October 15, 2025 • 52 mins
Chuck Todd sits down with veteran Democratic strategist and data expert Tom Bonier to unpack one of the biggest political mysteries of the Trump era: why Democrats are losing voter registrations—and how the GOP got so good at winning them. From the fallout of the Bernie-Clinton primary to the brand erosion under Biden, Bonier traces how Democrats’ messaging, outsourcing, and demographic targeting have backfired while Republicans quietly built lasting grassroots infrastructure, particularly among younger and working-class voters.
The conversation dives deep into the changing dynamics of party loyalty and political identity—why Gen Z and Latino voters are shifting, how Trump reactivated the “missing white vote,” and why college campuses have become unlikely conservative battlegrounds. Todd and Bonier also explore the Democrats’ shrinking Senate map, the Midwest’s populist tilt, and how data-driven strategies like “mixed mode” polling could determine which party defines the next generation of American politics.
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Tom Bonier joins the Chuck Toddcast
01:45 Where did trend of Democrats shedding voter registrations begin?
02:45 Bernie/Clinton primary was when Dem brand took initial hit
04:00 Downturn in Dem brand came during Biden’s four years
05:45 Democrats outsource their registration efforts more than GOP
07:00 Registration efforts targeted friendly demographics
08:00 Registered partisan turnout between 20’ and 24’ was 1 point
09:00 What can Dems learn from Republicans registration tactics?
10:00 The 2012 GOP autopsy was right, but didn’t foresee Trump
10:45 Obama’s campaign targeted younger voters & won
11:30 GOP created a consistent presence on college campuses
12:15 For Gen Z, their first interaction with government was Covid
13:00 Gender gap amongst younger voters was 25+ points
14:00 Trump won big with voters who don’t consume much news
15:30 Why Gen X became the generation that most supports Trump
16:30 When someone registers for a party, that tends to stick
18:30 Trump brought out the “missing white vote”
19:30 Dems dominating with higher educated, higher propensity voters
21:15 Younger white men are overwhelmingly registering Republican
23:00 Younger voters are generally registering as unaffiliated
24:15 Are Dems counting on Trump voters only showing up for Trump?
25:00 Climate looks similar to 17’ except Dems are more unpopular
26:00 What is causing the Democrats “brand problem”?
26:45 Voters didn’t know about Biden’s accomplishments
28:00 The importance of branding your agenda
29:00 Are there a “hard 7” number of swing states, or could others join?
30:30 Texas trending more blue, Florida trending more red
31:15 Migration patterns have made Florida tough for Democrats
32:00 Democrats have almost no margin for error to win the senate
32:45 What 4-6 states should Dems target to expand senate map?
35:00 Is the midwest out of reach for Dems for a generation?
36:15 Midwest voters are populist more than D or R
37:30 How and where can Dems stem losses in blue states?
39:15 Voter mobilization is easier to fix than persuasion
40:00 Why have Georgia and Arizona become more friendly to Dems?
41:15 API voters swung toward Trump in 24’ but are swinging back
42:00 Latino voters are economically sensitive and more swingy
43:30 What’s happening with the “Chamber of Commerce” GOP voter?
45:00 Preferred methodology for public opinion polling?
47:00 What is “mixed mode” polling?
48:30 What are the three polls you always make sure to analyze?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
So one of the topics I've certainly brought up quite
a few times has to do with just simply Democratic
voter registration. And it has been in a consistent downward trend,
arguably now for five years. And what's been a head
scratcher has been the sort of at times what has
(00:25):
appeared as a lack of urgency among some party leaders
about this trend line registration. And it turned out that
what the Republicans did starting in arguably before the twenty
twenty election. But certainly, and maybe this is about COVID,
and with my guest here we're going to talk about
that a little bit, is how much how much this
initial setback was during COVID, when the Republicans were more
(00:47):
comfortable doing in person than the Democrats were. But the
fact is we're here. There was one I believe the
folks of our decision desk put out a stat that
should I think that the last year Democrats have lost
a million voters among the states that keep track of that,
Republicans have lost about one hundred thousand. And of course,
no party or independent, whatever the delineation is by state,
(01:10):
is where all these extra voters have come. Tom Bonyer
is a longtime Democratic strategist, former CEO of Target Smart,
the sort of the chief voter file company for Team
Blue these days. When I was at NBC, we actually
worked with Target Smart as well, and in fact RNBC
poll combines Target Smart work with one of the key
voter file companies on the on Team Red, and Tom Bonier,
(01:34):
in a New York Times interview, goes, hey, I was
dismissive of these voter registration numbers, and I was wrong.
He's here today to talk more about that. Tom. Good
to see you.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Good to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So let's start with this. Where did this begin? Because
you know, for essentially the first fifteen years of this century,
Democrats were making the registration progress right Barack Obama's campaign
and sort of the success of its administration, and that's
sort of a if you look at an overall fifty
(02:05):
year trend, if you have a two term president, it
does usually help your party in the voter registration column.
But they hit a wall somewhere, and the question was
why did it happen? It started with COVID, But where
has it gone? And how have you come to the
conclusion that this turned out to be something we should
have focused more on.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, I mean you could actually even put the start
of it even further back, potentially to seventeen when you
saw now it had a different impact at that point
in terms of Trump's first term, but the Democratic Party
brand after the Bernie Clinton primary wasn't great, and so
(02:46):
what you saw at that point, starting in twenty seventeen
and going forward was fewer people registering or identifying as Democrats,
but it wasn't really impacting the vote at that point
because of the negative reaction to Trump's first term. There's
a lot of enthusiasm, especially among younger voters going into
the twenty eighteen midterms, So these voters were registering as
(03:06):
unaffiliated voters but were still voting for Democrats. And so
you're right, it was more around the pandemic in twenty twenty,
where initially you saw a bigger drop in terms of
the percent of registered voters and states of partisan registration,
which is more than half the states, and it's a
very diverse sample of states in terms of red states,
(03:26):
blue states, purple states. You saw that number dropping even more,
but it was spikey then because you remember the Black
Lives Matter movement and after George Floyd's murder, you saw
where there was more organizing happen generally driven by that movement.
You did see some more spikes and Democratic registration leading
(03:50):
into that election. So if you want to see where
it really went south for Democrats, who was generally just
during that four year period of President Biden's presidency, where
it followed the polling numbers, again, the Democratic Party brand
was heading south. And what we saw, and you mentioned
(04:10):
that that quote I had in the New York Times
about being wrong, what I was very specifically wrong about
was this calculation that well, maybe it's okay, maybe that
you know, what we saw during Trump's first term is
something we would see repeated that while fewer people were
identifying with the party or registering more importantly with the party,
that you looked at these unaffiliated voters and they looked
(04:32):
more like Democratic voters, meaning they were young, they were
more women than men, they were color and in the
end that didn't bear out. These are exactly the voters
that President Trump overperformed with serious election.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So let's start with the just the mechanics of voter registration.
You know, you could argue that a political party has
one job get members right, like that. Ultimately, you have
one job in a particularly if you run a county
party or a state party. You know, a national party
you could argue is sort of in some ways making
sure you have healthy chapters right all over the country,
(05:10):
but certainly on a state and local level, you have
one job. I'm a Floridian, a former Floridian, and I
you know, I always I have marveled at the incompetency
of the state Democratic Party because it's the voters have
performed better. Right for the longest time, Democrats used to
overperform their organization. And it would be one of those things. Boy,
if you ever actually spent some money in an organization,
(05:32):
this could happen and then everything went in the reverse.
And the Republicans have simply made a concerted effort to
register voters and the Democratic Party didn't. And I've never
what is in the you know, why isn't this first
and foremost? Why do Democrats outsource this more it appears
(05:53):
than the Republicans do.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, well, this is a complicated one, and you hit
on some of the key elements of this. Democrats have
invested in voter registration, to your point, generally not through
the party. There are some reasons just in terms of
the type of money you can spend. For the longest time,
Democrats had organizations like Acorn no longer that were very
successful in registering voters. It's all they did, right, They
(06:17):
had one job. Right, it's non partisan work. So what
that generally means or overwhelmingly non partisan work, meaning the.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Least partisan work is in legal terms, it's non partisan, right, So.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Five on one C three. Generally a lot of these
organizations are registered as five to one C threes or
five one C fours, meaning that they can't go out
and say, you know, are you a Democrat or a
Republican and then only register the Democrats. It's not partisan registration.
So they would register people based on demographics, so they
would go to college campuses, they would go to neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Where you know, you would get a larger share of
who you're registering. But it's not like they wouldn't register
somebody that wanted to be a Republican, a libertarian or
Green part whatever.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It a simple math, but if you were getting more
people on one side than another, it generally worked out fine.
And again that was something that worked well for Democrats,
and again it was this calculus that well, in the end,
it doesn't matter if they self identify or identifying that
voter registration card as a Democrat, as long as they're
voting for and with the party. And for the longest time,
(07:20):
that was a calculus that was okay. And you know,
I should point out even when you look at the
last four years or even last year, there were democratic
or progressive entities that they'd overwhelmingly non partisan voter registration
that were still getting results. But the problem was with
the lack of the partisan element, with a lack of
(07:41):
investment in partisan voter registration, the margins weren't nearly where
they were in the past. And what's striking to me
if you want to look at the impact of this,
I looked at turnout just in terms of partisan registration
across the battleground state. Now four of the seven battleground
states offer partisan registry, so it's not all of them,
but again a pretty good sample. The differential on turnout.
(08:05):
If you compare twenty twenty where Joe Biden won in
twenty twenty four where Donald Trump won, the differential on
turnout between Democrats and Republicans twenty twenty four to twenty
twenty was less than a point. I mean, the swing
was minimal, But the deciding factor and why the result
ended up being this landslide from an electoral college perspective
(08:28):
for Donald Trump was because there were just so many
more registered Republicans in twenty twenty four and fewer To
the point you made earlier, it wasn't just that the
Democratic numbers were stagnant. There were actually fewer registered Democrats.
So Democrats going into this election in order to win
would have had to have gotten higher turnout among partisan
Democrats than they got in twenty twenty, which was almost impossible.
(08:50):
And we think that twenty twenty had records setting turnout
and Democrats did quite well in turnout. For Vice President
Harris to accomplish that would have been incredibly difficult.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Have you examined the Republican tactics and because they do
it more in a more partisan basis than the Democratic side,
is there something to be learned?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, I mean to the extent that I'm you know,
can dig into it and that it's out there and
a lot of it is out there in the public.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I think they've been.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Very proud of what they especially in states like Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
They work. Look, arguably, it is all they thought about
starting in twenty seventeen was we can't you know. It
was like it reminded me of Carl Rove after two thousand. Hey,
I don't want to have a margin like that again,
Let's try to improve in all of these key battleground states.
