John Locke's Andy Jackson: Watch the NC House on Tuesday Night

The North Carolina Healthcare Association is a proud sponsor of the Due Politics Better Podcast. As the United Voice for Hospitals, Health Systems, and Care Providers, NCHA is dedicated to ensuring access to high-quality, affordable care for all. Visit NChealthcare.org to learn how hospitals and health systems are working to make health care more accessible, convenient, and outcome-driven. It's the Due Politics Better Podcast. I'm Brian Lewis. And I'm Skye David. I voted yesterday. About time. Hi, I pull into the Carey Senior Center. I see a car leave out of the main parking lot. I grab that spot and walk in, and I'm in and out in about 20 minutes. And man, they got that thing working like a well-oiled machine, the non-partisan pull workers, so good, so elderly, and so nice. Gailderly usually aren't. They are nice. They just seem to be having a great time. I think they would like early voting to last for weeks. They were relieving each other. Would you like to take a break? You know, I can stand here and then they just felt like a good team. Like, oh, you've ever been to a great Taco Bell where everything's just clicking along? Your comparison for early voting and like, what is efficiency is a, quote, great Taco Bell? Oh, there's something like a great Taco Bell. Okay. Yeah, especially when that food comes out, there's bean burritos or just. How I heard you talk about Taco Bell in a while. Yeah, well, you know, trying to lose weight, so. You're always trying to lose weight, Brian. I have not had one day of knowing you where you weren't trying to lose weight. You know what my personality is? What? Health. What your personality is is annoying. Hey, speaking of annoying political ads, we're seeing more of them now. Apparently, the word got out that some congressional Republicans might need to get on TV and tell voters that yeah, I also grocery shop and I also, you know, have to get my car fixed and prices are out of control. And if you elect me, I'm going to bring prices down. Last week, we talked about a couple of those congressional candidates who went up on TV. But also, David Rouser is up on TV, Brad Nott, Addison McDowell, Richard Hudson, a Tim Moore and Virginia Fox. Yeah, so we talked last week about Greg Murphy going on TV. And I don't think any of these candidates are at risk of losing. Of course, anything can happen, you never know. But I think they just have to get on TV and just, it's kind of like. I get out the vote, I think. Sure, and it all up. Yeah, next week at this time, we will be talking about the election results. But as of now, over 1.7 million North Carolinians, I heard we're recording on Wednesday afternoon and I heard that we would surpass 2 million by this morning. So at some point this morning, we surpassed that. Yeah, up 42% from 2022, that's a startling number. There is someone on X who's tweeting out these cold spark maps that show you how the early vote margin has moved since 2022 and 2024. They also have the US House and the US Senate mapped out. But interestingly enough, this particular map is looking at the congressional districts. If you look at it, it's kind of like blue versus red. Which really interesting is since 2022, 2024, in 2022, the eastern part of the state has moved about 3 points to the right. But since 2024, that same eastern part of the state has moved 12.7 points to the left. It's fun being in a purple state, isn't it? Things just change all the time. All right, so Governor Josh Stein weighed in again. It seems like he did this last week as well. He seems to be a bit pieved that a lot of mail-in ballots are being rejected. He's telling folks, if you can, just vote early voting. Which is sometimes gets confused with mail-in voting. Early voting, you do in person, but there's a window up until October 31st at 3 o'clock. And you say, look, don't risk it. Get to the polls. Bank your ballot. The state board of elections is saying that this, well, I think first, I should say that Governor Stein said last week that they're trying to throw out these extra absentee ballots. And the state board has responded and said it's just a slight increase. And I believe it is a 2.6% increase from last election. So that is more ballots that they're marking, but is it a big jump? I don't know. You know, we've had some high profile visits to North Carolina from President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance. We seem to be in the clear as it pertains to President Trump. We don't think he's coming back. But we're getting word that Vice President JD Vance is going to Kingston, North Carolina. That is Lenore County. He is going to be there today. Today, as we're recording this. So, but I think that President Trump is going to Rock Hill, South Carolina. And I'm guessing there will be some North Carolinians there. Probably. All right. Last week, we recorded the podcast. And then a couple hours later, the Carolina Journal sends over their poll. We were unable to get it in last week's broadcast, obviously. That was my fault. That was not your fault. We just, they usually get it to us, usually on a Tuesday. But anyway, it's election time. So I imagine Harper polling, John Locke, they are very busy. And let's talk about it today. Basically, bottom line, Governor Roy Cooper. He is up in the polls in the race for the U.S. Senate against Michael Wally. But he has less of a lead than their September poll showed. This was about a 10 point lead and it was almost 15 points in September. So, Republicans are gaining ground as we close in on election day. As far as the generic ballot goes, the Carolina Journal poll showed that Democratic candidates still have that advantage. They have 48.5% of those polls say they're going to vote for Democratic candidates and 42.7% for Republican. In September, there was an 8.2% lead and now that's 5.8%. According to this poll, President Trump saw a slight bump in his approval numbers. He is 43.9% a proof of his job performance, but he is still