6: What Could Still Change Before the Midterms?

- Are you okay? - That's something that they're okay is so triggering. (laughing) - Now I know the way home the individual's doing a podcast. - God bless. (upbeat music) - Welcome to Still Counting. I'm Gail and Drake. - I'm Claire Malone. - I'm Nate Silver. - And on today's show, midterms, midterms, midterms, as if we weren't doing that before. But, you know, we'll check in on Nate's midterm model flipper. - Yeah. - That was a weird one. That's sort of like a dying cow. - Is flipper okay to continue the theme? (laughing) - Debates a conventional wisdom around a series of midterms, headlines, and if there's time, answer some midterms related audience questions. So, election season is here. Okay, a little housekeeping here. Nate, did you know that Gail and I recorded a, what are we calling these? YouTube short? - Yeah, a mini-sode. - A mini-sode. Last Friday, we put it up on YouTube. - Pound that YouTube button. That's the purpose of a movie. - I don't know, I think it's SMAP. - Who came up with that? Who came up with that vernacular? - I don't know. - Smash that subscribe button. - Oh, YouTube, bro. - It's so stupid. But I do still want you to subscribe and watch it. It was fun. - Yeah. - It was also not that short. It was like 25 minutes long. - Yeah, Claire and I got to have a little fun without you, Nate. We debated how influential some of the quote-unquote October surprises have been so far. - Yeah. - And for folks who are only listening to this in the RSS feed, you're missing out. You gotta go subscribe. That's our little teaser, you know? - Please, it's on YouTube too. So you can see what HatNeed is wearing. You can see what our homes look like, or small slivers of our homes. Yeah, we talked about the Ken Paxton leaked audio. Crisis quote-unquote crisis there. James Talbiko having the flu. And of course, I would say our favorite story, US Ambassador, or shall we say former US Ambassador, Kim Barley-Gill foils, honey, please, and X Crisis, which is genuinely my favorite story of the season. - Truly. You asked the most important question, which is, now who's gonna pay for her wigs? (laughing) - I can say that. (laughing) - To be fair to Kim Barley-Gill foil, I think it's a combination of real hair and some sewn in pieces. - Yes, yes. - Or maybe it's all real. That's my speculation. It is full and beautiful. Okay, but we're gonna try to record these as often as possible. So if you want more still counting content in your life, go to youtube.com/atstillcountingpodcast and hit subscribe. First, we're gonna check in with Flipper, where Democrats have maintained their edge in the Senate and the House forecasts 73% and 93% respectively. Flipper gives the odds of a Democratic sweep of Congress at 73%. - Okay, I will say, this is the first week since we started taping that you haven't had an increase for Democrats in the forecast. So you can start to make an argument for a plateau, the generic ballot has ticked down a little bit. I was assuming this is mostly because of gas prices, gas fell from like 450 gallons for 30 or something and Trump's approval rating is still very bad, but like ticked up by a point. But what we'll talk about is in the context of the show. Like, you know, I think we're kind of entering silly season where the amount of noise tends to drown out the amount of signal. - Has the race just solidified, Galen? - Well, there was an interesting poll out from Politico that suggested at least according to voters themselves, 30% said they would switch their vote to a Republican in Congress if gas were to drop a dollar by election day. That would be a precipitous fall. But, and I don't think you should always believe voters when they respond to pollsters in the hypothetical. - Yeah, we've been through this many, many times. It's hard to imagine how you will feel in the future if something good or bad happens. I do think though that there are a lot of material concerns facing voters that if they were to suddenly improve, you would see some of Trump's approval rating bounce back and the like. But it's hard with now less than three weeks until election day to imagine these material concerns, improving to the point where you'd see a fundamental shift. - Can I ask a gas price question because you've been gas price stand over here? - Yes, price, I feel like this is like the odd lot, it's my guess. - Well, because Trump obviously made sort of a huge foreign policy decision where he basically rolled back sanctions to allow Russian diesel into the market. I think there's a lot of skepticism about whether or not that actually makes any difference. But his reasoning behind that big move is basically the midterms. Like, is it gonna make any difference? - When you see retail gas prices, they're roughly two weeks lagged from oil prices, right? It literally takes the oil a long time to get around the world and gas prices are a little bit sticky. So, you've seen gas decline from 450 to 431, the triple average or something. However, over the past five days, oil features are up 6% to $95 a barrel. And so that's like, that's it, right? That's gonna be the last incident that kind of flows through and dictates what gas prices are and to a large extent also energy bills by election day. So it's like, it's like probably too late now to undo the Iran war to the point where gas is magically cheaper by election day. And by the way, election day is happening, guys, people are voting in a lot of these states. We can talk about early voting. I'm sure we will. But yeah, I think the cake is pretty baked and it's kind of a question of like, do we have an accurate picture of the bake, right? Of the cake, whole foods is closed. - It's a boy that can't go. You can't go and buy more ingredients. You know, the CVS is up in 24/7, but their ingredients are kind of shitty. You probably wouldn't make the cake better with those, right? And so like, yeah, we're, we're, we're. - Way to, way to extend that metaphor. - Well, I was thinking about how baked the cake actually is. So I went through, I mean, the cake is baked in the house, right? Democrats only have to win three or four seats, depending on how you count vacancies at the moment and 93% chance that is well beyond Hillary Clinton territory in 2016 if we're using that as a benchmark. I think people feel that the house is baked. In the Senate, I was going through this morning looking at the polling averages to see how many of those averages have now sort of been stable for a while. And here's what I found. In Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, we have seen stability since August or even earlier, right? John also has been leading by nine points as far back as mid-Summer. Roicoper in North Carolina has been leading by 10 points since April in Ohio. It's been a three or four point lead for Shared Brown since August. Now in Texas, you see that, you know, three weeks ago, James Hillaryko was leading by two points while it's starting in August. And now it's up to three and a half points. There's been a little movement in Michigan towards L-Sied. He's now leading by about three and a half points as well. A little movement in Maine towards Collins. Troy Jackson is now leading by just two and a half points. Some of the bigger movement we've seen, you know, a month ago, the polling average flipped in Iowa. Now, Josh Turk leads Ashley Henson by a point in a half. In Kansas, it flipped at the beginning of October. So now, Adam Hamilton, the Democrat, leads Roger Marshall by about a point. In Minnesota, this is interesting. You see things shifting towards Democrats. Maybe if we are to expect the partisanship of a state to have more influence down the final stretch as undecided voters make up their minds, you know, Flanagan's lead over to Foria has grown about two points since the beginning of October to four points. You're also seeing a similar thing in New Hampshire, another Democratic state where Democrats have been underperforming a little bit. You know, Chris Pott has lead over Johnson, who has grown from three points to seven points since the beginning of September. That's a lot of numbers in there, but we're seeing stability in some of the races where the candidates are well known and well-defined at this point and some movement in the states where candidates are less well-defined. - I want to just drill down a little bit on