And back then it was Florida and Ohio. This time
(09:41):
it was the Big three, but particularly with Pennsylvania. Well
that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I mean when you look at their post mortem mafter
the twenty twelve election, where they said, look, we're not
going to win another national election if we continue to
do as poorly as we do with these emerging demographics,
especially younger voters and voters, and then they didn't really
do anything about it.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Ironically, the autopsy was right. They just didn't know Donald
Trump was the answer that was going to win him
over at more diverse I mean, it is a strange thing. Now,
I did mean to sort of interrupt your trade of thought,
but I've thought about that autopsy. So were they right?
It just they were wrong about who the right person was.
I mean, you know, anyway, but I did I digress.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Just at the time, I don't think, nor would they.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Don't think that's what right three percent in mind?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
No, oh no, no, certainly not. And so when you
look at their actual tactics now, a lot of it
looks a lot like what Democrats were doing again a
decade ago, two decades ago, especially, you know the successful
efforts of the Obama campaign. We have to remember that
the Obama campaign in two thousand and eight, they're organizing
with younger voters with something A lot of people looked
(10:45):
at it and said, well, look, these younger voters don't vote,
even especially not in presidential primary elections, and that campaign
saw an opportunity there and they put not only their
candidate there, but their resources organizing on college campuses. It's
arguably what won them the primary and then carried through
to the general election. And Republicans in a lot of
ways follow that model where they just had a presence
(11:07):
on college campuses that generally would be thought of as
quite hostile but for Republican or Republican electives, for Republican candidates.
But what they recognized, I think accurately, was that it
wasn't a matter if they didn't need to win these areas.
They just needed to turn around the numbers enough they
needed to not get out among younger voters, and you
(11:29):
look at what they created there. It's incredible, especially among
younger men. And these are numbers that are holding still.
They're resilient, especially among young men. When we look at
President Trump's overall numbers, you know, frankly in the toilet
at the moment, they're still out registering Democrats among younger men.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
You know, I have a thesis on that that it's COVID.
I always I have a gen Z focus group in
my household to college students and my younger My younger
one was sort of you know, let me put it
this way, he and his friends. I would say, you know,
think about this. Your first interaction with government is COVID.
(12:12):
And for some of these guys, right the first time
they've dealt with government, it took them away from their friends.
And I think that is a I think this is
going to be a generational thing with these guys. But
we'll see, right, it's only one cycle. But that's just
the thesis I have that this is more COVID related
than we fully appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
I think that's absolutely right, and in fact, you know,
I shared you know, in generally, a lot of the
things that I will share, I would say most of
the things I share as a partisan Democrat that I
share in public are going to appear to be more
favorable for Democrats. But in November of twenty twenty three,
I shared some analysis I put together. It was looking
at the voter registration gender gap among voters under the
(12:52):
age of twenty five, and it was really for me,
sounding the alarm where among all of the party registration states,
the gender gap among these younger voters was twenty six points.
In Pennsylvania, it's almost thirty seven points. And to me
that was a flashing red alarm that that's something that
if that's something that holds, and that we don't do
(13:12):
something about it, we're not going to win. And I
think your point, yeah, it certainly came out of COVID.
These were you know, it's complex, but when you put
these younger men, especially in a situation where suddenly their
lives are being lived almost entirely online, and the sort
of interactions they were having and the connections they were making,
(13:33):
and then sort of the lack of real world connections
they had, I think it had a massive impact. You know,
when you look at the Navigator surveys from after the election,
which is a great data set of large sample sized
post election surveys. They asked the question about how much
political news do you consume? And there's a straight line
correlation between the answer to that question and for whom
(13:55):
you voted, Meaning the people say I consume a lot
of political news present Hairs won by six points, but
those who say that I consume no or almost none
Donald Trump one by almost fifteen points. And again we
talked about these voters as low information voters. They're overwhelmingly younger,
and they were more men than women. We talked about
(14:16):
them as low information voters. They're not exactly low information voters.
They're consuming so much information, but they aren't consuming over
political information in the spaces that Democrats generally were contesting
or communicating it.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Have you studied this? You know, it does feel as
if you know sort of how often the first is
it like when you register somebody for the first time
for your party? How you know what kind of stickiness
is that? Is that a ten year stick? Is that
a generational stick? Is that? Like, you know, have you
(14:51):
been able have you looked at this through generational prisms.
You know, I always it's fascinating to me that my
generations the most pro Trump Generation X, and I attribute
it to growing up Reagan, as I call it, right,
that that was our formative years were Reagan, right, that
was the president during when we were both from you know,
(15:13):
Nancy Reagan showing up on different strokes, and then you know,
it was just sort of it was there and economy
was pretty good, right, you know, it was in the
end of the Cold War, right, we won something. So
that's my explanation for it. But I have no idea
whether I'm just sort of going through my head and
sort of saying, well, you know, how much is that
(15:33):
early commitment to a party matter long term?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, it's incredibly important. And the phenomena that you mentioned,
or the theory that you that you just posited, is
actually something the political scientists have studied and shown that
who at present when you're in those formative years and
again will depend for the individual in terms of when
tuning into these things. But people talking about broadly the
culture with the somewhatous but certainly Ronald Reagan in the eighties,
(16:02):
as a member of Gen X, myself, it was ubiquitous
from a cultural perspective, And yeah, so the biggest impact
is your household composition in a lot of ways as well,
or at least maybe next in line.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
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unless they win. So what your.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Parents are, what your parents are has a huge impact.
Now I'll be curious to see if that holds. It
would suggest that maybe now that's less sticky. But wherever
to your original question. When someone registers with a party,
they tend to stay there and it takes time. Generally
they'll start voting the other way before they switch. And
so we talk about these ancestral Democrats in places like
(17:53):
West Virginia throughout the show.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Let's just say it, that's the last spot of the
generational Democrats as Appalachia. Right, It's like in tucky West Virginia.
It's like the last Southern Ohio. I don't feel like
you have it in the Deep South anymore.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
You don't know they're gone. They're gone at this point,
and they are going. You know, Pennsylvania actually produces data
on party switchers on a very regular basis, and you
see it's still happening too, and it's.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
All Appalachia like areas like Western Pa.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, that's right, you know, in Pennsylvania's fascinating to me
because again you mentioned the success the Republicans had. They
had massive investment in part of the registration there, not
just in twenty twenty four, but going back four or
five years before that with great success. What's interesting to
me is if you look at this moment now, they
have some court races there that maybe aren't getting in
a lot of attention nationally, but are in Pennsylvania and
(18:42):
are incredibly important in a lot of ways. And Democrats
are actually doing among new registrants, are actually doing better
than they did four and even eight years ago. So
it's something that I'm looking at. They're not doing much better,
but they're doing a point or two better. Which is
this a bit of a turnaround. I don't know, but it's.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
It's Shapiro related. I mean, he's a popular governor.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Right, That's a big part of it. But an important
point here is even with that happening, the net numbers
are still getting worse for Democrats. Part of it is
because of who is being removed from the file to
put it in a passway, which part of that is death.
Part of that is people moving out of the states.
Part of that is purging, but that's generally negative. The
(19:27):
people who are in their eighties are actually more democratic
than not. People who get purged off the file tend
to be more Democrats. So Republicans are still actually gaining
in the net there, even while Democrats are doing better
among new registrants. So another thing to keep an eye on.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
In twenty twelve after that election, and I feel like
the most prominent person making this argument was Tom I
think that Tom Bevan over real clear that there was
a missing white vote, that there was this chunk of
people not voting, and that was the explanation for why
Romney so underperformed, particularly in certain place. I was a
(20:03):
bit skeptical, and I think some people were, And then
twenty sixteen happened, and then twenty happened, at twenty twenty
four happened, and you can't help but wonder how much
of the Trump gain is missing. Is voters that weren't participating,
say in the first twelve years of this century, versus
(20:24):
those that switched.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's a big part of it. I mean, obviously,
the entire equation has changed so radically from twenty twelve
that it's hard to point the one thing right because
we've seen that these voters who were more consistent, voting,
better educated. Again, traditionally Republican voters voted for Romney in
twenty twelve, voted for mckimal tom.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
I live in the last Romney precinct of Arlington, as
I call it there you go right, you know, And
they haven't voted Republicans since in this area, you know.
And so then I wouldn't call them liberal democrats.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
No, by noting, but those voters have voted, They likely
voted for Clinton, They almost certainly voted for Biden and
Fort Harris. These are the voters who are voting in
these lower turnout elections. That's the reason why, fairly well documented,
the Democrats are doing better in these lower turnout especially
these special elections that used to be the great advantage
(21:19):
for Republicans and that has turned on its head. And
so yeah, there are more of these lower turnout white
voters who are coming out when Trump is on the ballot.
They didn't come out in twenty eighteen. Not enough of
them came out twenty twenty two to have a red
wave election. We'll see what happens this year in New Jersey,
(21:40):
in Virginia and Pennsylvania and other places. See what happens
next year. But the other element of this that we've
been talking about is Republican improvements among younger voters, especially
younger voters of coloring, younger white men, and so I
don't know that you can count those in terms of
the missing white vote. Sure, these voters who demographically generally
(22:01):
would be a smaller share of the electorate and now
have been ascendant under Trump. I will say, when you
look at the polling numbers now and you look at
what drives Trump's, you know, reasonably good numbers when he
was elected and when he was inaugurated to where they
quickly went. The voters who dropped the most were these
same voters who swung the most towards him. So these
(22:22):
younger now have overwhelmingly negative numbers. But like I said
a few minutes ago, when you look at the partisan registration,
younger white men are still registering overwhelmingly Republican, which tells
me Republicans are doing the nuts and bolts, blocking and tackling,
doing the registration at the local level and holding on
to some of those margins.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
If the Democratic Party pointed to one thing, do they
have a do they have a base problem or a
persuasion problem.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Well, look, time will tell. I mean, from from both perspectives,
I think Democrats feel better about where they are now
in terms of of Trump's popularity. But I think there's
two parts to this equation, right, there's how well will
Democrats do in the elections happening next month and then
the elections next year just based on an anti Trump,
(23:16):
anti Republican sentiment which history would tell us, and we
don't have to go back any further team bit Historically,
we could go back as far as we want and
find Democrats should do quite well in these elections just
because of anti incumbency and especially because of Trump and
his little popularity numbers. To me, the big question is
are Democrats able to connect the dots and give voters
(23:37):
a reason to vote for them? From the positive case,
can we get to the point where people feel better
about the Democrat Party, where more people are associating and
affiliating with the Democratic Party. Why I'm watching these voter
registration numbers so closely now, because that's where you would
expect to see it first before the election, is more
people when they goybe it's just they're getting their driver's license.
