Final Midterms Thoughts + Haley Stevens' Heel Turn

Daylight, savings time ends two days before Election Day, every year. Instead of staying up until two o'clock in the morning, we are according to our circadian rhythms staying up until three o'clock in the morning. I've already adjusted. A new joke I got in my pajamas at like five p.m. last night, so it was like, it's dark. Gonna wear your jammy's name. Welcome to Still Counting, I'm Galen Druke. I'm Claire Malone. I'm Nate Silver. And on Today's show, a midterms bonus episode, we'll check Nate's flipper forecast one last time. I don't know. Flipper sounds tired at this point, maybe appropriate, maybe appropriate. We'll check it one last time before Election Day, go to the last batch of New York Times Santa University polls, discuss Haley Stevens's heel turn in Michigan, ballot stacking in Alaska and make our final predictions. Very quickly, if you want, if you are able, catch us lies at Crooked Con on Saturday, November 7th. First thing in the morning, there are going to be lots of other panel discussions. Get your tickets at CrookedCon.com. Okay. But let's start with the final, much anticipated New York Times poll of the cycle, where Democrats were ahead or essentially tied in every single key Senate race, including pretty wide leads for Abdul Al-Sahed in Michigan, James Talrigo in Texas, and Troy Jackson in Maine, Iowa in Alaska were the two closest ones, and just so people know, the full list of poll states was Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio in Texas. And I don't think those are the states that we necessarily would have been, would have thought a year ago would have been the ones that the Times was pulling, the very last stretch of the race. So let's just get to what jumped out at each of you from this last poll. Certainly, the upward trajectory for Democrats in Kansas and Michigan, where I know we'll talk about Haley Stevens later, but Abdul Al-Sahed is like at 50% of the bill already. He's gained several points recently. He's up to what four and a half or something points in our polling average. And even if Stevens endorsement were to hurt him, it might not be enough, right? And then in Kansas, I mean, we've had some crazy polling with Hamilton ahead by what you define as a margin of error range is tricky, but pretty consistent leads in like the load of mid or even the high single digits. And meanwhile, Roger Marshall kind of put out like a hostage video almost of, well, I know, do you want to describe that, Gaelin? Or like, with this crazy, yeah, where he's like, yeah, I've been accused of unfair medical billing practices, and it's technically true, but I just want you to know that I do want you to know they did it. Sure. Small town provider sends a few patients to a recovery, you know, it's like, yeah, we need to check doors open the bills bills run a couple of every OBGYNs patients end up in jail for not paying, Nate, I'm going to, I'll try to save you here from yourself. Let's take out to me from this last batch of polls from The New York Times is that it actually didn't shock me. So to pull back the curtain just a little bit, I recorded like the final pre-election episode of GD Politics over the weekend, you know, just for logistical reasons and because we're recording this today, I knew we would have one if The New York Times released a late batch of polls. And I said on that podcast that I expected the final batch of polls for The New York Times to be pretty rosy for Democrats and that was based on their national lead for Democrats and the generic ballot of 11 points, a 14 point lead for Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, a tie in South Carolina, all that jazz. And so when these polls came out, I mean, I was perhaps surprised that Democrats had a technical lead in every single Senate battleground, yes, some of those are within the margin of error and some of those are just one point, but also they had a technical lead in every governor's race in every battleground in the country, including Kansas and Texas, where it's not been a common fight. Exactly. Exactly. Cindy Holcher in Kansas, who has not been seen as a particularly strong candidate. And of course, there's already an incumbent Democratic governor in Kansas. And then Texas, where like we've all been focused on the poor candidate quality of Ken Paxton, but Greg Abbott is not a particularly bad politician or scandal-ridden politician, like this could truly just be people want to throw the bums out in addition to Ken Paxton. Or he's the most AI data center-associated public figure, maybe, right? There's that too. And also, Gina Hosek could be helped by Talleriko. She could be helped, of course, by Big Swing and the Latino vote. But I want to say one more thing here, which is why I wasn't surprised and why that kind of matters. When Ann Seltzer's poll came out in 2024 in the final throws of the election, and everyone said, oh my god, Kamala Harris is leading in Iowa by some not-insubstantial margin, maybe all the other polls are wrong. We had Ruth Agalnik on the 538 politics podcast. She's one of the pollsters at the New York Times that released and wrote up all of these polls last night. She had her on the podcast after the Ann Seltzer poll came out. And she said, folks, you can get excited if you want to. But this goes against every single other piece of data that we have about this election. In this case, the New York Times last batch of polls confirms basically every other piece of data that we have about this election. It confirms like just a huge environmental shift. And it kind of, you know, since we started this podcast a couple months ago, we've been talking about, are we at the beginning of a new epoch of American politics? And this does feel a little bit, whatever, you know, this is, you know, the day before the election. But it does feel a little bit like, you know, could this be like smudging the chalkboard a little bit? And then, you know, maybe the next 10 years will be quite different, you know, a politics divided more by class, you know, than anything else accelerated by AI environmentalists. The environment stuff, you know, it's, it's kind of a, I don't know, it's a, it feels like the most interesting election we've had in a while. The past couple have felt stressful, I think, got to like, even to cover them, like the Biden dropout was weird, but this one feels, I don't know, like really exciting to cover, I think. Yeah, what's tricky about this race is like, in some ways, the most trumpy places and voting groups are projected to be reverting a little bit, right, which kind of makes sense, right? People, I think I hate about a lot of political analysis, it's kind of midwit, is people take like something that happened twice in a row or three times in a row and analysis, permanently how things are now, right? Today's due shift, one of the more shocking outcomes was in 2018 when, despite like a D plus 8.5, Declimate, Bill Nelson lost in Florida. And Florida was a state like many other states, it wasn't like much more red than like Michigan or Wisconsin, the other states Clinton lost in 2016. And that signaled something, right, friend of the show Sean Prendy had a good analysis of Kansas and his newsletter over the weekend. It's changing a little bit, but like, the map is supposed to change to some extent. Right, this kind of Texas, purple Texas was kind of interrupted by Latinos and South Texas, defecting toward the president, but that's always been a swingy vote. And if that reverses, then Texas does become, probably not purple in a presidential year environment, but a winnable reach state for Democrats. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to take time to wax poetic, I think, at the end of this episode, but I do want to say, as you're talking about reversion to the mean and whatnot, a lot of comparisons have been made to the 2006 election, because there was a backlash to a quagmire in Iraq. And Democrats ended up winning the Senate, seemingly against all odds in that midterm. But I would say that what we're seeing is a combination of something like 2006 and a backlash to a quagmire and concerns about cost of living and that type of thing. Pre-to-2018, right, like I was looking at Harris County, Texas. And in 2006, statewide Republicans won Harris County, Texas by double digits, right? So even in an environment where Democrats were cleaning up and winning a Senate majority and all that jazz, Republicans were still doing very well in Texas. But in 2018, Democrats won Harris County, Texas by double digits, they end up winning County judge against all odds, these high-end suburbs really, I mean, I spent time in West Houston in the run up to the 2018 midterms in the district that George H. W. Bush lived in that was the sort of core of the original sort of flip to Republican. >> High Episcopalian, Texas. >> Exactly. That was the core of the original suburban flip to Republicans of Texas way back when. And that district was, I mean, you could, all the Republicans were like, it'll never happen. Lizzy Fletcher, the Democrat is not going to flip this district. This is the energy corridor, you know, all the money here is oil and blot, like it's this country club after country club, and it ended up not even being that close. And so if you marry, what Democrats did in 2018 and picking up all of those, you know, I will judge it. And they they book very strong with college educated voters still in the cross tabs now, but you marry it with like a more populist backlash to a quagmire gas prices, you know, diesel prices, fertilizer prices and you piss off farm country. Well, then you've really fucked yourself. Yeah, I want to go back to the times pole and the way it has been framed coming out. I thought Nate, Nate Cohen had a really interesting he really he addressed a question that I've really had as someone who, you know, I obviously was at 538 and then in 2020 I left and I kind of went back a little bit to mainstream journalism and and in those six years. The polling industry has really changed and some of this conventional so so Nate column was the final polls show a blue surge can we trust them and he addressed basically head on the use of waiting and polls. And that the you know, I think the conventional wisdom has changed over time and I thought it was really interesting when he gave us the poll results. As if they had been waited with the methodologies used in 2024 they were very different and I want you guys to explain to people. Why the conventional wisdom of like we need to wait the polls heavily why it's changed and what you made of of of Nate's column in general. Well, and celtzer was kind of the proof of or the failure of the proof of concept for just kind of leaving your data untouched and polls. Yeah, the whole thesis for why pulling or can occur and can be weird but it's unpredictable is because. Pulsers are doing exactly things like this where they say we must tie on Democrats or why do we do that maybe we think it was for reasons that were just a one off right but if not we will change our approach in this case by about three points. That's you know that was the error basically in in 2024 and so like the most respected pollster the industry is saying okay we are. Shifting things maybe it's a maybe it's a good way to trust what they do maybe it's a little ad hoc I don't know right meanwhile you have like Marist making we talked about last week this crazy likely voter adjustment. You have the Washington Post releasing a poll on Kansas and saying we're not sure we believe this right but for every person who does that a lot of posters are chicken shit right. So are those people are those people being chicken shit are they trying to give people like a real let's I'm going to be I'm going to play the let's give them a benefit of doubt they want their readers to be. To read and consume the news in a well adjusted way Galen are they chicken shit you agree with Nate what's going on here. Well everyone's iterating and I guess some people are doing it in a more ad hoc way and some people are doing it in a more systematic way like the New York Times like I fully respect the New York Times but ultimately what Nate cone was doing with that article was hedging a little bit. And he wasn't hedging saying that he thinks these polls might be over estimating Republicans it seemed like he was hedging a little bit saying he thinks these polls might be under estimating Democrats because what he said in that article was that their polls in 2018 and 2022 the other midterms during the Trump era. We highly accurate and used the old waiting scheme so if we're going to look at this as a midterm during the Trump era should we look at the waiting scheme that would have gotten closer to the results in 2024 or should we look at the waiting scheme that got close to the results in 2018 and 2022. And if we take the old waiting scheme thinking this is a midterm we might as well because look a lot of the people who don't respond to polls in this cycle may not ultimately end up voting. Then what he's saying is actually Democrats apart from a couple places like Maine might end up doing better than their poll suggests and he did a similar thing in his right up of Nebraska which came out earlier a few days earlier where he said you know we have Pete Ricketts leading by six points here but actually we think this might be over estimating Republicans. And so like I'm reading into it seems like Nate cone is hedging a little bit as pollsters oftentimes want to do but he's not hedging the way that most people in the media and many other pollsters are it seems like he's hedging saying like I don't know Democrats might maybe maybe it could be like 54 seats for the Democrats right is that kind of is that kind of the territory he's like suggesting. I mean if Democrats beat their polls they're winning more than 54 seats I think in the Senate and again I don't think that that should be people's base case. I'm just read I'm just trying to read into what it cone is doing. Like like what's on the map. I think the right tail enough to left tail or right tail I think that tail runs out very far. Like Atlas Intel which was opposed to had a very good 24 was just out this morning they had not been reactive the cycle with like a D plus 14 or D plus 15 generic ballot. I would definitely bet against that right but like you can find crazy shit you can find internal polls showing Democrats tied in Louisiana. I don't think I believe that but you can find such polls you can find