underwater. Well, underwater with a majority of North Carolinians, 54.5% disapproving. He did get a bump from September by 2.8 points. On the other hand, Governor Stein remains very popular among voters. He had a 50.5% approval rating and that was up from 49.4 in September. Also, news that we missed last week came in right when we finished recording that your longtime friend and lobbyist Joe Stewart would be retiring. Yeah, we had Joe Stewart on the podcast. Gosh, years ago, Joe is a golf buddy. He is a hilarious guy. And he's really a repository for lots of information about the General Assembly, North Carolina, politics, gosh, if there is a job in North Carolina, politics, state government, lobbying, industry, in the administration, this man has done it. He has had an incredible career and will deserving of this retirement. I hope that he can play golf more and that handicap continues to come down. Another interesting move in employment news, Senator Bobby Hanig is now at Wardensmith. He will be a lobbyist there. When you feel like the tone down those suits over at the button down or button up, is it button down or button up? You say button down, I say button up. Okay, well button up seems like all of your buttons are buttoned, so you're kind of tied around the neck, you know, that's what I have always thought. Well, he is over at Wardensmith, so maybe he has to wear blue suits. But congratulations to Senator Hanig. As the election draws near, we wanted to really dig into the early voting data and there is no one better to do that with than Dr. Andy Jackson of the John Locke Foundation. The Do Politics Better Podcast is supported by the North Carolina Travel Industry Association. Founded in 1955, NCTIA has a distinguished history of partnering with the North Carolina General Assembly to strengthen and preserve tourism. in North Carolina. - Visit nctia.travel for more information on how you can support your local tourism destination and the thousands of North Carolina jobs it creates. - Dr. Andy Jackson, Director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, welcome back to the podcast. - Thanks for having me. It's been 11 months. - Yes, it's almost been a year since you were here and maybe if listeners are new listeners, tell us what your job is at John Locke. - I have, it was that thing where they say, make your vacation, your vocation. My job basically as a public policy analyst is to complain about the government and get paid to do it, which is pretty nice. My primary focus is on election policy and issues of public integrity. Primarily, the areas I've been focused on other than election policy has been transparency both at the general assembly and at the local level. - Dr. Jackson, when we had you on back in November of 25, we were talking about the upcoming election. The Civitas partisan index had just come out. This is a great resource listeners that the John Locke Foundation Carolina journal put out that shows districts and their lean, whether they're republican lean, democratically, or one of those few coin toss districts. And Dr. Jackson, as we were going through the CPI and we were talking about the upcoming midterm elections at that time, going into 2026, you said, 26 is going to be an election. We probably won't forget. You said that it was going to be a tight election. You even made the case that Democrats were going to have a good year for them and they had a possibility. A possibility, I'm going to underscore that, of taking the North Carolina House. So here we are, 11 months later, headlines all weekend have been our dithmic grads going to take the North Carolina House. So I just want to get the question out there. What do you think? - Well, I will say they have a legitimate shot at it. If you would have asked me this question about 10 days ago, I would have said, well, almost certainly, because the Democrats had come out of the gate so strong in early voting. I mean, they were well above their typical turnout, even for compared to 2018. They were so far above Republicans comparatively. Now, if you look at, as a number standpoint, Republicans are actually now a little bit ahead. They started off a little bit below, but not terribly below, but Democratic turnout had been so strong and unaffiliated turnout, presumably disproportionately, Democratic leaning part of the unaffiliated voters was so strong it looked like Republicans were going to get totally swamped. Now, the numbers are starting to balance off a little bit. It's still looking like a good year for Democrats. So I think they still have a legitimate shot at getting that majority. I would say it's probably a slightly better chance that Republicans will hold, but it'll be a barely hold. - So every day on X, you're posting the data, and I just wanna direct listeners to your vote tracker tool, which is CarolinaElections.com. It's a really cool interactive tool. I don't know how you're getting all of this uploaded and adjusted, but talk to us about what you're tracking every day and what different things you're looking at. - Yeah, well, the nice thing is, we automated the system back in 2022, which makes my life a lot easier. We download this data every morning at about sometime between 5am and 5.30am, the state board of elections will upload all of their early and male ballots up to that point that have been counted by the counties. The counties reported to the state overnight. The state reports it early in the morning, and then I come in, get my morning coffee, hit the start button, and then it downloads the data and processes there. And it puts it in a format that is easy for folks to read and look at. So we can look at the totals per day. You can compare party turnout. You can click on, if you wanna see how things are going in your county, you can click on your county. We've got a nice little map. And you can compare the parties there, it gets all then the demographics as well. If you wanna look at turnout in particular, state legislative districts, you can filter that way. So there's multiple ways