(24:01):
Maybe it's not even effort to voter registration, but they
have a few boxes they could check. And right now,
those younger voters are overwhelmingly just say unaffiliated, just as
they did a year ago, three years ago, years ago.
And so for Democrats to really be able to maximize
(24:22):
their potential and these upcoming elections, I think that's where
you're going to see it. It's them being able to
build that positive and so to me, it's both. It's
it's persuasion and it's persuading the people to get to
the point where they enter that mobilization category where they're
going to be turnout targets for Democratic compaints.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Do you think the Democrats are resting almost counting too
much on Trump voters not showing up when Trump's not
on the ballot, Like it, It's sort of like I
hear this talk all the time, Well, Democrats will be fine,
and it may actually be a way of reason to
sort of no matter, you know, be careful thinking twenty
(25:03):
twenty six if it goes well for Democrats is somehow
a harbinger for twenty eight considering if quote unquote the
Trump voter just simply doesn't show up again for midterms,
they know this too, right, They know they have this problem,
and it does sound as if they're going to make
more of an effort to see if they can they
(25:23):
can get these voters more engaged in elections that don't
involve Trump. Do you let me tell you what. I
sense that Democrats are almost counting on this phenomenon, and
I would be weary of counting on the phenomenon given
how much money they're throwing at this.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah. Look, that's a hard one to read in terms
of what's happening tactically on the ground. I do think that,
you know, again, based on the history, You're right, the
Democrats are looking at this and making a calculus that
in the end, historically these voters haven't come out with
Donald Trump is not on the ballot, so therefore we
should do better. And you know, the special elections so
(26:05):
far have proven that true.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Look very so, everything looks similar to twenty seventeen except
the Democratic parties unfavorable ready. Yeah, but like if that's
the one thing that's different, it's much higher, that's.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Right, And that's why I think. You know, obviously, Democrats
has been going very hard on healthcare during this shutdown,
and that to me tells me that they are making
an effort to appeal not just to the mobilization universe,
not that the audience doesn't want to hear that message,
but to those swing voters. I mean, when they have
a message that Marjorie Taylor Green is agreeing with, suggest
(26:40):
there's something there and there's an opportunity and an effort
to appeal to these swing voters who likely voted for
Trump last year but are potentially part of that. You know,
maybe fifteen well, let's say fifteen percent of the country
who voted for him felt favorably about when he took
off and don't feel that way now.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
When you hear Democrats have a brand problem, what is
it that the problem is that people don't know what
the party does stand for, or that people do know
what the party stands for and they don't like it.
How do you view the quote brand problem? Is it
just not not very well defined or frankly defined in
(27:24):
an unpopular way.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You know, look, I'm a numbers guy, not a policy
or a messaging guy. But when you look at the
numbers from the twenty four election again, you look at
the exit polls, you look at the Navigator survey, there
was a big problem in terms of awareness of issues.
You looked at sort of the four signature legislative accomplishments
of President Biden in Democrats while he was in and
(27:48):
in each of those a navigator tested this a majority.
In some cases over sixty percent of Americans said they
didn't know anything about them. And then a real kick
in the pants for Democrats. More independent voters said that
Donald Trump did more on infrastructure when in office than
Joe Biden did.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
So just by saying Infrastructure week. Even though it failed,
it stuck.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So in our very online circle, that was the meme, right,
that was a running joke, Oh it's infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Right, And yet it turned out people have thought, oh
that Donald Trump cares about infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
That's exactly right. I mean, that's what bubble making up
the others.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
So you believe it is a it's an awareness, So
it's sort of it's more message penetration. The message itself
might be working if it if they knew how to.
So this would be a marketing problem. Is as much
as you may have a good brand, but if you
don't market it correctly, nobody knows your brand. Well.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, you know, I think there's two ways to look
at this question. One is the previous four years when
when when Democrats were in power, at least in the
White House. And then there's the question of now where
Democrats don't control anything, and I think there's you know
that has always been a challenge for the party that
is out of power, and how do you find your
own proactive agenda. I mean, we can go back to
nineteen four in the Contract with America and New Gingrich
(29:13):
and now Republicans successfully we're able to brand some type
of actual agenda. I think that's a lot more challenging
in the issue environment and just the media consumption environment
where in now to get voters to pay attention to
these things. I think the shutdown again we see Democrats
talking more specifically about healthcare is a good step in
that direction. I just think it's much more challenging these
(29:34):
days to get that proactive positive environment message out there,
an agenda out there, when in the end Democrats don't
have the ability to really move any of this forward.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
All right, I want to geek out, do geek out
on some states, and so you know, there's you look
at the you look at the seven swing states and
is it in your head a hard seven, meaning you
got the three Midwestern states right, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. Then
(30:08):
you got the sun Belt states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia,
North Carolina. Is there is is eight closer to seven?
I you New Hampshire, or is eight closer than to nine?
You see what I mean? Is it those seven and
everybody else? Or do you think there's a couple other
states still sort of you know, on the outside looking
(30:29):
in they could jump into the to the battleground map.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah. You know, if you wanted to look at obviously
the map and where states were moving in twenty twenty
four relative to twenty twenty, you had a handful of
states that I think you would have a very strong
argument for saying, you know, they shouldn't be considered swing
states in any sense, but they were getting closer. New
Hampshire was one of them. Yet Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Look, even Minnesota has been sitting there on the costpy.
I have you Minnesota the way I've viewed New Jersey.
For Republicans, it always it's always close. But Charlie Brown,
you know Lucy Wis both of football.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Well well, and for them it'd be there. You know,
three three hundred and fortieth electoral vote. It's not really
relevant from a strategic perspective, right, And so no, I
you know, I think at this point the seven states
are fairly solidified, at least if we're looking at the
next couple of years here. Obviously it will continue to evolve.
Democrats have have been interested in Texas and Florida for
(31:23):
a long time for obviously, you know, to put those
two in the same category, it's somewhat unfair given that
Democrats have won Florida and not too distant at least
in our lifetime, right, And at this point they're moving
in different directions, so, you know, for various reasons. So
you know, Texas will always be part of the conversation
(31:43):
for Democrats, at least further out from election day.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
But you're you're more pessimistic on Florida solidified? Are you
more pessimistic on Florida versus Texas if you were to pick.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
One, Yeah, I am. I mean, look, you had just
negative trends there. I think Democrats can still win there,
especially in the sort of dynamic we have now without
Trump on the ballot in a midterm election, Democrats would
have a chance there. In the presidential election. I think
it's more challenging. You know, it's not only just been
(32:17):
sort of a persuasion element, and you know, who is
the Democratic standard bear for full Floridians where they look
at identify with that party. I think that's been a challenge.
But just out migration, the migration patterns have just been
very difficult for Democrats. Where you've had Democrats movment, especially
during the pandemic, moving out of the state, and that
(32:39):
seems to continue.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Where really Democrats are moving out and Northeast Republicans are moving.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
In basically not just Northeast, but yeah, yeah, Midwest.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
So if you take the seven battleground states and you
take Kamala Harris's states and you put them together, the
max number of Senate seats that Democrats could win as
fifty two. What that tells you is they've got very
little margin for ayer if they want to be competitive
in the Senate. Now, look, both parties were so polarized,
(33:16):
both parties are sort of it's very difficult to win
a Senate seat these days. In the other side state right,
it's you know, Susan Collins and is probably the last
Republican that will represent me, But you know, at least
at least for the foreseeable future. She may represent it
another six years for all we know, but she's probably
the last of her come. So the question that Democrats
(33:39):
have to do, they have to figure out how to
at least have I would argue another four to six
states where they can win Senate seats. Maybe they can't
win it into presidential, but they've got to be able
to compete in senate races. What are those next four
to six that you think Democrats ought to be pre mean,
if they want to be competitive in the Senate, they
(34:01):
got to start prioritizing. Now I've got some in my head,
but I don't want to. I don't want to poison
poison the conversation. So I'm curious where you go first.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Well, well, it's a question of if you're looking at
this from a demographic and sort of political trend perspective
versus h you know, the actual opportunities in the individual candidate, right,
like we saw what, Yeah, you could make both.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Because I look at an Ohio and I don't think
there's much of a chance in Ohio. But Sharon Brown
is an overperformer. So in this specific instance, accept the
premise that Ohio this year is going to be competitive.
I'm skeptical, but obviously he's been a you know the guy,
the guy won nearly eight years ago. So yeah, no,
(34:41):
that's right.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
I mean, look from the actual demographic trends and where
states have gone under Donald Trump. Like bizarrely, Utah is
one of those states that stands out there's actually underperformed
for Republicans, it's underperformed for Trump. It's one that has
trended and actually does have somewhat favorable demographic trends. You
have a big question that you have to ask yourself
if you're trying to answer this is where do you
think Latino voters go? Obviously Donald Trump has driven a
(35:05):
huge over performance with Republicans among Latino voters. Do you
believe that's something that is just related to Trump? How
do you see what's happening with the mass de patients
and very public authoritarian acts advice out there? How does
that impact that vote? Because in the end, again Utah
has a quick, fast growing Latino population. Texas obviously is
(35:29):
a big part of that conversation and will be tested
and next year in terms of where we are. But again,
if you look at opportunities. I agree Ohio, just from
Shared Brown as someone who is a performer there with
a much more hostile environment for Republicans and Donald Trump
(35:50):
not on the ballot, you have to believe he has
a very good chance to win there. But look, you're right,
I mean the number of opportunity for Democrats above and
beyond those states the Vice President harrisone or those swing
states you know there are few and far between. Again,
that's where you have to look at things like what
happened and in Nebraska where you had Osborne money as an.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Independent, is that a better stre I mean you look
at the plain states, right, you look at the northern
tier where it wasn't that long ago where you had
(36:37):
two Democratic senators from North Dakota for a brief period,
for every reasonable period of time, two Democratic senators from
South Dakota, two Democratic senators in Montana. Is that lost
for a generation or does that? Or is it that?
And is that a Democratic brand issue or is it
(36:58):
an issue? Is it? Is it like a specific issue
that the problem that Democrats have?
