September 7, 2026 • 47 mins
On this episode of It’s a Numbers Game, Ryan Girdusky is joined by VoteHub Head of Data Science Zachary Donnini to break down the polling misses shaking up the 2026 election cycle.
Why did progressive and DSA-aligned candidates dramatically underperform expectations in Wisconsin and Michigan? Ryan and Zach examine the surge in primary turnout, the growing divide between highly educated urban progressives and white working-class voters, and whether pollsters are once again struggling to accurately measure the electorate.
They also dig into Black voter turnout, why Democrats are increasingly focused on electability, the limitations facing far-left candidates outside major cities, and what the latest numbers could mean for Republicans trying to hold the House and Senate in November.
Could a small polling error in states like Texas, Ohio, Iowa or Maine determine control of Congress? And are the warning signs from the Rust Belt pointing toward a much different 2026 midterm election than the national polls suggest?
Ryan and Zach break down the numbers—and what both parties should be watching as November approaches.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Groduski. Thank
you guys for being here. Okay, we had primary elections
on Tuesday, and I'm sure everyone kind of heard something
about them. I wanted to talk about it, but the
results didn't come in until early Wednesday morning, and we
had to record the podcast before then, so didn't get
to do it for Wednesday's episode. I want to actually
talk about it now, and I actually did one better
(00:21):
because we had to wait. I have the brilliant data scientist,
Zachary Danini, on with me. If you've listened to the
show before, you know him. He's so, so smart. Um,
he actually, this is how bright he is. He in
the Michigan primary the week before, not only did he
get the percentages about right, like to the zero dot,
he actually got the total number of votes.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I mean, he's brilliant. So we're going to talk about
how this primary is shaken out, why the polls were
so wrong and what it really means for November. But
before we do, let me give a rundown of what
happened Tuesday nationwide. Cause I know a lot of people
are busy. They're not all paying attention to every election.
I'm going to hit the most important elections. state by state,
because there were elections held in Connecticut, Vermont, Minnesota, Wisconsin,
(01:04):
South Carolina, and Alabama. And here's everything you should know.
In Vermont, incumbent Republican governor Phil Scott is very likely
to win his sixth term. But the election for lieutenant
governor is really where the battle is. Vermont, believe it
or not, has a Republican governor and lieutenant governor. It's
the first time that's happened since 2010. In 2024, the
lieutenant governor unseated a progressive for the seat of Lieutenant Governor, obviously.
(01:30):
They're both moderates. Some would say liberal, but it's Vermont.
So take what you can get. Republican Lieutenant Governor John
Rogers defeated the progressive challenger in 2024, winning 46% of
the vote. Former Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray, who left the
seat back in 2022, won her primary to take on
the seat, to try to win the seat again. She
(01:51):
won 61%. It's the most competitive race in the state
that you should know about. Very often, lieutenant governor becomes
the governor. So if, you know, for whatever reason, Phil
Scott eventually, not for whatever reason, eventually he will retire.
When he retires, it will be important to have a
Republican lieutenant governor. And really getting John Rogers a second
(02:11):
term will matter how aggressively Phil Scott can campaign successfully
for Republicans down ballot. He did it before in 2024.
Believe it or not, Vermont had a red wave in
2024 because Phil Scott was so incredibly aggressive at making
sure Republicans were elected down ballot. So We'll see in
Vermont if that holds. Over in Connecticut, incumbent Governor Ned
(02:31):
Lamont defeated a progressive challenger winning 67% of the vote.
He will take on former guest of this show, Ryan Fazio,
in November. But the most shocking part of it was
a 78-year-old incumbent congressman named John Larson. He won his
first seat back in 1998. And he's run for office
almost every two years since 1982. was defeated by Luke Bronin.
(02:54):
He is the former mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. I think
this is one of those things where Bronin had expected Larson,
the congressman, to retire. Sometimes in 2022 or 2024, he
didn't run for reelection as mayor. He's kind of been
hanging out, waiting and waiting, and he just finally said, okay,
the wait's over. I'm going to challenge you, and he
beat him. Larson is the 11th incumbent House member to
(03:16):
lose a primary this year. That is the highest amount
in a non-redistricting year. So not years that end with like,
you know, to like 2022 or 2012 when all the
seats are changed. The highest amount in a non-redistricting year
since 1970. By the way, we still have more seats.
Let's see if anything happens in Florida. Let's see if
(03:36):
anything happens in, you know, a couple of these other states.