polls showing them the independent. Tied in South Dakota and our model is very skeptical about that one right but there are these signs where and by the way there are theories too that like for why polls might be if they're under something Democrats. The theory be that a lot of pollsters now wait based on pass recall vote right they say did you vote for Trump or did you vote for Harris. And then maybe they see how that matches up with the actual result maybe they permit different degrees of slippage because midterm electorates don't have to be the same as presidential electorates right however. Trump is so unpopular now that some people lie or Mr. Member having supported him right yeah it was good article by the poster state navigate about this over the weekend so this is a theory it's a slightly spicy. Kind of the old money bullish theory but like but you know there there that's would be the argument but need I think just to really make clear what you're saying is that if people say that they voted for Harris when in fact they voted for Trump and people are trying to wait to say you know in twenty twenty four election it was our plus two nationally but you would have to end up waiting. Trump voters even more heavily is some of the actual Trump voters are ending up in the Harris because you're miscounting one of the Trump voters is someone who a Harris voter somebody who says they didn't vote et cetera yes yeah. Still counting is brought to you by Zbiotics especially this time of year you really don't want to be caught flat footed like you know we're covering this election flat out you know you have a drinker to but you still want like a good night sleep and you want to be like full force on the podcast the next day. Zbiotics, Zbiotics pre alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic it was engineered by PhD microbiologist to break down acetaldehyde an unwanted byproduct of alcohol metabolism make pre alcohol your first drink of the night drink responsibly and enjoy your next day activities like this podcast Zbiotics has sold more than 15 million bottles and earned the trust of thousands including us. 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Okay, we since we're already kind of urging into this we should just say we're as of Monday morning flipper stands flipper is giving the Democrats an 80% chance of taking the Senate which is up from 75% last week. The latest time Santa poll have already been added to that and it gives the Democrats chances of winning the house at 96%. I don't know Nate does it like anything need to be added to that like Nate silver who's going to win the election just to bring back classic I feel like people should understand that a 20% chance is not that low of 4% chances low frankly. But I don't want to be precious about this right the polls show Democrats winning the Senate okay. Not debatable anymore after the times polls dropped last night. And our models telling you there's a 20% chance that polls will be. Wrong enough and it does take a dose of fundamentals different kinds to I want to return back to the point right but. Yeah see we have 20% chance that the polls are wrong enough in the wrong kind of states for Democrats and they lose the Senate. probably narrowly, right? But they have leads of three or more points in states totaling five hiccups. It does not count Alaska where they're a little below it or Iowa and South Carolina where they're tied basically. You know, last I checked, if you have a three-pointer better lead and with one state to spare, then you're leading the pulse, right? That cannot be denied at this point. But I think the most important thing of all is that like something Galen said earlier, which is, I think the polling is remarkably consistent with the other data. And what's a fundamental versus a prior versus a poll versus a vibe? Yeah, that can get like a little bit ambiguous. But you have a president who started a stupid fucking war. Gas is really expensive. Mortgage is really expensive. These 80-years-old people are fucking sick of it. And Democrats have this very motivated electorate that seems to have turned out big in the early voting data. Republicans absolutely need more people to turn up tomorrow to have a chance in some of these races. And you have a mix of good and problematic Democratic candidates, but probably candidate quality advantages at least in most of the key Senate and governor races or more than not. And we had the results from 2018, where Trump lost by 8.5 points nationally in a better environment than this one, right? It just, people just don't want to believe it. Just to put some quick numbers on that mention of the early vote. The Times Tracker shows that the early vote is outpacing 2022 in every battleground state. I mean, Galen, I don't know. Should we, are there things we can take away from that? Things should we should be careful of. We obviously talked a lot about the early voting innovations and how we're tracking it last episode. But what do you make of all that? We've clouded this quite a bit, which is why I feel comfortable at this point just saying what we've seen. There's a good chance that the majority of Americans have already voted. And especially in a lot of Southern states, you get 70 plus percent of the expected electorate voting before election day. The folks at decision desk HQ did some good analysis of this as a former colleague of ours, Jeffrey Skelly. And he went through and looked at how the early vote is comparing to 2024. Now, we don't have party registration in every state. So some of this is modeled as opposed to actual party registration. But in every single state, the Democrats or modeled Democrats are outpacing 2024 by a healthy margin. It's 17 points in Kansas, 13 points in Iowa, 10 points in Maine, 13 points in North Carolina, eight points in Florida. You know, of all of those states, the only place where early voters who are either modeled as or actual Republicans are outpacing Democrats are Florida by three percentage points and Kansas by one percentage point. And, you know, Florida, I don't think that's a particular surprise, but it's that's still significantly down from 2024 and Kansas. Republicans are only leading in sort of the early amongst early voters there, you know, as a portion of the electorate by one percentage point. And also Adam Hamilton is really appealing to Republicans. That's versus in 2024, Republicans were leading Democrats in terms of makeup of the early vote by 18 percentage points. I mean, I've read a lot of numbers there, but if people really want to know just what it says raw, like, because I know we always say, Oh, like you don't pay to necessarily vote, it can be misleading. Right, like all of this comes with these same exact caveats that an election day vote counts as much as an early vote, and you don't know who is going to show up on election day. But increasingly, people vote early in the state where we have this data, that's what the picture shows. Okay, Galen, do you want to take us into our state specific T? I would, can I actually ask Nate, I need one question for you before we leave this forecasting area, sort of talking about the polls and the nitty-gritty numbers, which is like, we've been through a lot of elections with you. I remember 2016, you were doing battle to the very end with folks who said that you were too hot on Trump. 