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yes, I don't know. I think we'll get a good
sense of that next year. The question is, you know,
can Democrats recruit and run populist candidates who are not
connected to the negative brand of the party. Obviously, the
brand of the party of the Democrat Party is not
going to turn around anytime soon in those states. But
to your point, Democrats have had great success in the
last two decades in those states running.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Well, they're populous states, that's right, They're populous before their DNR, right,
and that's what tells that's why I assume they're still
potentially in play because they're not settled. They're culturally conservative,
but they want an activist government. Those states benefit from
(37:48):
an activist government.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Well, and right now they're not benefiting from the activism
of the current government. When you look at what is happening,
you know, you can throw Iowa in there too. When
you look at what's being with the tariffs and negatively
impacted uh uh. These populations have been under this presidency,
and then not just the tariffs, obviously, just through federal
(38:12):
grants for farms and that sort of thing. It's had
an overwhelmingly negative impact. And so for Democrats to test this,
they're going to need to run candidates who can run
on that populous message, who have some credibility and perspective
and obviously rely on this still being forefront of their
minds and Trump and not doing a turnaround in the
(38:32):
next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Here some of this, you know, sometimes you got to
do triage. What what blue states? You know? The thing
that made the popular vote go Trump's direction was not
the seven battleground states. It was the fact that Illinois,
New Jersey right were four point races five point races.
You're like, whoa right of the blue states? Where should
(38:59):
the party be? Hey, don't drop the ball here. I've
always said, New Jersey to me is at the top
of the list. But what after New I assume you
agree that on New Jersey? Where else would you be
telling the party, Hey, you know, you better keep a
better eye out in here, and you better do a
little more a little more work.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Well, you know. To me, this is an interesting dynamic
because it illuminates the problem with you know, I think
where the party brand identity issue that we've been talking
about actually has a bigger impact as in these states.
Because I mentioned how when you look at the turnout
data in twenty twenty four relative twenty twenty in the
battleground states, there was almost no difference between those. It
(39:41):
was just it was minimal.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
But no difference in three straight elections, right, that's sixteen,
twenty and twenty four. There were more the same than
different those those seven states.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
But where the turnout truly created for Democrats was in
these blue states and especially these Northeastern and mid Atlantic states,
where Democratic turnout was just abysmal. New Jersey actually had
a little bit of both, where it had a cratering
of Democratic turnout and it also had these unaffiliated voters
who were more fiscally sensitive in New Jersey than probably
(40:12):
any other state. A lot of that just due to
property taxes. But that drove the massive underperformance of Vice
President Harris in those states. And so you know, I
don't look at any of those at this point and
say Republicans are poised to turn this into a longer
term trend. Sure, mobilization worries me less than persuasion, because
(40:33):
mobilization is something that can be fixed with a single
campaign and a single cycle. Persuasion can as well, but
it's it's tougher. And so again it's not to say
that Republicans won't have opportunities in these states. But if
we're looking at it now holistically, there's not a state,
a blue state that I look at and say, well, gosh,
this is one where we're certainly going to be in
(40:54):
trouble in other than sort of generically. Again, if we
want to look at where their potential liability from Democratic
brand identity issues, it's going to be universally across these states.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Two of the battleground states where Democrats have had an
enormous amount of success are Georgia and Arizona. These are
two states that Barack Obama could never carry. He'd come close,
he'd make them more competitive, but there were you know,
couldn't win any races in those states. Are they just
(41:27):
uniquely allergic to Trump? Is this the suburban switch? And
those two states with just you know, I always said
Phoenix is America's largest suburb, right in Atlanta arguably a
close second. You know, they're just two. Is it due
to the suburban shift to the Democrats that those two
states in particular basically went from red to battleground.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
There's a few dynamics at play in both of those states.
You know, certainly that suburban shift is a big part
of it. They just have a barely significant well educated
white voter population, these voters who have swung since Trump
emerged onto the scene towards Democrats, and so that's a
big part of it. Another thing is Asian American voters
(42:12):
API voters in Georgia, massive, massively fast growing are of
the electorate there. Just when you look at the difference
between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, where Hillary Clinton lost
the state and Joe Biden won it, that margin swing
was almost entirely defined just by not just population growth
(42:32):
but turnout growth among API voters. Now it's worth noting
the same AAPI voters swung towards Trump in twenty twenty four,
and then the Poles are now swinging back against so
perhaps an emerging swing group. There's not as many of
those API voters in Arizona as are in Georgia, but
still an significant element. And then I think in terms
of Latino voters, Trump didn't get the same sort of
(42:55):
swing from Latino voters in those states as he got
in some other states. It's like Nevada, lan Texas, Florida.
And so that's part of the recipe as well.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
I mean not to oversimplify this, but you know what
you're describing in both and what you see and yeah,
I just feel like that Latino voters that Democrats assumed
that Obama's percentage was their percentage, when when you look
at these first gen and second gen voters, they're just
more economic sense, They're economically sensitive, and to me, they
(43:26):
behave just like regular old swing voters, because swing voters
are usually economically sensitive. That's right.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
And that's where I think that you know, the pandemic
had a huge impact. It's why you saw some of
these bigger swings in the Rio Grand Valley is because
the way that especially the hospitality industry was hit by
the pandemic in the closures. Uh, and yeah, I mean
these are Hispanic voters are are They very much meet
the profile of swing voters. I do think you're seeing
(43:54):
that acknowledged by these campaigns now, where you know, I
think for a while Democrats were perhaps making the mistake
of treating Hispanic voters as if they were only mobilization
targets and the price.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
And frankly talking the wrong issue. That's right, Immigration was
not the number one issue among these voters. Four years ago,
I operated on the thesis that Trump was a temporary
brand for the Republicans and that when the quote unquote
Chamber of Commerce brand came back, you know it would
bring us to I always said Colorado and Virginia. You
(44:28):
look at Glenn Youngkin, You're like, yeah, Glenn Youngkin can
succeed in both the Colorado and Virginia. Right, the sort
of the Chamber of Commerce type pitch. I'm less sure now.
I mean I think the I think once you have
a second term that it probably defines that Trump's now
it's Trump's party. He's not borrowing the party anymore, right,
(44:49):
he has molded the party. Is that wing? Is that
wing of the party just dormant, dead, no longer registered Republicans?
I mean the Paul Ryan wing. Are they now registering
as independent?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
I think it's a big question of to what extent
Republicans who are not Trump are able to pull it
off a convincing enough impersonation of him to be able
to have electoral success. Because I agree, I don't see
a world where the party goes back to where they
were before now right away.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
I mean, you're certainly not. You know, it's going to
take an election cycle or two before they would.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
It'll take them losing badly in elections with not convincing
enough Trump like clone. You know, when you look at
twenty twenty two, perhaps that is indicative of how the
party could free itself of Trump's shadow, in that you
had a lot of Republican candidates for the Senate who
(45:50):
are running as Trump clones, whether it was you know,
doctor Oz and Pennsylvania. You go across these these races
that they should have won based on the history of
midterm elections credit president who was historically unpopular. They should
have won them, but they didn't win them because of
these candidates Herschelwalker being another one, Zona and all races
(46:11):
that they should have won, uh, and they didn't. So
post Trump, are they able to find candidates who can
pull off more convincing impersonations. Then I think it's it's
stickier because from a primary perspective, it's the way you
win a Republican primary now and I don't expect that.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
To change any time.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Can they can they win general elections without someone named
Donald Trump on the ballot with that mega mentality? I'm
just not so sure.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
All right with the last minute or two here the
stay polling, I'm a I'm generally bullish unpolling, meaning I
kind of think that people demit. I hate the averaging
of polls because I think it's created the illusion of
accuracy when a poll is there to essentially give you
an estimate and it's you know, if you pay attention
(47:01):
to margins of aeror. Polling has been fine over the
last ten years. The problem is we have this, you know,
real clear politics in five point thirty eight gave us
the the somehow the illusion that there was there was
pure accuracy in what was a freaking survey. Okay, So
that would drive me bonkers. And that's why I hate
pull averaging and all of those things. All that said,
(47:24):
what's your preferred methodology to get up these days in
order to feel like you've got a good handle on
public opinion research? What kind of methodology are you looking
for these days compared to save twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Well, and I agree with everything you said in terms
of the state of polling, and I think polsters should
be applauded because they've adapted and evolved quite admirably.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Great. It's hard. It's never been harder.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
No, it's never been harder, and it just keeps getting harder,
you know, Apple putting into place. All make things even
harder for bolsters because the call will just be funneled
right to junk folders. So you know what I look for.
Mixed mode survey data collection is incredibly important now. I
think it's one of the things that we learned, and
again I think most polsters are doing a great job.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
So they are. Let's put that in a little bit
of American for people, Mixed mode for those that don't
follow the industry means what.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
So that means they're collecting data by not just one method.
So they're texting people, they're doing online surveys, they're calling people,
they're calling their landlines. Some people still into landlines.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
So they're almost picking a mode based on the demographic preference. Right,
if you know younger people prefer text a web, then
you text a web everybody under the age of thirty, right,
landlines over the age of seventy, etcetera.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Right, Every mode has its bias, and so if you
can collect data through multiple modes, it gets more expensive.
But you look at most accurate polsters, that's that's what
they're doing at this point, and I think you're just
going to see you're going to see more of that
going forward, I will say, you know, the other thing
that drives me crazy with the polling, beyond the averaging
of poles, is the cross tab diving.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Oh my god, that's it. That's worse straight like, oh,
don't do that.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
But you know, we'll see movement among independent white women
in one state between one pole and another and then
write a front page story about how they moved. And
the reality is none of that has the level of
fidelity that we could, you know, provide that level of credit.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
We used to have a rule at the NBC News
Pole and NBC Well Set Journal Pole and hart mcin
Turf were both like this, two poles in a row
and a subgroup. Don't go crazy when you see a switch.
Two poles in a row. And that was always the rule.
We did not ever ride about a swing until we
saw two poles in a row. You know. Even then,
(49:49):
you know you're talking about a subset of eighty to
one hundred and twenty, you know, on some of these
demographics cross tabs.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
But anyway, only everyone would follow your lead on that.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
It's fair enough and let me get out, get you
out in here. And this what's the three public the
nonpartisan polls that you're like when they come out, I
read it all. I read all of it. I go
into the demos and everything.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
You know, what's funny is is I have spent less
and less time this year digging into the polls, which
I think has been for me. But you know, look,
I love the New York Times polls. I don't love
how people sometimes cover them or how they digest them,
but I think they do an incredible job.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
I love I love their transparency. That's right. I mean,
they're analysis. It's funny how a couple of times they've
literally been your poll told you the answer and you
didn't write it. But anyway, I agree they're transparency. I
should be commended.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I've mentioned the Navigator surveys. I think they do a
great job.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I mean that I think we get a little bit
too obsessed about who was the accurate polster last time.
