7: Democrats Hit New High in Election Odds

I couldn't stop thinking of Joni Ernst herself introducing herself to Iowa and saying, I grew up castrating hogs on a farm in Iowa. When I get to Washington, D.C., I'm going to make them squeal. Oh, it's a wolf, not a hog. And she told us everyone dies. Don't you remember that? Oh my God, wait. Which is true. None of us are making it out alive. Let's start the podcast. Welcome to Still Counting. I'm Galen Drew. I'm Claire Malone. From Manhattan, New York, I'm Nate Silver. I've just got to put a little sauce on it. On today's show, we'll see what Nate's flipper forecast has to say about the midterms and discuss the latest New York Times poll. Then we'll look at the story of the 2026 midterms so far by analyzing the issues that Republicans and Democrats are spending their ad budgets on. But first, you guys, we're going to try something, something a little new. It's a number of the week. And, okay, I don't know. This might say it, this might not. I like where this is going. 16. No. No. I'm in charge. Today's number is 70%. Can either of you guess what that refers to? It's roughly Democrats' chance of winning the Senate and flipper. Actually, a little higher than that. No, I checked this morning. It's 77%. Okay. It's a little higher than that. It bounces around, Galen. It bounces around. So far this cycle, Mr. Silver, is this supposed to be, can I just ask, is this supposed to be fun? Because I have an answer, but it's not fun. It's not fun. Fun is relative with our- I would say the number is not fun. Okay. Then this is my guess. I mean, this is supposed to be fun, but the number is not fun. There's an ABC News poll out that showed that 70% of Americans think Trump will accept the results of the election if he loses. Will or won't? Will or won't. Yeah. Yeah. So Galen got it right. Although a little bit, a little bit gargled. It is it is indeed a Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos poll that says that seven in 10 Americans lack the confidence that President Trump will accept the result, the results of the midterms if Republicans lose. I'm among I'm among the majority here. I don't know that Trump's going to actually have anything to do about it. But I put myself in the seven out of 10 worried, worried Americans. Yeah. Yeah. We actually talked quite a bit about this on the GD Politics podcast this week. Good show this week. Thank you. I appreciate it. We talked to Nathaniel Rakich, our former colleague who now works at VoteBeat, which covers election administration. And the takeaway from the conversation, which people should go listen to it, it's comprehensive, was that there is a lot of. Right. They fielded a survey amongst, you know, election experts. And there was a lot of concern that Trump will try shit. And there was a lot of confidence that he will not succeed in either deterring a significant amount of people from voting or overturning the will of the people once recorded. Now, that's not like that doesn't mean we have a really healthy democracy. That's still I wish we didn't have those concerns. But. There's a lot of confidence that things will turn out. The system will hold. If there is worry, it's in a situation where the results are very close and we're battling this out for two weeks in court or it comes down to Alaska, which is going to take a lot of time for all of the mail ballots to come in. And then after they all do, we'll have to use rank choice voting in order to determine results. Yeah. Yeah. It is worth noting that of the three. Trump presidential elections. None of them wound up being super close. And every in every case you had the winning candidate have a couple of states to spare. And, you know, that's not necessarily guaranteed to be true every time. A lot of Democrats, 77 percent or whatever we have is winning exactly 51 seats or 52. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, if you guys want to know more about it, I would encourage people to check out Galen. Nathaniel talking on GD Politics. It was a good it was a good primer for Election Day. OK, before we get to the forecast update, a little housekeeping in case you missed it. We're hosting our first ever live show of Still Counting, which is very exciting. Oh, yeah. And we are excited. Yeah. Did we even announce that before? Can you do it in case you missed it? If we haven't said we did announce it, you missed it. I missed it. You were there and you were you were. You're telling your agents to do things. But we are doing our first Still Counting show at Crooked Con on November 7th in Washington, D.C. That'll be right after the election. And we're going to get into what Flipper got right. What surprised us about the midterms? We're going to get give you our hottest takes. You're going to get to see what hat Nate will wear in person. I was going to wear the Knicks hat today, by the way, but they lost the season opener last night with these not gaudy. I kind of like them. But like. Like gold numbered uniforms and like, yeah, so no, we will wear the Knicks hat the next time. Were they special world champion uniforms or just. They were special. Yeah. Kind of braggy. I mean, you go and go like you've been touched by fucking King Midas or something, right? You're kind of you're kind of asking for some bad karma, I think. Well, hopefully we'll have Still Counting hats by then and you'll be decked out in millennial pink. That's right. And just to get back to our live show on November 7th in Washington, D.C. Um, Crooked has also just announced some other names that will be joining at the week. The weekend events, Governor. Including a number of people who will not be president. Go ahead. You can list them now. Thank you. Governor J.B. Pritzker, Senator Chris Murphy, Simone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels, Jessica Tarloff and many more. You can check out the full lineup and get tickets at CrookedCon.com, which is hard to say, but we'll see you there. OK. We're going to go take a look at Flipper and what the latest forecast shows, which is that Democrats are holding their lead and they're perhaps even widening it a little bit. They now have a, as Galen previewed, 77 percent chance of winning the Senate and an almost 95 percent chance of taking the House. Last week, for reference, it was 73 percent for the Senate and 93 percent for the House. Can I ask actually really quickly, Nate, a question? Does that movement have more to do with us getting closer to Election Day? And meaning that therefore there is less uncertainty because there's less time for things to change or more to do with new polling results? And I know it's a modest change, but at this point we're all talking about modest. So, yeah, there is a slight effect where every day you get closer to November 3rd, there's less chance for an October surprise. Keep in mind the old Comey letter came out, I think, on the like very late, like the 28th or something of October. Although that affects pretty modest. I mean, Flipper's view is that in midterms. The national climate locks in fairly early, that it's predictable that you're going to have a big backlash against an unpopular incumbent. And midterms usually go well for the opposition party to begin with. Right. So there's a little bit of that effect that might help Democrats by a couple of points, assuming they maintain their lead. But it's more that like, you know, the generic ballot today we had New York Times. Sienna had them plus 11. CNN had a plus 10. There was a Verisite poll or something. Had them plus 12. Right. And there seemed to be just like a moment a week or two ago where you were getting into the merely the high single digits. But now we're seeing these double digit numbers again. And if Democrats really were to win the popular vote for the U.S. House by by 10 points or so, which would be the largest since 2008, along with Obama's landslide, then yeah, then then then there's not much chance that the center holds for Republicans. Right. They'd really have to get lucky and win a bunch of races by. Half a point or something. But like that's the margin at which things kind of collapse for the GOP. Since it's sort of top of mind, can we just really briefly give this this New York Times Sienna University poll came out today and obviously a super high quality poll that we pay attention to, even though we also tell people to look at polls in the aggregate. But the numbers were really bleak for Trump and Republicans. Trump's approval ratings hit a record low for the time Sienna poll 36 percent. Among likely voters approved and 34 percent among registered voters. What else stood out to you guys from this poll, which was obviously. I want to talk about the issues a little bit because we have a discussion on boring horse race. We want more horse race. I really believe that Americans care about their governance. No, this is. I mean, they do sort of theoretically. This is ultimately still about polling. But the last time we discussed this poll when it came out in September. There was this weird situation where every issue you asked about Democrats led by like seven to 10 points. And that didn't make a ton of sense to me. Right. On immigration and the cost of living. Democrats and Republicans were viewed basically equally on AI. Republicans had a two percentage point advantage. And that was an outlier at the time. So it could just be an outlier period. But it also represents the beginning of. The start of the final stretch before people have been inundated with a gajillion ads. And so it was pretty reflective of just how people felt about Democrats versus Republicans overall. Now we see. much wider discrepancies between what Americans think about the two parties on, say, immigration versus the cost of living. To give you an example, they favor Democrats by four percentage points on immigration, and they favor Democrats by 15 percentage points on the cost of living. That is more in line with what I would have expected. It's possible that, you know, a month and a half of campaigning and advertising has brought things more in line with where you would expect. I'm in Iowa right now. I watched two hours of local news last night and lots of campaign ads, which we're going to talk about later on. But you do see a lot of attacks on, you know, this person, you know, my daughter died because of an immigrant who's in the country illegally. And if Josh Turek is elected, he'll give amnesty to people who are in the country illegally. You see a lot of cost of living ads from Democrats. And so it could be a feature of the campaign. It could be an outlier. But the issues on which Democrats are overreacting to the fact that they're not in the country illegally, they're not in the country now, are much more in line with my expectations. And I'll add one more thing. Whereas Republicans led by two percentage points on artificial intelligence in September, Democrats lead by 11 percentage points now. Call it the data center build out ad flux. But like, this is more what I would expect. Yeah, the R plus two on artificial intelligence