Still Counting: Trump vs. The BLUE WAVE: A Midterm Extravaganza

Hey guys, Aaron here. I wanted to share with you an excerpt from a new series we're so excited about here at Crooked Media. It's from the folks who brought you the 538 podcast and it's called Still Counting. Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Galen Druke have spent their careers breaking down political data, honing their expertise in the numbers behind the numbers, election results, demographic changes, historical trends, and the polls. And on their new show Still Counting, they'll cover even more from politics to prediction markets to AI and even sports. You'll get rigorous analysis if you hat takes, but no spin or false sense of certainty, just the numbers and what they tell us about this moment delivered fresh each Wednesday evening. Now, I don't want to show favoritism here, but I have had a girl crush on Claire Malone's work for years and years. And I am so excited to hear her, Nate and Galen together, making sense of our world of numbers and also Claire, if you're listening, I have a girl crush on you. Enjoy. I think I'm just like a little bit nervous. That's why I know I know it feels weird. It feels weird. Welcome to Still Counting. I'm Galen Druke. I'm Claire Malone. And I'm Nate Silver. And we're talking too fast because it's the first episode and we're a little nervous. I also read my name. I was like, I'm Claire Malone. And this is our first official episode. Yes, we did a freed warmer. Yes, we talked to PodSafe America, but this is it folks. From now on on Wednesday evening, you're going to get a still counting podcast episode in your feed. And so for, you know, first, I'll say this is what we're going to do on today's podcast. We're going to do in midterms extravaganza. We're even going to kind of play a game. We're also going to talk about sort of the past year plus in Republican voter sentiment. It's been a pretty topsy-turvy year for the Trump coalition. And we're going to talk about the convention and all that does the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death. Before we get into everything that we have to cover today though, we should say welcome back everybody to our past listeners. Spread the word. Welcome to the new people. Hopefully, if you have no idea who we are, really, welcome to still counting. Well, actually, Claire, who are we? Who are we? I'm Claire Malone. We all work together at a data site called 538. And I was hired by Nate to be like the normal magazine reporter. To be normal. To be like a magazine reporter person. And then my, I'm sort of a traditional reporter. I am a writer at the New Yorker. I cover media and politics there. And I am currently on book leave for the year, actually going back in like six months. And I'm writing a book about the maha movement. That's who I am. Nate, who are you? I'm Claire Malone. Yeah. So my trajectory into journalism, if that's what you want to call it, is highly non-traditional. Before I ever like got into journalism, I was an online poker player. I was building baseball models. Basically, 2008 comes along. I'm living in Chicago. This campus hipster, as I thought it name Barack Obama, decides to run for president. It was a very exciting time in politics and also a time when there had been in baseball and sports a lot to talk about analytics. This was a kind of money ball revolution, so to speak. I was getting burned out with the baseball stuff. The poker was not going super well, to be honest. And so started trying to build a forecasting model first for the Democratic primary in 2008. And then general election. And it just kind of improbably, improbably took off. But yeah, I, you know, I try to look at the world, I sometimes do reporting, but I'm looking at the books. For the books, I do actually do reporting, which for the most recent book involved hanging out in Las Vegas playing poker for a year. I spent all time in Vegas. Yeah. It was a nice excuse to look on Valley Miami. But like, I don't do a lot of insider gossip with, oh, what's the scoop about the internal polls in New Hampshire? Like, I think that is actually a waste of time. You're being spun a lot of time. I think the goal of a model. We talked about this on the Podsave trailer. It's to force yourself to be more rigorous in, in analyzing the news. And explaining how you view the world. And now, and, and, and it had a, he started 5/3 day, which was at the New York Times, then moved to ESPN, then they closed it. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Now he has a wonderfully silver bulletin, which is a neat silver dot net. But like, we look, we got flippers or mentors model. We got. OK, I will do a brief or who am I? I was hired by Nate at 538. Not in the less weirdness initiative. I'll tell you that much. I was hired to be a podcast twink at 538. We were hired at about the same time. Yes, we were. We came from Wisconsin. I came from straight from Wisconsin public radio, which at the time I could not have imagined how good of an education Wisconsin would have given me for what was to come in American politics. Well, I'm doing incredibly well. Anyway, I stuck around 538 for about a decade where I did basically a combination of field reporting analysis, looking at the data, did things like the Jaymandering project. And once 538 shut down, I started GD politics, which is a podcast that I host on Mondays and Thursdays talking to a bunch of people who are journalists, authors, sometimes politicians, pollsters who look at data and try to make sense of it all. And I'm going to try to take some of that knowledge that I get from all the people I talk to and bring it to folks here as well. But anyway, enough of that, enough throat clearing. Let's dive into what's ahead today. But first, let me just say dear listeners and for our YouTube audience, I'm looking straight to camera for this one. Previous listeners, new