You have a whole bunch of pollsters who tend to
out outcomes that are more Republican. You have some that
are reliably more democratic. And if the election swings one way,
then those pollsters look good, and if it swings the
other way, look good. And I think we need to.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
I just want consistency, Like I know quinip X consistent.
I think they have a bit of a lien. They're consistent, Emerson,
I think they have a bit of a lien, but
it's consistent. Like, as long as it's consistent, then I
can I do my own math. All right, I'm going
to add to or I'm going to subtract to or
whatever it is, and that's where I go. But but
(51:29):
that's usually I'm sure what you look for consistency.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. You need to be able
to make some of your own mental adjustments and calculations
for sure.
Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, Tom Bon here, this was appreciate you geeking out
with me, and uh, we'll see how the vote. Do
you see evidence that the party is throwing real energy
in voter registration yet or not?
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Well, you're seeing it, and again you're seeing you're seeing
more of these outside groups that have existed that had
success last time around are doing it too. In terms
of party party doings and registration. I will say I've
heard a lot more talk about that happening, a lot
more people pushing for that happening. I believe you will
see investment from the party and that as we get
(52:11):
into the midterm elections next.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
I'd imagine they want to show something on that front.
That's for sure. Tom appreciate the time. Great stop with me.
Thank you.
So one of the topics I've certainly brought up quite
a few times has to do with just simply Democratic
voter registration. And it has been in a consistent downward trend,
arguably now for five years. And what's been a head
scratcher has been the sort of at times what has
(00:25):
appeared as a lack of urgency among some party leaders
about this trend line registration. And it turned out that
what the Republicans did starting in arguably before the twenty
twenty election. But certainly, and maybe this is about COVID,
and with my guest here we're going to talk about
that a little bit, is how much how much this
initial setback was during COVID, when the Republicans were more
(00:47):
comfortable doing in person than the Democrats were. But the
fact is we're here. There was one I believe the
folks of our decision desk put out a stat that
should I think that the last year Democrats have lost
a million voters among the states that keep track of that,
Republicans have lost about one hundred thousand. And of course,
no party or independent, whatever the delineation is by state,
(01:10):
is where all these extra voters have come. Tom Bonyer
is a longtime Democratic strategist, former CEO of Target Smart,
the sort of the chief voter file company for Team
Blue these days. When I was at NBC, we actually
worked with Target Smart as well, and in fact RNBC
poll combines Target Smart work with one of the key
voter file companies on the on Team Red, and Tom Bonier,
(01:34):
in a New York Times interview, goes, hey, I was
dismissive of these voter registration numbers, and I was wrong.
He's here today to talk more about that. Tom. Good
to see you.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Good to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So let's start with this. Where did this begin? Because
you know, for essentially the first fifteen years of this century,
Democrats were making the registration progress right Barack Obama's campaign
and sort of the success of its administration, and that's
sort of a if you look at an overall fifty
(02:05):
year trend, if you have a two term president, it
does usually help your party in the voter registration column.
But they hit a wall somewhere, and the question was
why did it happen? It started with COVID, But where
has it gone? And how have you come to the
conclusion that this turned out to be something we should
have focused more on.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, I mean you could actually even put the start
of it even further back, potentially to seventeen when you
saw now it had a different impact at that point
in terms of Trump's first term, but the Democratic Party
brand after the Bernie Clinton primary wasn't great, and so
(02:46):
what you saw at that point, starting in twenty seventeen
and going forward was fewer people registering or identifying as Democrats,
but it wasn't really impacting the vote at that point
because of the negative reaction to Trump's first term. There's
a lot of enthusiasm, especially among younger voters going into
the twenty eighteen midterms, So these voters were registering as
(03:06):
unaffiliated voters but were still voting for Democrats. And so
you're right, it was more around the pandemic in twenty twenty,
where initially you saw a bigger drop in terms of
the percent of registered voters and states of partisan registration,
which is more than half the states, and it's a
very diverse sample of states in terms of red states,
(03:26):
blue states, purple states. You saw that number dropping even more,
but it was spikey then because you remember the Black
Lives Matter movement and after George Floyd's murder, you saw
where there was more organizing happen generally driven by that movement.
You did see some more spikes and Democratic registration leading
(03:50):
into that election. So if you want to see where
it really went south for Democrats, who was generally just
during that four year period of President Biden's presidency, where
it followed the polling numbers, again, the Democratic Party brand
was heading south. And what we saw, and you mentioned
(04:10):
that that quote I had in the New York Times
about being wrong, what I was very specifically wrong about
was this calculation that well, maybe it's okay, maybe that
you know, what we saw during Trump's first term is
something we would see repeated that while fewer people were
identifying with the party or registering more importantly with the party,
that you looked at these unaffiliated voters and they looked
(04:32):
more like Democratic voters, meaning they were young, they were
more women than men, they were color and in the
end that didn't bear out. These are exactly the voters
that President Trump overperformed with serious election.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So let's start with the just the mechanics of voter registration.
You know, you could argue that a political party has
one job get members right, like that. Ultimately, you have
one job in a particularly if you run a county
party or a state party. You know, a national party
you could argue is sort of in some ways making
sure you have healthy chapters right all over the country,
(05:10):
but certainly on a state and local level, you have
one job. I'm a Floridian, a former Floridian, and I
you know, I always I have marveled at the incompetency
of the state Democratic Party because it's the voters have
performed better. Right for the longest time, Democrats used to
overperform their organization. And it would be one of those things. Boy,
if you ever actually spent some money in an organization,
(05:32):
this could happen and then everything went in the reverse.
And the Republicans have simply made a concerted effort to
register voters and the Democratic Party didn't. And I've never
what is in the you know, why isn't this first
and foremost? Why do Democrats outsource this more it appears
(05:53):
than the Republicans do.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, well, this is a complicated one, and you hit
on some of the key elements of this. Democrats have
invested in voter registration, to your point, generally not through
the party. There are some reasons just in terms of
the type of money you can spend. For the longest time,
Democrats had organizations like Acorn no longer that were very
successful in registering voters. It's all they did, right, They
(06:17):
had one job. Right, it's non partisan work. So what
that generally means or overwhelmingly non partisan work, meaning the.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Least partisan work is in legal terms, it's non partisan, right, So.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Five on one C three. Generally a lot of these
organizations are registered as five to one C threes or
five one C fours, meaning that they can't go out
and say, you know, are you a Democrat or a
Republican and then only register the Democrats. It's not partisan registration.
So they would register people based on demographics, so they
would go to college campuses, they would go to neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Where you know, you would get a larger share of
who you're registering. But it's not like they wouldn't register
somebody that wanted to be a Republican, a libertarian or
Green part whatever.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It a simple math, but if you were getting more
people on one side than another, it generally worked out fine.
And again that was something that worked well for Democrats,
and again it was this calculus that well, in the end,
it doesn't matter if they self identify or identifying that
voter registration card as a Democrat, as long as they're
voting for and with the party. And for the longest time,
(07:20):
that was a calculus that was okay. And you know,
I should point out even when you look at the
last four years or even last year, there were democratic
or progressive entities that they'd overwhelmingly non partisan voter registration
that were still getting results. But the problem was with
the lack of the partisan element, with a lack of
(07:41):
investment in partisan voter registration, the margins weren't nearly where
they were in the past. And what's striking to me
if you want to look at the impact of this,
I looked at turnout just in terms of partisan registration
across the battleground state. Now four of the seven battleground
states offer partisan registry, so it's not all of them,
but again a pretty good sample. The differential on turnout.
(08:05):
If you compare twenty twenty where Joe Biden won in
twenty twenty four where Donald Trump won, the differential on
turnout between Democrats and Republicans twenty twenty four to twenty
twenty was less than a point. I mean, the swing
was minimal, But the deciding factor and why the result
ended up being this landslide from an electoral college perspective
(08:28):
for Donald Trump was because there were just so many
more registered Republicans in twenty twenty four and fewer To
the point you made earlier, it wasn't just that the
Democratic numbers were stagnant. There were actually fewer registered Democrats.
So Democrats going into this election in order to win
would have had to have gotten higher turnout among partisan
Democrats than they got in twenty twenty, which was almost impossible.
(08:50):
And we think that twenty twenty had records setting turnout
and Democrats did quite well in turnout. For Vice President
Harris to accomplish that would have been incredibly difficult.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Have you examined the Republican tactics and because they do
it more in a more partisan basis than the Democratic side,
is there something to be learned?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, I mean to the extent that I'm you know,
can dig into it and that it's out there and
a lot of it is out there in the public.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I think they've been.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Very proud of what they especially in states like Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
They work. Look, arguably, it is all they thought about
starting in twenty seventeen was we can't you know. It
was like it reminded me of Carl Rove after two thousand. Hey,
I don't want to have a margin like that again,
Let's try to improve in all of these key battleground states.
And back then it was Florida and Ohio. This time
(09:41):
it was the Big three, but particularly with Pennsylvania. Well
that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I mean when you look at their post mortem mafter
the twenty twelve election, where they said, look, we're not
going to win another national election if we continue to
do as poorly as we do with these emerging demographics,
especially younger voters and voters, and then they didn't really
do anything about it.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Ironically, the autopsy was right. They just didn't know Donald
Trump was the answer that was going to win him
over at more diverse I mean, it is a strange thing. Now,
I did mean to sort of interrupt your trade of thought,
but I've thought about that autopsy. So were they right?
It just they were wrong about who the right person was.
I mean, you know, anyway, but I did I digress.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Just at the time, I don't think, nor would they.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Don't think that's what right three percent in mind?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
No, oh no, no, certainly not. And so when you
look at their actual tactics now, a lot of it
looks a lot like what Democrats were doing again a
decade ago, two decades ago, especially, you know the successful
efforts of the Obama campaign. We have to remember that
the Obama campaign in two thousand and eight, they're organizing
with younger voters with something A lot of people looked
(10:45):
at it and said, well, look, these younger voters don't vote,
even especially not in presidential primary elections, and that campaign
saw an opportunity there and they put not only their
candidate there, but their resources organizing on college campuses. It's
arguably what won them the primary and then carried through
to the general election. And Republicans in a lot of
ways follow that model where they just had a presence
(11:07):
on college campuses that generally would be thought of as
quite hostile but for Republican or Republican electives, for Republican candidates.