had been a little surprising in the first place. But trying to remember the exact timing of the New York Times poll, I believe it before or just as we start to see this crest in public interest about AI led by Jacob Coxton and other people working at the lab saying we're all going to die soon. But that number is I'm keeping in mind, Trump has a very unpopular stance on AI. He's aggressively pro data center, which only 20% of the country is he's pro acceleration and even fewer people are. He's calling all these things hoaxes. You know, I think that's kind of hard to explain for a populist version of Trump, I guess he's afraid of the stock market crashing. But like, so if you listen to the show, or followed flipper, you know, we saw the shift up in around Labor Day when, when you went from the Senate being a toss up more or less to now Democrats being three and four favorites. That we have attributed generally speaking to a spike in gas prices and to greater enthusiasm as pollsters shifted over to shifted over to likely voter polls. But AI was kind of happening. I mean, AI is happening all the time, right? The spike in the AI discourse attention by the public also happened at that period. The Economist had some interesting data out that showed that if you live near a data center, you're more likely to turn against Trump, believe it or not. So they had some ecological inference, at least. And like, I do wonder if that's like a little bit of a hidden factor here. It just also makes the world seem kind of chaotic. And when people feel things are chaotic, then they don't really like the incumbent party very much. They like to vote the bastards out. Galen, I want to I want to bring up a point you you did at our editorial meeting yesterday. And you pointed out that at least in isolated races, the Democrats lead has narrowed a little bit, specifically in Texas, where Tallarico's lost about a point. What do you think that's due to? Yeah, it could be noise and due to be hurting and due to pollsters wanting to get closer to a 5050 race ahead of election day, as sometimes they do. It could also be the result of advertising. We'll talk more about this in a little bit. But like, Republicans have dropped a money bomb on Texas. They're facing an uphill battle because their money doesn't go as far as if it were being spent by the actual campaigns because it's outside groups. They're facing an uphill battle because can Paxton is very well defined. And James Tallarico is very well defined. And they're facing an uphill battle because Ken has been running basically against Ken Paxton since the middle of the summer. And so we have talked on this podcast about money being overrated in terms of determining campaign outcomes. And I think that it oftentimes has been. But part of the reason is because we've set up a mutually assured destruction dynamic, where there's so much money being spent on ads, in favor of you and against you, that it all becomes a wash and genuinely becomes sort of confusing, overwhelming, and just downright unappealing to voters in battleground states. But imagine if those ads, the counterpoint ads disappear, and all you're hearing is X or Y candidate is a pedophile or like supports profiles or takes money from profiles or whatever. When you don't have that mutually assured destruction, we don't have the nuclear missiles sort of facing at each other. Soviet Union versus JFK's America. Then money does matter. And so when there is an overwhelming amount of messaging, you can see movement in the polls. That's not I'm not necessarily saying that's what's happening. That's one of I think three different things that could be happening. But also, the challenge for Republicans has been that Texas as a Republican state in a normal environment, if everyone turns out to vote, the Republicans are going to win. Ken Paxton is just extremely unpopular. So can you scare enough Republicans into the idea of Republicans losing Texas to get a few more people to turn out? And I think the answer is yes. But will it be enough? We're going to find out on November 3rd. Yeah, look, I think in a well polled state, if you have said we don't have any polls and any new influence the average, you know, one point shift is kind of below the threshold where I would start to tell narratives about it. I think two points is more substantial. Also, if you have a bunch of states where Democrats are basically plus one, plus two, plus three, plus four in our averages, you can and should see occasional Republican leads if the average is D plus three. I mean, there might also be some hurting. I think voters are pollsters are more self-conscious about what they publish in the final three weeks, which, by the way, is the window that Silver Bulletin uses to evaluate and grade pollsters. You know, I mean, we kind of saw in 2024. It's crunch time for pollsters. Like I think a pollster might be if whatever, for whatever reason, the batch came out Calarico plus nine. I think that poll might get published in August and probably probably wouldn't today. It's a very pollster dependent thing. I want to put a little plug here really quick, as you said, sort of where all of those races stand in the Senate. The average Senate polling error is five points. So a bunch of these states are within the realm of an average polling error. Yeah, polling error is unpredictable. Yeah. So we don't know if it's underestimating Democrats or Republicans. But I'll just say we are at a place where the Senate will be decided by a bunch of states that are all within the realm of an average polling error. Still Counting is brought to you by Sundays. We are what we eat and so are our dogs. A long, healthy, active life starts with clean, real food nutrition every day. You know, I think you could say that about humans, too. I think it's true. Very much so. Sundays for dogs is different. It's human grade, real food that you'd feel good eating yourself, Galen. 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Code valid for new users only. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. Crown Coins Casino. I think this is a good moment to bring up potential Cassandra Republican pollster, Patrick Ruffini, who's sort of been on a little bit of a jag giving this take over the past couple of weeks. Most recently, he told it to Politico that he thinks the polls are, quote, inflating the size of the battleground and what he means by that is that Reds States like Kansas, Ohio, and Iowa are not actually as close as the polls are making them out to be. And he's saying that we live in too polarized an age. Red states aren't going to swing this way. What do you guys make of this argument? We're just checking in on this two weeks out. Look, I like Patrick. I don't like that he used the phrase intentionally. I think that's a little conspiratorial. And I think, again, I like Patrick. I think that makes me inclined to give less weight to the things he says in the paragraphs that proceed or immediately follow that. OK, look, obviously, that's a thesis, right? The thesis for like the GOP holding the Senate is, yeah, Democrats are going to have a pretty good year. They're going to win the House, but it's just too much of a bridge to make up in Texas, Iowa, et cetera. Maybe they pick up two or three seats, but they need four. Like that's describing the 23 percent chance. Republicans have and 23 percent chances happen with regularity. But like there are a couple of things I keep in mind. You know, the more I think about this, I think the anchor of 2018 is really important because that was a midterm where Trump was on the ballot and they lost a popular vote for the House by eight and a half points. They won. They picked up four really red Senate seats like in North Dakota, I believe, in Indiana. They also lost Nevada and Arizona. They also failed to pick up West Virginia, Montana, Wyoming, where your Democrats incumbents running. Right. That was kind of like proof of concept that when you have strong, they were incumbents, but one of them, sure, Brown is actually on the ballot again this year. Right. So that was kind of proof that in a Trump midterm, Democrats can win in red states when they have particularly strong candidates, including Brown. However, by most objective indicators, a voter should be more mad at Trump. Then they were eight years ago. Gas prices are much higher. Everything is more expensive. His approval rating is a circular because he probably is a poll. Right. But his approval rating, especially his loyal voters, has declined quite a lot. You have the Iran war. You have the Epstein thing. You have the fact that he's 80 fucking years old. And so it's kind of like, well, wouldn't you think you were just referencing to the last Trump midterm? The Democrats would do like better than that. And when you get up to. Like, like, let's say Democrats win the generic ballot or the national popular by 10 points. Right. That is a 12 point shift from 2000 and 24. How much these states vote for for Trump by all about 11 or 12 points. I think Ohio was 11 and Iowa was 11 or 12 and Texas was 12 or 13 and Alaska was 11 or something like that. Right. So even if you ignore the candidates, then all those states in a D plus 10 environment shift 12 points. They're all they're all toss ups based on the fundamentals. And then you look at. Where do Democrats have stronger or weaker candidates? I do want to say that that's probably not how this election plays out, because the shifts I don't expect to be uniform because we're seeing different demographic groups move differently. For example, younger voters and Hispanic voters shifting much more to the left than older voters or white voters. White non-college. Voters were seeing some shift to some significant shift to the left, which is maybe where the question lies. But I we should expect polling error, but I don't think we should expect the polling error to be equal across all of the different states. I think the national popular vote margin is not particularly error prone. I said it's five points on average for the Senate. It's three points on average for the National House vote. And when looking at that New York Times, Siena University poll that came out today. That shows an 11 point lead for Democrats. That is with the understanding that white non-college voters, 58 percent prefer the Republican, 37 percent prefer the Democrat. I don't think that in that nationwide white non-college educated voters are being wildly skewed in that sample. Right. We are seeing something even in an environment that's D plus 11. They're very much favoring the Republican candidate. Right. And that feels like a poll that could be pretty close to accurate. But but in just Iowa or just Nebraska or just Kansas, where the population is much more white non-college and we are still seeing big shifts. Are there state specific errors or region specific errors? I think that's a possibility. I'm not going to bet the farm on that. But I understand. I understand why Patrick Graffini is saying slow your roll, because in the data that he published, we