got in the Zoom chat. It comes from Terry. How will Gerrymandering actually affect the midterms? Speaking of not being forecasters? Well, we know that the best guess is that the Republicans, Gerrymanders, all over the country have probably netted them eight to ten more GOP friendly seats. That doesn't mean they're going to win all of them. But it gave them an advantage. And I think right now that's about all we can say. Because in a real wave election, those kinds of things will be overcome. I think the other thing I would add to that is I agree. Plus, the thing that we don't talk about is that we are just losing competitive districts. And I think we're going to talk about this a little bit more based on some of the other questions I'm seeing is that when I think about how the midterms are going to be impacted by Gerrymandering, so much focus is on who controls the house, which is very important. Don't get me wrong. But the fact that many districts have been drawn to be less competitive impacts governing over the following two years. And we should also remind voters that if the Republican Gerrymanders netted them eight to ten more friendly seats, Democrats only need a net plus four to take the house. All right. We have another question. This one from Ellen. She asks, there are many perceived negative trends in politics, partisanship eroding norms and politicized government branches. Any positive trends? Hi, turn out. I was going to be mine. I turn out as a positive trend. People are turning out. People are enthusiastic for a variety of reasons, sometimes because they're angry, but that's a positive trend. I feel like you came back from Texas with some positive spin recently, right? I feel like you were like, you were happy. No, no, I wouldn't say I wouldn't go so far as to say I was happy. And it may just be spin. But what I will say is that I was at a sort of convention counter programming event held by the Democratic Party of Texas. And the head of that party said that they were able to recruit candidates in every single district, every single race up and down the ballot. That is a sign at least that people have hope, that it is a hopeful act to run for office, from the highest level to the lowest level of government. It is an act of hope to put your name out there, to go out there, to knock on doors to put in that labor, especially a lot of those candidates and it's gonna lose it. still Texas. But I guess what I'm saying is people are still willing to run for office. That's a remarkably good sign given all of the negativity out there and all the retirements from Congress for instance. And I was so interested. I was on a Zoom session this week related to this UC San Diego poll about election confidence where I was a bunch of political scientists talking it. And basically what they said is that no one in America or internationally has understood the correlation between healthy democracies and turnout and engagement. That basically it's very confusing that we're at a time right now in America where when you ask people do you have confidence that this election in the midterms will be free and fair less than 50% of people say yes. That is terrifying. Okay. That is not a majority literally right. And yet there are people who forecast this to be one of the highest midterm election turnouts in history. And so the fact that those two things don't correlate the fact I was confused by it. But the fact that even people who study this and have studied it everywhere don't fully understand why people why people are still willing to engage with a system. Or so they say because we also saw something way back in 2020 and if I'm remembering correctly in the runoff elections in Georgia where Donald Trump had said that the race was stolen from him that there are there are people who believe that he discouraged Republicans from coming out to vote in those runoffs and that's why Democrats won. So this is something to really pay attention to because yeah the more cynical voters are the less faith they have in the system you think they give up and stay home. But then there are a whole bunch of other people who are so angry that they're motivated to come out. How has turned out in Russia these days? Anyway, go ahead. That's another podcast not the impure politics podcast. We have international podcasts for that. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment. And we're back. Karen asks, we get so many requests to donate to campaigns in places where we don't live or vote. Does donating in these make a difference? We also have a question from an anonymous listener in the Zoom who wants to know why Republicans have such a huge cash advantage. Okay. I will take this and then Mara may have to jump in and correct me and that is all good. So does your small dollar donation make a difference? Yes. Potentially. You know, small dollar donations are important to campaigns. Campaigns are able to get better rates on ads. Campaigns are able to fund more things that are sort of directly important to what they think will help the candidate win, whereas super PACs are technically not supposed to coordinate. And some of that spending isn't as direct and they don't get quite as good a rate. Now, the Supreme Court gave them a slightly better one. Nope. Just the party committees. Supreme Court gave the RNC, the Republican National Committee, the NRCC, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the NRC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Then on the Democratic side, there's the DNC Democratic National Committee, the D-Triple C, which is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the DSCC, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. This is what the Zoom audience wants. This is the real impure politics back then. This is Tammy Correcting Mara and Tam apologize. But let me go back. So I think that what I would say is, if you want to send $15 or $20, wherever you want to send it, you do you. But I would also say that the greatest way to make an impact on your life and your community is to focus on elections like