But what they recognized, I think accurately, was that it
wasn't a matter if they didn't need to win these areas.
They just needed to turn around the numbers enough they
needed to not get out among younger voters, and you
(11:29):
look at what they created there. It's incredible, especially among
younger men. And these are numbers that are holding still.
They're resilient, especially among young men. When we look at
President Trump's overall numbers, you know, frankly in the toilet
at the moment, they're still out registering Democrats among younger men.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
You know, I have a thesis on that that it's COVID.
I always I have a gen Z focus group in
my household to college students and my younger My younger
one was sort of you know, let me put it
this way, he and his friends. I would say, you know,
think about this. Your first interaction with government is COVID.
(12:12):
And for some of these guys, right the first time
they've dealt with government, it took them away from their friends.
And I think that is a I think this is
going to be a generational thing with these guys. But
we'll see, right, it's only one cycle. But that's just
the thesis I have that this is more COVID related
than we fully appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
I think that's absolutely right, and in fact, you know,
I shared you know, in generally, a lot of the
things that I will share, I would say most of
the things I share as a partisan Democrat that I
share in public are going to appear to be more
favorable for Democrats. But in November of twenty twenty three,
I shared some analysis I put together. It was looking
at the voter registration gender gap among voters under the
(12:52):
age of twenty five, and it was really for me,
sounding the alarm where among all of the party registration states,
the gender gap among these younger voters was twenty six points.
In Pennsylvania, it's almost thirty seven points. And to me
that was a flashing red alarm that that's something that
if that's something that holds, and that we don't do
(13:12):
something about it, we're not going to win. And I
think your point, yeah, it certainly came out of COVID.
These were you know, it's complex, but when you put
these younger men, especially in a situation where suddenly their
lives are being lived almost entirely online, and the sort
of interactions they were having and the connections they were making,
(13:33):
and then sort of the lack of real world connections
they had, I think it had a massive impact. You know,
when you look at the Navigator surveys from after the election,
which is a great data set of large sample sized
post election surveys. They asked the question about how much
political news do you consume? And there's a straight line
correlation between the answer to that question and for whom
(13:55):
you voted, Meaning the people say I consume a lot
of political news present Hairs won by six points, but
those who say that I consume no or almost none
Donald Trump one by almost fifteen points. And again we
talked about these voters as low information voters. They're overwhelmingly younger,
and they were more men than women. We talked about
(14:16):
them as low information voters. They're not exactly low information voters.
They're consuming so much information, but they aren't consuming over
political information in the spaces that Democrats generally were contesting
or communicating it.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Have you studied this? You know, it does feel as
if you know sort of how often the first is
it like when you register somebody for the first time
for your party? How you know what kind of stickiness
is that? Is that a ten year stick? Is that
a generational stick? Is that? Like, you know, have you
(14:51):
been able have you looked at this through generational prisms.
You know, I always it's fascinating to me that my
generations the most pro Trump Generation X, and I attribute
it to growing up Reagan, as I call it, right,
that that was our formative years were Reagan, right, that
was the president during when we were both from you know,
(15:13):
Nancy Reagan showing up on different strokes, and then you know,
it was just sort of it was there and economy
was pretty good, right, you know, it was in the
end of the Cold War, right, we won something. So
that's my explanation for it. But I have no idea
whether I'm just sort of going through my head and
sort of saying, well, you know, how much is that
(15:33):
early commitment to a party matter long term?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, it's incredibly important. And the phenomena that you mentioned,
or the theory that you that you just posited, is
actually something the political scientists have studied and shown that
who at present when you're in those formative years and
again will depend for the individual in terms of when
tuning into these things. But people talking about broadly the
culture with the somewhatous but certainly Ronald Reagan in the eighties,
(16:02):
as a member of Gen X, myself, it was ubiquitous
from a cultural perspective, And yeah, so the biggest impact
is your household composition in a lot of ways as well,
or at least maybe next in line.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
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unless they win. So what your.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Parents are, what your parents are has a huge impact.
Now I'll be curious to see if that holds. It
would suggest that maybe now that's less sticky. But wherever
to your original question. When someone registers with a party,
they tend to stay there and it takes time. Generally
they'll start voting the other way before they switch. And
so we talk about these ancestral Democrats in places like
(17:53):
West Virginia throughout the show.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Let's just say it, that's the last spot of the
generational Democrats as Appalachia. Right, It's like in tucky West Virginia.
It's like the last Southern Ohio. I don't feel like
you have it in the Deep South anymore.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
You don't know they're gone. They're gone at this point,
and they are going. You know, Pennsylvania actually produces data
on party switchers on a very regular basis, and you
see it's still happening too, and it's.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
All Appalachia like areas like Western Pa.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, that's right, you know, in Pennsylvania's fascinating to me
because again you mentioned the success the Republicans had. They
had massive investment in part of the registration there, not
just in twenty twenty four, but going back four or
five years before that with great success. What's interesting to
me is if you look at this moment now, they
have some court races there that maybe aren't getting in
a lot of attention nationally, but are in Pennsylvania and
(18:42):
are incredibly important in a lot of ways. And Democrats
are actually doing among new registrants, are actually doing better
than they did four and even eight years ago. So
it's something that I'm looking at. They're not doing much better,
but they're doing a point or two better. Which is
this a bit of a turnaround. I don't know, but it's.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
It's Shapiro related. I mean, he's a popular governor.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Right, That's a big part of it. But an important
point here is even with that happening, the net numbers
are still getting worse for Democrats. Part of it is
because of who is being removed from the file to
put it in a passway, which part of that is death.
Part of that is people moving out of the states.
Part of that is purging, but that's generally negative. The
(19:27):
people who are in their eighties are actually more democratic
than not. People who get purged off the file tend
to be more Democrats. So Republicans are still actually gaining
in the net there, even while Democrats are doing better
among new registrants. So another thing to keep an eye on.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
In twenty twelve after that election, and I feel like
the most prominent person making this argument was Tom I
think that Tom Bevan over real clear that there was
a missing white vote, that there was this chunk of
people not voting, and that was the explanation for why
Romney so underperformed, particularly in certain place. I was a
(20:03):
bit skeptical, and I think some people were, And then
twenty sixteen happened, and then twenty happened, at twenty twenty
four happened, and you can't help but wonder how much
of the Trump gain is missing. Is voters that weren't participating,
say in the first twelve years of this century, versus
(20:24):
those that switched.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's a big part of it. I mean, obviously,
the entire equation has changed so radically from twenty twelve
that it's hard to point the one thing right because
we've seen that these voters who were more consistent, voting,
better educated. Again, traditionally Republican voters voted for Romney in
twenty twelve, voted for mckimal tom.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
I live in the last Romney precinct of Arlington, as
I call it there you go right, you know, And
they haven't voted Republicans since in this area, you know.
And so then I wouldn't call them liberal democrats.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
No, by noting, but those voters have voted, They likely
voted for Clinton, They almost certainly voted for Biden and
Fort Harris. These are the voters who are voting in
these lower turnout elections. That's the reason why, fairly well documented,
the Democrats are doing better in these lower turnout especially
these special elections that used to be the great advantage
(21:19):
for Republicans and that has turned on its head. And
so yeah, there are more of these lower turnout white
voters who are coming out when Trump is on the ballot.
They didn't come out in twenty eighteen. Not enough of
them came out twenty twenty two to have a red
wave election. We'll see what happens this year in New Jersey,
(21:40):
in Virginia and Pennsylvania and other places. See what happens
next year. But the other element of this that we've
been talking about is Republican improvements among younger voters, especially
younger voters of coloring, younger white men, and so I
don't know that you can count those in terms of
the missing white vote. Sure, these voters who demographically generally
(22:01):
would be a smaller share of the electorate and now
have been ascendant under Trump. I will say, when you
look at the polling numbers now and you look at
what drives Trump's, you know, reasonably good numbers when he
was elected and when he was inaugurated to where they
quickly went. The voters who dropped the most were these
same voters who swung the most towards him. So these
(22:22):
younger now have overwhelmingly negative numbers. But like I said
a few minutes ago, when you look at the partisan registration,
younger white men are still registering overwhelmingly Republican, which tells
me Republicans are doing the nuts and bolts, blocking and tackling,
doing the registration at the local level and holding on
to some of those margins.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
If the Democratic Party pointed to one thing, do they
have a do they have a base problem or a
persuasion problem.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Well, look, time will tell. I mean, from from both perspectives,
I think Democrats feel better about where they are now
in terms of of Trump's popularity. But I think there's
two parts to this equation, right, there's how well will
Democrats do in the elections happening next month and then
the elections next year just based on an anti Trump,
(23:16):
anti Republican sentiment which history would tell us, and we
don't have to go back any further team bit Historically,
we could go back as far as we want and
find Democrats should do quite well in these elections just
because of anti incumbency and especially because of Trump and
his little popularity numbers. To me, the big question is
are Democrats able to connect the dots and give voters
(23:37):
a reason to vote for them? From the positive case,
can we get to the point where people feel better
about the Democrat Party, where more people are associating and
affiliating with the Democratic Party. Why I'm watching these voter
registration numbers so closely now, because that's where you would
expect to see it first before the election, is more
people when they goybe it's just they're getting their driver's license.
(24:01):
Maybe it's not even effort to voter registration, but they
have a few boxes they could check. And right now,
those younger voters are overwhelmingly just say unaffiliated, just as
they did a year ago, three years ago, years ago.