listeners alike, spread the word, subscribe on YouTube, wherever you listen to podcasts, also rate and review us. Like, I don't know exactly how the algorithm works. That's Nate's job. But apparently on Apple podcasts, the more you rate and review us, the higher up we go and the more people see us. And then we'll maybe get introduced to the podcast. Basically, we're out here trying to rebuild an audience. And it's going to, it's like a political campaign. It's going to take all of us. Yes. Okay. Third, I would never do that. That's why we're good. We're doing our duty. The podcast podcast twunk now. Okay. We are officially post-baked. We're officially, I almost wore a white suit coat this morning, which first of all wouldn't have. Claire would have popped on that. You're a conda nest employee. You must not be wearing white after labor day. It's an old school rule. So yes, we are post-baked, which is officially when we stop wearing white, when we go back to school. It is also historically when people begin to tune into the election cycle in our highly polarized and partisan and engaged environment. I think people pay attention a little bit sooner than that. But nonetheless, we are going to use that as an opportunity to dive into the midterm. So right now, Nate, your model named flipper suggests that Democrats have an 83% chance of winning the house. And the senate forecast is split exactly 50/50. Nate, did you design the forecast that way to build suspense at the start of election season? I'm kidding. So when you first launched the senate favored Democrats slightly, not overwhelmingly, but I think it peaked out about 58% less than a month ago in terms of Democrats likelihood of taking the Senate. What has happened between then and now? So a couple of things have happened. Number one, people get really sensitive about like 50 versus 55, versus 57. It's not a big deal. It's like in an NBA game, it's like one point being scored, or two points being scored, you take it from nicks ahead by a point to the raptors ahead by a point or whatever else. So when you're near 50/50, small moves affect the probability of a fair bit, that's getting a little technical. There are a couple of things that have happened. One is that we've started to get more polls among likely voters and not just registered voters. And that matters because turnout is relatively low in midterms higher than it used to be. But as our model's been adjusting to those, early in the cycle, it felt like there was a bigger didn't feel like. I guess I don't know if it has feelings. I guess we use AI, right? I mean, maybe I don't know if they're vermorphizing models, Nate. I used to be an anti-anthropomorphicizer and now, now just to say, oh, the model thinks. Anyway, as we've gotten more generic, ballot polls among likely voters, they don't show quite as much an enthusiasm gap. I mean, I'm being too technical. Now I'm just, by the way, now I'm just thinking about whether or not you think the model could ever kill you for discussions on Twitter about AI. You know, I switched from Claude to Chechi PT because it was trying to kill you. The Claude Opus' were kind of weird, right? They would like, they'd be quite stubborn and lazy. What is a Claude Opus? I don't use it. We have the full range of AI use here, which is like, Nate has at least 12 AI employees. I use AI. I regularly, but like, don't make it code for me. I literally, you don't use AI. I do not use AI. I don't know at my time. Here's a summary version, right? As we get closer to the election, I think you see like a little bit of a rebound in Republican enthusiasm. It's having a marginal effect on the numbers and some of these kind of less pulled races in the generic ballot. Look, Trump's approval rating is 38% or so. His disapproval rating is 58%, 59%. He's not very popular, but Democrats aren't that popular either. So I think you might be seeing just the slightest bit of a reversion to the mean, but there's lots of layers in flipper. There are expert forecasts, you know, is New Hampshire now a state that's in play? How realistically do we take Talleriko's? You know, the model says, Telleriko is a slight favorite in Texas. Do we buy that or not? - We're gonna get into actually all of these dates. And we're even gonna get into Trump's popularity and his coalition and whatnot. But first we're gonna play a little game. - I mean, not first. We're gonna play a little game in order to talk about all of these states. - But it's educational. We're not. A little game, which is we're going to draw the most competitive Senate races out of a hat, and that's most competitive according to the polling averages. And that means that we don't know the order that we're going to talk about. - Yeah, we're going to give you the state of the race in Game of Thud. - Yes, exactly. And I will say, I have a GD politics hat here, which is only because we don't have-- - Shame on your shameless shill. - Shame on, because I'm a shameless shill. And also because we don't have still counting merch yet. But I hear it's coming. I hope it's coming. I think it's coming. I think it's coming. You know, we got to, neat. You got to stop advertising. I mean, we all love the next. We live in New York City, but you got to stop advertising the next for free - We're getting silver bullets in hats. By the way, I'm happy to advertise the next. You know, as long as Dolan doesn't kick me out of-- - Okay. - He's good. - You are first. - Okay. - So pick a race out of the hat. - Wait, by the way, last night in preparation for talking about all of the Senate races, I think I watched ads for every single Senate candidate or most of them just to kind of get a flavor. I was like, I want to see like what-- - And did it make you feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about American politics? - Well, I have to say, it was quite pessimistic. Like that was after watching like, you know, kind