the Democrats because in a previous episode, one of our first ones, we talked about how there had been pretty bleak numbers for Democrats and this is poll from earlier this year and NBC poll from earlier this year. The show that the Democratic Party was one of the things less popular than AI along with Iran. But there's some new Gallup data that says that, you know, the Democratic Party has increased favorability by six points in the last year. Well, Republicans has fallen by five. What is this? Is it something more permanent? Is it just the midterms? Sort of the Trump Republicans being in the spotlight and the war in Iran making everything look bad? - You look Democrats had all their little family feuds over the summer in Wisconsin and Maine and Michigan. If you look at poll, then the Gallup poll found that if you ask people which party is more extreme for a long time to the annoyance of people on Blue Sky or whatever, right? The average voter thought Democrats were more extreme than Republicans, that is not true anymore. Republicans have zoomed up in this extremity measure and if you kind of believe in like the median voter theorem that in general you want to be closer to what people say they want kind of common sense, I would think. Then that's a bullish sign for Democrats too. But yeah, no, Galen, you're right, that like and clear. We haven't seen that much movement in individual states to the extent we have. It's kind of states coming more in line with partisan fundamentals like him in Minnesota. It's still be a big underperformance talk but Minnesota just a week. New Hampshire is looking a little more normal now, right? It's interesting that we haven't seen. I mean, I kind of halfway expect, kind of halfway expect a tick back to Republicans and some of these, maybe the non-Texas red states. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. When the new Congress, whatever makeup it is, takes office in January, then basically the 28 presidential election continues. Do you have a sort of thought about where the Democratic party's favorabilities will be? you sort of think it'll come back down to the pre-mitter. - I think people should be very careful about extrapolating anything from 2026 to 2028, right? However, obviously, the narrative that emerges from 2026 can profoundly shape the primary because the primary is kind of like a weird consensus kind of beauty contest type pattern, right? So if Abdul El-Saiyeb were to lose in Michigan, that creates problems for progressives. And maybe also Jackson, Maine, maybe Flunning in Minnesota. If he does as well as other candidates, and that would bolster them by contrast, what if Democrats have a really good year and all these white dudes in the Midwest win? Well, that might be good for like an Andy Bashir type or something like that, right? If they have a really bad year, you might have a flight to safety. Like, oh, we have a limited map, we have to maximize. I mean, I don't know, but like that narrative will gel quickly. I do want to talk a little bit about the raw numbers as opposed to just the movement. So in that Gallup polling that you mentioned, Democratic Party favorability was at 43%, Republican Party favorability was at 35%. Neither of those are particularly good. You know, in the arts, people are trying to compare this election to 2006 and there may be legitimate ways in which it compares, but in the arts, you were seeing both parties up into the '60s or close to the '60s in terms of favorability. So we're still in an environment where people are not particularly happy. We have more independence than we ever did before. We have more independence than we've ever had before. People are not particularly happy with the two parties. And I think some of the movement that we're seeing here is Democrats who are very mad at the Democratic Party after losing in 2024 coming home, right? There's a little bit of wiping this late clean with some of these new candidates that people are enthusiastic about. 43% though is still quite low. And I would interpret a good Democratic year in some ways as voters using Democrats to punish Republicans who they're very mad at and Trump as opposed to an endorsement of a particular world view. If we're going to see those numbers go above sort of 45%, I think it will be because Democrats do a good job of nominating somebody who can inspire a broader part of the public in 2028. Like if you get a charismatic person who can appeal to, you know, both the left and the center and whatever, I think that's where you see that favorability start really going up and eating into independence, starting to see Democrats favorably. I think at 43%, it's still, those are all Democratic voters, some of whom are probably just disenchanted with their own part. - Yeah, I mean, you need to stay on the 2006 comparison. Obviously Obama eventually emerged out of this as the winner of the primary, kind of on the strength of his opposition to the Iraq war. Do you foresee the war in Iran sort of being a continuing, like this is going to be the biggest issue for the 2028 election? Like, I mean, it was known to be, everyone fucking knew this was going to happen, except the fucking person who was Secretary of Defense, Pete Higgs said, you have to be that fucking stupid to like think the war is going to be over in a week or two. Like it's really embarrassing to have this fucking, like Fox News TV host who's like doing jumping jacks with Marines and like starting his stupid wars that are causing everyone's got, I'm trying not to be too editorial, but like, like, you know what I mean? - It's a very, it's a very strange. I mean, I don't know if we'll talk about this, but obviously in the midst of all of this war, he announced this truly bizarre and I think troubling like public execution. Just a very weird person, weird personal choices. And that obviously won't, he's sort of like a, I mean, the testosterone stuff. You can just, you can really see it playing in some parodical like 2028 presidential spot. - Yeah, no words, no words, no whatever. - You know, I think if we're trying to compare this election to some other past, recent past midterm, there is some draw to compare it to 2018 because that was the other Trump midterm. And then the other year that folks are looking at is 2006. If I'm picking one, I am picking 2006. And the reason is because the concerns this year are almost entirely material. It's about cost of things, national safety, that kind of stuff, right? In 2018, the economy was just fine. People felt generally secure terrorism was a bit of a concern during the 2016 presidential, but it was all sort of shocks to the conscience. - Pussy hat politics. - Yeah, exactly. It was shot every single thing Trump did, led the headlines, it was an outrage, it was Charlottesville, it was, can you believe? The corruption, the sort of, the things he'll say, the taco bowl, for, you know, Cinco de Mayo or whatever, none of that register is anymore. There is the taco bowl, I know, I know, I know. - Yeah, you're right. We do live in a different country. - None of that register is in a lot of ways, yeah. - Trump can say, you know, basically whatever, he can say that John Houston has a nice ass. - He can say that maybe we should let foreign entities bomb San Diego and Los Angeles. - I think that was a little taken out of context, but still-- - I don't think it was. - I think it was taken out of context. - I think he was saying that the Democrats were ready to let Iran bomb American cities because they didn't want to go to war and he wants whatever. - I think we're putting some words in there. - There's one other comparison that I think is interesting too. - Wait, wait, wait, wait, is Galen done with his body? - But to conclude, the concerns now are not things that shock the conscious about, like weird shit that he says about moral outrage over racism or xenophobia or whatever. That has all been put to the side and everything is about one affordability and two, a different kind of corruption, which is like embracing yourself off of crypto as opposed to sort of, you know, like it feels so innocent now that he was impeached the first time over like a shady business, called a shady call with Ukraine, whatever. So if we're talking about material concerns, which is war and treasure, we're talking about 2006, maybe we're talking about something even more severe than 