But that is really wild. In 2024, only four congressmen,
incumbent congressmen, lost in a primary. So that's a big,
big thing. And I just about Larson, like to quote
Barbra Streisand, sometimes people stay too long at the fair.
Like he should have retired. You've been running since 1982.
(03:57):
That is five years before I was born. Like at
some point, don't you just want to go spend time
with the grandkids or pick up a hobby? I don't know.
Over in Alabama, Republican Rep Marquise became the nominee to
take on incumbent Democrat House member Shamari Figures. This is
the seat that was a Republican seat. The courts turned
it into a Democrat seat. Then the courts, the Supreme
(04:19):
Court overturned that. The courts, the state legislator redrew it
into a more Republican seat. It's still fairly competitive. It's
one of the seats that is the most competitive going
into November. So Rhett Marquise will be the Republican nominee
against Shamari figures. Over in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham's sister,
Darlene Graham, She came in first place, winning 33 percent
(04:42):
of the vote. She obviously had the Trump endorsement and
she had the Graham Institution, Graham Inc. or whatever. She
had that organization behind her. She will go into a
runoff election with Congressman Ralph Norman. Norman has just run
for governor where he came in third place during that election.
But he built up a bit of a statewide name
recognition there. He was very dominant in his congressional district,
(05:05):
which includes Greenville and Rock Hill, which are two fairly
large cities down in South Carolina. That's how he kind
of won. He didn't really come in second place many
places outside of like the area that touches the congressional district, though.
I think he'll have a tough time beating her, but
it will be such a very low turnout election because
it's a runoff special. I mean, I don't even know
(05:29):
how many people will go vote for that. But it
will be such a low turnout that maybe he can
do it, but it'll be very, very tough. It wasn't
super close. And once again, had he come in second
in a lot of different parts of the state, I
would say he has a chance, but it really was
just dominated by his congressional district. Now, here's where things
get very interesting. Over in Minnesota, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan,
(05:50):
she is certifiably crazy. She defeated Congressman Angie Craig in
the Democratic primary for Senate. She won 59 to 39.
Flanagan is she's she's she's wild. I mean, she's the
one who wears the T-shirt saying protect trans kids with
a knife across it. She benefited tremendously from the fact
(06:12):
that Francesca Hong, who I will get to in a second,
was running because Francesca was off the charts. So because
other people were crazier, she kind of slipped in. What's
interesting about Peggy Flanagan, though, was the polls had it
as a tight race. SurveyUSA, which is one of the
premier pollsters in Minnesota, said that it was a razor-thin,
(06:33):
toss-up race. Flanagan wiped the floor with her. She won
by 20 points. The other race in Minnesota that people
said was going to be completely lopsided, where it was
going to be one person winning that ended up losing,
was Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, is running for governor
of Minnesota. He lost to Lisa DeMuth. Now, he was
(06:54):
endorsed by Trump. Obviously, everyone in Republican politics, certainly everyone
over the age of 40, knows who Mike Lindell is
at this point. Big supporter of the president, big denier
of the 2020 election. He's kind of, you know, obviously,
anyone who's ever watched any conservative news program has probably
seen a MyPillow commercial. But nonetheless, and yet still, Lindell
(07:15):
had a lot of negative opinions of him, even within
Republican circles. And polls had him finishing by a wide
margin in first place, and he ended up losing to
a distant second place, losing by 11 points. It was
a 20-something point swing between what the polls were saying
and what the election was saying, just like Peggy Flanagan.
And now let's talk about the race that everybody talked about.
(07:38):
The governor of Wisconsin, the DSA-backed Francesca Hong, lost to
Milwaukee County executive by less than 4,000 votes out of
almost 800,000 cast. This is after a poll, after a poll,
after a poll show that she was going to win
by more than 20 points. I mean, one of the
other candidates dropped out because it said, why would I run?
(08:00):
Francesca is going to win this race, which is crazy
because who knows what would have happened had he stayed
in the race? He would have actually been the spoiler
candidate had he stayed in the race because he was like, no,
there's no way anyone can beat Francesca. She is just,
you know, going to dominate. And Francesca was crazy. She's
the woman who didn't wanted to cancel Thanksgiving. She hated
(08:22):
Valentine's Day. She didn't like Christmas. She didn't like Fourth
of July. And her old tweets have been circulating. And
since she lost and like it's just very millennial generation
to share things on social media. I want to give
a helpful tip as a consultant to anyone who wants
to run for office one day. Do a clean wipe
(08:44):
of your social media before you run for office. Just
clear everything before you announce, before anything happens. Because Francesca
had tweets up there that were like, I'm so glad
I didn't shave my legs tonight. People were posting that.