2020 was like its own kind of crazy because of COVID and how big of a lead we were showing for Biden and it looking like he could win Iowa even in 2020. 2024 was actually, we didn't cover 2024 together, but like you wrote in the New York Times that although the forecast said 50/50, you ultimately thought that Trump would win. And usually you're doing a lot of battle with commentators and other modelers and whatever down the final stretch. I'm speaking from an outside perspective here, so my impression is that this has been a more peaceful final stretch for you. Maybe it's because the people who usually do battle with your Democrats and right now you are showing the rosiest picture of the entire forecast market for Democrats. But I want to ask you just like what your experience is in this moment. Being you are out ahead of everyone saying that this environment is favorable for Democrats and have been for a while. Are you nervous about that? Are you not nervous because no one's fighting with you? I just want to see inside the Oracle's mind for a second. I don't know. There's just been anxious and nervous. That's for fair opinion. Everyone else has been chasing Flipper all cycle long, right? It's led the markets by quite a bit. They've now almost cut up the Thipper. I polly markets at 75% or something, right? So if you were following Flipper, you've already made money because you would have bought Democrats at a lower price and it's now at a higher price, and you can sell or buy that if you want. Look, I think that the models as a whole are in better shape than they've been, maybe, ever. I think there are a couple of models I think are, well, okay, I'll just leave it for you. I think there's one model that's actually broken. I'll never reveal it. Oh, interesting. Okay. But, you know, I have to say, I remember you in 2016 and it was the most stressed out I have ever seen you. Well, 2016 was weird because it felt like kind of a no win, right? Because either, because there was a lot of criticism about why is your model skewing holes toward Trump, right? So it felt like either Trump wins and we have to spend the rest of our life explaining what a 30% probability is or Clinton wins and we're seen as behind the curve and you had to come to Jesus moment about your model and your humanity in the primaries because you were like, I didn't trust my model. Yeah. And that was the point. I do, I do, I think Flipper has, you know, my intuition differs only in so far as I think it might be a little more asymmetric with this right tail possibility, right? But like, this is like, and look, any time that you look at other models and you see choices that are different, but like, I don't, I think the better models are kind of in the same place and the battle models are in the higher, are in the higher end this year, right? I think people over stuff their models sometimes with overly complicated priors and that at the end of the day, if the polling evidence is fairly consistent, right? It should be fairly true to the polls. I mean, there are lots of states where we chop off of usually a point or so from Democrats and like the advanced Flipper versions, but like, the polls show Democrats winning in a lot of cases. Also one thing too, you know, since we used to have 538 evaluate our forecasts, our forecast reaction like a little bit have been under confidence slightly historically, right? No one criticizes them for that reason, but like, I don't know. I think it's a good forecast and it's been ahead of the conventional wisdom. I didn't necessarily expect. I'm glad we got off the fence. Right at 75% is kind of the cursed Hillary Clinton zone, you know what I mean? I went 70 or 75 or 69, nothing, nothing like that, right? You know what, 69. Oh, just for him. It's just for him a true reason. 67, but Nate, we are going to be back here recording a post election podcast on Wednesday. So we can, you know, I am glad that we are at a place where you feel confident your model has figured out it's identity ahead of election day if the recriminations come. Yeah, but I don't need to explain to anybody. The polls could miss a little low on Democrats, right? Maybe they do need to explain that like, it would have to miss more than a little low, not a lot low, but more than a little low. Yeah. And we got to let's talk about your home state. We got to talk about Michigan, where the biggest surprise of the weekend, maybe apart from a double digit lead for LCI ad in the New York Times polls was Haley Stevens endorsement of LCI's opponent, Mike Rogers. There's been plenty of reporting on this unfolding spat about how their relationship fell apart. How are you all digesting it? What do you think of this situation and its influence on that race? Claire, why don't you kick us off? Isn't it interesting that Michigan and Ohio have been the most dramatic, like, weird, dark side of politics? I don't know. I just like the kind of the comment about the Midwest playing against playing against type. Well, I think it's just proof that we're that they're people just like everyone else. I mean, I have to say that the Haley Stevens thing really caught me off guard. I was like, wow, I saw that video of her walking in. And I was like, this is crazy work. And just watching like Debbie Dingo get on TV pretty much for like 24 hours. And be like, in her own way, like I'm concerned for Haley. Everyone's, it's a, it's a, it's a weird, it's honestly a weird brew. We'll talk about the electoral implications, but it's such a weird brew of like what actually goes on in politics coming out and being played out on TV. Like, obviously, there are a lot of people in politics in the same party who hate each other. And it's getting, it's coming up more and more because of these fissures in the Democratic Party, but it's just been like quite extraordinary to watch everyone just publicly like take a dump on Haley Stevens. It's kind of wild. Well, she wasn't exactly coherent or convincing. I know. I know. Now apart from a, Abdul was mean to me. Right. Um, you know, maybe has something to do with his stance on Israel, but she didn't seem comfortable saying that exactly. Um, it's, it's a very weird husband, by the way, fiance. But yeah, I will say it's this, it's the other reason why I think Debbie Dingle and Mallory Moore, McMoro are taking the lead in this is that they are both women. And there are some very obvious implications here where everyone's like, wait a second is Haley Stevens as fiance who is, who has publicly endorsed Mike Rogers, who has been a Republican donor as well as a Democratic donor, I believe has donated to APAC. There are all these suggestions that her fiance is influencing her. And that obviously has very loaded gender dynamics. And I think it's made this whole thing very like to me, this is obviously skewed into the personal and like, you could, I'm sure you could make, I mean, I think as I feel like again, reading the Dingle T leaves, she was like, I'm annoyed at everyone. The Dingle berries. The Dingle berries. I was going to make that joke and I with help me. By the way, I loved Debbie Dingle's on one of her TV shots. She just, it was like wearing her typical