2006. - Yeah, look, in the first term, Trump had the halo that people thought the economy was good, right? And so like all the super fucking shit that people talk about all day on MSN now, excuse me, and on Blue Sky and whatever else. - It's a miss now to you, miss now. - Miss, miss, miss. - Trump could say, these people are yelling and screaming, but in the day your paycheck is going up, stock market's going up, gas is cheap, you have a job. - And there's no forever wars. - There's no forever wars, right? And that's a pretty good argument, I think. Again, annoyed by the way, people are like, well, it's good that people are mad at Trump, but they're mad at him for the wrong reasons. It's like, oh, fuck yourself, you know? - I can make that, I can make that, I can make that. - Dossy, today. - First of all, lots of coins going in the swears jar. (laughing) - But the other comparison I wanted to make, a little more esoteric one, is to 2014, because that was, I guess that was the last lame duck election, right, in Obama's second term. In that election, the polls were kind of bad for Democrats, but then the bottom really fell out and Republicans beat their polls and Democrats lost nine Senate seats, which they took forever to regain. And that's interesting, because that's an election where you're in the second term, and voters just can't be bothered to turn out for the second term incumbent. - And the Obama base was very disillusioned at that point with the presidency in a lot of ways. It was a weird, it was a strange time sort of, it was like the rise of ISIS, they sort of felt like there was this on the precipice of something, I don't know. - It was kind of a stupid election, right? But people were just, but, you know, I don't sense the, you know, what's the case for like Republican enthusiasm for Trump, right? If you look at our Trump polling average, so Trump's overall approval rating is only 37, 38%, his strong approval rating is just 20%. What was that, so the term 38% at the peak, right? And so, like basically half of Trump's biggest fanboys have gone to nothing more tentative about him. And like, you know, look where to make big gains in 2024. Well, a lot of it was young men, right? Young men are not gonna fucking turn out for Ken Paxton or something, you know what I mean? You know, to rely on like a youth surge of first time voters is often not very reliable in midterms. And all the arguments polling are from Laxia Jane has found that like this likely voter gap that favors Democrats, it's more among younger voters, than older voters. All the voters are happy, the stock market's done well, right? You know, whatever they're, don't worry about that. - Don't talk about the answer. - Don't worry about AI and shit like that, right? But like, but younger voters who kind of thought, whatever, I don't like Kamala and, you know, Trump, you know, maybe give me some more money and like it's, I don't mean to, I don't know. But like it's hard, that enthusiasm gap could, you know, that's what would go from like Senate being a toss up to like the disaster scenarios for Republicans. - Well, listeners can tell us which midterms they think it most resembles in the, in the past. I don't know our email. It's probably something like still counting. - In 1902 with Grover Cleveland and his second not consecutive term. - It is still [email protected]. - There you go. There's the professional host. Still counting is brought to you by Incogni. Let's talk about something that doesn't get enough attention. Corporations, profiting off of your personal data without your consent. - You got my attention? - I'm locked in. - It's not tough. - Data brokers, companies you've never heard of are quietly collecting your home address, phone number, even your family members' names, which is very creepy, and selling that information to anyone willing to pay. No opt-in, no transparency, just pure surveillance capitalism. 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There are ads aplenty, the narratives are being spun out there. It's conventional wisdom season at the annual. So we wanted to play a little bit of a game called, "Do you buy it?" Gaelin brings the props out onto the table. - I forgot my GD politics hat, so we got a standard hat. - What is the hat? - It's our studio where we're recording it. - Oh, nice, and I think everyone should note, one of the reasons to tune into the YouTube channel is that Nate is wearing a different hat today. I have a friend who said, "Does Nate only wear Nick's hats?" And he wears different hats. He's wearing a-- - Who is that? - So it's Silver, he's a wolf. And he is the, as Silver with a Y, he's sensitive about both being the species and the spelling of his name. And he is the mascot for Silver Bulletin. - I thought it was a dinosaur, I'm not gonna lie. - Silver is a wolf, he might bite you. If you miss, especially if I hit him. - Well, it's a nice dad hat, okay? - I think people will be very upset to learn that Fidey Fox has been retired. I mean, he used to-- - Fidey is after Fidey, right? - Fidey and Silver are friends. Wilson Fox is a good combination because, you know, Fox has provided the brains and wills provide the brawn, right? And so Silver and Fidey are friends. Fidey was concerned. I mean, Fidey's a little bit cautious and mischievous, right? Even though Fidey believes that Disney does not have any intellectual property rights to Fidey Fox. - Just to make sure-- - Don't Fidey and I think that just people are capricious and angry about the success of Silver bulletin, right? - Someone called Fidey Fox. - Okay, anyway, this is Silver. He likes eating deer. - Is he for sale? - Is he for sale anywhere? - He will be soon, yeah. - Okay, great, so this is a little merch plug. Okay, but we are playing a game called Do You Buy It. It's about conventional wisdom and we are going to pick out of the hat a selection of recent headlines and news and we're going to decide whether or not the conventional wisdom that underlies the story matters. - Capiche? - Yeah, this is not, by the way, for readers, we have another segment. It's like a pricing game's on price is right called hot take hat that may superficially resemble this one. That's totally different. Here we're debunking hot takes and hot take hat we get to make our own hot. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in fact the 180 degree opposite. Claire, why don't you pick first? I want to hear you-- - Thank you. - Wow, producer Saul wrote it and he does have, as we have said before, pretty good hit, right? - It's suspiciously good hit, right? - Particularly for a boy. - Oh, okay. We don't have to get that anti-woke. (laughing) - Okay, here's a headline from Pew. With Americans in a sour mood, Democratic voters are more engaged in midterms. - We just talked about it. - Well, I'm so-- - Good take. - I think it will be taking my turn. - I think the idea here-- - No, thank you very much. I will not play Sherryans with you. - I think the idea here is that the conventional wisdom is that the more enthusiastic party wins the turnout battle, but is motivation an actual useful forecast for turnout? - Claire. - And I'm sorry, I blacked out while you interrupted me. What were you saying? (laughing) - I'm just saying that was a nicely chosen take because we kind of have this conversation like two minutes ago, I feel like, right? - Yes. - I mean, it's, you know, it is interesting in the polling where, you know, when a party is more enthusiastic, they also answer polls more. And the whole question about polling error is like, like, look, we are not getting a random sample of people in these polls, right? We're probably over sampling Democrats. However, pollsters know that. Number one, and number two, if the people who are more likely to be pulled or respond to a poll are more likely to vote, then it kind of is too wrong to making a right situation. - I think that might be a headline down the line. - Okay, Claire, I feel like your turn was stolen. So I'm just going to let you pick again. I want to add one thing, which is that enthusiastic and unenthusiastic votes are worth the same amount, but in midterms where there's more of a differential, like not everybody turns out to vote at the same rates as an presidential, I do think enthusiasm matters more. So we'll just, we'll get that caveat on the record. But Claire, go again. - Okay, there's a Washington Post