Who decides the future of America?

I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday Story. Historically, in a midterm election, the party of the president does not fare well. Since World War II, there have been only two midterm elections where the president's party has gained seats. And as we head towards Election Day, President Trump is polling at near historic lows. 32% of Americans in our poll approve of the job he's doing. Nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove. Some are predicting a blue wave. It just feels not like a blue wave, but like a blue tidal wave. President Trump is predicting the opposite. We're going to defeat the radical left, Democrats all across the country. And we're going to win a Republican House and a Republican Senate and do things like these. Democrats have an easier path to the majority in the House, but if they want to take back the Senate, they're going to have to flip some traditionally red seats. This election also brings some unique questions around whether the recent redistricting efforts will prove effective and whether any of the outcomes will be contested by the Trump administration. Today, I talk to MPR's senior political correspondent, Tamara Keith, about the biggest factors she's watching as we head into the Election Week, stay with us. We're back with a Sunday story. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I'm here with MPR's Tamara Keith. Tam, hi. Hello, Aisha. So it seems like from the moment they won in 2024, Republicans have been thinking about the midterms, probably Democrats too, but the last couple of years, there's been this scramble to redistrict. How does the political map today look different than it did in 2024? Yeah. So the president and his political team put incredible pressure on Republican led states to redraw district lines to favor Republicans. These new lines were drawn based on President Trump's 2024 base and his performance in 2024. And that was a real high water mark for the president. And since then, key components of that base he built have soured on him. And so based on all of my calculations now, looking at the Cook Political Report and how they assess these races, looks like about two thirds of these districts that in theory we're supposed to be sure things for the president's party are now really competitive, toss up races, super expensive, even some of them leaning towards Democrats. Okay. Well, because I mean, you mentioned that 2024 was a specific kind of high water mark for the president. So how have people's politics shifted since the election? Yeah. I mean, think about everything that has happened since January 20th, 2025 when President Trump took office. Yeah. He has closed the border as his supporters like to point out as he likes to point out. But a lot of the immigration tactics within the country have been upsetting to people. Voters I talked to regularly say they feel like he went too far. People who voted for him say that. And then there's the war with Iran that wasn't really on anybody's bingo card. You know, like he ran on no foreign wars, no endless wars. He ran on bringing down prices just days before he launches this war with Iran. He is boasting about how he had seen a gas station in Iowa where gas was a $1.85 a gallon. And then all of a sudden, the president launches this war. He says it's going to be short. It isn't. It's still going on right now. And gas prices, oil prices, diesel, fertilizer, all of these things that are parts of, you know, people's affordability calculation. All of that gets vastly more expensive because of the conflict. And so he like, he kind of took away multiple things that voters were supporting him to get. And most especially, which his team knew heading in, which everybody knew heading into this election, affordability was going to be key. Ultimately, people feel like they cannot get by. And that's a problem for the president and his party. Well, so I know that you said you've been talking to voters, including swing voters in swing states. What have they been telling you? Yeah. So this is part of a project that I've been working on most of the year called swing shift. And it is a long term project. I am planning to talk to these same voters for the next two and a half, three years. So through these midterms and through the next presidential election, these are all people. There's about a dozen of them. These are all people who have voted for president Trump at some point. A lot of them are Biden to Trump voters. Though some of them are Trump to Harris voters. And as part of this project, NPR agreed not to use their full names so they could speak freely about politics without personal or professional repercussions. And my overwhelming takeaway from numerous conversations with them, having them send me voice memos on their phones at key times is there's just a huge amount of dissatisfaction with the current state of the country. And I ask them every time we check in to give me one word or phrase to describe the current state of the country. That word from me would be anxious. I would say it is a mix of anticipation and a little bit of confusion. I would say that disarray would be a word that would describe the state of the country right now. Scary. I think we're in a scary place right now. Over the course of this project, the word that comes up the most and actually surprisingly, I think is