you can filter the data to really get at what you're looking for. And we designed this to be not really a projection to learn anything like that. Just a basic data tool that anybody can use to find out the information that they want. - I will just note here that it has the top 25 precincts. And number one is mosquito, too. - Yeah, that's down in Brunswick County. Brunswick County's been growing a lot. If you look at the demographic data for the state, I mean, especially you start with a small starting size, but grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And so they have to regularly split their precincts. So I'm expecting mosquito, too, is probably gonna get split sometime in the next few years. - How are you interpreting this high voter turnout among unaffiliated voters? Do you have a sense of how they would break in a midterm election, such as this one? - Well, you've got the polls that we've all seen publicly that show unaffiliated breaking towards Democrats. The thing about unaffiliated voters is there's different schools of thoughts on who they are. I tend to be most unaffiliated are weak partisans, their school of thoughts. So 40%, 40%, Democrat 40%, Republican, maybe they're remaining 20 or people that truly switch between the two sides on a regular basis. And they tend to behave like partisans. So if we had a way of breaking this down, and we might later after the election, if we had a way of this breaking down, I expect that those unaffiliated voters who voted those first few days when the Democrats were really coming out, were probably disproportionately democratic. And as we're getting now into a more balanced phase, these unaffiliated voters are probably roughly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. But once again, that's just projection based on the little bits of data that we have. So it makes it a little harder because you know, Republicans are generally 90, 95% they're gonna vote Republican Democrats. Now that most of the Jesse Crats have passed away, they tend to be around 90% Democratic. You're pretty confident in both of those. But unaffiliated, they don't have that. There's a bit more of a black box with them. So when you say they're not associating with the party, they have their beliefs, they have their philosophical tendencies, but I just don't really wanna sign up for that club membership, whether it's the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. - True, and there's no advantage, unless you wanna run for public office, 'cause you do need at some, at that point, to put yourself under our party banner, if you wanna have a realistic chance of winning, there's no need to. You don't get any benefit from registering. And some people believe, because your voter registration records are public records, anybody can look you up in North Carolina. Some people say, "Well, I don't want that grief, I don't wanna have to defend whatever party's actions or potentially have somebody be mean to me at church or not hire me 'cause they looked me up." And so there's no real disadvantage to not registering to a party, and there's no advantage to registering with the party, so why not? And if we were a closed primary state, I suspect that we would have a lot fewer unaffiliated voters. You've seen that in other states. - Yeah, to that end, I would argue that unaffiliated voters, such as myself, has more rights than an affiliated voter, because during the primary, I get to choose which ballot I want to vote in, and that's not something that's afforded to the Democrats or Republicans, I gotta take the ballot in a registered way. - Yeah, that's true, that's true. So that is a definite benefit, especially if you're in a situation where maybe one side has a much more interesting primary than the other. - We are recording this one week before the election. Can you talk about what type of election is this looking like? You've heard the mentions that is this gonna be 2010 for the other party or is this like 2018, as of now, what is it looking like? - Well, as of now, it's probably about halfway between a Democratic 2010 and a 2018. If the trends hold, again, I'm gonna keep saying that, sorry if people get bored of hearing it. But if it holds and we're probably looking at something closer to a 2018, which by the way, was still a pretty good year for Democrats. So that's where the numbers are taking us. And then once again, going back to the unaffiliated thing, we just do not know really what their deal is, essentially. And some people have picked those numbers apart. They've found out what proportion of unaffiliated generally vote Democratic and the Democratic primaries. That's kind of a shorthand you can use. And that's still a little favorable to Democrats, but it seems decreasingly so that it advantages Democrats for that. So that's where we're standing. I think we're trending towards a 2018. Let's talk a little bit about the Senate. We've been focusing a lot on the House and you have said from the get going back to November of 2025 that the House was certainly the more dynamic chamber in terms of whether it could flip or not. And you've always said, look, it's an outside shot, but there is that shot. But the Senate seems to be more static. Have you seen anything over on the Senate side that listeners might find interesting? Maybe the most interesting race in the Senate. I mean, sorry, in North Carolina legislature is probably that Senate seat down in New Hanover County with Mike Lee and Jessica Bickler. New Hanover County is kind of a bellweather county in North Carolina because the population dynamics are so interesting because you have these beach retirees like you have in Brunswick County that tend to be more Republican moving in. You've got that urban center in Wilmington and the urban areas have been trending more democratic and those forces are kind of aligned to keep New Hanover in balance and it's been in balance for a long time. And so that's a close seat. I think we've got that rated as an R1, which is about as close as you can