of close to like 40 minutes of just like, you know-- - Don't, don't, don't, like-- - It's, it's, well, none of these people have ever been to Washington DC. (laughing) It was, it was basically all about like how much beef costs and isn't it terrible and insurance companies? And that was both parties. It was like, yeah, it was quite striking how public it was. Anyhow. Okay, I picked North Carolina, which is a bad pick. (laughing) It's definitely a bad pick. It's a bad pick because we're pretty sure that the Democrat Roy Cooper is going to win in his race against Republican Michael Wattley, Roy Cooper, and that win probability according to Flipper trademark Nate's over. - It's pronounced with the dolphin, it's like Flipper. (laughing) - By the way, how did you name it? - We've already had a problem with Ferries and the 538 politics podcast brand. We really don't need to give them any fodder. - How did you name it, Flipper? - R's are good 'cause like R is for regression or like-- - No, I don't like that. - Okay, so, but Flipper gives the Democratic win probability at 86.9 percentage points. - Let's put it like that, it's, it's not a sure thing that Cooper wins a North Carolina. - But it would be embarrassing. - But if he doesn't, Democrats are fucked anyway. That means the polls are probably way off again. They need four seats. By the way, Gail and you're saying, well 50, 50 is just a cop out. It's kind of a coincidence because like, we think it's gonna be, and everyone thinks it's gonna be a very democratic year, but they have to win four seats, two of which are in quite red states. North Carolina is not a quite red state. It's a slightly red state. Like we have in your, your handwriting's actually a bit of a fucking, like-- - This is, this is Saul. - This is Saul. - This is Saul. - We're introducing producer Saul, who has Indians reading pretty good handwriting, and I would agree with that. - That's the only job that might survive the AI apocalypse is like good handwriting. It's rare. - What you were gonna say is that Trump won North Carolina by three points in 2024, which is a slight red state. - And Harris only, he only won the whole thing by one and a half point, right? So North Carolina actually moved toward the tipping point. It was one of the few positives out of Kamala Harris's night in November 2024 was that North Carolina actually became more purple, and Cooper's a strong candidate. He's the former governor. If he weren't to win, then it means the polls were way off, we're way off again. - Right. - Yeah. I mean, in terms of overall trends to look at, I think an interesting one here is that we've all been talking about the anti-establishment sentiment amongst the electorate this go around. Roy Cooper is like a two-term governor. He has-- - He's a good candidate, like well known in the state. - But he is, I mean, he's not really the establishment because he's running against the Democratic Party in part, and he's like, you know, I don't belong to anybody. I'm my own man. He's very much been a feature of state politics and not national politics. And so I think-- - The benefit of being a governor. - Suggest that he is a good candidate to run in North Carolina. But he's not running, you know, the Republican Michael Wattley is not really a populist outsider who can say the establishment has sort of taken the country in the wrong direction, whatever. He's like the former chair of the Republican Party in North Carolina. - So I think whereas maybe being so entrenched in politics could have been of vulnerability, the contours of this race are not gonna let us see that. - Great, so take a way is Panic at the Disco for Democrats if-- - Roy Cooper loses. - Nate? - Next race that you're picking out of the hat. - Okay. - Second there. - Of course. Is this Rick Michigan? - Michigan. - Oh, god, god, god. - Dramatic pick. - I'll say I'd leads by roughly two points in the civil rules and polling average. Does that include, by the way, a new Glen Gariff poll? I don't think that came out last night after a publication deadline that might cut it down to one or one and a half. Look, we've talked a lot about Michigan. If you haven't listened to any of the previous episodes, - We're more applaud-safe America talking about the Michigan race. - The basically of the land is something like this. Michigan is about as purple as it gets, it almost exactly follows the national trend. The national trend this year is around D plus seven, meaning in the average state, if you count up all the votes for all four and in 35 house races, you'd expect Democrats to win by about seven. Michigan therefore is also about a plus seven. The question is, can L-Syed be a quote unquote bad enough candidate? I'll explain what I mean by that, right? Or microtures a quote unquote good enough candidate to overcome that seven point spread. Now, the different ways to define bad candidate, when a certain type of election nerd, like me, means that it just means they're likely to underperform the baseline. It doesn't mean they're a bad person. It doesn't mean that I don't know if there are any-- - They're not charismatic, or yeah. - And there's a lot of research that I think people are in some degree of denial about that says, in general, more moderate candidates, how you define moderation is complicated, tend to overperform. - And moderation, we should say, just complicated to define it, can often be affected by gender, race, things like that. - Absolutely, it's interesting, by the way, that El Sayyed is kind of like playing in to this kind of almost like fuck boy image, right? It's like, oh yeah, like women, I like, you know, it's like, he's not like-- - I think it's more like he lifts, right? - He lifts, he lifts. - So he's raised a lot of money. He inspires a lot of young voters. He also turns off a lot of voters. And so, but, you know, here's the thing, even if you believe, and we do, that