only one person said at this time, but numerous people have said it month after month. One word to describe to say the country right now is divided, divided, divisive, divided. Of course, now we're in an election time when again, the country feels pretty divided. And what about how do they grade different politicians? Yes, that is the other thing I always ask them for their grade for President Trump. I would give the president an F. I would give Donald Trump a C minus. I would give him a C minus. I still grade the president's performance on the job very low, uh, verging on failure. With the confusion, everything that's going on, I would say it's probably a C. I'd agree to the president's performance, uh, F. He's not doing a very good job. You know, these are all people who have voted for President Trump sometime in the past 10 years. And we have arranged from A plus plus plus plus to F. Now the two voters who A plus plus plus plus is Gerald. He's in Georgia. I absolutely plan to always vote in every single election. And I will always be voting as a Republican. Wally gives the president an F. He's also in Georgia. I just don't think that he's an effective leader. And I thought that as Americans, we'd do so much better. They both voted for the president in 2024. And in this midterm, they're going in different directions. Gerald A plus plus plus voting red up and down the ballot. There was one instance where there was nothing but a Democrat running unopposed. And I prefer to write my own name in because I refuse to give a Democrat my vote. Wally, he's voting for Democrats. He's voting for Senator John Assof. We need wholesale change. And well, our Democrats fearing better with these swing voters are some of them warming up other than Wally to the Democrats. And I don't know that Wally is necessarily warm to the Democrats either. He has a lot of complaints. I would grade Democrats as an F as well. And we see this in polling. So this isn't just like my handful of people. What polls tell us is that yes, the president of the United States has an incredibly low approval rating like the lowest he's ever had. People favor Democrats over Republicans, according to the latest PBS news, Maris poll by about eight points. But then when it comes to assessing Democrats, the Democratic Party brand isn't a really bad place. How would I grade a Democrats? I would have to give them a D minus. Democrats get a D minus. I don't think they have been very effective in opposition. It seems like the parties being overrun by the Democratic Socialists of America. Democrats are pretty much put a nail in their coffin because they've said, hey, if you vote us, we're not going to be here for you. We're just going to be here to go after the president and all the Republicans. Yeah. So that's a concern that I heard from a couple of voters there that what's going to happen if Democrats win the House and the Senate, is it just going to be a bunch of investigations and sort of a replay of the 2019 and 2020 era with two impeachments of President Trump and just all of that ranker that existed. And mentioning the Democratic Socialists of America, that's something I've heard out on the trail, too, talking to voters. It is something that has really broken through. Certainly, there are a few candidates nationwide who won Democratic primaries, who affiliate with the Democratic Socialists of America. I'm not good at math, but it's a very low percentage of the total number of candidates. However, if they have gotten a lot of attention and especially from President Trump and Republicans running for office, they have found their bogeyman for this cycle and its Democratic Socialism. They call it communism, which just to be clear, it is not, but they make it sound very scary. And I would say that there are a number of Republican leaning voters who are like, yeah, that doesn't sound like the America I want. Well, in 2024, the culture wars really took center stage in the election. Do those issues still matter to voters? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think we're going to get a pretty clear answer based on the results of these midterms. So I will remind you in 2024, there was this Trump campaign ad that they put hundreds of millions of dollars behind in the final weeks of the campaign, attacking Vice President Harris for supporting trans rights. Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners. Every transgender would have access. Kamala's for they, them, President Trump is for you. I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. This is an issue that gets an outsized amount of attention and has gotten a lot of attention in this midterm campaign as well with Republican candidates making an issue, putting it in ads. Don Davis playing for their team, not ours. The question I have in this election cycle about these ads and again, hundreds of millions of dollars has gone into them and races all over the country is is the issue of drag queens. What people care about most right now in this election, you know, it's one thing to accuse the party in power of being focused on culture war issues, ancillary things. It's another thing to be the party in power who people are looking to for answers and then to accuse your opponents of that. It's like when people are struggling to get by, is that what they want to hear about from the people who want to lead? Well, let's talk more