like Debbie Dingle, like all the pearls in the world. And then in the background, she was like her buffet, like low table with like the little salt, like the little China soldiers. And I was like, this is so Midwestern grammar core. Anyway, but she was obviously, like there are people who are obviously ticked off at L-ciad for not being more like diplomatic for lack of a better word. It seems like maybe Haley Stevens is a bit of a loose cannon. And, you know, oftentimes people will say like in, you know, in PR, it's like you want to control the explosion in private rather than in public. And it just seems like there's a lot of, like personal politics that have crashed spectacularly in the last 24 hours. Yeah. Like, listen, from a strategic perspective, Abdul Alzadeh did not go about this the right way. These are layups in competitive race statewide politics where you just say you disavow, like people who have extremely unpopular opinions and who seem potentially bigoted. And one of the things is all very easy. Nobody, nobody's like really invested in Jank Weeger as a sort of voice in the Democratic Party. You can just say that I was stupid. I disagree with it. Like, whatever, like I kind of wonder if Abdul Alzadeh had been looking at the kind of polling that the New York Times published on Sunday when he said like basically Haley Stevens, you can fuck off because he did not handle, I mean, he has not handled his campaign particularly like somebody who's running in a true like deep purple state. And he has the freedom to do that because the national environment is really democratic. And so, you know, he can kind of be unapologetic in ways and maybe perhaps likely still win. But the other thing here is, you know, Haley Stevens, like how much does this matter? Right? That's the question of like, especially before the New York Times polls came out showing Abdul Alzadeh up by double digits. It's like, oh, is this going to have a negative impact? Whatever. I was, you know, mulling this over as the drama was going down before she ever endorsed my brothers. Okay. What percentage of Michiganers voted in the Democratic primary? 18% half of those people voted for Haley Stevens. So 9% of primary voters in Michigan are Haley Stevens voters. Now, Haley Stevens is not a thought leader, right? Like, that's not nobody, but that's not a lot of people. Haley Stevens does not have some big block of voters that are hanging on it. Every single word she says, excited to like follow. She's like invented a new accent. Kind of, right? Like if she had exactly a Michigan, it's some, it's, it is, it's like an amped up. Like obviously you and I both know people who have like, there's a twin, there's like a extreme flatness, but she has, it's a, it's a lot. I also want to say that Gailin, it's a good point that like she is not a thought leader in the party that it's, you know, 9% of people, but it's everyone wanted it to be Gretchen Whitmer. And after that, everyone wanted to be Christine McDonald for the, and then everyone wanted it to be P booted, Judge, like literally nobody cares about like, but that's why you happen. And that's also why you have Debbie Dingelberries out there on TV calling her essentially in a nice way. Crazy. No, I mean, no, like that is, right? Because it's, it's to like the Democratic Party, obviously the line, like when they were interviewing AOC, when they were interviewing, they all say, like, this is a distraction, it doesn't matter. And then they're also like in these subtle ways, being like, and she's crazy, because the, it's, they need to, they need it to be about a personal rivalry, which it also actually seems like it is, and not for voters about like fissures in the party. And that is what's happening when they're going on local and national television and basically calling her crazy. Right. This is actually way less, I think this is less bad for Abdul Al Sayed. Then if she had like, you know, just take 2016 as the canonical example where Bernie Sanders for months is like, yeah, you need to do all of these things if you're actually going to get my endorsement. And I really think the party stole the nomination. There's just like months and months of back and forth. He Lee Stevens had been saying for months, I'm so excited to vote a straight Democratic ticket. We have such great people on the ballot. Maybe she didn't continue saying Abdul Al Sayed by name over and over again. She was just like, I'm so excited to vote. We had great Democrats, blah, blah, blah. And then the final weekend, she's like, actually, I voted for my Rogers. It like, it doesn't seem to reflect so much even on the party. Is it right? Yeah, it's personal. Yeah. Al Sayed has a confrontational quality that kind of reminds me of if, if I were running for public office, I'm like, I'm not an astronaut person. Oh, oh, no. She's the most confident person in the world. I mean, it's like, uh, read Trumpian. No, you know what, no, you know what it is. It's like every time I see it because I feel like the new kind of like blue sky or Twitter thing is when a Democrat is posting an Al Sayed clip. It's always like, this is how you should handle the media. And to me, it's so reminiscent of 2016 when we were seeing obviously Trump, you know, making the media like the enemy of the people in a very different bat, like, you know, sort of extreme way. But Bernie Sanders right was doing the same thing with the left to a lesser degree, not not the same inflammatory language, but definitely like these people are idiots. Like you shouldn't trust them. So there was, and I feel like that's it's sort of like the maturation of the Bernie contingent is what the, the Al Sayed, um, communication stylist. Yeah. Am I dating myself with a reference to the movie Bullworth? I want to say Bullwork, but it's Bullworth. Um, Bullworth, not Bull Bullworth. Give us the reference. 1998 political satire starring Warren Beatty as Senator J. Billington Bullworth. The idea is he goes kind of crazy and just says what's on his mind all the time and becomes super popular, right? And like, Trump has that quality too. But like, I think every now and then it's like, uh, like Nuckelmall pictures and baseball, right? There can't be too many people doing that any given time because it kind of becomes a stick. Um, but, you know, they do have a politician who will populist, who will really tell it like it is. There's always been. No, no, no, Vance is trying to do it too now, right? Yeah, I think people who are really overperforming Adam Hamilton, James Taloriko, John Assof, these are people who are really trying to bring everyone along for the ride. And when you hear Abdu Al Sayed engage with ideas and opinions that he doesn't agree with, he seems to be like fuck you as opposed to like, listen, I know we disagree. I think I made a fool. I might have gone over your head. The point, you know, a Nuckelmall picture of baseball is not conventional, right? It's a usual strategy. I agree with you, Nate. I was saying that Claire, not everyone is doing it. Like the people who are really overperforming, I'm using him. He's hyperbole, but I'm saying that it's a big trend, like in the Trump era that a lot of people, I'm using the media as sort of like a, you're standing right there, foil. And everyone