In this episode of A Numbers Game with Ryan Girdusky, Ryan breaks down the numbers behind the Democratic wave sweeping recent U.S. elections. He and data analyst, Zachary Donnini dive into low Republican turnout, high Democratic engagement, and changing voter demographics in battleground states like Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York City. They explore how candidate quality, party loyalty, and the rise of the progressive left shaped the outcomes, while analyzing the economic and immigration issues challenging the GOP. It's a Numbers Game is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Gardusky. Happy
post election Thursday. We're taping some wednes Day, so I
got confused for a second but heavy post election Thursday.
It was a wave. There's no easy way to say it.
It was a Democratic wave across the whole country. I
was paying attention to local races and states that we're
not making the national news. In Kansas, in Connecticut, in
(00:27):
you know, Georgia, in red states and blue and Democrats
absolutely had a triumphant night. And there's I think multiple
reasons for that. First, in states without heavy, high profile
elections like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Kansas, Republican turnout was pretty mild.
(00:47):
Republican turnout was very low in some places, and it
definitely hurt Republicans down ballot. I know, for our school
board campaign in Pennsylvania, we for the very first time
I had door knockers knocking on doors and we paid
them to go knock on doors. And the overwhelming response
for Republicans was I didn't know there was an election happening,
(01:08):
And you could tell by the time by the way
that the votes that were coming out in Georgia where
Republicans lost the state wide election for the first time
in twenty years by twenty points. It wasn't a high
profile position, but they did nonetheless lose it by a
substantial margin in an election they weren't expected to. So
the low turnout from non high profile states definitely hurt,
(01:32):
definitely hit. With this great political realignment that has been happening,
we are seeing college educated whites, high intensity voter. They're
the ones who are shifting further to the left, and
they showed up in big numbers, big big numbers, no
King's rally, and was a weird the Kings, No King's rally.
(01:53):
Those groups of voters were showing up in drops, and
I don't know, I don't know in the average non Virginia,
non New York City, non New Jersey state if there
were Republicans even engaged at the same level. So I
think that that was a big part of it nationwide,
was just the high propensity turnout, high election, high interest election.
(02:16):
The independent number, the number of Independence showing up was
particularly low compared to their usual percentage, and many of
them are probably Trump voters or non committal Republicans. Lower
propensity people. Independence usually always vote at a lower propensity
than Republicans and Democrats, but it was very, very low.
(02:37):
So I think that's the overall country to begin with.
Then when you look at high high high stake states,
I guess states that the media was covering back and
forth like Virginia, New York City, and New Jersey. I
think that there was two different things happened. So we'll
start in Virginia. Win some series was a bad candidate, right,
(02:57):
I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I was hearing from
people on other campaigns in Virginia how poorly she was
running her operation, and it showed she lost by the worst,
by the worst election results for a Republican in almost
half a century. She just did terribly. She turned people off.
But there was also the issue of the government shutdown,
(03:20):
and that definitely affects people in Virginia. There was the
issue of Trump's the incumbent president. Whenever you have the
incumbent president being of one party, Virginia New Jersey goes
the other way. It's a knee jerk reaction. That's part
of the zeitgeist. So you have the government shutdown, you
have bad candidate on top of the ticket, and you
have the Republican being in power in the White House,
(03:41):
and all those things make up a perfect storm against win.
Some sears Jason mire is losing by I think six
points was way larger than I thought it was. But
it shows the intensity to which the anti Republican sentiment
was there. Remember I said to everybody, if when some
Seers loses by double digits, Jason Mirs is going to lose.
(04:02):
She lost by fourteen points. Had she lost by eight,
Jason Mirs would have won. And so what did a
lot of other Republicans down ballot When it comes to
New Jersey. I was on Buck and Clay's show on
Tuesday and I was just telling them early numbers coming
out of New Jersey, and the Democratic turnout was preposterously high.
It was, It was insanely high. I want you to
(04:24):
think of this that Jack Chitarelli to the Republican nominee
who ran in twenty twenty one. He got one hundred
and twenty two thousand more votes than he received in
twenty twenty one, enough to win in a twenty twenty
one election. Right, had we done the twenty twenty election,
(04:44):
twenty twenty one election again and Murphy. Governor Murphy had
the same amount of votes that he had gotten that year.
But Jack Shirelly had gotten twenty twenty five numbers, Chitarelli
would have beat Murphy. Chitdarelli had that much new voters. Remember,
I said New Jersey one hundred and sixty thousand new
registered Republicans. But even though Jack Chitarelli got one hundred
(05:07):
and twenty two thousand new voters, the Democrats, Mikey Cheryl
had over four hundred thousand new voters. They turned up
out of the woodwork in remarkable numbers. Right. Jack Chitdarelli
got one point two five to five million last time.
(05:27):
He got one point three seven million this time. One
point three seven million, big number. Murphy got one point
three to three million last time. Mikey Cheryl got one
point seven nine million this time. Huge, huge increase coming
out of South Jersey the Democrat of the average Democrat voter,
(05:49):
Mikey Cheryl had so many Democrats vote for that she
was only four hundred thousand votes away from hitting Kamala
Harris numbers. That's remarkable and kudos to her campaign for
running a good campaign. I mean, there's no shame and
sing there saying somebody of the opposite party ran a
good campaign, but it also speaks to the environment of
the year. That's part of it, and that's what I
(06:11):
want people who feel deflated to realize the year. Sometimes
there are just bad election cycles, right, Sometimes there are
bad election years. There were I have a friend who
ran for office in New York in a republic leaning area,
who had a lot of money campaign money, who had
(06:32):
a ground game, who had an operation, who was really
really working hard for the seat, and the Democrat had
no visible campaign whatsoever, was working out of a U
haul truck after they were evicted from their campaign office.