headline. Half a billion dollars in GOP spending does little to move the polls. - And I have here the conventional wisdom behind that is that the Republican spending advantage doesn't matter as much as people think Claire. - Thank you, Galen. I mean, I think this has sort of been the big story of the last week because Elon Musk's prolific spending, I think like historic political donations to Republican packs has been a big political reporter story. I think I agree that the spending at this point doesn't matter that much, that the outside factors of the war and affordability and sort of Trump's continuing burrowing has had a stand in making his candidates stand alongside him. I think I agree with that, conventional wisdom. - I think the conventional wisdom, I think the conventional wisdom overrates the importance of money and high profile races. House races are not that high profile individually. So yeah, I guess that I'm agreeing with this evolving conventional wisdom and also there are a couple of things, one is that if you get individual contributions, you get more favorable ad rates than with outside money. And for the more, if you have that money early on, like Telleriko did, then you can buy out ad slots well in advance and develop a campaign infrastructure. So like late outside money, I mean, it's not worthless, but maybe you're getting 20 cents on the dollar and things like that and I don't know. I think Elon should buy a basketball team or something. - Are you gonna see the Alex Gibney doc? - I probably will. Yeah, let's go together. - Let's go together. - I think that Democrats have been using this as a story to try to get their voters a little more outraged, a little more concerned, a little more tuned in. They're already close to the max, but to scare Democrats into being like this isn't, the cake isn't baked, you know? Republicans are spending all of this money, et cetera, et cetera. Let's be clear, if money bought elections, Hillary Clinton would have been president. Like the Clinton campaign and outside groups spend literally 200% of what Trump spent in the 2016 election. So money does not, as much as sort of, you can make critiques of the amount of money in American politics, there is not an obvious relationship between who spends more and who wins. - Let me ask you. - Because earned media is a really important, we've talked about this announcement, we already talked about gas prices, but also in each of these individual races, people know can taxed in very well. People know Susan Collins very well. People know Sherrod Brown very well. I mean, there are some areas where these candidates can-- - Well, let me push, let me push a little bit. Let me inhabit sort of a Republican, operative who works for one of these PACs, and they'll say, well, a lot of this money is being used actually for like turnout operations. Does that make a difference versus just ad buys in big media markets? - It might make more of a difference at this point, but there are strong incentives for these consultants to spend money on ads because that's how they make the most money. And I think that in an environment that is so lot, where sentiment is so lopsided and the issues, as I mentioned earlier, are so material, there's only so much this kind of persuasion stuff or even turnout stuff can do. I remember in the immediate aftermath of the Biden-June debate where he just completely fell apart. I was on ABC News and the host asked me, you know, the Biden campaign is reporting that they're having so much trouble fundraising now. Like, isn't that a concern? And I was like, what are we even talking about here? How much money would it cost to outdo the earned media from that debate? Every single American seeing that the American president is unable to straightforwardly answer a simple campaign question, debate question. There's no amount of money that can undo that. It's not the exact same thing, but in a similar way, I question if an enormous amount of money can undo. So sort of the betrayal of no more forever wars were in a forever war. The I'm going to bring crisis down gas has increased, as a direct result of the zikas over powers, the media buzz. Yeah. And just people, if you pay attention to the news, you're just not seeing anything good for Republicans right now. Yeah. Anytime you drive by a gas station, it's an advertisement for Democrats. Exactly. Oh, gas is silver. Go over there. That's a good one. That's a good CNN. That's a good line. That's a good line. That's a good line. I'm gas. Do you even pump gas? I don't know. I don't know. This is the best part of it all. Ney doesn't drive. And I know that because I have driven around New Hampshire. Do you not have a license anymore? First of all, you grew up in mother fucking Michigan. Group in a college town, Claire. Claire. Have you ever gotten a license? I got a permit. I got a permit. This is genuinely new. Wow. Wow. This is sensitive for me. This is going to end up on New York Post. All right. Because it's so weird, I will let you have a turn now. I have to go. I deserve a good hot take. AP. Democrats want a blue wave. New Hampshire is exhibit 1a for why that may not happen. Bad take. Okay. So. I mean, yeah. It's really. We have to transfer. Yeah. Let me translate. So the narrative is that take that's taken hold is that Democrats are under performing in blue states. Something that we've talked about at length, right? True. They are. But New Hampshire is like not exactly. And the governor's race. They're well down. They're probably lose that. But the Cal. Is a Kelly. I ought. Is quite popular. And you know, New Hampshire likes their likes their incumbents a little bit of bipartisan spirit. But I think the New Hampshire. I mean, we've written and talked on the show about like. I think Minnesota is. And unlikely, but real opportunity for Republicans. New Hampshire. So New Hampshire is like its own. It's its own category. You're saying. The people shouldn't extrapolate. New Hampshire people overreacted to a couple of polls. A couple of weeks ago showing a tight race. It's now pop us plus seven, which given us the new knew is a. Former Senator and. Monorid. Ish. Well, you know, he's not moderate. Monorbells him to Trump, right? He's not MAGA. Although he was endorsed by Trump. But yeah, no, I think that is a story that feels like somewhat he needs to get a silver bulletin subscription. And understand that. New Hampshire has gotten. Back into the range where you'd expect it to be unlike Minnesota. Which flag ends up to a four point lead. But four points versus seven points is, you know, four points is within the normal polling area range. Seven points is in the Susan Collins gravity defying. I mean, I also think just like from just like we'd love to talk about, you know, the media narrative and all of this. I think we are at the point where three weeks out. Assignment editors are kind of like, whoa, that's an interesting race. Like what's, you know, and I have great sympathy for that. And it's still like, you know, you're helping inform people. But there is certainly I think at this point in the election, like an incentive to just kind of like write some snappy titles. Well, that's kind of a crazy point, Claire, which is this is usually the point in the cycle where people are like, yeah, let's write about Texas. Let's write about Iowa. But we've been talking about Texas than Iowa for two months now. And it's like, okay, let's talk about, I guess things are closer than you would expect in New Hampshire. That's not to say that Democrats are going to win everywhere. It's just that the narrative about Democrats overperforming in these more competitive or even red states has truly solidified to the point where we got to talk about something new. Just to put some numbers here, Democrats are way overperforming in red states compared to blue states. If the polls are to be believed, like just let's do this based just on the most recent New York Times, see on a college state level polls. In the five red states where they asked about it was like Kansas, Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Alaska. Democrats were overperforming the 2024 baseline by 16 and a half points. If you look at states that Harris won the New York Times Santa College did a poll of Maine. They also pulled statewide in New York, which is the only other like out now blue state that they did. There