needs to meet you. So it's, it's like, that's what it is. That's what I mean. I think, does anybody disagree with this that also leave us as more about the Democratic Party in 2028 than it does about the Michigan race in 2026? Well, I think it really confounds it because now if he loses, then you can say it's hitly Stevens fault and not because he was too progressive or whatever. Yeah, Nate, I think I mean 2028 as far as the primary is concerned. And just like, there's a lot of pent up energy and not always good feelings. Look, Abdu Al Sayed did not win the primary by very much at all. And it just, it's one of the weird moves. I compared it to like the Luka Donchitz trade where like, I was playing poker at the time in the Maverick's trade, Luka Donchitz to the Lakers for shit right in front of you. I'm like, am I seeing this right? Am I hallucinating? It's just so weird. Maybe there's something about like, I don't know. I mean, sometimes there are like these like Twitch streamers who are crazy on stream or something and strip naked and like, it just felt a little bit like that. I don't - No, it felt like a little bit. - It's so very petty. - Yeah. - I actually don't think it'll have a huge effect, but it does obviously give, it's gonna be what everyone's talking about for the next 24 hours, which almost speaks to the baked nature of the day before the election and election day itself, right? - Yeah. - Still counting is brought to you by Wild Alaskan Company. I love fish. I love cooking fish. Fish is good for you, it's good for your brain. And it's also filling and cooks in a pretty short amount of time. Would you not agree? - Claire, love fish. I also say, I think by accident, Wild Alaskan Company sent a double order and sent Nate's portion of fish to my apartment. So I have been eating so much. 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Visit loonstarkaceno.com for more details. Sign up today for an incredible welcome bonus. Play bold, win big. - Okay, speaking of the baked nature question mark, or should I go for the baked Alaska pun? - That's not the baked Alaska pun. - Okay, speaking of baked Alaska, another late October surprise came in the form of a New York Times investigation, which revealed that operatives linked to Mary Peltola's campaign were behind the effort to put a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot in Alaska. The incumbent is Dan L Sullivan, the quote unquote fraud is Dan J Sullivan, and Trump's order the Department of Justice sued to block the certification of the election results if the incumbent Dan Sullivan lost on Sunday a federal judge dismissed that suit. How do we see this playing in Alaska? That is according to the New York Times polling, a much closer race, and actually that was one of the sort of negative signs for Democrats in all of the positive signs in that slate of polling, because it seemed like Mary Peltola was performing worse than the last time they had pulled Alaska. - Yeah, they had Alaska as a plus, Peltola plus seven or six or seven a matter of weeks ago, and you know, polls can vary these sample sizes and Alaska tend to be small, 'cause it's really hard to reach people. But yeah, a lot of the polls conducted before news of the Dan Sullivan's, whether you technically determine a scandal or not, I think it is, it's fucking stupid, right? You are trying to confuse people, and it kind of goes against this kind of fighting for Alaska values. I'm not sure, sure, it's quite running as a super clean cut image, right? But like, you know, you're trying to get people to vote for a Democrat in this complicated system, and like it just, it's, and also because of range voice voting, if you misrank the Dan Sullivan's, but put them both ahead of Peltola, the real Dan Sullivan eventually gets to vote anyway. So it's just fucking, it's stupid, and it lowers my opinion of her campaign. Well, it also cuts against the Democratic sort of thing that Democrats have been saying for the Trump era, which is that they're like pro-democracy and provoting and all this stuff. I mean, yes, this is not illegal, and it does happen in all this sort of thing. It is done, it's true, right? And it is, but ultimately, you're trying to disenfranchise people, like you're trying to confuse people so that they don't cast a vote for the person that they want a cast of vote for. That's bad. Yeah, and range voice voting could hurt her for the reason I mentioned, right? If you add up the wrong Dan Sullivan with the right Dan Sullivan, then her lead falls by about a point. So I thought, obviously, the New York Times falls like a 9.2 out of 10 for Democrats. The reason it's not a 9.8 is mostly because of Alaska. The number of undecideds at this point is relatively low. I mean, I know Alaska has more of a kind of maverick streak. And they have dealt with sort of ballot shenanigans before. I don't know, I kind of can't quite decide whether or not this matters. It does speak, I do think just like, you know, we've talked a lot about candidate quality and, you know, the idea that Mary Peltola was such a good fit for the state. I do think it also speaks to, I mean, she also has had like campaign personnel problems, half her staff quit, what, like, six weeks ago or two months ago. And part of me thinks like, man, this says something about like the insularity of a state's political culture that this happened kind of, you know, that like the times only kind of confirmed it towards the very end. - Because one of those fired staffers went to the times inside, let me tell you all about it. - Correct. Yeah, her staffers, yeah, I don't know what it is. - Yeah, and, you know, like I think the times was also as like sort of the metamedia narrative on this. I think the times was like, listen, I think Kellen Browning, it was like a worthy story. Like this is obviously a story you report. The times was also obviously delighted to have like a little surprise scupalicious thing happening at the very end of the election. And I would say went hog wild in their promotion of it. Like they did. So, you know, and now Haley Stevens will overtake this. - Like I said, this is bad. That was a, I don't usually make a normative statements here, I'd say it's bad from like a, you know, people should have just say that they want to say in politics. Perspective, I don't know if it's going to shape the election, but you know what, it might shape the ballot initiative that's asking Alaskans if they want to keep ranked choice voting in future elections. So, you know, this has been on the ballot before to repeal ranked choice voting on the top four nonpartisan primary in Alaska. And it's just won by like the slimmest of margins. And there's a lot more money trying to do away with it this time. Of course, this electorate is probably more favorable to Democrats who, I don't know, are kind of more in favor of this, although in some states, the Democratic Party opposes this because it just gives the party less authority over the process. So, I do wonder if people say, you know what, screw these kinds of shenanigans because this specific kind of shenanigan is only really possible in a ranked choice voting, right? Like, you know, they could, I guess they could put a dance Sullivan on the ballot under a different party, but