That is not a joke. That's really happened. And the
(06:52):
Democrat won. And the Democrat won by big numbers, even
though the Republican is who's replacing a conservative Democrat. Even
though the Republican got five thousand more votes than the
incumbent got in the last election, it didn't matter because
the turnout was just too high. Right, Democrats were turning
(07:15):
out a probably seventy five to eighty percent of a
presidential year. Republicans are probably turning out its sixty to
sixty five percent. Independence were at forty forty five percent
in the New York City mayoral election. And I'm going
to talk to Zachar Denini later about this because he
covered the mayor election pretty intensely. The most fascinating and
interesting thing that you are going to maybe not here
(07:40):
you should hear is that in the Democratic primary, Governor
Cuomo won the support of Hispanics in the Bronx and Blacks,
primarily Right Asians, a lot of Whites. They voted against
him in this election. According to the New York Times,
majority White areas voted overwhelmingly for Cuomo, A majority East
Asian areas vote overhalling for Cuomo. You know who didn't.
(08:04):
Blacks and Hispanics, the same people that they thought were
going to be the last ones in his coalition, completely
abandoned him. They voted entirely for the person with the
DA at the end of their name, because they are Democrats.
Had Cuomo received the amount of support in the Bronx,
Queens and Brooklyn, in the Black and Hispanic areas that
he won in the Democratic primary, I had those percentages,
(08:28):
he would be mayor right now and not Zara Mundani.
That base leaving him and even though he got larger
amounts of you know, basically the old Bloomberg coalition speaks
to why he lost and courteously what embarrassed himself. And
I'm so so ashamed of him. He should never show
face in public again. What a complete, complete loser. Anyway,
(08:53):
that's my initial thoughts, but we're going to hear a
lot in the next coming weeks and days. Democrats and
the media are going to sit there and spin this
and said they're and say this is a complete reflection
of Donald Trump. This is a rejection of all things Maga.
This is a rejection of everything that twenty twenty four
was about. This is the re realignment of young people
in Hispanics. Two things on that, the Hispanic numbers. We're
(09:16):
going to wait and see. We're going to find out
what the actual turnout was in place like New Jersey.
I looked at one city ahead of this, ahead of
this podcast, and that was Pi Saic, New Jersey, very Hispanic.
In twenty seventeen and in twenty twenty one, the demo
the Hispanic vote was D plus fifty four and then
D plus thirty eight. In the presidential elections in twenty
(09:38):
sixteen and twenty twenty it was D plus fifty one
and then DE plus twenty five, you could see the
trajectory towards Republicans, and then in twenty twenty four was
R plus seven Trump pointed by seven points, and this
year was D plus twenty four. Now that is a
massive thirty points swing towards the Democrats. However, it is
still to the right of where they were in twenty
twenty one by fourteen points. I think those comparisons are
(10:02):
going to be very useful because despite a wave election,
let's see if the new coalition that Trump built of
voters is back to where they were before Trump ran
in twenty twenty four. I doubt that they are. I
don't know if they are. But what I want to
say to the bigger idea of the of the last
night was there were a couple of bright spots for Republicans.
(10:23):
Nasau County Republicans picked up a important school board Loudon County, Virginia.
There was a handful of things here and there. For
the most part that it was horrible. I think Republicans
and especially Republicans in DC, should have an honest moment
with themselves about the state of the economy. The economy
(10:44):
is not good. We cannot lie and just say it's
great because Trump's president. It is not good for young
people especially, It's not good. There's a lot of anxiety
right now over AI, over the changing in the job market,
over what other people can afford to live. There is
a housing crisis in this country in a large part
(11:05):
because of immigration. Just saying it like it's saying it,
there is an immigration. The immigration that the Bush and
Reagan coalition supported in this country for decades brought in
the people I Zora Mandani brought in his family, brought
in the families of people who believe in socialism that
were elected across the country last night in places like
(11:26):
Saint Paul, almost in Minneapolis. But we'll see if that
election holds out later on. But in all these elections,
the far left, a lot of them were bolstered by
the mass immigration of the Third World in our country
who fundamentally believe in socialism. And I don't I think that.
I think that Republicans need to have a moment and
(11:47):
a reflection over what the economy looks like right now,
what the state of our immigration has done done to
us in our country, and really make an important pivot.
At the same time, it was a wave year right,
it was a wave year in overwhelmingly blue states. Don't
(12:09):
set your hair on fire. I always say to candidates,
if you lose by one vote, you should spend the
entire next six months thinking about how you didn't campaign
hard enough. If you lose by a million votes, it
wasn't about you. And for a lot of these Republicans
it wasn't about them. There was nothing that they could
done to win, just like there was a lot of Democrats.
There was nothing they could have done to win in
twenty ten or in twenty fourteen, just like for a
(12:31):
lot of Republicans, and nothing they could have done to
win twenty oh six or twenty oh eight. Waveyears are
wave years for a reason. And I think what we
are the most interesting thing that we are seeing is
if you go through our trajectory, twenty twenty five being
a wave year, twenty twenty four being basically a wave year,
twenty twenty two not being a wave year that was
(12:51):
the one exception, but twenty twenty being a waved, twenty
eighteen being a wave, twenty sixteen being a wave, twenty
fourteen being a wave. The American public for the last
decade is overwhelmingly frustrated with how things are working out,
and they are just going to the next shiny object
who can sit there and make the economy work for them,
(13:14):
to make the economy work with their kids, and we'll
see how this all shakes up. I don't think that
it's that bad because you cannot control for a wave.