have seen in both 2018 and 2020 Republicans being more underestimated in red states and Democrats being more underestimated in blue states. Nationally, that all averages out to be not a huge error, but regionally that could pose challenges. But it's also I mean, with those states that you just named could be regional polling error. But I'll also just point out those are also places that might be uniquely. Affected by diesel prices. And that is also, you know, just to point to it, which allows me a little bit of a transition to our our our favorite talking point, diesel with Nate. Why don't why doesn't diesel jeans sponsor this fucking brilliant? Brilliant. I mean, I mean, but it has been a big week. It has been a big week for diesel. Nate still does not know how to drive. And Trump is still trying to. Do these these Hail Marys. I mean, and really this week was quite notable. I mean, he he announced an eight billion dollar assistance program to help farmers compensate for rising fuel costs. But the biggest one was a massive foreign policy shift where he lifted sanctions on Russian diesel fuel exports. I mean, you know, it set off a sedate little rebellion in Washington among Republicans. Like. Just I feel like I know what you're going to say here, but does this matter? In these last two weeks of the election? Sure. Look, oil prices have gone. Futures have gone up a bunch. Exactly which type of products translate into which type of gas station increases for Americans is hard to say. Right. But if there's a another economic shift, the vibes have been a little bit negative recently. So that could be an October surprise that if anything could work against Republicans. I mean, look, I thought one of the most interesting things that I think was Nate Cohn, who is one of the people. Who conducts the poll or helps with the poll at the Times said. Now, if you survey people and ask, are you going to vote and build a likely voter model that way, Democrats show a huge enthusiasm advantage, right? Other pollsters say we're going to predict your likelihood of voting based on your past behavior. Have you voted in the past? And maybe we'll wait what your self-described likelihood of voting is, but we don't totally trust you. Right. And those show a more modest. Democratic edge, right. That's where you kind of get to those tail, you know, D plus six or seven versus D plus 12 or 13. Right. It's probably not quite that big, but like, yeah, you know, so voter preferences are one thing. But like, you can just imagine a world, especially in states where it feels like Trump has really broken his promises on on inflation. Just Republicans not showing up very much. Right. The polls in the midterms in 2022. Or 2018 were pretty accurate. Actually, in 2014, they underestimated Republican gains. The GPU is already doing pretty well. But pollsters underestimated the turnout advantage that those marginal Obama voters who all turned out younger black men, younger Hispanic men, etc. In 2012 and 2008 were not reliable midterm voters. And you could almost see kind of pollsters making the same mistake in reverse, right? That they are. They are. Trying and probably very imperfectly to capture these marginal Trump voters that they always are missing in the presidential gears. But then, you know, is a is a, you know, is a 26 year old Hispanic American who voted for Trump for the first time going to vote for fucking Roger, Roger Marshall? They live in Kansas. I tend to think maybe not. I know. I think the early voting data, which Claire teed you up perfectly to be the gas man, and you delved back into polling. Which I respect it is it is are the polls accurate season. But to answer your question, Claire, about Trump's statements in Kansas and his foreign policy moves. And I'm curious if you have thoughts on this as well as somebody who is also interested in foreign policy. Ukraine, you've spent time in the Middle East. But like that's data to me, right? That means Trump is looking at the exact his pollsters are basically telling him the exact same stuff that we are seeing in the public polls. Like if you're going to Kansas and basically paying farmers, I mean, this is like a crass way of saying it, but like paying farmers to turn out for you, like you're not in a good position as a Republican. It's not crass. I mean, they have literally offered money to people to vote for the Republicans, right? Like, shouldn't we mention that thing that's happening? Yes, that's true. That's true. But yeah, the gas situation is not good. And like I when I was talking to the hog farmers this morning in Des Moines, I was like, you know, it is the case that a lot of people. On the East Coast, don't clock how much diesel costs or don't like, let's remember, in 2022, the average national gas price was $5. That's higher than it was now. That was under Biden. And people were very pissed off. We're seeing something kind of different now, which is where gas nationally is like 430. So it's not reaching Biden levels. But diesel and fertilizer prices are off the charts. And I'll just say that because we got Consumer Price Index data this week or the end of last week, I will say we are back in the territory that we were in for the first three years of Biden's presidency, which is prices are rising faster than wages and an increase in clip, meaning that Americans are literally becoming poorer with the passing of every day. Their purchasing power decreases basically every single day. It's such a good point, I think, about what? I always think it's important to call out where the East Coast centered political media might sort of miss things experientially. And a lot of us live in cities where you might take public transportation. If you have a car, maybe you don't fill it up twice a week or whatever it might be. So I do think it's a great point. By the way, just as a fun aside, I used to live in Doha, Qatar, and it was water was literally more expensive than gasoline there because Qatar sits, shares a. Natural gas fields with Iran and so liquefied and it, you know, it had big liquefied natural natural gas production plants anyway. But gas was so cheap there. And it's so, you know, watching all the stuff in, you know, with with the Houthis and Saudi Arabia just had to cancel their big economic conference. I mean, there's obviously in the desert. Doha. No, it's Davos in the desert. Oh, yeah. Doha is in a separate country. Let's not. Yes. I woke up so early this morning. If I'm using. If I'm using. It's OK. If I'm using the Michigan metaphor, this is Saudi Arabia. This is Qatar. OK. Well, I got after 530 and went under Al Jazeera called me up and offered me a job in Doha. So I do. I do. I do. I am familiar. Yes. We're going to move on to one of our favorite little topics, which is fake pollsters. And should we trust the polls? On Tuesday, a firm called Wedgwood Polls makes me think of Wedgwood, China. Put out a statement admitting to fabricating polling as a, quote, experimental project and, quote, a wake up call that, quote, sparks a necessary conversation about data integrity, media literacy and accountability across the political research landscape. What say we to this? I said, go fuck yourselves. I hope you're put in jail. Oh, OK. I think I don't. I mean, I think civil liability. OK, here's what I'll say. Wedgwood Polls was putting out a bunch of polls in primaries. OK. In the general election, different polls, polling aggregators had gotten in touch with them, even talked with them directly. They'd sent data over to suggest that they were doing real polls. And the names of the people associated with Wedgwood Polls were people who had worked at polling outfits in the past. They were crowdfunding polls. So collecting money from people on election Twitter to field a poll, I believe, in Nebraska. For example, and their polls seemed even influential in, for example, the Michigan primary, where they were showing Mallory McMorrow in single digits shortly before she dropped out. And she's been on Twitter saying they really fucked me and that, you know, donor funds dried up after this poll came out and things like things like that. Yeah, these guys, by the way, they really are like known on election Twitter. It's kind of surprising. I don't think they're. I think people on. I think they're. I've seen those names. Are sometimes are sometimes too kind to. Yeah. These enterprising college kids or whatever they are that start doing these kind of polls that are even at best kind of mediocre. Look, I'm a big free speech guy. If they're just kind of making knowingly false information, I think it's still protected speech in a constitutional sense. Right. If, however, they are crowdfunding for polls that they claim they did one poll. Nebraska. Right. But if they're crowdfunding for polls that that they're not actually doing, I don't know where that goes or trying to drum up business for things that they aren't doing. Yeah. They were also doing private business. They were taking money from individuals to conduct polls on their behalf. Let's also think about a relatively new incentive, which is, you know, you can try to do some of this to manipulate prediction markets. They, in some cases, have had kind of narrative setting polls. Right. They were one of the first groups to show El-Sayed doing quite well in the general election against Mike Rogers. They were, I believe, the first organization to have a poll out in Maine after a poll. Put all instances of poll in quotation marks, listeners. Yeah. I think they were among the first to poll Maine after Graham Platner graciously dropped out of the race. They had a poll of Mississippi last week that had. Not been polled much. Right. So if you're doing this kind of like narrative setting polls, then, you know, maybe you are buying positions on prediction markets and then and then, you know, the line goes up and then you cash them out or whatever else. I mean, and that or maybe you even have a political agenda or you have a political agenda. Right. It's a serious story for the polling industry, actually. I think it's a serious story for the polling industry before we go too far down the rabbit hole of what fake polling agenda setting polling. I think we should, for folks who are not on election Twitter all the time, say that part of the reason that this came out or the reason that this came out is the data journalism site 50 plus one did an investigation of their polling. They saw that they had done a poll with a particular outfit organization that does online polling, and they commissioned a poll themselves of the exact same state. And the data that they got, especially the micro data, was very different. They were very different from the poll Wedgwood said that they had done. And so in comparing the two polls, they were like, this looks like it was all fabricated and clawed or something. It doesn't actually look like this is a poll that came from the pollster that they had paid to conduct it. And so then they started putting together a whole bunch of information, looking at the trends in the results that they