get. And it would have been I'm going to take a step back and it would have been more naturally probably a D1, except when they drew that district, they carved a little bit, a downtown Wilmington out of his district, which gave him a little bit of padding. Might not be enough this year, but it could. He's a generally good campaign. He's lost before and he's come back and won again. But I think that's an interesting particular race. The thing about the Senate is they're bigger districts and so there's not many of these kind of districts that are trapped on the edge of these urban counties like Wake and Mecklenburg and Gilford. You don't really have that as much in the Senate. And so those are the most vulnerable Republican seats right now. And when we see that across the board, the ones that you're really looking at flipping a lot are those kind of big county edge districts. You don't have that as much as Senate and plus a couple of the districts. And I think I said this a year ago, a couple of the competitive districts are the candidates, the incumbents there are Buck Newton and Danny Brit. And they're reputed to be very, very effective campaigners. They're popular in their districts. And so even though the numbers indicate that they're close, they've always well overperformed. And so you'd have to go through and take out at least one of those. If the Democrats wanted to get a majority in their nets, really difficult to pull off. You bring up a good point because when we were talking about the partisan index last year, we've been talking about your poll all year. We report on that every month. Can quality still matters, right? So if you look at New Hanover County where it's an R plus one, which means Senator Lee generically should win that district by one percent, let's say to make things simple. But his candidate quality does matter. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you can pick out candidates like this. I think Alan Chester, in what is that Wilson County? I think Nash. Was it Nash? Okay, I get those two. Because those two kind of ran together and then they flipped. So he's reputed to be a good campaigner. That is not an easy district to hold, especially in this environment. He won by a small margin last time. So, you know, having people that know how to run in their district is really important. And we think about the advantage of encompassing. I mean, part of the advantage, of course, is there things you can bring to the district and whatnot. But part of the advantage that's kind of baked in when you say incumbents have an advantage is these are people that have already won in the district. So they've got the it factor. They my day. Yeah, yeah, they may my day of nothing else. And you don't win unless you're a winner, so to speak. And so having those political skills helps as well. And so I think that there are some candidates that can weather political storms better than other candidates, especially ones that have a little more experience that are, you know, reputed better campaigners and whatnot. You talked about some of the suburban districts and a couple districts. Everybody's watching are the I think it's house 35 and 36 and then Senate district 18 and those are in Wake County. What are you what's the data showing in those house seats currently held by representative parade representative Sheetzel and in the Senate? That's an open seat. Yeah, well, the numbers there are the same as everyone we got a little bit more Democrats. But this is also Wake County. So that dynamic is, you know, increased. I mean, I could pop up the actual numbers, but the turnout numbers in general are showing that it's still pretty fertile territory for Democrats. So even if the Republican numbers come up, those are among the most vulnerable incumbents in the state. And so I know that representative parade. She's won some pretty close ones in the past, but this is a one that's going to be, this is probably the fighter for political life right now. I think it's going to probably be pretty close. But yeah, I think that one's going to come right down to the edge. Probably Sheetzel as well. Full disclosure used to work at the John Locke Foundation. Doesn't work there now. And he left before I came on board. So, you know, we've never really bumped into each other down the hallways or work. But yeah, those districts, and once again, you know, Trisha Kotham's, and a couple of the districts out there in the triad are ones that you definitely want to look out for. We have been following the poll that you guys put out once a month, your contractors Harper polling. And we really do appreciate the way you guys share it with us. One of the data points that we track every month is the approval rating of President Donald Trump. President Trump seems to be losing support among his base. And we're hearing that we're seeing, we're seeing conservatives say they are sitting this one out. We've heard conservatives, there's a few or even outspoken say in their voting democratic this year. Dr. Jackson, this has got to be something that you have been thinking about. What's going on out there? And let me be clear, we also know on the policy front that John Locke Foundation has been critical of some of the not-so-conservative policies from this administration, mainly around tariffs and his economic agenda. But yeah, can you kind of enlighten us a little bit about what you're saying in the numbers? Well, if you look back and look at the policies, you know, number one thing is the cost of living. Inflation has not been tamed. I mean, it's nowhere near it was in the post-Covid days, you know, in 2021, 2022, around then. But it's still uncomfortably high. And because it's above that two and a half percent that the Fed likes to have, you know, that's inflation built on top of high inflation already. And so that's something that is affecting people. You know, President Trump had really run as kind of an anti-war candidate. And so this prolonged conflict with Iran has undercut kind of, you know, one of