And if you ran for office last night and you lost,
I know that that's bruising, but just know it was
probably nothing that you could do. It was probably the
year that it was in, and Republicans have a year
to make some serious changes in order to avoid a
(13:37):
catastrophe in the mid terms. With me, coming up next
is my friend Zachary Danini. He's going to go over
the data from New York City and show us if
there's any lessons that we can learn for the nation
as a whole from Mandani's win. That's gonna be up
next with me on today's episode is data Scientists. One
of my therap people on Twitter, Zachary Danini, Thank you
(13:59):
for being here, so zach, your coverage of the New
York mayor's race is better than almost anybody else's on
social media. Thank you what surprised you because you said
for a while. He was definitely winning, he was winning
a majority. What if anything surprised you, Yeah, I think
the number one thing that surprised me was that the
Republicans really, really, really rallied around Cuomo. Right, I think
(14:20):
Curtis Sleewah is going.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
To end up with about seven percent of the vote
in polling, he was at fifteen or sixteen for a while.
The Trump endorsement, I think of Cuomo def definitely helped, right,
because I think Sleewah was at ten or eleven in
the early vote and then fell down. He was at
maybe I think six or five and a half in
the election day vote. So the Trump endorsement helped a lot.
(14:43):
But yeah, even in that early vote, I think, you know,
a lot of Republicans had the thought process that they
liked Sleewaw more than Quomo. They answered in polling they
were going to support Sliwah, and then they came out
probably held their nose and voted for for Cuomo.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah. I can tell you anecdote as a New Yorker
my whole life, I know probably seven people, seven Republicans
that stayed with Sliway. But they had made their decision
a long time ago, and they probably all the most.
They were voting for Sleewa, but they were voting for Cuomo.
What surprised me is is that a lot of people
(15:19):
and a lot of people online especially said CMO needs
these Bronx, Hispanics, Blacks out of burrows to go vote,
and in the end he lost them. He lost the
establishment Democrat voter Tondanni. Had he had those voters, he
would have beaten Mendonni. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
If he did how he did with block voters and
Dominican voters in the primary, I think, yeah, he would
have would have been really close with Mom Donnie.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
It would have been it would have been especially close
because in the end and in southern Brooklyn, right, it
was in Brooklyn and the Bronx where his numbers fell
apart and the should and it was almost like the
Bloomberg coalition very much, because he did far better in
Manhattan than I thought he was going to Yah. His
numbers of Manhattan are very strong, and I think that
(16:06):
what their lesson is for as a political consultant, what
my lesson is is that these types of voters will
always vote with the establishment Democrat, even when you are
They'll vote for the Democrat even when you have a
socialist maybe yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So I think that the D next to Mam Donnie's name, right,
that that first column is really really valuable with with
black voters in New York City and across the country,
right right, I mean Cuomo was the establishment D in
the primary.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Black voters broke for Cuomo.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Then Mamdonni won the primary, got the D next to
his name for the general election, and I think Black
voters really basically kind of respected that and and back
their nominee. What this reminds me of is oftentimes you
get these elections where you may be a special election
and then you have a rematch in a general election.
(17:04):
And what often happens is the person who wins this
special election will win the general election by much much more,
maybe something like five or six months later, because just
being that incumbent winning the first time getting the D
next to the name, the Democratic establishment voters who maybe
vote a little bit less based on ideology and more
(17:24):
on party loyalty, respect that.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Right. And also what tells me from a national point
is is that you know, if AOC runs for president,
which who knows if she's going to, but let's say
she does, you know, it's the black vote in South
Carolina and the Deep South and Super Tuesday states that
will stop her, right, they will not support her very
likely your weakest demographic right, but they will then turn
(17:51):
around and support her overwhelmingly in a in a general
elections mean very little light on it going into and
also by the thing, the Asian vote voted for.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So Mom Donnie did really well in South Asian areas,
but East Asian areas like Flushing and then in Southwest
Brookland were Cuomo one and those were areas Cuomo flipped
from the primary, and Mom Donnie did did well with
the East Asian voters that are still in the Demogracratic coalition.
I think Nate Cohne had a really nice analysis about
(18:26):
how the vast, vast majority of voters in that June
primary were Harris voters, not Trump voters, but when you
added Trump voting Asians to the mix, which those areas
shifted as hard right as almost anywhere in the country
last November, Cuomo kept those voters.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I think that when you extrapolate from I know you
foot focused primarily on New York, when you look at
New Jersey and Virginia and other races are out most
of the country. I mean, Democrats had a great night.
I think that it's part of I think that part,
part of what Mandani's wave was was just the overall
(19:04):
wave happening in the nation towards the Democrats. Yeah, and
I know you don't give up opinion about this, but
what was your If you look at my Latino vote specifically,
which is a lot of focus on it, they definitely
shifted left. But in some parts, especially in New Jersey
where has been looked at, they did not shift as
left as they had pre twenty twenty. Yes, so they
(19:28):
were not back to pre twenty tine numbers. Is that
an accurate statement to saying.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. So again, I'm getting my
hands on a lot of precinct data today. I think
I'm going to be able to dive into it tonight
and tomorrow and publish more, you know, thought out analyses.
But from the anecdotal stuff I've been seeing online, yeah,
we're talking about thirty point swings to the to the
left towards Democrats from twenty twenty four. It looks like
(19:54):
in a lot of North Jersey Hispanic areas, but a
lot of those areas, especially Dominican ones where you know
forty or fifty point swings to the right. So that's
I think going to be the big question heading forward
in national politics. Is Trump proved that there is a
Republican candidate who can really really compete and generally, I
would say, narrowly lose Hispanic voters in a place like
(20:16):
North Jersey and win them in Texas. And it looks
and you know, there's gonna be downballot lag They're going
to stick with the Democratic Party in some elections, but
come twenty twenty eight, I have no idea what North
Jersey Hispanics will look like in the presidential election.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
So how much does how much does the youth turnout
matter for the mayoral election for Mendanni? I mean, obviously
was basically you tracked a big part portion of it.