showed. They took all of this information, sent it over to Wedgwood and asked for a comment. Instead of sending back a comment, they put out this statement online saying, oh, this was all an experiment. We were just trying to prove that the polling industry aggregators, news organizations are all too credulous of new pollsters or polling information, which that that may be the case. You know, I think people will not maybe be fooled as easily the next time. But in some ways, the system worked because one of these polling aggregators did an investigation into. What they were doing determined that their data was bullshit and they had to come clean about it. Now they're spinning it seemingly as some grand experiment. But had they never gotten caught? I think there is a question of what they were actually trying to accomplish. But it's like the agenda setting stuff is bad. It was already baked in. It was already reported on. Mally McMorrow can try her hand at a lawsuit. I don't know. That's a kind of Trumpy thing to do. But now they've been caught. My journalist brain goes to it's it is great that one of the polling. Aggregators caught it out. It's shady. It casts lots of implications on like real legitimate pollsters. I'm thinking of Ann Selzer, who's been through put through, you know, civil litigation with Trump. But I do think it now puts this heavier burden on the polling aggregators themselves. Right. And I think, you know, you already see people talking about how they vet pollsters. But I'm wondering what the editorial conversations will be among people who are. I saw all this stuff out. And I let me tell you, we have what we have an aggregator on this call. Well, you kind of you kind of do. Well, did you include Wedgwood polls? We accept the New York Times is feed. With occasional but not very common manual overrides for different reasons. But so, yeah, it's a case of we are trusting. The Times is vetting process. If it's a borderline case, we'll look at what 50 plus one is doing. Some of the other aggregators, maybe, you know, real clear politics has somewhat weird standards. So we are not doing a whole lot of vetting of individual polls because the New York Times kind of uses basically the rules. They inherited the rules that 538 used to use. And like 50 plus one is also made of 538 alums. Right. So it's kind of like, OK, since I kind of helped design these processes and there are some differences of opinion, it would be a little bit worse. I mean, the reason why I got my back up a little bit about kind of problems, the polling industry is like it's not an isolated problem. It's also not a new problem. I mean, in our pollster ratings database, we have 11 banned pollsters because we or someone else caught them or believe the bulk of the evidence is that they faked data at some point. You know, I uncovered a fraud firm called Strategic Vision way back in like 2009 that had been around for a very long time. Research 2000 was a very prolific pollster. So partly to get my back up is like there is due to. diligence being performed to be fair it's not being done by silver bulletin it's being done by primarily the times and 50 plus one i think um and we are inheriting that right but also like i had i could barely tell you anything about wedgewood polls before 3 p.m yesterday or whatever right and so partly it's because they're new and i think one question is kind of like okay maybe the presumption should be that you've got to you've got to prove yourself somehow or i don't know what the rules would be exactly but like i i don't think they're all that influential or very influential at all and i just like i ask yeah because they did they went to significant lengths to obscure their mission because some vetting was done like the folks at vote hub got on a call with them and they told them a completely fabricated story about how they were doing real polls the folks at 50 plus one did the same thing like these people are just lying and obscuring things and because these folks pay close attention to the data they were found out can i ask you now though does removing you were saying they're not all that influential does removing wedgewood from your averages or your forecast change much at all no it made almost no i mean it made almost an impact partly because like i mean wedgewood had slightly good numbers for democrats but also a bunch of real good polls entered for democrats this morning so the overall impact overall impact was basically zero um but no look again i'm looking at this primarily as as a model or forecaster and not more than an aggregator really um you know a well-designed model should not let an unknown pollster have all that much influence right um you know we anchor pretty heavily to the pollsters that have track records and have higher pollster ratings like the new york times for example um and so it doesn't matter that much in fact to some extent i like you know one thing i don't like about election twitter frankly is that there's too much talk about individual polls and you know averages and aggregates are are better than individual polls but like i do think like i mean look when we have vetted pollsters in the past and sometimes we still do we still do there have been a handful of cases this year where we have had mainly eli my colleague has gotten on the phone you know i think we have pretty good judgment if someone passes muster in a 30-minute phone call and then shares convincingly fake data with you this is not like proof beyond a shadow of a doubt right it's kind of a preponderance of evidence standard and it's not a good use of anybody's time um to have a five-day vetting process anytime a new poll is published and good for 50 plus one but i it's like a lot of things where people are like well i mean it is it is i do think 50 plus one we i don't want to spend too much more time on this it's i feel like we have a lot of things to talk about today and this is a whole rich issue issue but 50 plus one does come out looking good here because this this sort of segment of journalism is in some ways it very much its own thing a thing that's constantly developing and changing because of the ways ways that polling is developing and changing and i think that's a good thing and i think it just sort of speaks to some of the classic problems of journalism which is resources if you want to fact check everything and you know kick the tires on everything you need a lot of people and that's not always you know the case and two it's just like some people are out to be um actually deceitful and i think that that's you know the fact that they did their 50 plus one did their due diligence here um is a big deal i would think that the new york times will probably be having an editorial conversation about you know the fact that they did their due diligence here um is a big deal i would think that the new york times will probably be having an editorial conversation about you know the fact that they did their 50 plus one did their due diligence here um is a big deal i would think that the new york times will probably be having an editorial conversation about their process i'm sure they're you know they do the calls i think i've heard nate talk about that nate cone talk about that publicly so i mean separately from literally fake polls there's also this kind of group of polls of kind of that are kind of done by amateurs right where they'll contract with polling poll fish or one of these companies we can survey very very cheaply we at silver bulletin have traditionally not accepted those polls when some other poll experts have not accepted those polls so i think that's a big deal i would think that the new york times will probably be having an editorial conversation about polling aggregators have so we've actually been a bit more conservative in some ways what can happen sometimes is like people from those firms will lobby you and they'll say well we used to do kind of bc to the pants but now we're a professional polling operation and we don't want to we don't want to gatekeep too much but i mean that's kind of where things might shift right it might be like you need to like kind of demonstrate that there is some level of professional services going on here right um but i mean look there's a lot of people who are like you know i don't know i don't know there has probably been you know if we've caught 11 fake pollsters in the past right they're probably really 30 or 40 out there right we're only catching the more obvious cheats and like it's kind of part of the um cost of or the benefit and the cost of like kind of just aggregating and averaging things together i mean it is a case too where like a pollster will get more scrutiny if they have numbers that look like big outliers right and ledger was kind of interesting in that they didn't look like huge numbers and they didn't look like huge numbers and they didn't look like huge outliers it kind of seemed plausible they had you know they were really favorable for el sayed michigan which is interesting you're talking about this as a forecaster and you don't put together a model for the primaries i mean you might in the presidential but that's the area where i think this is more concerning wedgewood did have favorable polls to democrats for these general elections but it was like within a point or two they were pretty clearly i think at this point knowing that it was fake data trying to influence the narrative around primaries and showing numbers that were overwhelmingly good for more progressive candidates and it is also in that kind of environment where voters democratic and republican voters alike are paying a lot of attention to who seems electable yeah and they're more liable to switch between voters and media organizations including ms now we're picking up these individual polls from wedgewood and you know doing segments about them having conversations around them so i'm not necessarily like yes the aggregators is one thing but the role of these individual polls in a primary environment where the the voters themselves are the kind of people who pay close attention to this information worries me as well and i think it's a slightly separate issue from just whether it gets put in the aggregators well look we rarely on this show which is a show partly about polling i mean except for i guess we're making a touch for the new york times poll maybe that's being hypocritical right we generally do not talk a lot about individual polls and i generally think people people shouldn't right people should anchor to averages and priors and look at trends when they're consistent right um but like i don't know i mean um yeah they could be trying to influence the narrative in favor of progressives they could be trying to i mean look it's also plausible that they're trying to undermine trust in polls which might be more of a republican trump motivation or encourage democrats to nominate candidates who they think might lose you know i mean there are a lot of there a wide variety of of motivations these people strike me as being kind of incompetent