his real rationales, you know, getting out of the forever wars that he had campaigned on. And I think, you know, those are the kind of things that were really the base of his campaign. And so a lot of conservatives saw that as the base of their support. And if those are not materializing, then you're in a situation where, well, you know, why are we here? Why are we, you know, why are we supporting this guy? You know, he still has a strong base of support. But, you know, each month it seems to chip away a little bit. Now, there's too late for the, you know, things are baked in for the campaign. There's not, you're not going to have something that's going to happen. Some announcement in the next week that's really going to affect that. But, you know, we still have two more years of the administration. So he does have time to turn this around. Although the other factor, the third shoe here that's dropping is he's officially lame duck after next Tuesday. And so Republicans are going to start looking for their political future elsewhere. This is common for all presidents. Do you think MAGA lives on post Trump? I see a lot of overlap with, you know, with the Tea Party and that MAGA movement. So the, the kind of populist nationalist political right, I think there's been variations of this from the dawn of the country. It's all a legitimate, you know, form of, of ideology as it were. And so I think, yeah, they're going to be around. What form is it going to take? Are they going to call themselves MAGA? Are they going to go back to Tea Party? They're going to have a new thing. You're looking at really a solid third of the electorate. And, you know, their baseline beliefs aren't going to change. You know, even if with circumstances, if you were to told me that, you know, evangelicals would be supporting a, you know, thrice-divorced person that talks about stuff that I'm not going to mention here. You know, if you were to tell me that 10 years ago, I would have, you know, been dumbfounded. But, There you have it, but the core beliefs are there and I think that they'll find another way to express that in the future if not necessarily calling themselves MAGA. Not to make you a prediction expert, but if you were taking a look at this data and looking at the first congressional district, what are the numbers showing you that we're looking for to happening on Tuesday? Well, the interesting thing about the first, because I had looked at this a couple of days ago, is that for one thing, black turnout is still relatively high in the first, as good news for Don Davis, their solid democratic supporters, if that holds up. And really, black turnout across the state has been up. And so that's good news for Democrats as well. Once again, though, if this was a case of front loading, then we're going to start seeing, you know, those slowly diminish over time as well. And so I think normally that district was what we call on R5, tends to lean more Republican after they did that last round of redistricting. We're in the way the numbers will start looking now. We're probably in a D5 D6ish environment. But to layer and another layer, Eastern North Carolina, the rural areas, especially tend to be less elastic in their voting. This is something that those suburban areas work. Those ring districts around the big cities, the suburban areas, that's where people move a lot. I mean, not physically, but just when they're voting. So those areas tend to have a lot of swing between Republicans, Democrats, those rural areas tend to have less. So maybe if it's a D6 environment, maybe the first district is a D4. That still gets in range. Don Davis is an incumbent who has successfully run there several times, or at least in most of the district now that it's changed several times. And so he's got that advantage as well. So there's several layers, there are several tranches of data that kind of run together that I say it's going to be close. Probably a slight advantage to Davis. When they redrew the first district last year, when I say they, the General Assembly came into a special session to redraw that district at the behest of President Trump. They took Democrats out of the first district and put them in the third district. And the third district, the current occupant is Dr. Greg Murphy. He's been an incumbent, I believe since the 2018, 2020, COVID days, 2019. He got a special election. Special election. Okay, 2019. Thank you for that. But we're hearing, and let's look at your poll last week. I was just kind of looking at where the numbers were coming from. And the third district, I'm not suggesting that Murphy is in trouble, but Murphy, Dr. Murphy, a Republican, former House member, by the way, the General Assembly. He's up on TV. And we haven't seen him up on TV. And since 2019, that special election, Dr. Chris Cooper, he's been on our podcast before. And he says that political scientists call this dummy mandering, I believe. Could we be seeing a classic case of dummy manders? It's possible. Now he's probably still going to win, but it's going to be a pretty close race. Dr. Murphy, Dr. Murphy, I would expect that one to be maybe a three or four percent margin. The issue here, and this speaks to another issue. So I think he's going to win, going to be closer than usual. But he's having to spend his money on his race. And you're seeing that with a lot of Republicans that normally, they would normally kind of send out to other Republicans to try to collect chips that they can use in some vote in Congress later. They're having to spend that on their own race. So that's making it more difficult for their fellow candidates in more competitive districts. And so yeah, by kind of pressing and making them nervous, he's probably spending more than he needs to in that district, in his own district, but better safe than sorry. You've got to use it or lose it in this case. And he wants to make sure that he's not a situation where he unexpectedly loses. But yeah, it's possible that that could happen. I think it's unlikely, but