And is it just that his message and his social
media presence, which is very, very important, His social media
was so exciting rather than the fact that they're all
(20:54):
socialists now.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
So I think, first of all, we're talking about you know,
eighteen forty nine year old voters in New York City
are are probably substantially substantially more socialists than you know,
the country as a whole. The you know, this isn't
anything new, right. The DSA has been you know, extremely
strong in New York. They have a lot of boots
on the ground. I think it's one of the cities
where they're strongest in the US. But anecdotally and through polling,
(21:19):
I can also tell you that a lot of the
youth were coming out for Mom Donnie against Cuomo.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I think people see Cuomo with the scandals, the you know,
sexual harassment issues, as you know, a Democratic party that
they don't like, and Mom Donnie's a fresh face with
a great social media presence who I also think, you know,
kind of you know, a lot of Democrats are talking
about the lessons they can learn from his campaign, and yeah,
(21:45):
one of those is the youth turnout was was pretty
striking and Mom Donnie really transformed the electorate in a
way I don't think we've seen candidates do other than
Donald Trump in the last ten years.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
What lesson is there for Republicans and all that, well,
lesson is that Democrats.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
And so I think there's going to be a lot
of discussion, you know, is Mom Donnie strong?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Is he?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And I think this election last Night does not give
us a good data point on that. And my argument
for why is that, you know, if if Bernie Sanders
ran against Joe Manchin nationally with a D next to
his name or something, the that's like a tough election
to part right because we usually talk about Democrats versus Republicans,
(22:30):
and in a Democrat versus Democrat general election, you know
Cuomo's going to peel off a lot of those moderate Democrats.
And that's nothing that Mom Donnie is doing wrong, right,
because you know, a progressive Democrat running against a moderate
Democrat is tough because the moderate Democrat should get Republicans
and Democrats.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
On the flip side. Mom Donni had the D next
to his name, and.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
We talked about earlier about why you know that's very
good because you get the you know establishment, you know,
Dominican and Black New Yorkers, you know coming home.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
For you right. Well, Zachary, where can people go to
remar with your stuff and all your things and your
substack and Twitter and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Go to Zachary Danini on Twitter one word and then
then my stub stack is at Zacharydanini dot com.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Go check him out. It's so good he's so so smart. Zachary,
thank you for being on. Yeah, thank you so much
for having me on. Now it's time for the Ask
Me Anything segment of this podcast. If you want to
part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me Ryan
at Numbers gamepodcast dot com. That's ryanat numbers Plural Game
podcast dot com. I love these questions. I think it
(23:32):
makes a really good show. Our first question comes from Jason.
He's is there and says thank you that he loves
the true crime content that I did in the last episode.
Thank you so much, Jason for listening to this podcast
or watch me on YouTube. I uh, maybe I will
do a whole true crime episode around the holidays when
there's really not a lot of news going on and
there's not a lot of data to sit there and
(23:52):
pour over. But I really enjoy it. I love that
kind of those kinds of stories, So I will definitely
maybe do an episode or just a full Q and
a true crime stuff in the future. Next question comes
from David. Dave brother says, Hey, Ryan, can you do
an episode about why ninety percent of black people vote
for Democrats? I don't know if it's a full episode, Dave,
that could do it. Look, the black vote has been
(24:17):
not a completely monolithic vote, but it's been fairly monolithic
basically since they had the right to vote. They were
used to be Republican, now they're democrat. I think that
when you look at there's a lot of things going on.
There's part of it is, you know, the history of
blacks in America, which has been one of immense suffering,
(24:37):
an immense amount of racism. And you know, even I
who thinks a lot of the DEI stuff is way overblown,
who thinks that a lot of the reparations conversations is
you know, deliriously stupid. You have to sit there any
knowledge how bad blacks aded in this country. There was
genuine racism against them, and there becomes a mindset in
(25:00):
the black community, especially about like we can all do
better together, and we can all we could all kind
of float together. All our ships can float together, all
our ships can sing together. When the black vote moved
in nineteen sixty four, I mean it was very coordinated
by LBJ. LBJ knew when he passed the Civil Rights
Act he'd have the blacks voting for the Democratic Party
(25:21):
for the next hundred years. He said it and he said,
explicitly using the N word. And I think that at
this point the reason that you're seeing some kind of
transformation is a lot of the institutions in the black community,
the black church, black universities, that young blacks are not
(25:42):
as part of those institutions as they used to be.
And also they are not parents at a young age
like they used to be. They're not teenage parents hardly
at all anymore like they used to be. So now
that there's some independence from those institutions that kept them
as democrats, that's I think that that is an important reason.
(26:03):
But yeah, the institutions kept them, kept them democrats. It
was reinforced over and over again. To be a good
black person was to be a Democrat, and they pulled
the race in the card as frequently and as often
as they possibly could. So that is uh, yeah, that's
pretty much why maybe I'll have guests sit there on
top of the history of it and the few exceptions
to black to black candidates and black people and Republicans
(26:26):
rather who did well with black candidates. My cockpy phenomenously
well with black voters in Arkansas nineteen ninety eight. I
think he got fifty percent. I think he's the only
Republican majority of the black vote in any state wide
office of the last three decades. But I have to
check on that. Uh. But that's yeah, that's that's really
the real reason why. And that is and maybe I'll
do a full thing. Maybe I'll do a full episode
(26:46):
of Republicans who won size on numbers of the black
vote and how they did it, like Arnold Schwartzenegger, like uh,
like my cockpy as I said, you know who didn't
was win some series. She did not do it. Nominating
a black Republican does not for any black boats. That
is the lesson from last night and many other times
it has been tried. So thank you for listening to
this podcast. I'll see you guys next Monday. Have a
(27:08):
great weekend, don't despair, and if you like this podcast,
please subscribe on YouTube or the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
wherever you get your podcasts. I'll talk to you guys
next week.
Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Gardusky. Happy
post election Thursday. We're taping some wednes Day, so I
got confused for a second but heavy post election Thursday.
It was a wave. There's no easy way to say it.
It was a Democratic wave across the whole country. I
was paying attention to local races and states that we're
not making the national news. In Kansas, in Connecticut, in
(00:27):
you know, Georgia, in red states and blue and Democrats
absolutely had a triumphant night. And there's I think multiple
reasons for that. First, in states without heavy, high profile
elections like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Kansas, Republican turnout was pretty mild.
(00:47):
Republican turnout was very low in some places, and it
definitely hurt Republicans down ballot. I know, for our school
board campaign in Pennsylvania, we for the very first time
I had door knockers knocking on doors and we paid
them to go knock on doors. And the overwhelming response
for Republicans was I didn't know there was an election happening,
(01:08):
And you could tell by the time by the way
that the votes that were coming out in Georgia where
Republicans lost the state wide election for the first time
in twenty years by twenty points. It wasn't a high
profile position, but they did nonetheless lose it by a
substantial margin in an election they weren't expected to. So
the low turnout from non high profile states definitely hurt,
(01:32):
definitely hit. With this great political realignment that has been happening,
we are seeing college educated whites, high intensity voter. They're
the ones who are shifting further to the left, and
they showed up in big numbers, big big numbers, no
King's rally, and was a weird the Kings, No King's rally.
(01:53):
Those groups of voters were showing up in drops, and
I don't know, I don't know in the average non Virginia,
non New York City, non New Jersey state if there
were Republicans even engaged at the same level. So I
think that that was a big part of it nationwide,
was just the high propensity turnout, high election, high interest election.
(02:16):
The independent number, the number of Independence showing up was
particularly low compared to their usual percentage, and many of
them are probably Trump voters or non committal Republicans. Lower
propensity people. Independence usually always vote at a lower propensity
than Republicans and Democrats, but it was very, very low.
(02:37):
So I think that's the overall country to begin with.
Then when you look at high high high stake states,
I guess states that the media was covering back and
forth like Virginia, New York City, and New Jersey. I
think that there was two different things happened. So we'll
start in Virginia. Win some series was a bad candidate, right,
(02:57):
I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I was hearing from
people on other campaigns in Virginia how poorly she was
running her operation, and it showed she lost by the worst,
by the worst election results for a Republican in almost
half a century. She just did terribly. She turned people off.
But there was also the issue of the government shutdown,
(03:20):
and that definitely affects people in Virginia. There was the
issue of Trump's the incumbent president. Whenever you have the
incumbent president being of one party, Virginia New Jersey goes
the other way. It's a knee jerk reaction. That's part
of the zeitgeist. So you have the government shutdown, you
have bad candidate on top of the ticket, and you
have the Republican being in power in the White House,
(03:41):
and all those things make up a perfect storm against win.
Some sears Jason mire is losing by I think six
points was way larger than I thought it was. But
it shows the intensity to which the anti Republican sentiment
was there. Remember I said to everybody, if when some
Seers loses by double digits, Jason Mirs is going to lose.
(04:02):
She lost by fourteen points. Had she lost by eight,
Jason Mirs would have won. And so what did a
lot of other Republicans down ballot When it comes to
New Jersey. I was on Buck and Clay's show on
Tuesday and I was just telling them early numbers coming
out of New Jersey, and the Democratic turnout was preposterously high.
It was, It was insanely high. I want you to
(04:24):
think of this that Jack Chitarelli to the Republican nominee
who ran in twenty twenty one. He got one hundred
and twenty two thousand more votes than he received in
twenty twenty one, enough to win in a twenty twenty
one election. Right, had we done the twenty twenty election,
(04:44):
twenty twenty one election again and Murphy. Governor Murphy had
the same amount of votes that he had gotten that year.
But Jack Shirelly had gotten twenty twenty five numbers, Chitarelli
would have beat Murphy. Chitdarelli had that much new voters. Remember,
I said New Jersey one hundred and sixty thousand new
registered Republicans. But even though Jack Chitarelli got one hundred
(05:07):
and twenty two thousand new voters, the Democrats, Mikey Cheryl
had over four hundred thousand new voters. They turned up
out of the woodwork in remarkable numbers. Right. Jack Chitdarelli
got one point two five to five million last time.
(05:27):
He got one point three seven million this time. One
point three seven million, big number. Murphy got one point
three to three million last time. Mikey Cheryl got one
point seven nine million this time. Huge, huge increase coming
out of South Jersey the Democrat of the average Democrat voter,
(05:49):
Mikey Cheryl had so many Democrats vote for that she
was only four hundred thousand votes away from hitting Kamala
Harris numbers. That's remarkable and kudos to her campaign for
running a good campaign. I mean, there's no shame and
sing there saying somebody of the opposite party ran a
good campaign, but it also speaks to the environment of
the year. That's part of it, and that's what I
(06:11):
want people who feel deflated to realize the year. Sometimes
there are just bad election cycles, right, Sometimes there are
bad election years. There were I have a friend who
ran for office in New York in a republic leaning area,
who had a lot of money campaign money, who had
(06:32):
a ground game, who had an operation, who was really
really working hard for the seat, and the Democrat had
no visible campaign whatsoever, was working out of a U
haul truck after they were evicted from their campaign office.