was an average underperformance of the 2024 baseline by four points. If you look at Michigan, which is the only real battleground state that they looked at, there was an overperformance for Democrats around six points. It is like the red or the state, the better Democrats are doing. If you want to make the case against Democrats, you can say, I don't know, maybe the polling is off in some of those red or states as it has been in the past. But you could also say in those red or states, Republican incumbency field much more immediate and if we're in an anti-incumbened mood, there's going to be much more of a backlash. Still counting is brought to you by Wild Alaskan Company. If you've been hearing all of our analysis about the Alaskan Senate race and Mary Peltola's campaign slogan of fish, family, and freedom and been thinking, I'm hungry. If I want some fish, Wild Alaskan Company is for you and I'm now prepared to say this because they sent me two boxes full of fish, and they're delicious. I have also partaken in some of this fish. It was delicious. I made them into fish tacos. Yeah, it's delicious. I made miso, sable fish. It was really, really good. So Wild Alaskan Company offers the best way to get wild caught high quality seafood delivered to your door on your schedule. 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Go to wildalaskan.com/count for $35 off your first order of premium wild-caunt seafood. That's wildalaskan.com/count for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. Galen, I believe it's your turn. Even though I've been talking so much. This is a take from the ball work. Maybe somebody else can take this take. Magas, Tallariko, mental breakdown, conspiracy, implodes instantly. I will summer my former reporter at the Georgetown voice who now does great things. Okay. The conventional wisdom out of that is dumb conspiracies don't stick. Galen? To dumb conspiracies. I mean, in America, lots of dumb conspiracies stick. I don't think that's a good thing. All right. How about this? Democrat? Is that our first bet? No, that's our second bet take. Okay. Claire, it sounds like you have a theory of why bad conspiracy theory is stick for dumb conspiracy theory stick. I think America has, you know, a streak of what's called the American Bizarre, right? I think it's a Philip Rothline. But we've always been, you know, like, we've always, we've always questioned fluoride in the water. We've always just trusted, you know, things. There have always been the cranks that have, that have, that have. You're currently writing a book about Maha. I think you're very well positioned to answer those questions. But I think, you know, the reason why conspiracy theories take hold is because, particularly in the last 25 years, there's just been an incredible distrust in the media, all institutions, the media in particular. And I think particularly among Republicans. And I mean, the rise of social media, like this story was started by two social media influencers who, by the way, have had like huge influence with the administration. We should say, like the Minnesota ice raids, you could make the argument where, in part, sort of, ginned up by a lot of attention to the Somali community after the scandal in Minnesota. So, you know, I think I. Well, Minnesota scandal was real. This is. No, no, no, but, of course, the Minnesota scandal was real. But then there were these right-wing social media conspiracy theorists who were sort of like going around. And, um, am I right in saying this? I think this has. this happened. I think it was a little bit of calm A, a little bit of calm B. I think my broader point is, as people distrust the new. the mainstream news more, they place greater trust in people who. I'm using the word "trust" a lot, are untrustworthy, who will seed stories for political reasons, and a lot of those stories have legs. This one. I don't think it has legs because there were sort of. Tariqo had actually been back on the trail for a couple of days when the story came out, right? There were like. Just in case there are people out there listening to this, who have a healthier relationship with political media than anyone's been going around this table. Um, the story is that James Tariqo had the flu, at least says he had the flu. Thank you for. yes. and then basically was off the campaign for nine or 10 years. days. And the conspiracy theory spread that he in fact had a mental breakdown and was at an inpatient facility in Ohio. Certainly it seems like the Ohio portion has been debunked. I think there may still be questions for some people about why we're watching. Why weren't you filming, you know, front facing videos while you had the flu being like, hey guys, I'm a bit sick. But and we talked about this the other day, like 90s, 90s, 12 days, whatever it was, it's a long time to be off the trail, particularly in the final month of the campaign. Look, I mean, um, Claire, I guess you and Galen are more polite about describing people, but like, you know, people have a screw loose. You're saying who are who are promoting this? A screw loose could be generous. I mean, like, the like Twitter manga grifters are just not very bright. Okay. Like, and I'm tired of like trying to come up with overly clever interpretations of like stupid grifter theories. Like, look, I don't think it's great. I think it is a little weird that Talariko was off the trail for eight or nine days for whatever it was, right? Um, if you read the Texas Tribune, they're like, well, um, he has type 1 diabetes. Um, and sometimes people with type 1 diabetes, uh, tend to have longer recovery periods from things like that. It also talked about a period where, um, he'd been like campaigning in a state statewide race and like was just exhausted and like, is basically asleep for two days. I mean, look, people have different constitutions. We probably all know some people who are have the iron constitution. Then some people who just seem to get sick a lot when they're sick. Then they're out for a few days. And that, that's fine. It's not disqualifying to be a US standard, right? But like, the fact that like, somebody found like flight logs of like, um, like, so there was some flight from Austin to Ohio. And if Talariko is in some mental hospital, why would he go in Ohio? And then they called this woman and badgered her. And by the way, probably committed various hippo violations or whatever. Um, and she's like, there's no patient by that name. And eventually, um, you know, because she wanted to get this fucking idiot off the phone. As she's like, well, maybe, you know, I guess he could have been discharged. And he's like, yeah, got you. Except the discharge actually happened like after he was seen at Austin City Limits or whatever the music festival was. It just, it's just fucking stupid. And, you know, it takes an issue that like, I mean, who knows? We haven't seen a ton of polling post-fake scandal or the campaign scandal. Um, but like, it takes a story that like, could have had some legs and could have been the subject of, I don't know if you need like deep investigative reporting, but yeah, it's a little, it's a little weird. And by the way, I don't think we should, um, you know, we have some Talariko's not old. We have a lot of really old people, you know, uh, I don't trust all the reporting about Mitch McConnell. I didn't trust it about Joe Biden. And I don't trust it about Donald Trump with Talariko because he's younger. The priors are a little bit different. But like, I think there should be more scrutiny on, on candidate health, right? But this is, you know, well, I was gonna, this is kind of what I was thinking as you were talking, which is that we, there's a lot of I think during up until the Biden debate, right? We had had a little bit of squeamishness, you know, Hillary Clinton, um, passing out at the 9/11 memorial, right? There, you know, any time a candidate's health kind of comes up, I do think reporters and editors kind of a little bit freeze and think, wait a second, how should we cover this? In part because I think you've made this point for many years. And like at 538, we talked a lot about the increasing age of candidates. And, you know, you can, you can extrapolate it out to judges. There is a little bit of a weirdness that we have in America about that is totally because of the partisanship of readership of