Another one said, I'm going to be balls deep in
a glass of bourbon. I mean, I was like, it
(09:06):
was funny. It was very funny. But if you're already
considered unhinged and crazy and you have and you have
a lot of those things out there, it doesn't help
your gaze. If you're, you know, if Mitt Romney had
a tweet being like something, you know, crazy and wild
or like saying, like, you know, one of my sons
sucks at baseball, obviously didn't have Twitter when when his
(09:28):
son was younger. But whatever, people would have forgiven him
because he's so straight-laced. But when you seem nuts, when
you say things crazy on a regular basis, and then
you have tweets like that, it only kind of reinforces
why people think you're nuts. So I want to ask
the question and pose the question, why did polls get
it so wrong between what they thought voters were going
(09:50):
to do in both the Republican and Democratic primary in Minnesota?
But the Democratic primary is everywhere, because remember this, the
polls were off by double digits in Minnesota. Wisconsin, and
just a week ago over in Michigan, where Abdul Al-Said
was supposed to win by 15 points, and he won
by a single point. So here's, I've been thinking long
and hard about this. And I have two reasons. One
(10:12):
that's good for Democrats and one that's good for Republicans.
One that's good for Democrats is this. A big part
of polling, when you are creating Any kind of campaign,
if you're a campaign manager, and I've been a campaign
manager many times, the first thing you do is you
build a target universe. You say, okay, my guy is
running for mayor. 100,000 people will vote for mayor. Three
(10:33):
people are running. I need to secure 42,000 votes, and
I will absolutely get enough plurality to win this election.
And you build your entire campaign over finding those 42,000 voters.
And you reach, obviously, more. You try to reach as
many as possible. But you always have to get, you
have to ID the 42,000 that will vote for you.
That's kind of how you build that campaign. Polls are
(10:55):
no different. They say, let's look at a likely voter
registration base. Let's say there's going to be, you know,
a million people who vote. And so I'm going to
poll estimates based upon what percentages of which groups I
think are going to vote there. Part of the problem
that pollsters in these Democratic primaries are having is that
voter turnout is explosive. I mean, the numbers are really
(11:15):
sky high in all these primaries. And I think part
of the problem for pollsters is you're building universes that
don't exist because the numbers are too high. And I'll
give you a perfect example. In the Wisconsin governor's primary,
almost over 791,000 people voted this time in 2026. In 2022,
there was an incumbent governor who had a challenger. It
was 463,000. In the competitive election in 2018, which was
(11:45):
a Democratic year, it was 538,000. So it went from
538,000 to 791,000. That's a remarkable, huge increase of close
to 40%. I don't think that they modeled that out correctly.
Over in Michigan, a very similar thing happened. In 2026,
this election last week, 1.53 million people voted in that
Michigan primary. In the semi-competitive election in 2024, where Elise Slotkin,
(12:16):
who's now a senator, was running, there was only 933,000.
Michigan also has a problem where I went back up
to 2012. There has not been a primary since before 2012.
When Gary Peters, the incumbent senator, ran his primary, he
was unopposed. So no election in Michigan has ever had,
(12:37):
for a primary for the U.S. Senate, has ever had
more than 1.1 million votes in it. This one had
1.5 million. This is dramatic. And most, by the way,
had 700,000, 500,000. No one came close to 1.5 million.
Democratic enthusiasm is off the charts. And it's intense. And
(12:57):
it's real. It's not fake. It's not on the internet.
It's not something to rah-rah Democratic support. People need to
understand that. So it makes it very hard for pollsters.
But that is good for Democrats. What is the good
news for Republicans then? The good news for Republicans is
if you look under the hood at most of these
polls and you see which is the demographics they were
really getting wrong. The pollsters nailed the black vote being
(13:18):
against the DSA candidates. We've seen that in poll after poll.
What they got wrong was the white vote. They estimated
the white vote that El-Sayed would win the white vote
by big margins. And they estimated that Francesca Hong would
get around 45 percent of the white vote. She ended
up with 39 percent. I don't think she got there.