And so for Democrats to really be able to maximize
(24:22):
their potential and these upcoming elections, I think that's where
you're going to see it. It's them being able to
build that positive and so to me, it's both. It's
it's persuasion and it's persuading the people to get to
the point where they enter that mobilization category where they're
going to be turnout targets for Democratic compaints.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Do you think the Democrats are resting almost counting too
much on Trump voters not showing up when Trump's not
on the ballot, Like it, It's sort of like I
hear this talk all the time, Well, Democrats will be fine,
and it may actually be a way of reason to
sort of no matter, you know, be careful thinking twenty
(25:03):
twenty six if it goes well for Democrats is somehow
a harbinger for twenty eight considering if quote unquote the
Trump voter just simply doesn't show up again for midterms,
they know this too, right, They know they have this problem,
and it does sound as if they're going to make
more of an effort to see if they can they
(25:23):
can get these voters more engaged in elections that don't
involve Trump. Do you let me tell you what. I
sense that Democrats are almost counting on this phenomenon, and
I would be weary of counting on the phenomenon given
how much money they're throwing at this.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah. Look, that's a hard one to read in terms
of what's happening tactically on the ground. I do think that,
you know, again, based on the history, You're right, the
Democrats are looking at this and making a calculus that
in the end, historically these voters haven't come out with
Donald Trump is not on the ballot, so therefore we
should do better. And you know, the special elections so
(26:05):
far have proven that true.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Look very so, everything looks similar to twenty seventeen except
the Democratic parties unfavorable ready. Yeah, but like if that's
the one thing that's different, it's much higher, that's.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Right, And that's why I think. You know, obviously, Democrats
has been going very hard on healthcare during this shutdown,
and that to me tells me that they are making
an effort to appeal not just to the mobilization universe,
not that the audience doesn't want to hear that message,
but to those swing voters. I mean, when they have
a message that Marjorie Taylor Green is agreeing with, suggest
(26:40):
there's something there and there's an opportunity and an effort
to appeal to these swing voters who likely voted for
Trump last year but are potentially part of that. You know,
maybe fifteen well, let's say fifteen percent of the country
who voted for him felt favorably about when he took
off and don't feel that way now.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
When you hear Democrats have a brand problem, what is
it that the problem is that people don't know what
the party does stand for, or that people do know
what the party stands for and they don't like it.
How do you view the quote brand problem? Is it
just not not very well defined or frankly defined in
(27:24):
an unpopular way.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You know, look, I'm a numbers guy, not a policy
or a messaging guy. But when you look at the
numbers from the twenty four election again, you look at
the exit polls, you look at the Navigator survey, there
was a big problem in terms of awareness of issues.
You looked at sort of the four signature legislative accomplishments
of President Biden in Democrats while he was in and
(27:48):
in each of those a navigator tested this a majority.
In some cases over sixty percent of Americans said they
didn't know anything about them. And then a real kick
in the pants for Democrats. More independent voters said that
Donald Trump did more on infrastructure when in office than
Joe Biden did.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
So just by saying Infrastructure week. Even though it failed,
it stuck.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So in our very online circle, that was the meme, right,
that was a running joke, Oh it's infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Right, And yet it turned out people have thought, oh
that Donald Trump cares about infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
That's exactly right. I mean, that's what bubble making up
the others.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
So you believe it is a it's an awareness, So
it's sort of it's more message penetration. The message itself
might be working if it if they knew how to.
So this would be a marketing problem. Is as much
as you may have a good brand, but if you
don't market it correctly, nobody knows your brand. Well.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, you know, I think there's two ways to look
at this question. One is the previous four years when
when when Democrats were in power, at least in the
White House. And then there's the question of now where
Democrats don't control anything, and I think there's you know
that has always been a challenge for the party that
is out of power, and how do you find your
own proactive agenda. I mean, we can go back to
nineteen four in the Contract with America and New Gingrich
(29:13):
and now Republicans successfully we're able to brand some type
of actual agenda. I think that's a lot more challenging
in the issue environment and just the media consumption environment
where in now to get voters to pay attention to
these things. I think the shutdown again we see Democrats
talking more specifically about healthcare is a good step in
that direction. I just think it's much more challenging these
(29:34):
days to get that proactive positive environment message out there,
an agenda out there, when in the end Democrats don't
have the ability to really move any of this forward.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
All right, I want to geek out, do geek out
on some states, and so you know, there's you look
at the you look at the seven swing states and
is it in your head a hard seven, meaning you
got the three Midwestern states right, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. Then
(30:08):
you got the sun Belt states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia,
North Carolina. Is there is is eight closer to seven?
I you New Hampshire, or is eight closer than to nine?
You see what I mean? Is it those seven and
everybody else? Or do you think there's a couple other
states still sort of you know, on the outside looking
(30:29):
in they could jump into the to the battleground map.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah. You know, if you wanted to look at obviously
the map and where states were moving in twenty twenty
four relative to twenty twenty, you had a handful of
states that I think you would have a very strong
argument for saying, you know, they shouldn't be considered swing
states in any sense, but they were getting closer. New
Hampshire was one of them. Yet Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Look, even Minnesota has been sitting there on the costpy.
I have you Minnesota the way I've viewed New Jersey.
For Republicans, it always it's always close. But Charlie Brown,
you know Lucy Wis both of football.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Well well, and for them it'd be there. You know,
three three hundred and fortieth electoral vote. It's not really
relevant from a strategic perspective, right, And so no, I
you know, I think at this point the seven states
are fairly solidified, at least if we're looking at the
next couple of years here. Obviously it will continue to evolve.
Democrats have have been interested in Texas and Florida for
(31:23):
a long time for obviously, you know, to put those
two in the same category, it's somewhat unfair given that
Democrats have won Florida and not too distant at least
in our lifetime, right, And at this point they're moving
in different directions, so, you know, for various reasons. So
you know, Texas will always be part of the conversation
(31:43):
for Democrats, at least further out from election day.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
But you're you're more pessimistic on Florida solidified? Are you
more pessimistic on Florida versus Texas if you were to pick.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
One, Yeah, I am. I mean, look, you had just
negative trends there. I think Democrats can still win there,
especially in the sort of dynamic we have now without
Trump on the ballot in a midterm election, Democrats would
have a chance there. In the presidential election. I think
it's more challenging. You know, it's not only just been
(32:17):
sort of a persuasion element, and you know, who is
the Democratic standard bear for full Floridians where they look
at identify with that party. I think that's been a challenge.
But just out migration, the migration patterns have just been
very difficult for Democrats. Where you've had Democrats movment, especially
during the pandemic, moving out of the state, and that
(32:39):
seems to continue.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Where really Democrats are moving out and Northeast Republicans are moving.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
In basically not just Northeast, but yeah, yeah, Midwest.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
So if you take the seven battleground states and you
take Kamala Harris's states and you put them together, the
max number of Senate seats that Democrats could win as
fifty two. What that tells you is they've got very
little margin for ayer if they want to be competitive
in the Senate. Now, look, both parties were so polarized,
(33:16):
both parties are sort of it's very difficult to win
a Senate seat these days. In the other side state right,
it's you know, Susan Collins and is probably the last
Republican that will represent me, But you know, at least
at least for the foreseeable future. She may represent it
another six years for all we know, but she's probably
the last of her come. So the question that Democrats
(33:39):
have to do, they have to figure out how to
at least have I would argue another four to six
states where they can win Senate seats. Maybe they can't
win it into presidential, but they've got to be able
to compete in senate races. What are those next four
to six that you think Democrats ought to be pre mean,
if they want to be competitive in the Senate, they
(34:01):
got to start prioritizing. Now I've got some in my head,
but I don't want to. I don't want to poison
poison the conversation. So I'm curious where you go first.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Well, well, it's a question of if you're looking at
this from a demographic and sort of political trend perspective
versus h you know, the actual opportunities in the individual candidate, right,
like we saw what, Yeah, you could make both.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Because I look at an Ohio and I don't think
there's much of a chance in Ohio. But Sharon Brown
is an overperformer. So in this specific instance, accept the
premise that Ohio this year is going to be competitive.
I'm skeptical, but obviously he's been a you know the guy,
the guy won nearly eight years ago. So yeah, no,
(34:41):
that's right.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
I mean, look from the actual demographic trends and where
states have gone under Donald Trump. Like bizarrely, Utah is
one of those states that stands out there's actually underperformed
for Republicans, it's underperformed for Trump. It's one that has
trended and actually does have somewhat favorable demographic trends. You
have a big question that you have to ask yourself
if you're trying to answer this is where do you
think Latino voters go? Obviously Donald Trump has driven a
(35:05):
huge over performance with Republicans among Latino voters. Do you
believe that's something that is just related to Trump? How
do you see what's happening with the mass de patients
and very public authoritarian acts advice out there? How does
that impact that vote? Because in the end, again Utah
has a quick, fast growing Latino population. Texas obviously is
(35:29):
a big part of that conversation and will be tested
and next year in terms of where we are. But again,
if you look at opportunities. I agree Ohio, just from
Shared Brown as someone who is a performer there with
a much more hostile environment for Republicans and Donald Trump
(35:50):
not on the ballot, you have to believe he has
a very good chance to win there. But look, you're right,
I mean the number of opportunity for Democrats above and
beyond those states the Vice President harrisone or those swing
states you know there are few and far between. Again,
that's where you have to look at things like what
happened and in Nebraska where you had Osborne money as an.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Independent, is that a better stre I mean you look
at the plain states, right, you look at the northern
tier where it wasn't that long ago where you had
(36:37):
two Democratic senators from North Dakota for a brief period,
for every reasonable period of time, two Democratic senators from
South Dakota, two Democratic senators in Montana. Is that lost
for a generation or does that? Or is it that?
And is that a Democratic brand issue or is it
(36:58):
an issue? Is it? Is it like a specific issue
that the problem that Democrats have?
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yes, I don't know. I think we'll get a good
sense of that next year. The question is, you know,
can Democrats recruit and run populist candidates who are not
connected to the negative brand of the party. Obviously, the
brand of the party of the Democrat Party is not
going to turn around anytime soon in those states. But
to your point, Democrats have had great success in the
last two decades in those states running.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Well, they're populous states, that's right, They're populous before their DNR, right,
and that's what tells that's why I assume they're still
potentially in play because they're not settled. They're culturally conservative,
but they want an activist government. Those states benefit from
(37:48):
an activist government.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Well, and right now they're not benefiting from the activism
of the current government. When you look at what is happening,
you know, you can throw Iowa in there too. When
you look at what's being with the tariffs and negatively
impacted uh uh. These populations have been under this presidency,
and then not just the tariffs, obviously, just through federal
(38:12):
grants for farms and that sort of thing. It's had
an overwhelmingly negative impact. And so for Democrats to test this,
they're going to need to run candidates who can run
on that populous message, who have some credibility and perspective
and obviously rely on this still being forefront of their
minds and Trump and not doing a turnaround in the
(38:32):
next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Here some of this, you know, sometimes you got to
do triage. What what blue states? You know? The thing
that made the popular vote go Trump's direction was not
the seven battleground states. It was the fact that Illinois,
New Jersey right were four point races five point races.
You're like, whoa right of the blue states? Where should
(38:59):
the party be? Hey, don't drop the ball here. I've
always said, New Jersey to me is at the top
of the list. But what after New I assume you
agree that on New Jersey? Where else would you be
telling the party, Hey, you know, you better keep a
better eye out in here, and you better do a
little more a little more work.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Well, you know. To me, this is an interesting dynamic
because it illuminates the problem with you know, I think
where the party brand identity issue that we've been talking
about actually has a bigger impact as in these states.