I think that would be like less obvious than this environment. And like listen, like Lisa Murkowski for whatever criticism, I guess both Democrats and Republicans have of her has benefited a lot from this range choice voting system. Alaska would have a much more conservative Republican senator in the Senate if it were not for this system and her independent right in campaign all of those years back. And she came out against this and she said this is wrong. Pretty strongly, even though for example, she endorsed the Democrat for governor in Alaska. - It's very, I mean, Mary Peltola's candidate, is campaign is not doing this, they're basically saying like, we didn't have anything to do with it, even though it seemed like they did. - Yeah. - It's very, like immediately when this came out, I was like, this is some Lyndon Johnson shit. You know what I mean? Like this is just some real old school - Shining against. - Rat fucking. Like it's just, I mean, Lyndon Johnson, I think did worse and a master of the Senate, right? So, but it is this, I guess you could be, this is probably only a defense that hardcore partisans would make, but it's like, listen, for dirty times, you need people who are willing to go the distance. I mean, and then I think you could make the argument, which is really valid, which is like, but it's stupid. I don't know. I think maybe Alaska, which will be, you know, certainly the last results to come in will be one of our most interesting ones to watch. - Certainly. And I just want to clarify, when I said Lisa McCarthy came out against this, she did not come out against ring choice voting. She likes ring choice voting. She came out against what the Democrats did. in this instance, even though she's like, she's like Mary Petols. friend, basically, and she endorsed her in a past house race. But she was, she had strong words with them. Mary Peltola. Well, interesting. Really. We need to call up, I like Armando Yanuchi and have him write a story of this. Oh, wait, he already did it. Sorry, Vee. But it's kind of a machine politics, maybe South side of Chicago. It's very, it's, it's, it's insular. That's what it is. Yeah, it's just, it's insular. Guys, we've reached the moment of this podcast where it's time for our final predictions, our final narratives. This has been fun. I wish we could talk about Vee for another hour. But we have other, other things to get to in the final stretch. So folks, Nate, do you want to kick us off? What are your final thoughts on the 2026 midterms before we get results? Big night for Paulsters. Big night for knowledge. No, look, I think the two, the most important thing night for knowledge. Big friend now. If like Republican, so look, all that 20% or the GP wins. There are some scenarios where, yeah, maybe this thing hurts her Peltola in Alaska and Teleriko wins, if the Kansas polls are in Mirage, right? Democrats come Wednesday short and win the house. Like that wouldn't be a disaster for the polls, right? But like, for Republicans to have a good night, like something we don't recognize in the known universe would have to happen because like, and again, they can have a pretty bad night and maybe hold the Senate less likely, but within the boundary of the Senate, right? But like, what's a single good indicator for Republicans, apart from the fact that their people seem to answer polls less often. And so that's the only thing. Yeah, that's not even a good indicator. It also can mean very low voter enthusiasm. I thought it was interesting that the Washington Post found this big voter enthusiasm gap in whose response to his polls in Kansas, where the hard data on early voting also shows the biggest gap. I just wonder if the Trump voters will see on Tuesday, right? The Trump voters show up and we have a comparative center race leaning down slightly, right? Republicans don't show up and you have a fucking ethnic landslide. And flippers kind of stuck halfway between those, I guess. Claire, final thoughts on 2026 or final, final thoughts for the still counting podcast. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm, I don't know. I don't like, I don't think I have anything profound to say because I do think that it's such a tilting towards a blue night so that all I can, all I can think about is, you know, the way that Trump will react to it, I guess, is the, is the big sort of question mark, if the poll, if the numbers feel so confident, sort of that, you know, not even Republicans have seen to be indicating from their internal surveys that they're going to do well, that does make me think about like basically, it's, you know, Custer's last stand, Trump's last stand, like what does he do here? Right? You know, he's about to become a lame duck. He's talking about, you know, a big bombing campaign in Iran once the midterms are done. I guess I just think about what is his rhetoric look like? Does it matter? Is it echoed by other Republicans? Do other, if there are close races to Republicans, except the results? Those feel like the X factors to me. And so I guess that's where my head starts to go after all this data seems to be pretty clear. Yeah, when you're in forecast land, you don't think that much about the aftermath of a dispute election, but on Sunday morning, we ran this article showing basically essentially 13 randomly selected flippers scenarios. They were a little bit curated to be fair. But the map showed how many states we'd expect to remain unresolved as of early Wednesday morning, and typically one to two Senate races and one to two gubernatorial races, like a dozen house races on average. You know, Alaska and Maine are both very slow to count their votes. You know, part because of ring choice voting and part because they're just rural, very rural states. Lots of territory and they're slow. The Republican-leaning states are faster. It's actually the best argument for Republican confidence is that their states count votes quickly and Democrats, Democratic ones don't. But yeah, I just, they have already threatened Republicans not to see Peltola because they think it's of the Dan Sullivan's thing, right? And like, so I'd be slightly worried if it does come down. There's a 15% chance comes down to one state in the Senate. And that's a little worrying, I think. Yeah. I guess it's my turn. My deep thoughts with Galen. My funnel. This is a little bit of a repeat, I think, for folks who listen to the GD-Politics high cost. But I'm starting to think about this as the betrayal election because looking back at the most recent midterm in 2022, gas prices were higher. They were five bucks on average in 2022. Inflation was two and a half times what it is now. It was nine percent annualized in the summer of 2022. And so, but still, Democrats held their own, right? Like the partisans on both sides turned out and it was not a red wave election. And so, it is true that we've like Democrats have shifted from talking about a lot more sort of normative stuff and, you know, Democratic norm breaking things that Trump does to material concerns. But, you know, in 2022, there were a lot of material concerns at play and still the partisan polarization won out. So, what could be different about this election where Republicans don't still just turn out for their guy regardless of