once again, he's stuck with spending money on himself, which probably the party doesn't want. Yeah. And I imagine he is lamenting the General Zimbley Special Session Hillman, Don Davis, or probably an agreement on that if nothing else. Is there a race that we haven't covered that you're watching, whether it be in North Carolina or elsewhere? I'll be honest. At this point, I don't really watch individual races, believe it or not. I mean, I'm just kind of looking as the data comes in and seeing where it goes writ large. So I don't know if I, I mean, obviously that Michigan Senate race is interesting. This is, it's one that you would have thought that the Democrats would win easily, but they went hard, hard, hard, hard, hard left with that one and made what should have been a cakewalk into a competitive race. So it's high risk, high reward in that one. Because if they win, then they've got somebody that's, that's, I don't know, to the left of Bernie Sanders on some of this policy stuff. But they have a realistic chance of losing in what is looking like a good year for Democrats. So that's an interesting race. And you know, that race could end up determining control of the Senate. So it's kind of huge. The 11th district, is that pop up on your radar? I mean, it's there, but I think everybody's been paying attention to 11th. It's looking like Jamie Eggers winning that one. When I had participated in this kind of pints and politics event over in Asheville back in the spring. And I had said that I expected Chuck Edwards to win by about 2%. So I already thought it was going to be a close race, because you know, the eggers are a political dynasty out west. And you know, could bring in tons and tons of money. But then the stuff happened with Edwards that happened with Edwards. And he was out and they got this last event replacement. Jennifer Balkum is, I mean, she's in it to win it. She's campaigning a lot harder, frankly, and a lot tougher than I thought she would. I thought maybe she would just kind of go through runner paces and set herself up for two years from now. But she's, I mean, she's making the effort. But I, you know, I think most people are looking at that race and saying, yeah, it's probably out of reach at this point. I'm going to ask you about the John Locke Foundation. You know, you're a conservative think tank. You're not a partisan think tank. Oftentimes we mix up Republican with conservative. That isn't always the case, but usually you can count on a Republican being more conservative. But you guys have kind of taken it on the chin from some Republicans. And I'll just name him Michael Watley, the US Senate nominee for the Republicans. He's running against Roy Cooper. You've been showing polling that he's not doing well. I think he, the poll he had a beef with you guys about was showing, I think, a 15, 14 point spread. He's at a press conference and he kind of dresses down one of the Carolina Journal reporters. And just I guess being accused of not being team players here. And, and you guys have always been clear that your polling is your polling, but you want to expound on that a little bit. Yeah. It's just like this when we've been talking today where I'm saying also can like a good year for Democrats. I mean, these are just the numbers. And we're calling balls and strikes as we see them. And we are a organization that fits on the political right. But we're I mean, we're really a subgroup of that week. We call ourselves classical liberals. And there's a reason for that. And so on the conservative moment, there's a whole split what they call Natcons and Freakons. We come squarely down on the side of the Freakons. We're actually co hosting an event in Raleigh a couple of weeks after the election to discuss basically the future of conservatives in America. But we don't alter the facts to fit, you know, our beliefs. Would it be easier for us to get our policies passed in a Republican general assembly? Absolutely. Because ideologically, they tend to line up for the most part with us. But that doesn't make us, you know, Republicans. And so we're independent. And there's there's an overlap that like, you know, we're nonpartisan. There's like, say, common cause who we usually don't agree with. We have a couple of narrow things where we've worked together with them. They're definitely on the political left. But then you've also got organizations that look like they're nonpartisan, but they're actually, you know, partisan. And we don't engage with them as much because it's just not as productive. Yeah. And listeners out there whose mind might be exploding classical liberalism, just look it up and John Locke, it's political theory. It basically means conservative. As words kind of have a kind of morph in and out, especially in politics and religion. When you saw my quietly dressing down, what of your reporters? What was what were you thinking? Cause it was all overseas span. And then it made its way into social media. It was hilarious. That was that was Andrew works over at the Carolina Dural, which is actually on the side of the building from the John Locke foundation. So yeah, I gave him a hard time about that. It was it. It was, I mean, we thought it was hilarious that he would do it, and frankly, it's good for us. I mean, it is an illustration that, you know, we're not carrying either party's water, you know, we're going to pursue our beliefs, and yeah, I mean, if that's the take that Wattley wants to have, that, you know, we're conspiring against him, well, that's fine, there's nothing we can do about that. Do you like to ask folks what their election day traditions are? Do you watch the data come in, or are you like, I will digest this tomorrow? What do you do on election day? I've been exercising my refresh finger, so I'll be doing that at the State Board of Elections webpage, like generally that's faster than any other place, because that's where it's supposed to be first. And so I'll be clicking that regularly, I do a little bit of media that night, so I keep myself