I mean, it's hard because there's no real exit polls
to work with. We're really looking at precinct data. It
(13:42):
reminds me of the 2024 poll over in Iowa. Remember
the famous Seltzer poll where it had Harris beating Trump
in Iowa? They said, Seltzer said, that she was going
to beat Trump in Iowa because Harris was at a
35-point lead among senior citizen women and a two-point lead
among senior citizen men. Think about that. senior citizen women
(14:06):
in Iowa, overwhelmingly white, like 98%, overwhelmingly Christian, overwhelmingly evangelical,
not a majority, but a large plurality are evangelical, white evangelicals.
This is not the crowd that would gravitate towards Kamala.
In the end, what I think happened was the people,
(14:27):
the elderly people, the people over 65 who love MSNBC
and CNN, they're answering their phones at higher levels than normal.
Because in that exit polls, in the Iowa's case, the
exit polls, Harris won the senior citizen women vote by
seven points. Trump won the senior citizen men vote by
13 points. So massive 20 point discrepancies in both those
(14:51):
cases by the best pollster ever. She wasn't picking up
on the fact that white progressives are answering the phone
in greater frequency than other, you know, working class white people.
I am from a working class white family. If my
grandfather got a call from a stranger, he'd tell them,
go F yourself. I'm not telling you anything. So you
could sign me up for jury duty or something like that.
(15:12):
I mean, he would say something like that. They're not
going to answer a poll. My father, who loves Fox News,
watches it religiously, calls me to tell me who was
on this week. He does not answer polls. He tells
me he gets calls for polls and he hangs up
on the phone with them. You're not being heard then.
That's that's fine. And the thing is, among white progressives,
(15:33):
some view themselves as independent. Some view themselves. Some don't
have college degrees. They manage to meet their way in
a general population. So that's why the polls, I think
these exit polls are really off. If you look at
the counties in Wisconsin, remember, polls estimate that Hong Kong
went between 40 and 44 percent of the white vote.
I didn't have I don't have exit polls, but I
(15:54):
looked at the whitest counties in the state. County like
Pepin County, it's a rural county, 98% white. She got 31%
of the vote. Buffalo County, 97% white. She got 30%
of the vote. Lafayette County, 97% white. She got 29%
of the vote. Green County, 97% white. She got 33%
of the vote. I don't think she hit that 40% number,
(16:17):
even though she did very, very well in like Milwaukee
among white progressive areas. I don't think there was enough
because she lost the rules almost everywhere she goes. Same
thing with El-Said. The New York Times created this blueprint
of precinct data, especially in Wayne County, which is home
of Detroit. And outside of the super Muslim areas in
(16:38):
Wayne County, he lost almost every other white majority precinct
in the county. I don't think he hit there. And he,
by the way, polls were saying Emerson said that he
was going to win the white vote by 30 points.
And Detroit News said he was going to win it
by 12 points. There's no way El-Said won either the
white vote by 30 or 12 points, even with the
overwhelming Muslim vote. I think that that is having a
(17:04):
very important problem with the Democratic primary polls. I think
it's also having a very important problem, possibly, with the
general election polls. I am not, you guys know, I
tell the truth. I'm not cheerleading one side or the other.
I mean, I am, but I'm living in the real world.
I've been talking about inflation and the economy and why
(17:25):
it's bad for Republicans. And I'm not sugarcoating anything. I'm
trying to be as middle of the road, knowing I'm
a partisan as possible to give you guys the facts.
There could be a very real case as we saw
in 2016, as we saw in 20, as we saw
in 2024. that the polls are undersampling white working class people.
(17:47):
And that is going to affect races like in Texas,
where James Tallarico is beating Ken Paxton in all of
these polls, not by much, by a few points here
and there, because these polls are finding that Ken Paxton
is only winning the white vote by 14 points, a
population that Trump won by 33 points. You see what
I'm saying? If this is a error, And it's an
(18:09):
error across the board in other polling. How does that
impact Texas, Ohio, Maine, Iowa? These are important questions because
all these races are on a razor thin margin. Fox
News just had Susan Collins down by only two points
in Maine. If there's a five point error among the
white vote, she's going to win re-election. She's got this.
(18:32):
This is what I want to know. And obviously I
can't until election day. But part of something in the
pit of my stomach say they're wrong. They're not hitting
the white working class because they're unless the white working
class is so unbelievably frustrated with the economy. They do
not care about the socialism stuff and immigration, everything else.
They've given up on everything and they only care about
(18:52):
the economy. And maybe that's possible. I'm not saying it's not.