moderation, hard to define, probably helps. We also understand that polarization is driving everything. And actually, voters are pretty smart, right? Voters might say, I understand that Mike Rogers might come across as moderate, but empirically, he's going to vote with Trump, the large majority of the time. And El Sayyed, we'll probably vote with Democrats, the large majority of the time. And we're kind of moving into a parliamentary system where the candidates matter less. So, in a model, you might say, okay, there's like a three or four point penalty here. A seven point question is enough to cover it. In the polls, there's for now, a little bit more of a penalty. It's closer to a toss up, maybe El Sayyed, by one point in plus seven. - And by the way, in my tour of candidate ads last night, I mean, I actually think the way that El Sayyed is kind of trying to present himself to general election voters is not moderating on the issues, right, which is, which is, I think, kind of, you know, key for his campaign, right? He's running a real, like true believers, Medicare for all plan in some ways. He's not actually a democratic socialist, but I think he's sort of running the Elizabeth Warren playbook where it's like, I'm a progress, no hold on, wait, let me finish my thought, which is like, I'm a progressive, but like, don't worry, I'm not here to tear down capitalism. Like, that was her thing, but I think where he is, where you see him trying to quote unquote moderate, is on that perception of him as an extremist, right? So, like, he has a lot of stuff about like, he has the ad with his grandparents, he has the ad about like, I grew up playing football in Michigan. Like, I feel obligated as a Ohio and just say muck fish again. But like, that stuff, that stuff. - Was that one planned? Was that one planned? - It wasn't, it just came to me. It just came to me, it just came to me. - But that's where he's trying to moderate on is the perception, right? Like of him as a, as the, like, scary foreigner, right? Which, by the way, like Rodgers is playing into by like, saying his, saying like, "Oppel Rahman." And, you know, so there's, there's interesting dynamics, about what we mean as a moderate candidate. I'll say to somebody who got some blowback from, in the comments after we were on. - Never in the comments, man. - Because I had described El Sayed as a below average candidate or liable to perform below where a quote unquote generic Democrat is. I was really talking about the numbers and the perception of El Sayed as an extreme candidate. And I think like, people interpreted that all to be about Israel because that's kind of where a lot of the comments are sort of, I guess, in the left space online. But I really don't actually think as much as that has been a sort of knockdown dragout fight for the Democratic Party. What is going to decide this race? I think the most important thing that, like my takeaway for the Michigan race is that it is a very high profile test for progressives for the activist left. You said he hasn't moderated that much. I will say on issues like, and I think issues like Defund the police. abolish ice, Medicare for all, those kinds of things will actually motivate voters more than the Israel question, because those are the, for example, healthcare, safety, cost of goods, corruption. Those are the kinds of things that are motivating voters in the selection. I mean, I looked through all of the polling and really like the Israel Palestine question as much as it may motivate activists for the broad sort of base of American voters, it is not ranking up there. It's really, again, inflation sort of incompetence and government and corruption, then the economy more broadly. Data centers, flock cameras, like these are local issues that are actually, like the Warren, when you asked you, but like what's very important to you, 50% of voters say the Warren Iran, 22% of voters say the Israel Gaza issue. So I think I just want to say here that like when people, when this battle placed out sort of in the general election in Michigan for Senate, I think that the test is going to be, so he has pivoted away from defund the police. He has not pivoted away from abolish ice. He's pivoted a little on healthcare, where he wrote a book with the sort of prologue written by Bernie Sanders about Medicare for all. He said, you know, I don't want to, now he said I don't want to abolish private insurance, those things can coexist, et cetera. And so I think that this is going to be viewed as a test for whether the left can perform in a battleground state ahead of what's going to be also a knockdown dragout fight in the 2028 Democratic primaries. Look at me. We got the most boring and the most controversial first two picks. He is, he is a former podcaster. Yeah. We're not going to do it right. But recovering podcaster, that might be too much to overcome. Well, we, this is amazing, because polling groups have asked Americans what are the most attractive and least attractive traits for a candidate at, you know, these kind of strategy groups? Can you guess what one of the least attractive traits for a candidate is? Well, now I know. Podcaster. We can never. And well, socialist was also one of them. He said, again, he's, he is not DSA, although he sort of is seen oftentimes with AOC and Bernie Sanders and people who align with the, yeah, I have to realize it. It's like a sake. You can't. You're all older. Considered. Okay. All right. Thank you. What is that? That's some rich stuff. He just said. Okay. I got Iowa, which is Josh Stark, the Democrat versus Ashley Henson currently in the poll. That was an excerpt from the first episode of Still Counting. Thanks for listening. And for the rest, head over to Still Counting, wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe, or watch us on YouTube at Still Counting Podcast. New episodes drop every Wednesday evening. Don't miss them.