around. I actually have this really, really ugly tie, 100% polyester, it's a bicentennial tie. So it's almost, the tie is almost as old as I am from, you know, 1976, and it's got these eagles with this, you know, wings out, and because it's a 1970s tie, it takes up half my chest. So I wear that on election night, it's really gaudy. So that's what I do. And I'm actually thinking about heading down over to Franklin County and watching some of the process there, I like to just basically keep myself updated and see how things are going. They've changed some of the rules about counting. So I want to go there and see how they're going to, you know, run the tabulators in the afternoon, they don't have to wait until the evening this year, which should make the data come out much more smoothly than it did two years ago. All right. So I know you get asked a lot, Dr. Jackson, we get asked a lot, what's going to be the numbers when we wake up the day after the election in the General Assembly, in the House and the Senate, and want to see what answer you give folks who ask you that? Well, the answer changes depending on when, you know, what the data looks like. So as things are going, I would, I mean, I would go as far as saying we're probably maybe the House would be a 61, 59 democratic. Really? Yeah. You think it flips? I think there's a genuine chance that it flips. I mean, if, once again, you know, as the numbers go, you know, if you ask me five days from it, I might change mine. But that's where we're looking. This time stamp it again, Scott, and I was over it, this is Tuesday, what the 27th? 27th. Yeah. There you go. Things can change. Senate, I think that you're looking at maybe either 28, 22 or 27, 23 Republican. I just don't think the Democrats are going to be able to crack those Eastern North Carolina districts. All right. Now, you got me going at US House. Does that flip? Oh, definitely flips. I don't think anybody has a question about that right now. Okay. US Senate. Just to make things really interesting, I'm thinking 50, 50 and let JD Vance hang out and DC a lot. Uh-huh. Yeah. That'll keep him out of Iowa and South Carolina and New Hampshire. Yeah. Conceivably. Conceivably. Yeah. Okay. We have closed with you before asking you your magic wand question. So we'll give you a second magic wand. If you'd like, if you had a magic wand and you could change something in our politics, what would it be? Well, I will say the one thing I would like to see, and maybe this is not really in politics, this is in policy thing, uh, one thing I've been advocating for a lot is, uh, independent election audits and there's a bill that would house that within the office of the state auditor. Um, I had talked before about maybe Secretary of State or or even having, you know, hire an independent contractor, this, uh, Utah and other states do this and, uh, unfortunately, it's gotten caught up in the partisanship of it. Um, but what you want with this is you have an out, somebody on the outside, you know, with these counties, contacting them, seeing what's going on, what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong and, and basically, waiting them, no, this is where you need to make these corrections. A lot of times, you know, because we collect a lot of this data. But it's done by the counties themselves and then passed on to the state. And so you might not see some of your own mistakes that you're making. Um, and so I think if you have something like that, you, you foster what I call a cycle of continuous improvement. And so that you can help correct issues before they become too big of a problem. So I would, you know, there's a bill that has that, um, I don't know if it's been vetoed. Um, if it, if that veto holds, I would like to think that if, even if we have a split general assembly, that maybe they could work on a bill on a bipartisan nature to get something like that passed. Dr. Andy Jackson, we appreciate everything you are doing in North Carolina politics, your work over at the John Locke Foundation, you keeping us informed on X and other social media platforms about what's going on out there in early voting. You certainly know how to do politics better. Thank you for being on the podcast today. I appreciate the invitation. Navigating the healthcare system can feel like a game you didn't choose to play and the rules seem to constantly change. You submit a claim, it vanishes into a denial. A doctor prescribes care prior authorization turns into a waiting game, coverage you counted on suddenly disappears. These aren't magic tricks, they're insurance barriers and red tape that delay care, increase cost and put North Carolina patients at risk. Health insurers shouldn't be gambling with access to care, it's time to stop the games. Visit healthesystemnc.com and learn what's at stake. Paid for by heal the system. Dr. Andy Jackson, I love talking to this guy and I'll tell you why, one, well you heard the conversation right, that that basically is Dr. Andy Jackson but we call him Dr. Andy Jackson and we did it throughout the podcast conversation. Dr. Andy Jackson, this Dr. Andy Jackson, that he's leaving yesterday, he's going down to Union County, he's got a speaking engagement and I say, bye Dr. Jackson, have a great visit to Union County and you do the same and we talk about what a pleasant man Andy Jackson is. Dr. Andy Jackson is just an amazing guy and we need to have him on the podcast more and then we hear a little knock on the door to our office, open up the door and who is it? Dr. Andy Jackson and he has a message for us. Just Andy is fine. Yeah, that's what he said and then he turns around and leaves and that is the kind of guy that we like, right Sky? That's right. Yeah, so, you know, thank you Dr. Jackson Andy for spending time with us on the podcast. I love the data that you're putting out on social media and look forward to hearing, you're exploring it all after the election. Bacon makes everything better. Including North Carolina's economy. North Carolina's pork industry