about ads in this election. I mean, spending on ads is at a new extreme. I mean, I think it's going to reach record levels. Am I wrong in saying that? You are not wrong in saying that and in fact, I just pulled up the ad impact webpage so I can get you to leave it down first. Okay. So, but what has your reporting shown about the money being just flooded into ads to cycle? Total spending so far, this election cycle is as of this moment, but probably going to go up at 11.55 billion dollars. Oh my goodness. That is more money than has been spent in any other election cycle up until this point. And I will remind you that in the last election, 2024, there were a bunch of congressional races, but there was also a highly competitive presidential race that cost something like three and a half billion dollars. There is no presidential race this year. And yet the spending is up this high. It is, I mean, like, well, what's going on there? Why is it so high? It's a lot of super PACs. It's a lot of these groups that can raise unlimited funds and spend unlimited funds. And it's also a function of the fact that you have competitive races in states with big and expensive media markets. So there's a Senate race in Texas. That Senate race is between James Talleriko, the Democrat, and Ken Paxton, the Republican. And it is the most expensive Senate race in the country. 569 million dollars on ads. And they may not be done counting. You know, Republicans probably never thought they'd have to spend that much money to hold on to a Senate seat in Texas of all places. Now, Tim, you know, this is not your first rodeo. I didn't get the title senior for nothing. But me and you used to work together as White House correspondents. You mentioned 2018. We were both covering Trump at that time for NPR, both in the White House at that time. I was there the day after the midterms at the White House. At the White House. Trump had a press conference. He was very angry, extremely angry that day. You could tell he was very angry. And I was sitting there like, "Wait a minute. What's going on? Are we okay?" What does this moment feel like in comparison to 2018? You know, I also think about 2020 when he came out and said, "Frankly, we did win." When he didn't win. And the question that I really have about this time is, I know that he's been going around the country saying, "Vote like I'm on the ballot." But does he really feel like it's him who's on the ballot? Like, does is his reaction to this going to be as if he personally lost? Or is he going to say, "Well, it didn't try hard enough. I left it all on the field. I did 30 rallies in 30 days or whatever the tally ends up being." And my super PAC spent more than $400 million on their behalf. And they just didn't perform. Or is he going to lash out and deny the results as he did in 2020? I mean, certainly he talks about this like his presidency is on the line. And in some ways, it is because he becomes a lame duck on Wednesday morning. Well, yeah. He becomes a lame duck really regardless, right? Well, definitely. If Republicans were to lose control of the House or the Senate, they would definitely mean a different presidency for him. He has had a very compliant House of Representatives, a mostly compliant Senate. He hasn't faced a lot of investigations or even oversight of his actions in office, even things like the Iran War. There haven't been a lot of hearings about that even. So the way he has been able to govern where he just tells Republicans what to do and he doesn't get a lot of pushback, that is unlikely if Democrats end up winning control of the House or the Senate or certainly if they win both, that said, you know, he hasn't had that much use for Congress as president. You know, if you think about most of the actions that he has taken as president, they have been executive actions other than the one big beautiful bill act, which is the tax bill and also made some cuts to health care. Other than that, most of what he has done has just been signing ceremonies and refusing to spend money in eliminating departments without asking and tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom without asking, like he's just done it through brute force. When we come back, what to watch for on Tuesday? I'm Aisha Roscoe here with NPR's Tamer Keith. So Tam, the big day is Tuesday. What's election day like for a senior political correspondent? Walk me through your day and what I'm guessing will probably be a late night. Yeah, so I'm an early riser, which does not go well with election night, but I have a plan. I have a system. I have a routine. It's become a routine. I like to go for a run in the morning because those endorphins help me survive later. I go vote. I try to nap. I don't usually succeed. Then I work on spreadsheets. I put together my list of races that I'm watching and make sure I'm ready to input them. Obviously, I drink a lot of coffee. Get my sour gummy candies ready just in case I need them late at night. Yes. We talk about the possibility of a blue wave, but each race is its own thing. It comes down to the candidate and the unique things about that race. As the results start coming in on Tuesday evening, what races will you be watching most closely and why? I have my eyes on some of the races that I covered in the lead up to the midterms, and in fact, kind of focused on them because they were interesting. North Carolina's