small-time crooks um but that might that might be wrong i mean it's you know also now another reason why this situation might be getting worse is that um it's easier to generate superficially plausible fake outputs with ai now i mean claude and gpt refuse that or i don't even know if they do but like i don't know if they do but like i don't know if they do but like an open weights model might right might also be easier to detect it certainly ai is making various types of fraud detection easier like in academic papers but like even in academia you routinely have scandals from very reputable people that faked data and it's just it's kind of a a kind of a reason to i think do what the better aggregators do which is to wait more heavily on the more reliable polls to de-emphasize individual polls obviously we have a lot of thoughts on this and um we might talk about it again but we also want to hear from you guys our listeners your most burning midterms questions we're going to talk about them next week on the podcast so please send us whatever's on your mind to still counting at crooked.com and we will try to answer a bunch of people's questions still counting is brought to you by zip recruiter we're all trying to save time these are the things that we're trying to save time with these days i don't know the time is money money is time amen and the number of things i waste money on to save time truly you could just be saving time with zip recruiter we all have our own time saving hacks for everyday life but if you're a business owner how can you save time hiring that's zip recruiter zip recruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested qualified candidates first so you save time by meeting the right people faster and now you can try it for free at zip recruiter.com 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We're going to talk about ads. A lot of you are probably getting bombarded by political ads right now. They're often the most tangible way that you interact with a campaign. And so we wanted to spend some time playing ads and talking about the story that they're telling about the broader political environment. You might have even had. A ad at the beginning of watching this segment on YouTube and shameless plug. Subscribe to us at YouTube dot com at still counting podcast. You got to see political ads when you're trying to watch political ads. It's like trippy, man. It really it really is. OK, guys, off the top of the dome. Do you know how much money has been sent on midterm ads this year? I do, because I because I read the story. But Nate, can you guess? Nate, who never reads anything. Two billion dollars or something. I don't know. Way off. It's going to be. I mean, it's been 10 billion. It's going to be over 11 billion dollars spent on ads this cycle. Like when I was a baby covering elections, the rule of thumb was in a presidential. You spend a billion dollars like that's pennies by today's standards, which is bad. Yeah, I'm going to editorialize for a moment. That's bad. OK, but we're not going to linger too much on that thing. We we have. We have a little bit of a fun gimmick, I think, here, which is we're going to watch a bunch of ads. But just as a little bit of background, you know, campaigns and packs, they have their own. They run their own polls. They don't release them, but they're putting them out constantly, particularly in these last few weeks. And we wanted to sort of take a look at them. They don't usually share the data, but you can get a good sense of what they're seeing through their data by looking at the kind of ads they're running. So we pulled data from the Wesleyan Media Project. But to identify some of the issues where the two sides are focusing most of their ad buys. And we we specifically focused on the Senate for the period between September 28th and October 11th, although not all of the ads released in that window. And what we're going to do is we're going to play one ad for the top three issues on both sides. And then we're going to end with a couple of wildcard ads. You guys ready? Excited. OK, great. So we're going to start. We're going to start with the number one issue that Republican Senate ads are focused on, and that is taxes. Here's an ad from the Republican aligned Senate Leadership Fund targeting main Democratic candidate Troy Jackson. How do we know Troy Jackson's going to raise taxes? Because he already has. Troy Jackson voted repeatedly to raise taxes, higher income taxes, higher sales taxes, higher property taxes. Over and over, Jackson raised taxes on working men. He even voted for higher electric bills. In Washington, Jackson wants to raise taxes again. Don't let Troy Jackson make your life even more expensive again. SLF PAC is responsible for the content of this advertising. Well, that settles it. I'm voting for Susan Collins. I didn't realize a progressive Democrat wants to raise taxes. I had no idea. I had no idea. I'm persuaded that I've worked. I mean, to me, this is. Like, easy, breezy, beautiful cover girl. Like, this just makes sense. If the number one issue is the cost of living and voters over decades of history don't trust Democrats on taxes, connect cost of living to taxes. Right. They can't run on gas prices. They can't run on grocery prices. They can't run on ending forever wars, et cetera, et cetera. So basically say this guy's going to increase your taxes and make your life less affordable. Done. I have to say. Just at the outset here, we are going to watch so many ads where this there was a candidate is like in black and white and it's just so but but but Troy Jackson, I was saying this to you guys earlier. He literally looks like every guest at my parents wedding in 1973, like the hair, the suit. It's it's so good. But did Mr. Bean go to your parents wedding in the 1970s? There's an amazing photo of a guy playing an accordion in like a pink suit and his hair looks like Troy Jackson. Anyway, he looks. He had ruffles like he had sunglasses on, too. It was a fun wedding. OK, but I want to ask a real question here. So obviously it's a negative attack ad on taxes. Is there a way that Republicans could have done a positive spin? You know, we cut your taxes. We cut some taxes in the big, beautiful bill. Or do they not really want to mention that bill at all for for worry that that voters will remember that a lot of other things got cut because of that bill? Can I? Can I be just like a little blunt here? I think one of the benefits of passing the one big, beautiful bill is the amount of money that they're getting in donations to run these ads in the first place. But it is not from well, from very wealthy people, from wealthy people. Right. Like because we know I'm not just saying this from like off the cuff bias. Like we know from looking at the impact of the law overall that it took some benefits away from the poorest off amongst us. And gave more benefits as you go higher up the income ladder. And so, you know, these are things that corporations, even small business owners benefited a lot from this. You know, we even have some small business owners on the call. But I think in terms of mass appeal, somebody making like getting their income from like a W-2, whatever. These are not the people who benefited from the one big, beautiful bill act. And it doesn't and it wasn't popular when it passed. And it doesn't make sense to focus on it now. To answer my own question, I just don't think Republicans want to mention this bill. It's not a it's not a popular thing to bring up. And you don't want people connecting the dots back to to to Trump, you know, waving it around. It's also pretty unlikely the Democrats will succeed in raising taxes until and unless they win the twenty twenty eight election, at which point they might. Right. But but this is why it's sometimes harder to run as the incumbent party is like Democrats. Democrats are being elected if the polls are right to serve as a check on Trump's power. There is no chance of Democratic trifecta before twenty twenty eight because they will not control the presidency. So so therefore, I wonder if it falls like a little bit on on deaf ears. I mean, it's probably worth doing. Right. You got to talk about your taxes, your woke, your immigration. Right. Those are kind of like the three Republican bread and butter issues, like you said, Galen. But yeah, look, I mean, I think Maine is one of those states. Where Democrats should be kind of concerned about polling error. It's happened in that state before. Is that the number one state you're going to be watching on election night? Like for that kind of stuff? Maine and Michigan. You know, I don't rank. Actually, I do rank. Rank it. Rank it. Your entire life is about ranking things. If you look at literally favorite states, least favorite states, literally fucking burritos. Yeah. Literally burritos back in the early days. I'm a ranker. I'll admit. I'll admit. How much money did we spend on freelancers eating burritos all across America? I'm a ranker. I'm a ranker. Different era of media. If you look at the difference between the Silver Bulletin flipper forecast and like Polly Market or Kelshi, I think the biggest difference is like Maine, followed by Iowa and Kansas. And those reflect popular concern about polling error because in Maine it happens. It happened. You know, Iowa, in some ways, I'd be less concerned just because like we talked about at the top of the show, if you are in a D plus 10 environment, Iowa should be fairly neutral. You know, Kansas, you are seeing a big outperformance by Adam Hamilton. So, yeah, maybe. Kansas, you say? Kansas, you say? What an excellent segue. Okay, we're going to go on to the Democrats and the number one issue that they're highlighting, which is the cost of living. And here is an ad from Adam Hamilton, the Democrat who is running in Kansas. I'm Adam Hamilton. These soaring prices and broken politics are hitting families hard. People need help now. That's why I'm calling for an immediate suspension of the federal gas and diesel tax until we end the Iran war. I've spent my life bringing people together to solve problems. That's how we can bring costs down now for Kansas families. And I approve this message because we have to do better. Do you ever wonder what it's like to film one of those ads where they're like, all right, we're in a public park now and I want you to walk like this? I want you to walk forward and call your opponent a pedophile. James Taylor goes walking bothers me a little bit. However, I was I was going to vote for Roger Marshall. I am not persuaded to vote for Hamilton. It's going to be for every ad. Great. Diesel Nate, did that ad work for you? I mean, I think the things you notice, first of all, it comes across. is very kind of Kansan-like. little league coach kind of mild mannered he's got white hair glasses there's no mention that he's a democrat of course right yes um i think uh and also because you know whatever if you say i want to end the stupid war in iran and i want to lower gasoline taxes like that's not identifiably particularly a