But unless that happened, I think they might be doing
the same mistake that they did in Michigan and Wisconsin
and Minnesota across the board. We're gonna bring on Zachary
DeNini next, and he's gonna tell me if I'm right, wrong,
and what happened in the Midwest. That's coming up, stay tuned.
Zachary DeNini is a data scientist who correctly predicts many things,
(19:13):
somebody who I read constantly. I was on a road
trip last Tuesday, home from Louisiana. I kept saying, what
is Zach saying about the primary? What's Zach saying about
the primary? Zach, when everyone catches on to how smart
you are, I hope you don't forget about this podcast.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
No, thank you. I appreciate it, Ryan.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Let's talk about the polling error in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and
Michigan the week prior. I said before in the monologue,
a big problem is when pollsters create the universe, the
numbers coming out in this primary cycle are so high,
it's kind of impossible to make that universe. And because
the election turnout is so very high, both on the
Republican side of Minnesota and the Democratic side everywhere, that's
(19:53):
what threw this off. Do you agree? What do you think? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
So when polls closed in Wisconsin, the AP's turnout estimate
in the Democratic primary was 602,000, which was pretty normal
based on past primary history. It ended up at about 800,000, right?
So what we are seeing this year consistently is these
high interest, high turnout primaries. And going back to, I
(20:17):
remember I came on and talked to you about Mom
Donnie's win last November. That was the start of just
a higher turnout, more kind of interested in politics, democratic
primary universe. And what I'll actually say is in the
last couple weeks, though, we were getting high turnout, but
it wasn't a massive youth turnout surge. It was better
(20:41):
than a lot of primaries we've seen in the past
when literally over half of voters have been seniors for
youth turnout. But it still is just generally across all
age groups. People, yeah, are just more interested in primaries
this cycle.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
That's very fascinating. If you look at Michigan and Wisconsin specifically,
the DSA-aligned candidates, Al-Said and Hong, underperformed big time in
the polls.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Is it... Okay, so this is my reason, and I
want you to tell me I'm wrong or not. When
you look under the hood of a lot of these polls,
where they got it wrong was they had the white
vote much higher levels of support. The black vote they
actually pretty much nailed, but the white vote they got
almost entirely wrong in both states. How much does this
affect the outcome, not really understanding white working class voters
(21:32):
in polling still?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Regarding these primary races, what you have to remember, especially
about a lot of the white voters you're talking about,
is they like both candidates. If you're scrolling on Twitter
or something like that, and you're seeing online Democratic discourse,
you're going to see pro-Stevens, pro-Crowley, pro-LSA people, right? But
the median Democratic primary voter, even, they tuned into this
(21:54):
race 10 days ago, Maybe they're very upset with the establishment.
They might be more likely to vote for Hong or
El-Sayed because they're not happy with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem
Jeffries and Trump winning. But then you have these really
popular governors who are pushing for these candidates, endorsing them late.
And you just get this very volatile situation where people
like both candidates. They like Whitmer. They like Evers. They
(22:18):
want someone who's passionate. And I think what we saw
in the end is each time, yes, the DSA candidates
really underperformed polling expectations with these white voters.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, and I just have to imagine that because El-Said
and Hong were so caught up in personal stuff that
they came off as weird. And I know this is
just a hypothetical. I don't know the future. But Hong saying,
I want to cancel Thanksgiving and that becoming something so
late in the election. Yeah. It had to affect her.
(22:51):
I believe it had to. And El-Sayed campaigning with Hassan Piker,
to a certain degree, it had to affect him as
coming up as a little too personally weird for the
average Michigander or Wisconsinite. Could this polling error among working
class whites, we saw it in 2024 to a degree.
(23:11):
We saw it in 2016 for sure. Could we see
it in 2026? And I say that because in like Texas,
in that race, Paxton has a 14-point lead on average
among white voters in Texas. Trump won it by 33.
It's a 19-point swing. It's very aggressive against the Republicans.
Could there be a working-class error among these white voters
(23:32):
that would take a state like Texas or Ohio or
Maine that are just on the cusp of flipping one
way or the other? And if there is that polling
error that possibly is there, could it deliver a bunch
of close elections?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
So I want to go back to that first part
of your kind of question there where you're talking about,
you know, like Hong and Al-Sayed, you know, potentially having
some candidate flaws that made them underperform. And specifically, a
lot of things are similar about these two elections. They're
bordering Rust Belt battleground states. A progressive candidate massively underperformed
polls and the race ended up basically tied. But there
(24:07):
are also some differences here. So Abdul Al-Sayed came out
of a three-way primary field where McMorrow had some buzz.