worsening inflation and increasing gas prices and whatnot? I mean, I think there's a lot of stuff like people have had more time to be frustrated with inflation. He's more of a lame duck like he's been around for a very long time. There's a certain exhaustion perhaps. But I think what I'm really focusing on, which gets back to the like, this is a knitting together, perhaps of 2006 and 2018, which is that when Biden was president, he did some things that he said he was going to do that were popular at the time that turned out to be very unpopular and probably the wrong policy at the wrong time and launched a backlash against him, right? The two trillion that Democrats passed and he signed as soon as he got into office that turned out inflationary undoing the Trump error restrictions on immigration, which caused a crisis at the border. When he did those things, people actually wanted him to, you forget, but like, those were popular when he was elected. But in reality, things didn't turn out the way that folks wanted them to. For Trump, those two issues are tariffs and immigration. He said he was going to do them. The tariffs were actually popular when he got elected, but the consequence was increasing prices. Immigration, in 2024, Americans said they wanted mass deportation. That's what they got. They didn't want it this way. There's a backlash that's unpopular. But think about all of the things that Trump has done that are the opposite of what he said he would do that weren't even popular when he first did them. He said he was going to end forever wars. He started a forever war in Iraq, Quagmire in Iran. He said he was going to lower prices. That Iran war ended up raising prices and pretty dramatically for the exact kind of voter who had supported him for the last 10 years, like farmers in the heartland. He said that he was going to carry the mantle of the little guy. You rarely see him in public without a billionaire. He, one of his innovations in 2016, was skepticism of China. Now he's like dining with the Chinese, hugging them clothes, giving them whatever chips they want, etc. He was going to drain the swamp. He didn't release the upsteam files and like the Baroque corruption has run rampant. And so everyone thinks that like politicians are hypocrites and they're all corrupt and whatever. But a lot of times they do the things that they say they're going to do. They just overread their mandate. They do them in a way that's unpopular. They're overly partisan. They're playing to their base, whatever. In this instance, Trump has not been playing to his base. I don't know what he's been doing. But he has betrayed everything that he pitched to his voters that helped remake the Republican Party in a more populist vein. So he's just really betrayed people. And the things that he did that were unpopular when he did them are now even less popular. The Iran War, all the inflation, whatever. And so I think if the bottom really falls out, the story here is that Trump himself sort of unknit this coalition that he innovated back in 2016, all on his own. He did that. And the groups that are new to that coalition are the ones who are fading out from it. Or maybe just in a lot of cases, not voting, right? It's the people that it's the groups that people, this is the fucking problem. It's like people, people who really know what they're doing, understand mean reversion. People who are midwit think everything is a trend always go up, right? States do change a little bit. I remember in 2006, the Bush midterm, you had Democrats doing, compared their well in rural areas, it was kind of a last gas, but like, because that's kind of where you have a lot of military families and things like this. That may be this discussion last week. But like, yeah, Trump has really stepped in it in every way possible. And a lot Decisions are really strange. I don't think it's also but yeah, we're kind of seeing I mean, this is you know, we're a decade into this and it's also like I do think we are seeing a Country that has bit like the culture of the the political culture of the country is fundamentally changed we're seeing the corruption Just be more a part of politics and as we've talked a lot about on the show Corruption now becoming more of a fixture of voters interests and I do think that it's gonna make the 28 election So interesting Because both of the parties are kind of a mess and the country feels so different than it did in a lot of ways 10 or 15 years ago and You know, I whatever this will we'll talk about all this actually election, but I'm just kind of like You know rise of populism things like that like where you know where to or do we see like everyone just go back to like I just want you know Some former evangelical mega church pastors running my state and you know what I mean like you know the kind of classic old American Candidate. I don't know. It's gonna be a very Wild West political season five five words Haley Stevens John Federman dream team That and raid fate everyone guys the last time because because also the end of this midterm cycle means the beginning of the 2028 primary season and I'll just say the last time that both parties had fairly competitive open primaries on either side was when we Created our original podcast together in 2016. So get ready for a wild fucking ride no matter what happens on Tuesday night. We're gonna leave it there for today I want to remind folks of a couple things the live show that we have at CrookedCon Nate and I are also going to be doing live coverage on election night on our respective Substitutes were teaming up with the folks at slow boring and the argument We're gonna have a live stream video that everyone can watch. We're gonna have a live blog that's paywalled We're all of the Saucy salty NSFW Nate takes like everything you've heard on this podcast today We'll live behind a paywall so become paid subscribers over there and we are also going to be hearing from Clare Malone throughout the evening as well She'll also be joining our friends at Crooked over on YouTube And then we have a live show on that Saturday We're gonna make sense of it all. Oh, sorry actually we're going to have another we have a podcast on Wednesday We're gonna debrief it all and see how wrong we all worry about everything we said this entire election and you can shame us um, and then we have a live show on Saturday At Crooked Con so lots to look forward to we're gonna get some rest between now and then but Nate and Clare This has been this covering this midterm has been an unexpected treat with the two of you what a delight What a delight That's it for today's episode of still counting listen wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe on YouTube at still counting podcasts We back on Wednesday evening for a regular episode looking at the election Still counting is a crooked media production executive produced by giland drew Clare Malone and Nate silver our team includes Saul Rubin Emily for Claudia Shang Charlotte Landis Reed Sherlin Johanna case Ben Hefcoat Matt to grow Katie Long and Adrian Hill our music is by Break master cylinder our production staff is proudly unionized with the writers Guilds of America East Winning never sounded so good. 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