That is not a joke. That's really happened. And the
(06:52):
Democrat won. And the Democrat won by big numbers, even
though the Republican is who's replacing a conservative Democrat. Even
though the Republican got five thousand more votes than the
incumbent got in the last election, it didn't matter because
the turnout was just too high. Right, Democrats were turning
(07:15):
out a probably seventy five to eighty percent of a
presidential year. Republicans are probably turning out its sixty to
sixty five percent. Independence were at forty forty five percent
in the New York City mayoral election. And I'm going
to talk to Zachar Denini later about this because he
covered the mayor election pretty intensely. The most fascinating and
interesting thing that you are going to maybe not here
(07:40):
you should hear is that in the Democratic primary, Governor
Cuomo won the support of Hispanics in the Bronx and Blacks,
primarily Right Asians, a lot of Whites. They voted against
him in this election. According to the New York Times,
majority White areas voted overwhelmingly for Cuomo, A majority East
Asian areas vote overhalling for Cuomo. You know who didn't.
(08:04):
Blacks and Hispanics, the same people that they thought were
going to be the last ones in his coalition, completely
abandoned him. They voted entirely for the person with the
DA at the end of their name, because they are Democrats.
Had Cuomo received the amount of support in the Bronx,
Queens and Brooklyn, in the Black and Hispanic areas that
he won in the Democratic primary, I had those percentages,
(08:28):
he would be mayor right now and not Zara Mundani.
That base leaving him and even though he got larger
amounts of you know, basically the old Bloomberg coalition speaks
to why he lost and courteously what embarrassed himself. And
I'm so so ashamed of him. He should never show
face in public again. What a complete, complete loser. Anyway,
(08:53):
that's my initial thoughts, but we're going to hear a
lot in the next coming weeks and days. Democrats and
the media are going to sit there and spin this
and said they're and say this is a complete reflection
of Donald Trump. This is a rejection of all things Maga.
This is a rejection of everything that twenty twenty four
was about. This is the re realignment of young people
in Hispanics. Two things on that, the Hispanic numbers. We're
(09:16):
going to wait and see. We're going to find out
what the actual turnout was in place like New Jersey.
I looked at one city ahead of this, ahead of
this podcast, and that was Pi Saic, New Jersey, very Hispanic.
In twenty seventeen and in twenty twenty one, the demo
the Hispanic vote was D plus fifty four and then
D plus thirty eight. In the presidential elections in twenty
(09:38):
sixteen and twenty twenty it was D plus fifty one
and then DE plus twenty five, you could see the
trajectory towards Republicans, and then in twenty twenty four was
R plus seven Trump pointed by seven points, and this
year was D plus twenty four. Now that is a
massive thirty points swing towards the Democrats. However, it is
still to the right of where they were in twenty
twenty one by fourteen points. I think those comparisons are
(10:02):
going to be very useful because despite a wave election,
let's see if the new coalition that Trump built of
voters is back to where they were before Trump ran
in twenty twenty four. I doubt that they are. I
don't know if they are. But what I want to
say to the bigger idea of the of the last
night was there were a couple of bright spots for Republicans.
(10:23):
Nasau County Republicans picked up a important school board Loudon County, Virginia.
There was a handful of things here and there. For
the most part that it was horrible. I think Republicans
and especially Republicans in DC, should have an honest moment
with themselves about the state of the economy. The economy
(10:44):
is not good. We cannot lie and just say it's
great because Trump's president. It is not good for young
people especially, It's not good. There's a lot of anxiety
right now over AI, over the changing in the job market,
over what other people can afford to live. There is
a housing crisis in this country in a large part
(11:05):
because of immigration. Just saying it like it's saying it,
there is an immigration. The immigration that the Bush and
Reagan coalition supported in this country for decades brought in
the people I Zora Mandani brought in his family, brought
in the families of people who believe in socialism that
were elected across the country last night in places like
(11:26):
Saint Paul, almost in Minneapolis. But we'll see if that
election holds out later on. But in all these elections,
the far left, a lot of them were bolstered by
the mass immigration of the Third World in our country
who fundamentally believe in socialism. And I don't I think that.
I think that Republicans need to have a moment and
(11:47):
a reflection over what the economy looks like right now,
what the state of our immigration has done done to
us in our country, and really make an important pivot.
At the same time, it was a wave year right,
it was a wave year in overwhelmingly blue states. Don't
(12:09):
set your hair on fire. I always say to candidates,
if you lose by one vote, you should spend the
entire next six months thinking about how you didn't campaign
hard enough. If you lose by a million votes, it
wasn't about you. And for a lot of these Republicans
it wasn't about them. There was nothing that they could
done to win, just like there was a lot of Democrats.
There was nothing they could have done to win in
twenty ten or in twenty fourteen, just like for a
(12:31):
lot of Republicans, and nothing they could have done to
win twenty oh six or twenty oh eight. Waveyears are
wave years for a reason. And I think what we
are the most interesting thing that we are seeing is
if you go through our trajectory, twenty twenty five being
a wave year, twenty twenty four being basically a wave year,
twenty twenty two not being a wave year that was
(12:51):
the one exception, but twenty twenty being a waved, twenty
eighteen being a wave, twenty sixteen being a wave, twenty
fourteen being a wave. The American public for the last
decade is overwhelmingly frustrated with how things are working out,
and they are just going to the next shiny object
who can sit there and make the economy work for them,
(13:14):
to make the economy work with their kids, and we'll
see how this all shakes up. I don't think that
it's that bad because you cannot control for a wave.