publications, right? People, people know that they're gonna get dinged for, um, certain kind of stories, I think when it touches really personal areas. And it does become a bit of a, I mean, British media doesn't have this because they're just, you know, animals when it comes to this. But, well, and that void creates room for conspiracy theory. Yep. I think that's really true. And it doesn't just go to, um, help stories about health. I think the mainstream news, taking passes on really controversial stories in general. Yeah. Hunter Biden is the most famous one. Has been one of the biggest, like, the media learned a lot of lessons after the 2016 election. I think like one of the biggest lessons after the Biden era is that the media can't let really uncomfortable stories pass because then they will be taken up. Like, people have a new sense and in our, and everything is filled, our current environment is filled with these shades of gray stories that are frankly like, I, I know this like hard to do and you get a lot of flack for it. But I think that's exactly right, Galen, is that if mainstream reputable news sources don't cover them, then it creates room for grifters. Uh, Claire. Yes. Is it my turn? Back to you. Yes. Headline from The New York Times. Oh, this, this one, this one will be fun. Hillary Clinton steps, steps Hillary Clinton steps to the podcast mic as midterms approach. We got competition, guys. The conventional wisdom here is that prominent messengers mobilize voters. But does anyone really care what Hillary Clinton has to say? You know, it's nice and Chapacore this time of year you could spend, I mean, like everyone knows what they say like they want. I'll tell you what you're answering my question. Well, you kind of read it as a crime, Tom. I know I, I get the way that I looked at Nate. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm trying to read body glue. I'm trying to, I'm trying to. Yeah, go ahead, answer it. Sorry. But I did look at you because I know, I know, I know you, I know you'll have something on this. I mean, this is obviously like, um, anyone who is already listening, I think this is going to be in Kara Swisher's podcast feed. It's a, it's a vox media podcast. It's kind of fan service, I think if you're already, if you're listening to this particular podcast, if you were going to like and subscribe to a podcast with Hillary Clinton, you are already voting or you have already voted, and this will not make a difference. Yeah. As far as endorsements are concerned in general, like, I don't know if this is an endorsement per se, but it's somebody with a bold face name in Democratic politics, who's probably going to talk about the need to get out to vote and whatnot. endorsements matter in primaries. As far as the general election is concerned, I don't think endorsements matter very much these days. Like, even, you know, I don't know, obviously Barack Obama is going to Michigan to try to support Abdul Al-Sahead there and consolidate the party limit, maybe around the edges, maybe the boldest of face name. But there's a podcast, not endorsement. Nathaniel, what do you think of Hillary coming to eat our lunch as a podcaster all day before any member of the Biden family? Like, 100 Biden needs to go shut the fuck up, right? Jill Biden said you didn't buy it to a 100 Biden's crypto coin. But can I, it's all AI generated, too. I mean, I'm not, yeah, I mean, I mean, I think the Biden's, this is a serious point. I think the Biden's are doing Jill Biden had a book. I think the Biden's are on the circuit because they need money. And I, and I think that's the real reason that it's a, the whole, that whole situation is a bit Shakespearean tragic. Yeah. Um, yeah. I think it's. It's you're going to turn. You're gonna turn. How many? Oh, only three left. Okay. Do you want me to shake it? No, no, no, it's good. It's good. Okay. Here we go. Here we go. Clip Trump rallies clip. No, no, no, no, no, cue for our producer. I think the rallies have had a massive impact. There seem to numbers go up every time I have a rally. It's beyond the area, too. Okay. So the Trump theory of the case here is that his rallies matter to the election results. The conventional wisdom is that they don't, Nate. One thing is Trump is generally holding these rallies in quite red states and districts, right? Just as we were taping this like political came out with the headlines saying Republicans probably can see the house is gone and they're trying to minimize the damage, which in some ways is a very mature reaction, like speaking of Hillary Clinton. In 2016, she was unwilling to concede that Ohio and Iowa were gone. And so spent resources there, once she should have been on a more back footed posture in Michigan and Wisconsin that were the true tipping point states, right? So in some ways, it's a mature sign that the GOP is in kind of like prevent defense mode, but it's also conceding that they're in in a lot of trouble. And like Trump is still a entertaining speaker, you know, what was he who's complimenting John, he stood as I guess, right? It's exciting. I miss that one. Yeah. I miss that. His rallies aren't saving people. And he's making himself a center of attention, which is, which is what Republicans don't want to happen, right? Yes. Can I ask a question about being the center of attention made me think of this? This is just like a total weird in your brain goes to a place. I feel like Marco Rubio isn't out there that much and that that might be a really good thing for his potential 2028 prospects. I mean, if you think it's 2028, it is kind of a weird problem that Trump is a 37% approval rating. I'd probably expect to go lower before it gets higher and get the Secretary of State and his VP are leading nominees. But JD's out there stumping, you know, and And Marko's kind of little Marko is giving speeches about western civilization. I know. But isn't that preferable to going to stump for Ken Paxon, like if I'm a Marco Rubio's, you know, campaign in the in the wings waiting, I'd be like, frankly, delighted, by the way, it was shaking out for JD Vance. Probably. It also happens to be part of the job, right, to be not in the United States. Totally. As the secretary of state, what are his other jobs though? Some of them he has to be in the US for vice, where I have been as way, I think also he doesn't need to be in the United States for that one. It's so good. It might be my turn. Yeah. Okay. This is another clip of Mike Johnson in Texas. From my bird's eye view, I am there on the ground in the swing district, so you're going to decide the majority. And I'm telling you something is happening right now. It feels like 2024 to me. I'm telling you, the polling is not reflecting this. The polling is not letting everyone know what's really happening. They're under sampling Republicans. They're over sampling Democrats. How many of you have it answered a political poll in the last six months? No, nobody. All right. This is catnip for us conventional wisdom being the polls under sample Republicans, a.k.a. the shy Trump voter phenomenon. You can't answer yet, Nate. It's scaling's turn. I think under sampling Republicans and the shy Trump voter phenomenon are two different things to be able to understand playing. Let's do under sampling Republican. We'll do under sampling Republicans first, which is yes. The polls are 100 almost certainly under sampling Republicans. At this point, that is an accepted feature of public opinion polling. There are two questions that stem from that one are the polls waiting appropriately since they are not reaching enough Trump supporters and probably Republican voters in the midterms. Two, the people that they are missing, are they going to vote? So to answer the first question, we won't know that until, well, both answers, we won't know until election day. That's part of why there's still a whole bunch of suspense because if the polls were accurately, we wouldn't even need an election day, right? But in terms of are they under sampling Republicans, the way that pollsters have tried to wait out of this problem is by waiting for education, making sure you have enough people who don't have a bachelor's degree, whose education popped out at a high school degree, making sure that in you, there's other ways of trying to reach people by doing these different institutional trust scores about maybe what, if you believe