democratic message necessarily and so i think it's i think it's a a smart ad and i wonder how many ads he's doing about roger marshall's billing practices um but yeah and he mentioned and he mentioned diesel because that is um very important to agricultural production and uh in trucking and industries that are important in states like kansas it needs referring to roger marshall billing and then sort of going after for for like criminal damages people who didn't pay his bay uh bills at his practice his as a doctor as a doctor yeah yeah which brings in also the cost of health care into the cost of living argument i mean i think this is a similar like easy breezy beautiful cover girl you know you want to run a cost of living ad that's the number one thing that voters will now maybe tied with corruption number one thing that voters care about the most obvious visible reflection of that is gas done and by the way nate what you picked up on nobody's saying what party they belong to i spent two hours watching local news in des moines last night i had to take multiple showers afterwards because it was i felt so gross after watching i mean more than the local news all of the ads in between the local news i don't think that there was one ad for anything other than a political candidate i think maybe minus one construction company and not a single person mentions what party they belong to if anything it's in an attack ad they'll be like josh turrick like loves illegal immigrants too liberal for iowa but like josh turrick's ads you have no idea what party he belongs to same with ashley hinson and so on here's the thing like i don't watch political ads very often because i don't live in a place that's often being fought over politically but it was so like you fully understand why people hate politics and want to disengage after watching this stuff and i was talking to the av tech this morning who was like oh it's not just local news like every time i want to watch disney plus or my kids want to watch disney plus or hulu or whatever it's all of these ads pedophiles cancer corruption like uh you know more cancer like a lot of cancer and not being able to pay health care bills and just i mean really rough stuff like it you know illegal immigrants killing people like it's just it is rough and from both sides yeah iowa is actually a particularly fascinating and sort of i mean i think you're seeing sort of like the sad reflection of the place iowa is in where it has i think the second highest rising cancer rate in the united states um which is often due to sort of agricultural runoff it's got a hugely white population and i think we have spent you know 15 years talking about how white americans are metabolizing the demographic changes that are are hitting the country and iowa seems to be going through it you know what i mean like they're sort of a i mean you know they've fallen out of favor obviously with the democrats for being like the first in the nation primary but i actually think this election cycle they're they're kind of ground zero for the the the kind of quiet psychosis of america in 2026 pop quiz yeah yeah i want your gut reactions no looking at maps does iowa border kansas yes yeah no it does not thankfully a leading ai model caught a mistake i was going to publish in an article yesterday that mentioned kansas is a neighboring state to iowa no iowa borders uh nebraska but not kansas wait oh but is it is it it's like it's really near though right it's really near it touches tips need it touches tips touches galen this is a family show no it's not no it's not if your child is listening to this show you're a bad parent got a problem doesn't it touch tips claire can you confirm wait new yorker fact checker here former new yorker fact checker wait hold on oh it's so close though it's so close it's there's a reason why we're all confused about this it's super close okay i guess it doesn't touch tips we've been things have been clear can i just say like while i'm on this iowa kick because i did specifically dedicate two hours to watching political ads because i knew we were having this conversation the ads do become a wash like i said it's mutually assured destruction like you're hearing like this person is supporting pedophiles this person is prosecuting pedophiles like one ad it's the you know it's just back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and it all tends to become a wash but you know what doesn't all of the stuff in between the political ads which is the local news and i wrote down everything they covered on the local news in des moines last night or everything that i could remember or at least pertained to this they broke a world record for packaging the most meals in an hour it was over six hundred thousand at the local ag expo so apart from that some of the stuff that they covered was the average cost of a new car is now fifty thousand dollars thousands of iowans are losing their health care plans there will be no medicare plan that now covers visits to mayo clinic in twenty twenty seven the cost of this year's halloween candy will scare you um there was news you can use about how to figure out if your provider is dropping your plan or leaving the state altogether when it comes to health care and today is the deadline for property tax statements to go out they're delayed schools don't have funds and then another segment on a homelessness crisis it's very bleak yeah it's like no amount of ads is going to change that reality yeah you know we're we're doing this segment as it's fun it's you know it like political ads are in some ways so farcical but what they're actually speaking to is like i just i feel like often because we are we joke about it but we do cover the horse race but it is it really is like a kind of sad election there's a lot of uh malaise sort of percolating underneath the surface i mean you know which we can talk about in a different segment um i don't know which one feel really bad people feel 70 over 70 percent of americans say that the country's headed in the wrong direction yeah it's it's like quite and and no one talking about what party they they belong to i mean we're going to spend the next two years you know talking about how the how the democrats are going to rebrand themselves for 28 but it's just i mean you know in iowa rob sand spends so much time saying you know he has some like off the cuff little slogan but it's basically like i you know he there he's constantly trying to find ways to say he he you know doesn't like the are you about to tell me the slogan every single one of his ads was a burly republican saying i always vote republican and it's because i want lower taxes this time i'm voting for rob sand it's my first time voting for a democrat he hates it he hates it he hates it he hates it he hates his own party and he won't raise taxes and then another guy shooting uh clay pigeons being like i'm a republican i want to shoot like corruption and waste fraud and abuse and i'm voting for rob sand and he was the only person who had far more ads in favor of him than against him i think republicans are starting to pick up their money and go elsewhere yeah go elsewhere by the way now i'm just thinking of political ads i watched last night galen mary peltola there was an anti-mary peltola ad run in alaska and whoever cast and then dressed the people in this ad put every single individual in camo i mean i wish i could find it right now but it was like six different shots and it was like people in their living room wearing camo like people outside it was so funny um some of this stuff is so crazy you should be able to like sign up to watch local news in different parts of the country if you're a real sicko that would be fun okay we need to go on to the next issue so the the number two issue that republicans are prioritizing are anti-trans ads um which is basically a rerun of the 2024 playbook and we are going to show you an ad now attacking sherrod brown in ohio this is paid for by the republican aligned senate leadership fund abused and exploited by an extremist agenda forcing childhood sex change surgery but sherrod brown stands with these extremists brown supports sex change surgery for kids permanent surgical decisions with devastating consequences the extremists demand it sherrod brown complies and ohio's children pay the price sherrod brown after 50 years in politics the extremes egos are just too much slf pack is responsible for the content of this advertising for those people who aren't watching this ad i think we should maybe describe a little bit of this but it's basically what i was thinking at the end when they said 50 years of um in politics there were some pictures of sherrod brown who also in some of those pictures looked like a little bit of a thing but i think it's a little bit of a like he could have attended my parents wedding in 1973 um but showing that he you know has been around for a long time but the rest of the ad is overlaid you know ilhan omar aoc aoc yeah um hasn't this in in regular fashion haven't you now been convinced to vote for john husted i totally convinced i can't see anything that would make me go back i mean i was planning to vote for brown but um but since we're relitigating the issues of five years i mean no look um Republicans had a lot of success with this, against kamala i i think there's a risk to them that like it kind of seems like old news now when trump won the election when democrats have kind of retreated on a lot of trans rights issues right um again i'm not saying it won't be somewhat effective i mean it was you know there was a reason that they them ad was like the most run ad in political history what's up the ohioan way in here well it's not even ohioan but it's just so i would i sort of classify this kind of ad i mean another ad with amy acton that we're gonna talk about later on a few other ads as sort of like i think of them as kind of like it's like our daily mail politics right tabloid politics and i think in 2024 um there was a lot i think it was partially because of the pandemic but i think it was partially because of the pandemic but i think because there was such a crazy narrative in the election not narrative there it was such a crazy election the president the serving president drops out you have another female candidate who you know i think wasn't as polished and and you know as good a candidate as people wanted it and so um the election because of the craziness kind of got into this tabloid state right and i also think that people have constantly been obsessed with the epstein files like you know trump has sort of brought the tabloid in um and i wonder if the 2024 playbook curdles a little bit in part that that sort of tabloid play playbook curdles a little bit just because of how much more serious things have gotten with two material wars yeah material two wars material concerns and after a while people are kind of like oh god like you know it's just it's it's just even people who you know might those those as the issue might resonate resonate with them right they might