supports more than 42,000 jobs and generates 10.8 billion in economic impact every year. That's what we call bringing home the bacon. This message is brought to you by the NC Pork Council and the family farmers working hard to do agriculture better. This week's Tweeter the Week is from Danielle Bataglia. She's at Danny underscore Bataglia on X. My face gave away classified information is my new favorite way to say I don't have a poker face. I share in that. I do not have. I definitely respond with my facial expressions. Do you? You hear a lot of weird things and you don't respond at all. You stay pretty stomach. I don't know if that's true. Do I have a poker face? I don't know. I've never thought I was really one to hide my feelings but maybe I do. I don't know. It's something I'm told we should all work on. It's lobbyists. It's one of the 48 laws of power by Robert Green. Have you ever read that book? I don't think so. He says you should really never show your what you're feeling. It's until it's absolutely necessary at the very end when it's time to get what you want. But anyway, 48 rules, I don't. When I read it and I've read it, I've read it before and I'll pick it up every now and again. I find it to be so Machiavellian and ugly and sometimes people say, are you really reading this and it's not so much that I want to emulate the 48 laws of power although I think there are principles, but it's like you should know how people are manipulating you. Did you know the book is banned in like 30 states from being read by prisoners? No, I didn't know that. They're Department of Corrections. It's considered contraband. Speaking of rules, I have to ask you this because I had this thought. We were on the phone earlier and I know this has to be a rule someone told you when maybe you were a child or you were in grad school that you should use someone's first name a lot when talking to them. You use it so much when you're talking to someone that it almost becomes like patronizing. I do it for several reasons. And I was told somewhere. one's favorite word is their name to the more I say it, the more I can remember it. And sometimes I just can't remember someone's name. It's like, say, hey, I'm Brian, I'm sky. And then the sky will just float out of my head. And I'll forget it. So I'll sit there and go sky, sky, sky, sky. See, I want to believe that. And that's how you remember names, but you so confidently call people the wrong name often. So I'm not sure that your little tricks and tips are working. It is a occupational hazard, not being able to remember names and then, why wouldn't you just, if you're not sure what their name is, but the thing is you do seem sure you just call them the wrong name with confidence. My brain, my brain, I can't explain my brain. I'm not as smart as you. I have to work. That's not actually about being sorry, I have to work, I have to really work hard to be this mediocre. Yeah. Okay. But give me an example of where it's patronizing because I definitely don't want to. It's like when you say it, and then you say, like in my head, I visualize the sentences that you're saying as you're saying them. Do you say words? Do you say words? Yeah. So then it will be like, you know, we'll get this to you, comma, depra. Okay. And you know what, depra, like it's a lot to me, but it may not be to them, but to me, I'm like, God, step, say in your name, could it be that we've been working together for a decade or close to it and I get on your nerves? It doesn't get, it's not like it gets on my nerves, it's just like you could chill with that a little bit. You know how I fixate on things? You know that I have this quality about me, it's one of those things that I sort of fixate on. You know, I definitely think a lot about how what I'm saying is being received. I want people to know that I'm engaged, I'm paying attention, that I know their name, that I know a little bit about them. I try to be a good listener, not always a good listener, and you can attest to that. But I, it is something that I do work on. And so I try, I don't want to overkill though. So if I've been obnoxious to someone out there and listen or land, let me know. Let me know. Listener. Listener. Alright, so we, we boxed ourselves in for this coming week, we have an election on Tuesday, and then we need to get in the car and drive to Concord for a presentation, for a client on Wednesday and Thursday. Something we just weren't thinking about months ago and we said, yeah, we'll come to your conference. Yeah, we'll come for two days. All the conferences the day after the election, great time. Yeah, that's fine. So anyway, that'll be fun. But leading. So we'll be recording next week, probably in a hotel bathroom. Yes, like in Winston's age, years back. We've done it a few times. Yeah, yet cited about the election? You voted, so it's just, it's all, we're just waiting, that's right, waiting game. Dr. Jackson went hard on his prediction. Yes. Yeah. So I'm not making any predictions, I just, you don't want to be in that business. You know, someone told me, but you're willing to put everybody else on the spot for. I am, but someone told me last week I had a conversation with someone they had a conversation with Senator Mark Bassknife after the 2010 election. And he said something that Senator Bassknife had said to him that I am taking to heart. He told, he told the reporter, "I'm on the side of North Carolina. If they're voting for this, then I'm for that." And I think that is a good way to think about it. However, your vote now there, North Carolina, I'm with you. Send 'em to Raleigh. We'll work with them. All right, we'll talk to you next week. Next time you hear from us, the election will be over or almost over. There may be some races that are still hanging out out there, but we will break it all down next week and we'll probably try to get that out Wednesday. So look for us a little bit earlier in your podcast feeds, but until then get out there and vote if you haven't already and remember to do politics better.