conspiracy theories or what relationships you have to the media or whatever it might be, pollsters have worked very hard. And at this point, pollsters are now relying on a practice which we used to, used to be a no-no, which is waiting for past vote, making sure you have enough Trump voters and care voters. They're predicting what the election is going to look like, most like. Yes, which does get very tricky. Like I would say in 2025, part of the reason that pollsters underestimated Democrats is because they were basically overweating Trump voters in that cycle and not enough Trump voters turned out and Democrats did very well. Again, the polls could be underestimating Democrats in 2026 as well just to say it, right? The polls already look really good for Democrats, but it is still possible. So Mike Johnson is 100% correct in that the polls are under sampling Republicans as a starting point. The question is, what do they do after that? And I hope they solve the problem. The industry in many ways relies on them being able to wait and model their way out of it. I will also say, because it's a midterm, a lot of the folks that pollsters might be missing may not show up to vote, period. So these low-prepensity Trump voters, Nate, do you have any thoughts on this? I'm not permitted to speak. You are now permitted to speak. No, look, my critique of, I mean, obviously everybody can and should be worried about systematic polling error. You know, I tend to worry about it more at the state level than the national level because nationally, Democrats are just up the same amount they were in 2018 and conditions are worse than they were for Trump by most subjective and objective indicators for Trump than in 2018. But like, look, the critique I have, the counter critique I have of like the polling critiques is you're not giving pollsters credit for having incentives to get the right answer and being aware of the problem, right? Like, I don't know if you want a sports analogy or whatever, but it's like, okay, it's like, you know, maybe you have a clock in your house that's, that's seven minutes too fast, right? So it says seven o'clock, it's really 653 or whatever, except every time, and people like, well, we got to correct for that, right? You know, I can, I can sleep in a few extra minutes here, except every time your house is cleaned or something, someone on plugs a clock and resets it, and you have no idea whether it, you know what I mean, this is not the perfect analogy, maybe it's like more like correcting a golf swing or something, I don't play golf either. I like, I like this insight into your writing process, by the way, because you've had some really interesting metaphors and analogies today, and I just, like, genuinely, I'm like, this is like, this is Nate's process and it's going to show up in a silver bullet in some day soon. Yeah, but every, you know, especially post-seltzer where she's like, we're showing things a pure way, and no, they're Iowa bars, yeah. Every pollster is aware of this issue, and the question is, are you correcting for it enough or too much? In 2025, polls underestimated Democrats, it's often been true in these lowest, in these lower turnout elections. Yeah. No, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing, but it's like, the pollsters have more, better, are better incentivized than, than a lot of people, and you don't have that much hurting this year so far, and part of that is because, like, you can wait for past vote. You can try to get out with demographics, you know, but maybe you're kind of creating a, not a synthetic respondent, saying, we need to up-weight Republicans because they're not answering our poll. Well, they also just might not vote, you know? Yeah. 100%. Still counting is brought to you by Zbiotics, and I have an admission. I literally took Zbiotics last night. We did a virtual happy hour on GDP politics, I had two glasses of wine, and before I had those two glasses of wine, I popped some Zbiotics, and I mean, I'm your evidence. How am I doing today? For people who don't know what Zbiotics is, 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. Zbiotics has sold more than 14 million bottles and earned the trust of thousands, including Galen. Yeah. I mean, not only literally last night, I got a wedding coming up this weekend. I'm thinking, double dose, Friday night, rehearsal dinner, Saturday, actual wedding, Sunday, going to be golden, ready to prep for the week, you know? There you go. Subscribe for yourself today, and if you aren't satisfied, they will refund your entire order. No questions asked. Head to zbiotics.com/counting, code counting for 15% off your first order, that's Zbiotics. Okay, Claire, take us home. Boop. Boop. Okay. Last one. The best one. Oh, no. Yes. Is it Kimberly Guilfwell? On the Wall Street Journal, Guilfwell's collapse comes as White House struggles to fend off allegations of excess, I mean, indeed. Okay, so the conventional wisdom here is that I will read another headline from Politico. Democrats are making corruption messaging a pocketbook issue, the conventional wisdom being that people care about their pocketbooks much more than they do about corruption and that in order to make one matter, you have to tie it to the other. He's not the case. I think I buy this. I'm not sure how much of an impact it has on the midterm vote. I feel like the theme of the show has been like this cake done, got baked, but like when you're thinking about this story, which really has legs, right? And you're thinking about perceptions of the party post midterms when Trump will fade even more and what we're left with are sort of the practices that he's acculturated, the Republican party to namely sort of open corruption and cronism in a way that's genuinely unprecedented. I do think this matters to the 28 election. And the fact that Guilfwell was engaged to Donald Trump Jr. obviously puts her incredibly close to the center of the action and like I don't think Don Jr. is going to be a candidate necessarily in 28, but he'll obviously be a big figure out there no matter what. I think it's a genuinely bad look for the Republicans and I think it's a probably pretty strong message to voters who are sort of getting getting as Trump fades and all you're left with is Trumpism, one of the most market characteristics is corruption. Yeah, I don't know exactly what signal this gives us, but in the Gallup poll that we were talking about earlier, they regularly ask monthly, they ask Americans what's the most important problem facing the country. If you add up all of the economic concerns, which includes just the economy, then jobs, fuel, prices, what have you, about 30% of Americans say it's the most important problem facing the country. About 30% of Americans also say that the most important issue facing the country is poor government leadership. So on one hand, you can say, no, Americans really care about this feeling that the government is not doing a good job. The big stories of the past couple of weeks have been this guillfoil thing. And there was another, frankly, story about her having sort of an odd relationship with the businessman intertwining with government work. But like the deep-tug Seth and the leadership idea plays into those poll numbers very well. And I think there are a lot of swing voters out there. If we're going to talk about the voters who make the difference, swing voters out there who think politics are corrupt, both parties are corrupt, and it surprises them little to find out that a politician is corrupt. And so you could say that because there is this general very cynical, negative attitude towards both parties and politics in general, it matters less, perhaps. But here's an important caveat to that sort of LOL, like it's all the same, nothing matters, kind of thing, which is the MAGA movement is now the incumbents. They're the politicians. They're the ones who are viewed as corrupt, entrenched power serving themselves, serving the rich, all that jazz. So Trump and Republicans have none of that grist that they had in 2016 to say, oh, the Clintons are corrupt. They've been in politics too long. I mean, Trump and his family and all of these different characters can really go for it, what have you, have all been in the national news, in many negative and corrupt different way with corrupt stories surrounding them for a decade. And so come 