And if you ran for office last night and you lost,
I know that that's bruising, but just know it was
probably nothing that you could do. It was probably the
year that it was in, and Republicans have a year
to make some serious changes in order to avoid a
(13:37):
catastrophe in the mid terms. With me, coming up next
is my friend Zachary Danini. He's going to go over
the data from New York City and show us if
there's any lessons that we can learn for the nation
as a whole from Mandani's win. That's gonna be up
next with me on today's episode is data Scientists. One
of my therap people on Twitter, Zachary Danini, Thank you
(13:59):
for being here, so zach, your coverage of the New
York mayor's race is better than almost anybody else's on
social media. Thank you what surprised you because you said
for a while. He was definitely winning, he was winning
a majority. What if anything surprised you, Yeah, I think
the number one thing that surprised me was that the
Republicans really, really, really rallied around Cuomo. Right, I think
(14:20):
Curtis Sleewah is going.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
To end up with about seven percent of the vote
in polling, he was at fifteen or sixteen for a while.
The Trump endorsement, I think of Cuomo def definitely helped, right,
because I think Sleewah was at ten or eleven in
the early vote and then fell down. He was at
maybe I think six or five and a half in
the election day vote. So the Trump endorsement helped a lot.
(14:43):
But yeah, even in that early vote, I think, you know,
a lot of Republicans had the thought process that they
liked Sleewaw more than Quomo. They answered in polling they
were going to support Sliwah, and then they came out
probably held their nose and voted for for Cuomo.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah. I can tell you anecdote as a New Yorker
my whole life, I know probably seven people, seven Republicans
that stayed with Sliway. But they had made their decision
a long time ago, and they probably all the most.
They were voting for Sleewa, but they were voting for Cuomo.
What surprised me is is that a lot of people
(15:19):
and a lot of people online especially said CMO needs
these Bronx, Hispanics, Blacks out of burrows to go vote,
and in the end he lost them. He lost the
establishment Democrat voter Tondanni. Had he had those voters, he
would have beaten Mendonni. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
If he did how he did with block voters and
Dominican voters in the primary, I think, yeah, he would
have would have been really close with Mom Donnie.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
It would have been it would have been especially close
because in the end and in southern Brooklyn, right, it
was in Brooklyn and the Bronx where his numbers fell
apart and the should and it was almost like the
Bloomberg coalition very much, because he did far better in
Manhattan than I thought he was going to Yah. His
numbers of Manhattan are very strong, and I think that
(16:06):
what their lesson is for as a political consultant, what
my lesson is is that these types of voters will
always vote with the establishment Democrat, even when you are
They'll vote for the Democrat even when you have a
socialist maybe yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So I think that the D next to Mam Donnie's name, right,
that that first column is really really valuable with with
black voters in New York City and across the country,
right right, I mean Cuomo was the establishment D in
the primary.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Black voters broke for Cuomo.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Then Mamdonni won the primary, got the D next to
his name for the general election, and I think Black
voters really basically kind of respected that and and back
their nominee. What this reminds me of is oftentimes you
get these elections where you may be a special election
and then you have a rematch in a general election.
(17:04):
And what often happens is the person who wins this
special election will win the general election by much much more,
maybe something like five or six months later, because just
being that incumbent winning the first time getting the D
next to the name, the Democratic establishment voters who maybe
vote a little bit less based on ideology and more
(17:24):
on party loyalty, respect that.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Right. And also what tells me from a national point
is is that you know, if AOC runs for president,
which who knows if she's going to, but let's say
she does, you know, it's the black vote in South
Carolina and the Deep South and Super Tuesday states that
will stop her, right, they will not support her very
likely your weakest demographic right, but they will then turn
(17:51):
around and support her overwhelmingly in a in a general
elections mean very little light on it going into and
also by the thing, the Asian vote voted for.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So Mom Donnie did really well in South Asian areas,
but East Asian areas like Flushing and then in Southwest
Brookland were Cuomo one and those were areas Cuomo flipped
from the primary, and Mom Donnie did did well with
the East Asian voters that are still in the Demogracratic coalition.
I think Nate Cohne had a really nice analysis about
(18:26):
how the vast, vast majority of voters in that June
primary were Harris voters, not Trump voters, but when you
added Trump voting Asians to the mix, which those areas
shifted as hard right as almost anywhere in the country
last November, Cuomo kept those voters.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I think that when you extrapolate from I know you
foot focused primarily on New York, when you look at
New Jersey and Virginia and other races are out most
of the country. I mean, Democrats had a great night.
I think that it's part of I think that part,
part of what Mandani's wave was was just the overall
(19:04):
wave happening in the nation towards the Democrats. Yeah, and
I know you don't give up opinion about this, but
what was your If you look at my Latino vote specifically,
which is a lot of focus on it, they definitely
shifted left. But in some parts, especially in New Jersey
where has been looked at, they did not shift as
left as they had pre twenty twenty. Yes, so they
(19:28):
were not back to pre twenty tine numbers. Is that
an accurate statement to saying.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. So again, I'm getting my
hands on a lot of precinct data today. I think
I'm going to be able to dive into it tonight
and tomorrow and publish more, you know, thought out analyses.
But from the anecdotal stuff I've been seeing online, yeah,
we're talking about thirty point swings to the to the
left towards Democrats from twenty twenty four. It looks like
(19:54):
in a lot of North Jersey Hispanic areas, but a
lot of those areas, especially Dominican ones where you know
forty or fifty point swings to the right. So that's
I think going to be the big question heading forward
in national politics. Is Trump proved that there is a
Republican candidate who can really really compete and generally, I
would say, narrowly lose Hispanic voters in a place like
(20:16):
North Jersey and win them in Texas. And it looks
and you know, there's gonna be downballot lag They're going
to stick with the Democratic Party in some elections, but
come twenty twenty eight, I have no idea what North
Jersey Hispanics will look like in the presidential election.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
So how much does how much does the youth turnout
matter for the mayoral election for Mendanni? I mean, obviously
was basically you tracked a big part portion of it.