City Council, the school board. I'm not saying you have to send money to them, but pay attention to them. If you want to get out and help a candidate, know your local officials. Don't just focus on the top races that are getting the attention and are viral in some other random state. Focus on improving your life and your community. That's what I would say. Because literally also it's not just like you'll have a more direct impact from that effort, but those races are often decided by like nine votes or like six votes. So your energy actually can make a bigger difference like literally in who wins. And it's important to hold your local officials accountable in all of those things. Why do Republicans have such a cash advantage? I asked a Democratic consultant this yesterday. He said, of course Republicans have a massive cash advantage. Democrats are the party out of power. The Republican party is in power. The president is in office. This person argued that the president is also a very transactional president. And so he's able to ask lots of people and interests for major donations and those. But he has a bigger advantage than any other incumbent president. And this president has uniquely focused on billionaires, his friends, his family. He has been, you know, Democrats would say he's strong armed American institutions and corporations to raise more money. And people feel if they give tremendous amounts of money to Donald Trump, they'll get something in return. I think, tell me if I'm wrong. Are Democrats still ahead in small donations? So Democratic candidates, as of the June campaign finance reports that came out in July, Democrats were leading in almost every race in terms of fundraising. Small donations, yeah, the candidates. Right. Now Democratic groups, the Democratic National Committee, nobody seems to want to send money to the Democrats. They're in debt because they are in debt. They are in the whole two million dollars as of the last report. Republican groups, like the RNC, the NRCC, the NRSC, they have more money than Democratic groups, but Democratic candidates have more money than Republican candidates. And just to further explain this, super PACs like MAGA Inc. No going back pack a bunch of these other super PACs that have popped up like mushrooms in the last few weeks, they can accept unlimited donations. Whereas candidates are maxed out, individual donations can only go up to like 2500 per cycle or something. Anyway, I don't have the exact number, but it's like low 1000s versus right me a million dollar check. Got it. Okay. Nancy asks, and this one I think I'm interested to hear Maura's perspective on this. If Democrats win the house, what does their immediate agenda look like? That is an excellent question. And if you talk about Democrats winning the House and Republicans hanging onto the Senate, so that means Democrats, even though they have a very long wish list of legislative things they want to pass, those things are not going to become law. But there, there is a messaging advantage to just talking about them and passing them. And they want voters to know that therefore, healthcare, reversing some of Trump's healthcare cuts, maybe even reversing some of his tax cuts, reversing some of the Medicaid cuts, a whole bunch of things. The other thing we can expect from them is a lot of investigations and hearings. It doesn't mean that they're going to get a single member of the Trump administration to actually come to Congress and sit as a witness when they're, when they're called there, but they're going to do a lot of oversight and hearings. I think you can expect that. So you can expect Democrats to kind of try to lay the groundwork for the 2028 presidential election by using, if they have the House, by using their majority in the House and the fact that they will be committee chairman and they will have a speaker to show voters what they would do if they were entrusted with all of government. Yeah, and they'll be able to subpoena officials. But those subpoenas won't be, I don't believe those subpoenas will be answered, but yes, they can try. They can certainly try. Right now, President Trump has a very friendly Congress. They have not provided a lot of oversight. There has been very little pushback that we did just see a war power's resolution get a few more Republican votes and Republicans in swing districts voting against the President. But generally speaking, President Trump has had a very compliant Congress. If Democrats win, I don't know that they will go the route of trying to impeach him again like they did last time, but they will certainly bring oversight. And he will use them as a foil. Oh, yeah. And, and, and that, and he'll veto everything though. It won't even get to his desk if they, if Republicans still have the Senate. Yeah, well, and he, he, in an interview with Laura Ingram on Fox News, he was kind of like, yeah, you know, if they win the House and the Senate, I'll just be a stopper. I'll stop everything they do. Or maybe he said, I'll figure out how to work with them. He's never figured out how to work with Democrats before. I don't know that he will now, but this is what I'm a little confused about with the idea, because my assumption has been that this would just be immediate inquiries and subpoenas and everything from a Democratic House. But I feel like the last year or two, it feel like there's been a sort of backlash to the initial resistance era Democrats from the first. That's why you saw how came Jeffries meet with Jared Kushner. Well, that's what I, is it, is it politically smart for Democrats to take that tact then? Is that what voters want? Voters who the majority of, I'm not saying the majority of Democratic voters, but Donald Trump won the 2024 election after everything that happened. I don't know. Is that do voters want to keep relitigating all of them? No, I think what you're going to see is Democrats try to do two things at the same time. They're going to have the hearings. They're going to have oversight, but they're also going to try to find ways to work with Republicans. And