say like yeah the trans issue does weird me out and i don't know how i feel about this or i you know i don't want these surgeries to happen there i do think there is this fatigue with our kind of constant tabloidization of politics also sherrod brown as far as i'm aware did not um advocate for taxpayer funded gender affirming surgeries for illegal immigrants in detention right i mean you know there were specific things that tied kamala to that that bundled together inflation and trans rights and immigration and like and her being kind of goofy and how she kind of talking about this in public settings um yeah so i don't know if it you know that ad captured something about kamala harris um that left a mark right i don't know that you get the same thing with this kind of slightly frumpy non-threatening candidate like sherrod brown that's why they have to put all these like women and brown people in the ad to make him seem more scary that's exactly what i was gonna say right like if you can't just rely on your opponent's bad image and you have to plaster a whole bunch of people all over them to make them look bad it says it says something right the other thing is it's like your take is correct right this is an 80 20 issue americans don't feel comfortable with this it's relatively few people who want sex changes for children which is what this ad is about at the same time it's not something that people care all that much about right now for example in 2024 there was you know like shoes on the other foot people very clearly want legal abortion and have trended towards the position of wanting legal abortion it didn't really matter how much kamala harris campaigned on that or joe biden before her people's concerns had moved on to something different and so it's hard to and abortion i would say is even more entrenched perhaps more powerful than an ad like this it's hard when people have moved on to especially concerns like the cost of living war what have you to just like keep focus on a social issue winning never sounded so good what would you do if you want big at crown coins casino real people win real prizes every single day hi this is chelsea from dallas i just hit the jackpot won over 1 million 500k visit crown coins.com sign up in seconds enter code crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus you may win up to 10 000 sweeps coins crown coins.com that's c-r-o-w-n coins.com no purchase needed code valid for new users only void were prohibited by law 18 plus terms and conditions apply let's move on to the next uh number next category the number two issue for democrats is business and just so you guys have a have some context the wesleyan media project told us that the business category refers to ads that make any mention of business small big corporate economic impacts yada yada yada okay so let's check out an ad for new hampshire's chris papas this lumber business has been open for more than 50 years and i've never seen anything like this we just can't catch a break tariffs electricity diesel we're getting screwed at every turn but chris pappas he's actually trying to help us he's fought trump's terrorists that are hurting our economy he's pushed for american sawmills and trade talks and when gas prices spiked from trump's war in iran chris fought to cut the gas tax and that's why i'm counting on chris i'm chris pappas and i approve this message okay for those people who are listening to this it's chris pappas wearing flannel walking through a lumber yard talking about diesel you would not identify that as as new hampshire's chris pappas necessarily right i had kind of more of a midwestern vibe nevertheless i am persuaded now i was going to vote for sununu but now i'm going to literally send in my my early vote for chris pappas right now that was pretty that was a team ad it was as far as these things go and he's but he's unlike some of his candidates he's ahead seven points in the polls or whatever right he wants to be a nice guy yeah yeah i mean speaking of it being a little bland people might be friend when democrats are trying to win over swing voters or compete in more red territory like remember when that week or whatever in 2024 when connell harris became mitt romney and all she did was talk about small business but there is like a couple things one small business is one of the most popular institutions in america it approaches approval ratings of like the military people love small business in america and all of these candidates especially in senate races are competing on red turf people think democrats are bad for business and so by going out and saying i am a small business owner i want to support our small businesses you're applying cross pressure you're trying to engender a kind of trust that democrats don't naturally have the other thing you might be talking about is tariffs which is again a cost of living thing so i think and i'll say one more thing here which is the democratic party is not popular but according to the new york times santa college university polls every single democrat except for peggy flanagan is running well ahead of the party is significantly more popular than the democratic party so people are trying to establish brands that are separate and apart from democrats in order to win in these states and there's many different ways you can do it but like talking about your business bona fides is one of them it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like individual politicians are trying to partake in the creator economy the star economy where you have to create your own brand separate from uh the monolith and also presumably if you believe in private industry you're not a socialist which is another thing they might be trying to be back against correct okay um let's go back to 2024 playbook the tabloidy play playbook um the third issue for republicans is crime and here is an attack ad on michigan senate candidate abdul el sayed um a cop pulls up to a shooting a home invasion a carjacking abdul el sayed has a question do police really need to use guns do we need as much of a police force and abdul wants to let criminals out of jail early any and all efforts to uh get people out of jails and prisons abdul el sayed he'd take guns from cops and hand michigan to the criminals slf pack is responsible for the content of this advertising you well you gotta be careful what you say on a podcast i was just about to say i feel like i feel like we need to note that for for people again just listening both of those clips were pulled from interviews or events that el sayed did in 2020 uh and as everyone is constantly saying now does this play into the woke one was crazy uh line is is el sayed sort of protected in some ways from those statements because you can just say well i don't know like we were all kind of saying stuff like that what do you guys think nate i mean he's now gonna vote for mike rogers yeah yes this is the number one thing he's gonna say um canada had different strategies with this right you can say oh lol woke 1.0 if you don't actually kind of admit to specific things that you were kind of wrong about then maybe it's not as persuasive you know here in new york zora mamdani has made some explicit kind of knee bending gestures toward um toward the police and things like that abdul el sayed seems to be more More of a kind of brawler and debater and contextualizing and explaining things, but not in a way that seems defensive. It's an interesting strategy. But yeah, look, in some ways I think this issue is maybe better for Republicans than the trans issue at this point. I mean, you know, people have reason to fear crime affecting them directly. And, you know, even though I believe murder rates are down in a lot of large American cities versus the peak immediately after COVID, people have bad memories of that period. And, you know, how well people's subjective views of what are crime rates in my area, they don't necessarily correlate all that well with like kind of what the actual data is. And of course, you know, all these ads, if you're not watching the video version of this, then. Shadows, dark, right? You know, whatever, you know, they're using photos that are, you know, tinted, right? Yeah. I mean, I will also say if you're watching this ad on, let's say, your local Fox channel, you might also be watching coverage of, you know, looting and riots in Paris, right? So there you could also this it could be part of this converging atmospheric sense of. But the left is crazy and violent. And look what's happening in Europe. Do you want that to happen in Detroit? Right. Like there is this pervasive sense that I think Republicans are probably also trying to tap into in general. The third issue Democrats are centering their ads around is health care. And here is an is an attack ad that the Democratic aligned group Vote Vets has run. This didn't have to happen. A large cut to Medicare and Medicaid coverages. Rural hospitals. Say they could be hit the hardest. Getting care is becoming more difficult. Ashley Hinson made these health care cuts happen. When we look at bills like this, we know we want to cut as much as possible. Hinson voted to cut coverage for 100,000 Iowans, voted for double digit premium hikes and to push 20 rural hospitals to the brink of closing. Ashley Hinson turned her back on us. Tell her to reverse the health care cuts. Galen, how does this play in between the local news you were describing before? Yeah. So I'll say that at the end of 2025, I do think that a lot of us imagined this election would be more like 2018 in that every other ad is about health care because they're the enhanced subsidies were not extended. That means that people's premiums are going to go up significantly in 2027. I guess that's another factor here. People will not. I mean, we're entering over. We're in an open enrollment period, I guess, two days before Election Day. But people are not really they might start hearing about this. They might start getting worried. But it has not hit their there hasn't hit their pocketbook just yet, whereas obviously gas has already hit their pocketbook. So I think whereas in another world, this could have been the number one issue. We would have heard more about the one big, beautiful bill. You know, we would have a lot of it would have been about health care, rural hospitals, people, you know, the numbers, the ways that some of these premiums are going up. It's kind of ginormous. And we do expect that a lot of people will opt out of health insurance when faced with those increases. We'll probably hear more about that in 2028. I do want to say that this ad is from a couple months ago. And again, in watching the ads last night, what I noticed was every single ad is now about an issue plus corruption. So if that ad had aired last night, it would have been, you know. Such and such person would this exact ad aired. It was like Ashley Hinson cut funding for health care so that she could give money to her billionaire donors. Like there's another one. Ashley Hinson missed a vote to release the Epstein