first congressional district, so North Carolina won. That features Congressman Don Davis, who is running in his third race with his third different district map. They have been trying to get him Republicans in the state legislature have been trying to get him the whole time, and he is running against Lori Buckout, who's been endorsed by President Trump. And I'm also watching the Senate race there. Michael Wattley handpicked by President Trump, former Republican National Committee chairman versus Roy Cooper, the Democratic Governor, longtime governor, politician in the state, generally seen as a moderate candidate. And sort of the other side of that coin, then, is also looking at the Senate race in Michigan, where you have Abdul El Sayed, who is a progressive candidate versus Mike Rogers. Another Trump-endorse candidate has run in that Senate race before and lost, sort of a traditional kind of Republican. And so those two races are kind of a test of, in theory, what kind of Democratic party candidate works, and those two races might send a lot of signals about what Democrats may want to do heading into the 2028 presidential election. So you're watching those both for like the margins, and also for what it says, there's going to be a lot of discourse, let's say. And then I'm watching Florida in Texas, where they did big redistricting pushes, and I want to see how it turns out, and whether those gerrymanders turn out to be dummy manders or not. Well, at the beginning of our conversation, we talked about those redistricting efforts, and it seems like the case is out on whether this was a good move to do the redistricting or not. Yeah, did redrawing these lines actually help in the way it was supposed to, or did it end up hurting other neighboring districts because they kind of overshot? We don't know yet, but at this point, it's definitely not looking like a slam dunk. And I think that if this big push from the president and his political advisors to get states to redraw lines, if that ends up being a bust, then I think there will be political consequences. Are Republicans going to keep following him whenever he says to jump? If what he advised them to do, what he really almost forced them to do, ends up hurting them? Well, I mean, you mentioned earlier, you talked about 2020 where President Trump denied the outcome of the election. The Trump administration has already been sowing some seeds of doubt about the outcomes of this election. They've been talking about the Alaska Senate race, and in that case, there has been some reporting that there were some sneaky tactics, and that may be the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola was trying to confuse voters by bringing on a candidate with the same name and last name as her competitor. But do you think that issues like that will embolden Republicans to call legitimate election results into question? Yeah. So Peltola's campaign does deny that it recruited Dan J Sullivan, who is different from Daniel S Sullivan, the incumbent Republican Senator in Alaska. This certainly gives fuel to the president's claim that something was going on. The president was not waiting for this. The Justice Department had already sued to try to prevent the results of that election from being certified if Dan S Sullivan loses his race. There's also that speech the president gave over the summer alleging widespread voter fraud. They haven't really been able to back that up with anything, like actual evidence, or names, or whatever. But the Trump administration has filed a ton of lawsuits that have been thrown out, and election law experts say that pretty much everything that they've tried to do has been dubious legally because state's control elections, not the federal government. But a lot of people also did not anticipate that January 6th would happen, and yet there was a riot. Tam, for people who might be trying to read the tea leaves on Tuesday, who might be stressed out about however they want the race to go, as a long-term election watcher, what do you recommend people do with their election stress? Well, it is my job to watch elections. It is not their job to stress about elections. So I would suggest going for that run, going for that walk, touching grass as they say, get fresh air, feel the warm embrace of the sun, if the sun is shining where you are, and then, you know, tune into NPR. Yes, we will give you all the facts and no hyperventilating. No hyperventilating, no fisticuffs, or anything like that. Tammer, Keith, thank you so much for this primer on the midterms, we'll all be tuning into your coverage on Tuesday. Thank you. That was Tammer, Keith, NPR, Senior Political Correspondent, and one of the hosts of the NPR Politics Podcast. The voters we heard from in today's episode were Wally and Georgia, John and Pennsylvania, Colleen and Pennsylvania, Michelle and Michigan, Jason and North Carolina, Evan and Wisconsin, Lee and Nevada, and Gerald and Georgia. This episode of the Sunday story was produced by Sharon Machihi and edited by Liana Simstrom and Megan Pratt, engineering by Onley Pwang. The rest of the Sunday story team includes Andrew Mambo, Jenny Schmidt, Maddie Baron, and Justin Yan, our executive producer is Irene Neguchi. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and up first we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week until then have a great rest of your weekend.