don't forget, there are some real bipartisan issues, data centers, AI, the war in Iran is very unpopular. I think that you're going to see a two-track approach if Democrats get the house. And of course, they will still have to somehow fund the government basic functions of governing. We have another question here from Kevin who asks, "What levers do any politician have for lowering prices on gas, groceries, insurance, home health, etc?" Well, they could somehow convince Donald Trump to declare victory in Iran and end the war there because some of those high prices are caused by the straight-of-formers being blocked. Other than that, there's not a whole lot that Congress can do to magically bring down prices. Donald Trump promised to bring them down on the first day that he was going to be in office and it didn't happen. Which was sort of a mistake. Well, you have to make promises when you're running for office, but it was a promise he literally could not keep. You cannot, as president, just bring down prices when inflationary pressure is a thing. And then it certainly went beyond that when he launched the war in Iran that has caused oil prices to spike. Diesel is way high. And that is historically high. It is historically high. And that affects grocery prices and everything else. Also, trade wars, those raised prices too. So potentially, rolling back some of those policies could help reduce some of the inflationary pressure. I do think that on health insurance, for instance, there were Obamacare subsidies that were allowed to expire. There was a bipartisan effort and negotiations that ultimately went nowhere, but there was a bipartisan effort to extend some of those subsidies. That would, it would not make the cost of health care go down, but it would make the cost for individuals. Yeah, how they're being impacted by it. Yes, exactly. I mean, the other thing, the easiest lever, I think, when the government comes to just economic help for people with taxes, right? And so I think it's been really interesting. I've been monitoring at the state level. A bunch of states are kind of toying with the idea of eliminating completely or cutting property taxes. Florida has a ballot referendum on the ballot that would, it wouldn't literally eliminate property taxes, but it would eliminate them for a huge portion of population. Is it means tested? It would be, no, it would basically increase the, what's the home set? That's a very regressive policy. Exactly. You should go tell Governor DeSantis that and the Florida legislature, but this, it would increase the home set exemption from $25,000 where it is right now up to $250,000 by 2028. And after that, it would be indexed by inflation. I should also note that for this to pass, it would need 60% of Florida voters to approve it. So it is facing an uphill climb. Miles, I'm going to ask you another question, because we got a bunch of questions like this. This one comes from Sean who asks, what are officials doing to protect voting? And several of you also asked what they can do to make sure voting is free, fair, and safe. So Miles, why don't you tackle these? Yeah. So election officials are doing a lot right now. And I think the thing that people, this whole genre of questions, that people should make people feel good, is that federal law is on their side. That there is federal law that protects people from being intimidated at polling place. There's clear federal law that prevents federal armed agents from showing up at polling places. There are a number of federal laws around voting that protect people. And so basically, the number one thing that I hear from election officials right now, as they prepare for this, is that they're getting their lawyers in order. And they're talking to the law enforcement in their area about the rules. And I reported a story that found that judges themselves who are not, you know, who we think of as people being involved in the election process necessarily, but they're preparing to get potential requests from law enforcement for ballots. And they want to be able to know, you know, they want to understand the election process to know which search warrants, for instance, if you get search warrants from the federal government, as we've seen in other times earlier this year, how they should respond to that. And so everyone is kind of, I would say, doing a little mini law school right now, preparing for an understanding the laws and how to respond in sort of unprecedented situations that these election officials haven't necessarily seen. In terms of what the average person can do, I mean, number one has to be vote, right? And I think that when you talk about the impact of some of this rhetoric, it's not only the actions, it's the diminishing turnout that comes from the rhetoric around the actions. And so some part of our responsibility as journalists, definitely, and as people, I think, has to be being sort of clear-eyed about what the real risks are, what the likely risks are, and not choosing to give up, you know, your voice in the democracy just because you're concerned about something that might happen. Okay, well, let's leave it there for now. Thanks to everyone who sent in or asked a question, they were great. Even if we couldn't get to your question, it's still really helpful for us to see what you're interested in and to know, you know, what you want to know about the midterms as we plan our show for the next several weeks. Yeah, and I just want to say thank you to everyone who tuned in as well. We always talk about how when we take this podcast every day, it feels we love talking to each other, but it does feel like talking to each other in a room sometimes and just being reminded whether it's here, seeing all of you folks on Zoom when we do live events, that there are lots of people all over the country who tune in and who enjoy nerding out with us, it's a blast. So thank you so much and thanks for sending questions to. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks, I cover voting. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.