files. And on the same day, she took a donation from one of her donors who's in the Epstein files. Every like every single issue. And I mean, every single issue like this person cut, you know, police funding so that they could give that money. To like like we haven't talked about corrupt. We've exhausted the top three Democrat and top three Republican without talking about corruption yet. I think it's caught on a little bit later that everyone is obsessed with that. This issue seems to be resonating. And now every single ad has an undertone of it's not just the health care. It's your health care is going to be more expensive. And it's because these people are corrupt. It's a little eat the rich vibes, right? Like, yeah, permeating into just like mainstream. American culture. OK, do we want to get to our wild cards, which we'll get get to some of our corruption stuff. OK, these are ads that aren't necessarily tied to specific issues, but I think they are. They are notable. They tell the story of specific campaigns. And we want to start with an attack ad that I think has been really, really talked talked about the last couple of days. It is not for a Senate race, but it focuses on the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, Amy Acton. And let's play this. My name. My name is Donna Arthur and I'm Amy Acton's mother. I love my daughter. But when I saw her lying about her opponent, it's not easy for a mother to say this. But Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help and she can't help you if she needs help. Don't vote for people who lie. Don't let her become your governor. If you think she'll make your life better, you're fooling yourself. It will only get worse. OK, I'm guessing a lot of people listening have seen this ad. I'm just going to jump off and say right here that this is featuring Amy Acton's mother, who Amy Acton was taken away from her mother when she was a little girl. Because I want to say 12 or 13 years old. Amy Acton was raped by her stepfather. Amy Acton's mother, who appears in this video, stayed with that man until he died, according to Amy Acton's brother, who released a statement. Defended him in court against Amy Acton. She defended him in court. I mean, this ad is like I was honestly shocked and very few things shock me anymore in politics. It's like so to use someone's childhood sexual abuse against them. It's just like it's just like really incredibly despicable. And I so on a human level, and I think it is getting all the fallout that it should on that level on a strategic level. I genuinely have no idea what the fuck Ohio Republicans were thinking, like genuinely no idea, particularly given that they're. Party is obsessed with pedophiles like it's just there. The levels to this are like it's so reprehensible. It's like, I don't know. I was I was shocked by it. Guys, any any thoughts on this? Well, are you an Ohio swing voter, Claire, as I am? Because I am not persuaded. I'm going to vote for Amy Acton's mother for Senate or for governor. Rather, write her in. Right. I think that this like if you're if you're watching this on local news in Ohio. I mean, you're surely the segments are all I haven't watched Ohio local news. Right. I mean, there's there's a question of how does a voter react? Do they see this as being credible if they just. Just see the ad in isolation and we can have a debate about like kind of how reliable the mother seems. Right. She comes across a little bit angry, maybe. But the question is, like all the context of people that Claire just went over, will people discover that now and backlash? I don't know. I mean, I think I think this is uncertain. Like, obviously, it's probably not an ad that you run if you're ahead by five points in the polls. And instead, Ramaswamy is down five points. Right. We suppose it's kind of like small business owner success story. Nice guy doesn't, you know, doesn't quite translate as much. And but I don't know. I'm trying to I'm trying to. I mean, just I guess for people's context, I would say the way that the Ramaswamy campaign has been trying to portray Amy Acton, who came to. Visibility Ohio during she was the most visible state spokesperson appearing every day during the covid crisis and telling people stuff, obviously, for a certain segment of the population, that is not a popular thing to have been. Right. So if you had anything to do with covid and public health health messaging, the label of liar is probably going to play for a lot of people. The other thing that I think, you know, it's been a pretty dirty campaign in a lot of ways. I mean, there have been other attack ads where. We talked about this briefly, I think, on another podcast, but Amy Acton and her husband had an argument. Her like the daughter called the police. There was basically like a domestic altercation. There have been all these allegations that, you know, about like, oh, or implications that like, oh, was Amy Acton. Did she have a drinking problem? So it has already been quite personal campaign on the airwaves. Right. Like attacking someone's character. So in some ways, this is. This this ad with her mother as the closing set piece to a quite personalized campaign. I guess there's there's some internal logic. if you sort of um rip out your soul and flush it down a porta potty but i mean i would say that that's the kind of the thinking i would assume yeah i mean when again this is like a hard thing to watch and putting fraught family dynamics on top of you know the sexual abuse and all that in a campaign ad is harsh from the strategy perspective like you're trying to find credible people to speak credibly about the candidate and so often in these ads they're like hired hands to be like who is this person or you know i usually do this and now i'm doing that whatever but like when somebody says i'm her mom don't believe her people don't see that very often in politics yes that's true it's it is if you knew nothing about her you wouldn't believe her you wouldn't believe her you wouldn't believe her nothing else about it it's if you didn't have any of the back background or context you're right it is which i didn't have a lot of the background context before you know reading the articles that followed up to this but like how many people read the new york times article explaining all of the context behind this um not a lot and we should say that the the amy acton's campaign i think they cut an ad like a really quick ad of her brother basically rebutting all of this they've put out so that i think they immediately went on the airwaves to put this you know to to put a response out to it but to uh you know make a point that galen was making earlier it's it's it's bleak out there people um okay let's do one last ad and there is one political candidate who's been so tarnished with scandal that running ads against him is almost too easy let's take a look looking to bet on which shameful ken paxton scandal will surface next then download scandal the only betting app where you can parlay ken paxton offering a plea deal to a pedophile with ken paxton voting to protect puppy abusers and get paid because he did both of those things here's a tip always bet that he did the thing even if it's as outlandish as evading a process server's attempt to deliver a subpoena to his front door by fleeing his home in a getaway car driven by his wife too fast to scandal so download scandal today and multiply your net worth by seven thousand percent like ken did while in public office it's gambling problem call ken paxton who's looking for like-minded people to work with on his next it's a funny ad usually political humor is pretty i wouldn't vote after seeing that ad i'm signing up for scandal i'm not only voting for james talarico i'm i'm seven xing my net worth it's a good ad ken paxton is a daily mail candidate um he has so many scandals i mean we didn't we didn't play this ad but there's another ad in the same kind of voice you know whatever where it shows um ken paxton partying in dubai with um two fugitives from justice from the u.s so you know not great bob and um it's also interesting go ahead name unlike every other talarico ad i'm not getting vertigo because they have too much money to spend on exotic camera shots and things like that but tracks them carefully so you know i i think it's a good ad and it's kind of um well-humored and i think that's you know the thing about texas is like the challenge is very clear right you have to get all the independents and maybe a few crossover republicans to vote for you right um and in some ways it defines the problem better than a state like maine where things are a little bit more weird i don't know if either of you have seen talarico's sort of closing spot which is like one of those it's definitely meant for like online only i think they released it yesterday or the day before but i think it's a good ad and i think it's a good ad and i think before but it's so incredibly obama coding coded i was like laughing to myself a little bit it was sort of like you know it was all about hope and you know shots of the sunset and like people helping each other across fence lines and i was like oh my gosh this is like really like they're feeling really confident in this and it was just you know obviously very different than the actual ads they're running on tv um speaking to it sort of like you know turn out the base morning in amarillo is it amarillo amarillo amarillo get ready for way more corruption ads like between now and the presidential election in 2028 like i don't i think this folks have settled on cost of living and corruption tie the two together yeah ship it and ken paxton does the work for you uh you know we'll see how it manifests elsewhere totally and uh people you can write to us tell us political ads we've missed questions you want to know about for next week's show please hit us up send us send it to our email which is i don't remember stillcounting.com thank you galen as i tried to scroll uh to find it um that's it for today though uh listen to still counting wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe on youtube.com slash at still counting podcast we'll be back next wednesday evening for another episode still counting is a crooked media production executive produced by galen drew claire malone and nate silver our team includes sol rubin emily four claudia shang charlotte landis reed churlin johanna case ben hefcote matt degrote katie long and adrian hill our music is by breakmaster cylinder our production staff is proudly unionized with the writers guilds of america east winning never sounded so good what would you do if you want big at crown coins casino real people win real prizes every single day hi this is channel c from dallas i just hit the jackpot won over 1 million 500k visit crown coins.com sign up in seconds enter code crown and get a free lucky wheel bonus you may win up to 10 000 sweeps coins crown coins.com that's c-r-o-w-n coins.com no purchase needed code valid for new users only void were prohibited by law 18 plus terms and conditions apply