And is it just that his message and his social
media presence, which is very, very important, His social media
was so exciting rather than the fact that they're all
(20:54):
socialists now.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
So I think, first of all, we're talking about you know,
eighteen forty nine year old voters in New York City
are are probably substantially substantially more socialists than you know,
the country as a whole. The you know, this isn't
anything new, right. The DSA has been you know, extremely
strong in New York. They have a lot of boots
on the ground. I think it's one of the cities
where they're strongest in the US. But anecdotally and through polling,
(21:19):
I can also tell you that a lot of the
youth were coming out for Mom Donnie against Cuomo.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I think people see Cuomo with the scandals, the you know,
sexual harassment issues, as you know, a Democratic party that
they don't like, and Mom Donnie's a fresh face with
a great social media presence who I also think, you know,
kind of you know, a lot of Democrats are talking
about the lessons they can learn from his campaign, and yeah,
(21:45):
one of those is the youth turnout was was pretty
striking and Mom Donnie really transformed the electorate in a
way I don't think we've seen candidates do other than
Donald Trump in the last ten years.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
What lesson is there for Republicans and all that, well,
lesson is that Democrats.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
And so I think there's going to be a lot
of discussion, you know, is Mom Donnie strong?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Is he?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And I think this election last Night does not give
us a good data point on that. And my argument
for why is that, you know, if if Bernie Sanders
ran against Joe Manchin nationally with a D next to
his name or something, the that's like a tough election
to part right because we usually talk about Democrats versus Republicans,
(22:30):
and in a Democrat versus Democrat general election, you know
Cuomo's going to peel off a lot of those moderate Democrats.
And that's nothing that Mom Donnie is doing wrong, right,
because you know, a progressive Democrat running against a moderate
Democrat is tough because the moderate Democrat should get Republicans
and Democrats.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
On the flip side. Mom Donni had the D next
to his name, and.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
We talked about earlier about why you know that's very
good because you get the you know establishment, you know,
Dominican and Black New Yorkers, you know coming home.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
For you right. Well, Zachary, where can people go to
remar with your stuff and all your things and your
substack and Twitter and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Go to Zachary Danini on Twitter one word and then
then my stub stack is at Zacharydanini dot com.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Go check him out. It's so good he's so so smart. Zachary,
thank you for being on. Yeah, thank you so much
for having me on. Now it's time for the Ask
Me Anything segment of this podcast. If you want to
part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me Ryan
at Numbers gamepodcast dot com. That's ryanat numbers Plural Game
podcast dot com. I love these questions. I think it
(23:32):
makes a really good show. Our first question comes from Jason.
He's is there and says thank you that he loves
the true crime content that I did in the last episode.
Thank you so much, Jason for listening to this podcast
or watch me on YouTube. I uh, maybe I will
do a whole true crime episode around the holidays when
there's really not a lot of news going on and
there's not a lot of data to sit there and
(23:52):
pour over. But I really enjoy it. I love that
kind of those kinds of stories, So I will definitely
maybe do an episode or just a full Q and
a true crime stuff in the future. Next question comes
from David. Dave brother says, Hey, Ryan, can you do
an episode about why ninety percent of black people vote
for Democrats? I don't know if it's a full episode, Dave,
that could do it. Look, the black vote has been
(24:17):
not a completely monolithic vote, but it's been fairly monolithic
basically since they had the right to vote. They were
used to be Republican, now they're democrat. I think that
when you look at there's a lot of things going on.
There's part of it is, you know, the history of
blacks in America, which has been one of immense suffering,
(24:37):
an immense amount of racism. And you know, even I
who thinks a lot of the DEI stuff is way overblown,
who thinks that a lot of the reparations conversations is
you know, deliriously stupid. You have to sit there any
knowledge how bad blacks aded in this country. There was
genuine racism against them, and there becomes a mindset in
(25:00):
the black community, especially about like we can all do
better together, and we can all we could all kind
of float together. All our ships can float together, all
our ships can sing together. When the black vote moved
in nineteen sixty four, I mean it was very coordinated
by LBJ. LBJ knew when he passed the Civil Rights
Act he'd have the blacks voting for the Democratic Party
(25:21):
for the next hundred years. He said it and he said,
explicitly using the N word. And I think that at
this point the reason that you're seeing some kind of
transformation is a lot of the institutions in the black community,
the black church, black universities, that young blacks are not
(25:42):
as part of those institutions as they used to be.
And also they are not parents at a young age
like they used to be. They're not teenage parents hardly
at all anymore like they used to be. So now
that there's some independence from those institutions that kept them
as democrats, that's I think that that is an important reason.
(26:03):
But yeah, the institutions kept them, kept them democrats. It
was reinforced over and over again. To be a good
black person was to be a Democrat, and they pulled
the race in the card as frequently and as often
as they possibly could. So that is uh, yeah, that's
pretty much why maybe I'll have guests sit there on
top of the history of it and the few exceptions
to black to black candidates and black people and Republicans
(26:26):
rather who did well with black candidates. My cockpy phenomenously
well with black voters in Arkansas nineteen ninety eight. I
think he got fifty percent. I think he's the only
Republican majority of the black vote in any state wide
office of the last three decades. But I have to
check on that. Uh. But that's yeah, that's that's really
the real reason why. And that is and maybe I'll
do a full thing. Maybe I'll do a full episode
(26:46):
of Republicans who won size on numbers of the black
vote and how they did it, like Arnold Schwartzenegger, like uh,
like my cockpy as I said, you know who didn't
was win some series. She did not do it. Nominating
a black Republican does not for any black boats. That
is the lesson from last night and many other times
it has been tried. So thank you for listening to
this podcast. I'll see you guys next Monday. Have a
(27:08):
great weekend, don't despair, and if you like this podcast,
please subscribe on YouTube or the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
wherever you get your podcasts. I'll talk to you guys
next week.
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