Because I mentioned how when you look at the turnout
data in twenty twenty four relative twenty twenty in the
battleground states, there was almost no difference between those. It
(39:41):
was just it was minimal.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
But no difference in three straight elections, right, that's sixteen,
twenty and twenty four. There were more the same than
different those those seven states.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
But where the turnout truly created for Democrats was in
these blue states and especially these Northeastern and mid Atlantic states,
where Democratic turnout was just abysmal. New Jersey actually had
a little bit of both, where it had a cratering
of Democratic turnout and it also had these unaffiliated voters
who were more fiscally sensitive in New Jersey than probably
(40:12):
any other state. A lot of that just due to
property taxes. But that drove the massive underperformance of Vice
President Harris in those states. And so you know, I
don't look at any of those at this point and
say Republicans are poised to turn this into a longer
term trend. Sure, mobilization worries me less than persuasion, because
(40:33):
mobilization is something that can be fixed with a single
campaign and a single cycle. Persuasion can as well, but
it's it's tougher. And so again it's not to say
that Republicans won't have opportunities in these states. But if
we're looking at it now holistically, there's not a state,
a blue state that I look at and say, well, gosh,
this is one where we're certainly going to be in
(40:54):
trouble in other than sort of generically. Again, if we
want to look at where their potential liability from Democratic
brand identity issues, it's going to be universally across these states.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Two of the battleground states where Democrats have had an
enormous amount of success are Georgia and Arizona. These are
two states that Barack Obama could never carry. He'd come close,
he'd make them more competitive, but there were you know,
couldn't win any races in those states. Are they just
(41:27):
uniquely allergic to Trump? Is this the suburban switch? And
those two states with just you know, I always said
Phoenix is America's largest suburb, right in Atlanta arguably a
close second. You know, they're just two. Is it due
to the suburban shift to the Democrats that those two
states in particular basically went from red to battleground.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
There's a few dynamics at play in both of those states.
You know, certainly that suburban shift is a big part
of it. They just have a barely significant well educated
white voter population, these voters who have swung since Trump
emerged onto the scene towards Democrats, and so that's a
big part of it. Another thing is Asian American voters
(42:12):
API voters in Georgia, massive, massively fast growing are of
the electorate there. Just when you look at the difference
between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, where Hillary Clinton lost
the state and Joe Biden won it, that margin swing
was almost entirely defined just by not just population growth
(42:32):
but turnout growth among API voters. Now it's worth noting
the same AAPI voters swung towards Trump in twenty twenty four,
and then the Poles are now swinging back against so
perhaps an emerging swing group. There's not as many of
those API voters in Arizona as are in Georgia, but
still an significant element. And then I think in terms
of Latino voters, Trump didn't get the same sort of
(42:55):
swing from Latino voters in those states as he got
in some other states. It's like Nevada, lan Texas, Florida.
And so that's part of the recipe as well.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
I mean not to oversimplify this, but you know what
you're describing in both and what you see and yeah,
I just feel like that Latino voters that Democrats assumed
that Obama's percentage was their percentage, when when you look
at these first gen and second gen voters, they're just
more economic sense, They're economically sensitive, and to me, they
(43:26):
behave just like regular old swing voters, because swing voters
are usually economically sensitive. That's right.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
And that's where I think that you know, the pandemic
had a huge impact. It's why you saw some of
these bigger swings in the Rio Grand Valley is because
the way that especially the hospitality industry was hit by
the pandemic in the closures. Uh, and yeah, I mean
these are Hispanic voters are are They very much meet
the profile of swing voters. I do think you're seeing
(43:54):
that acknowledged by these campaigns now, where you know, I
think for a while Democrats were perhaps making the mistake
of treating Hispanic voters as if they were only mobilization
targets and the price.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
And frankly talking the wrong issue. That's right, Immigration was
not the number one issue among these voters. Four years ago,
I operated on the thesis that Trump was a temporary
brand for the Republicans and that when the quote unquote
Chamber of Commerce brand came back, you know it would
bring us to I always said Colorado and Virginia. You
(44:28):
look at Glenn Youngkin, You're like, yeah, Glenn Youngkin can
succeed in both the Colorado and Virginia. Right, the sort
of the Chamber of Commerce type pitch. I'm less sure now.
I mean I think the I think once you have
a second term that it probably defines that Trump's now
it's Trump's party. He's not borrowing the party anymore, right,
(44:49):
he has molded the party. Is that wing? Is that
wing of the party just dormant, dead, no longer registered Republicans?
I mean the Paul Ryan wing. Are they now registering
as independent?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
I think it's a big question of to what extent
Republicans who are not Trump are able to pull it
off a convincing enough impersonation of him to be able
to have electoral success. Because I agree, I don't see
a world where the party goes back to where they
were before now right away.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
I mean, you're certainly not. You know, it's going to
take an election cycle or two before they would.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
It'll take them losing badly in elections with not convincing
enough Trump like clone. You know, when you look at
twenty twenty two, perhaps that is indicative of how the
party could free itself of Trump's shadow, in that you
had a lot of Republican candidates for the Senate who
(45:50):
are running as Trump clones, whether it was you know,
doctor Oz and Pennsylvania. You go across these these races
that they should have won based on the history of
midterm elections credit president who was historically unpopular. They should
have won them, but they didn't win them because of
these candidates Herschelwalker being another one, Zona and all races
(46:11):
that they should have won, uh, and they didn't. So
post Trump, are they able to find candidates who can
pull off more convincing impersonations. Then I think it's it's
stickier because from a primary perspective, it's the way you
win a Republican primary now and I don't expect that.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
To change any time.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Can they can they win general elections without someone named
Donald Trump on the ballot with that mega mentality? I'm
just not so sure.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
All right with the last minute or two here the
stay polling, I'm a I'm generally bullish unpolling, meaning I
kind of think that people demit. I hate the averaging
of polls because I think it's created the illusion of
accuracy when a poll is there to essentially give you
an estimate and it's you know, if you pay attention
(47:01):
to margins of aeror. Polling has been fine over the
last ten years. The problem is we have this, you know,
real clear politics in five point thirty eight gave us
the the somehow the illusion that there was there was
pure accuracy in what was a freaking survey. Okay, So
that would drive me bonkers. And that's why I hate
pull averaging and all of those things. All that said,
(47:24):
what's your preferred methodology to get up these days in
order to feel like you've got a good handle on
public opinion research? What kind of methodology are you looking
for these days compared to save twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Well, and I agree with everything you said in terms
of the state of polling, and I think polsters should
be applauded because they've adapted and evolved quite admirably.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Great. It's hard. It's never been harder.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
No, it's never been harder, and it just keeps getting harder,
you know, Apple putting into place. All make things even
harder for bolsters because the call will just be funneled
right to junk folders. So you know what I look for.
Mixed mode survey data collection is incredibly important now. I
think it's one of the things that we learned, and
again I think most polsters are doing a great job.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
So they are. Let's put that in a little bit
of American for people, Mixed mode for those that don't
follow the industry means what.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
So that means they're collecting data by not just one method.
So they're texting people, they're doing online surveys, they're calling people,
they're calling their landlines. Some people still into landlines.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
So they're almost picking a mode based on the demographic preference. Right,
if you know younger people prefer text a web, then
you text a web everybody under the age of thirty, right,
landlines over the age of seventy, etcetera.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Right, Every mode has its bias, and so if you
can collect data through multiple modes, it gets more expensive.
But you look at most accurate polsters, that's that's what
they're doing at this point, and I think you're just
going to see you're going to see more of that
going forward, I will say, you know, the other thing
that drives me crazy with the polling, beyond the averaging
of poles, is the cross tab diving.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Oh my god, that's it. That's worse straight like, oh,
don't do that.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
But you know, we'll see movement among independent white women
in one state between one pole and another and then
write a front page story about how they moved. And
the reality is none of that has the level of
fidelity that we could, you know, provide that level of credit.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
We used to have a rule at the NBC News
Pole and NBC Well Set Journal Pole and hart mcin
Turf were both like this, two poles in a row
and a subgroup. Don't go crazy when you see a switch.
Two poles in a row. And that was always the rule.
We did not ever ride about a swing until we
saw two poles in a row. You know. Even then,
(49:49):
you know you're talking about a subset of eighty to
one hundred and twenty, you know, on some of these
demographics cross tabs.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
But anyway, only everyone would follow your lead on that.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
It's fair enough and let me get out, get you
out in here. And this what's the three public the
nonpartisan polls that you're like when they come out, I
read it all. I read all of it. I go
into the demos and everything.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
You know, what's funny is is I have spent less
and less time this year digging into the polls, which
I think has been for me. But you know, look,
I love the New York Times polls. I don't love
how people sometimes cover them or how they digest them,
but I think they do an incredible job.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
I love I love their transparency. That's right. I mean,
they're analysis. It's funny how a couple of times they've
literally been your poll told you the answer and you
didn't write it. But anyway, I agree they're transparency. I
should be commended.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I've mentioned the Navigator surveys. I think they do a
great job.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I mean that I think we get a little bit
too obsessed about who was the accurate polster last time.
You have a whole bunch of pollsters who tend to
out outcomes that are more Republican. You have some that
are reliably more democratic. And if the election swings one way,
then those pollsters look good, and if it swings the
other way, look good. And I think we need to.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
I just want consistency, Like I know quinip X consistent.
I think they have a bit of a lien. They're consistent, Emerson,
I think they have a bit of a lien, but
it's consistent. Like, as long as it's consistent, then I
can I do my own math. All right, I'm going
to add to or I'm going to subtract to or
whatever it is, and that's where I go. But but
(51:29):
that's usually I'm sure what you look for consistency.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. You need to be able
to make some of your own mental adjustments and calculations
for sure.
Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, Tom Bon here, this was appreciate you geeking out
with me, and uh, we'll see how the vote. Do
you see evidence that the party is throwing real energy
in voter registration yet or not?
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Well, you're seeing it, and again you're seeing you're seeing
more of these outside groups that have existed that had
success last time around are doing it too. In terms
of party party doings and registration. I will say I've
heard a lot more talk about that happening, a lot
more people pushing for that happening. I believe you will
see investment from the party and that as we get
(52:11):
into the midterm elections next.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
I'd imagine they want to show something on that front.
That's for sure. Tom appreciate the time. Great stop with me.
Thank you.
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