2028, it would be very hard for a Republican to make the case that the Democrats are the entrenched corrupt powers. Yeah. I'm just saying, if I were ambassador to Greece, I wouldn't be corrupt because of good fucking assignment, good weather, good food, kind of important, but not too much stress. OK, Greece is like a top 10 ambassador destination. Now let me add an important detail to you claiming that you wouldn't be corrupt. Also imagine that you're $100,000 in credit card debt, and you need another $250,000 to pay off a car loan. I just, I just blog more. Yeah, just because this is what I would do, I would start a sub-stack. Kimberly Gillefoyle, have you considered starting a sub-stack? I haven't feeling we might see her on one of these paywall websites. I'm not sure which one. Yeah, this is a really interesting character. I mean, like free, free movie idea, right? But just her-- I mean, I actually mean this. Her life story is fascinating. Like, from San Francisco, her dad's Irish, her mom's Puerto Rican, she like married Gavin Newsom. I mean, she is really, like, do you can say lots of things about Kimberly Gillefoyle? But that's a self-made woman, right there. OK, we have reached the end of the road for our, do you buy that extravaganza? It seems like there's some good takes, some bad takes out there. We want to take a moment to answer just a couple of listener questions. And a reminder that folks can submit these questions at [email protected]. And we'll answer them from time to time. Maybe we'll do a mail-back episode eventually. Here's the first one from Brain on the Beach. Why aren't the Epstein files a bigger issue in these midterm elections? Nate, I feel like this is a good one for you. I think it's important to make a distinction between things that, like, acutely change. And I guess we're still using the fucking cake metaphor. Oh, yes. I mean, who do you want to go to the questions for in bycake when we're done? I'm hungry. No, like, that is baked deep into the layer of the cake. I mean, someone-- It was baked in during the primaries. Thomas Massey is a prime example of this, right? Some of the reason why I think you've seen that enthusiastic Trump's support number decline, I would guess Epstein is some of that, maybe not the most important factor. The people who are following Epstein news from day to day are partisans who are going to vote Democrat 100% anyway. And so, like, it's not like a change. Why are there just solution Republicans? Maga Republicans. No, but it's not the-- Like, Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, what I mean by the Thomas Massey thing is that obviously Trump endorsed Massey was critical to the sort of the-- what was the law called? The Epstein file, whatever. The law that sort of put them out there, forced them out there. Then Trump would basically like, screw you and endorse his primary candidate. And I think if you're talking about the kind of voter to whom the Epstein stuff matters, it might be the low propensity Trump voter that the Republicans or some proportion of them are hoping gets out and votes. Right. There is a part of me that's like how representative are Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green of a particular kind of prime voter period. And there's polling that's going to jump. Like, when you ask voters to identify as Maga, like, do you support Trump? It's like 100% of people identify as Maga support Trump. Because that's like asking the same question twice, essentially. But are there people who were quite locked into the project who were very-- you know, Parker Carlson's another example? I think there are probably some. Those are-- I mean, those are people who also pay a lot of attention to the news, but maybe non-traditional news sources where they are really following different-- down different rabbit holes and paths and whatnot. And it just comes back to Republicans and Trump are now the entrenched power that has viewed us corrupt, right? Why is Epstein-Piles matters for Democrats? Because they think that Trump is going to be incriminated in some way, and this will finally take him down or something like that. At this point, if that's what you're hoping was going to be an issue in the midterms, that doesn't seem like there's a smoking gun in there, and that's why it's not a big issue. And also, again, the material concerns are driving this, which is more-- I mean, it's been-- I've likened it to Russiagate. But it falls in this category of broken promises by Trump along with gas prices and Iran reinforces that cluster a little bit. Do I think it's one of the top three factors of the midterms? No. Is top five or top 10? Probably, yeah. But my critique has just been like, I don't know that it needs breathless coverage from day to day. It's gotten a lot of coverage. And I'm sure people who want more coverage of it can find all types of substacts and cable networks and whatever to go deeper on it. But yeah, I think it's probably injurious to Trump. OK, from Fender Jazz Bryan, is this midterms closest in modern times to 1974, perhaps? Republican corruption, bad economy, including high unemployment, high gas prices, et cetera? Fender, Nate likes this, and he's nodding. 74, it's a good one. It's harder to know the elections I've covered elections since 2008, and like, so kind of, and kind of 2006, I was kind of very invested. But for that, it's kind of a fate, you know, I wasn't alive in my prison for it. 78. Yeah. Carter, Carter, baby. So I looked up the numbers, at least for the 1974 election. Democrats gained 49 House seats and four Senate seats, emerging with 291 House seats and 60 Senate seats. The large incoming Democratic House class became known as the Watergate Babies, and their arrival strengthened efforts to make Congress more transparent and to weaken the power of entrenched committee chairs. The period also brought major campaign finance reforms. Certainly, we're not going to see that after 2026, because Democrats, even if they control both upper and lower chamber of Congress, won't control the presidency. And so we're not going to see a whole bunch of reforms. I also were simply not in an era right now, where probably one of the parties is getting 60 Senate seats anytime soon, to be clear. That's the moment that we've been in. I am a strong believer that if one of the parties committed to trying to break out of the game of inches sort of race to the bottom partisan politics that we're in, that somebody could win 60 Senate seats again. I think it would require a different kind of politics than the sort of activists and partisans on both sides are trying to get their party to engage with. So yeah, I would say, like, sure in the sense that there's a broad sense of corruption and that Democrats are probably going to do really well, but not in the scale. It's it's it's I'm just this is a little bit like it's so interesting in the 60s and 70s how much American politics was willing to take at its basically reforming the primary system post watergate. Yeah, like backstopping corruption measures. It's just it was just a totally different. Yeah, I was just looking at the different time. Look at the 1974 map and like, what's the best going on with this, you know, I mean, it's like with all the blue areas from today are red and kind of vice versa. Oklahoma's like really blue and like the whole state of Nevada has one congressional district. A lot of shit going on in 1974. These lame duck elections tend to go badly for for the president, right? In 1974, which next to Nixon's soon to be short lived, second term, the exception being Bill Clinton's second term after Republicans had overreached on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But yeah, that's not the worst. That's not the worst, worst analogy, 74. I endorse that. OK, that's it for today's episode of Still Counting. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe on youtube.com/atstillcountingpodcast. We'll be back next Wednesday evening for another episode. Still counting is a crooked media production. Executive produced by Gailan Drew, Claire Malone, and Nate Silver. Our team includes Saul Rubin, Emily Four, Claudia Sheng, Charlotte Landis, Reed Turlin, Johanna Case, Ben Heffkoat, Matt DeGroat, Katie Long, and Adrian Hill. Our music is by Break Master Sylinder, our production staff is probably unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.