He edged her out through the non-establishment lane. And then
he ended up beating Haley Stevens, who benefited from $ 70
million loan and APAC spending, Schumer's endorsement, Whitmer's endorsement, you know,
(24:30):
Very good black vote in the end with a lot
of these very successful pro-Obama mailers. Al-Said, yes, he underperformed polls,
but still a pretty damn good performance in my mind. Like,
that's a pretty impressive performance. He would have lost had
McMorrow dropped out earlier. I think that's true, but he
still would have lost by like three points, maybe.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Okay, whatever.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Meanwhile, I want to go to Wisconsin. Francesca Hong's opposition,
she lost to a guy who dropped out. And then
Mandela Barnes and Lieutenant Governor dropped out. And then he
came back. She was pulling ahead 40 to 8. It
was complete disarray. There was no $ 70 million in boosting Crowley.
(25:12):
It was just this frantic late campaign. And she got
stuck at 39%. And he came from 8 to 40
and beat her. So I think that that Hong as
a candidate had more shortcomings. And I'm not just saying
that because she lost barely and El-Sayed won barely. I
(25:32):
just think that if the Wisconsin and National Democrats had
coalesced around Crowley sooner, he would have won by 25,
like Stevens could. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Well, what do you think about the white vote if
there's a poll error in the white vote?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
So I want to get, yeah, to the second part
of that. So generally, I will often say things like,
I don't think primaries have that much bearing on general elections.
I mean, there's so many examples. For instance, you know,
on the Republican side, Doug Mastriano and Kerry Lake are
fantastic Republican primary candidates. They win races easily. They're poor
general election candidates. On the Democratic side, if Francesca Hong
(26:11):
had actually won by 15, I would still be sitting
here saying, I think she's a very weak general election candidate.
But I do think there are some signs here about
white working class voters, because Francesco Hong and Abdul El-Sayed
did very poorly in a lot of areas that Bernie
Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in by 25, right? This is
(26:34):
a different type of progressivism, a different new wave of leftism,
and a It is really, really good in these high-education
urban centers, basically. That's where Hong did well. That's where
Al-Sayed did well. It did poorly in some working-class kind
of white areas like St. Clair County, Michigan, where Bernie
(26:58):
Sanders really did well with these types of Democratic voters,
and Al-Sayed and Hong didn't. And I actually do think
that could carry over to the.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
General a little bit.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
There's a little less interest from white working class.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
You know, you're so right, and I never put it
like this. Bernie Sanders in 2016 was saying things like
open borders is a coke pipe dream, right? He was really, yes.
You're not get caught up in as many culture war things.
It was really economics, economics, economics.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It was, it was, it was a bit pro God.
It was before he was a bit pro God. He
was before woke one.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
It was, it was a different, right, right, right, right.
A hundred percent. There is a certain type of foreign, um,
Third world romanticism that comes out of the Hong and
the El-Sayed type in the sense that they talk about,
I mean, El-Sayed has talked about football as a white
(27:53):
supremacist sport. That's what he wrote in his blog, I think.
And Hong said she wanted to cancel Thanksgiving, which, you know,
broke the internet.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
I think the outside thing was like toxic masculinity, by
the way, but.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It's toxic masculinity. I believe he said it's also structural whiteness,
but maybe I'm wrong. It might be just whatever, whatever
the case is, you know, what I'm saying is, is he's,
he's criticizing football over. He's intellectualizing football from a progressive standpoint,
which is just enjoy a game and shut up. Like
kind of like that's the average Joe Schmoe is like,
(28:29):
I just want to enjoy my Sunday. I don't care.
And to a certain extent, you know where you saw
this on the Republican side, Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against
a joke candidate, and he underperformed in all the white
working class areas after his cold comment that Native-born Americans
are lazy and his defense of H-1Bs and all the
(28:51):
rest of it. And I think there could be this whole,
the narrative that's coming out of both sides of the
camp is you're criticizing Americans too much. And your economic
message is getting lost. Hong talked about sewer socialism, which
was from the 1910s about building sewers and that's socialism.
But it didn't translate because it got all caught up
(29:13):
in culture war stuff and woke to or whatever that is.
I want to ask one other quick question. The black turnout,
black turnout was pretty solid, very solidly against the DSA
aligned candidates in both Michigan and Wisconsin. And it wasn't
super favorable. I don't know of Minnesota, but it was
very much against it in Minnesota and Wisconsin. If the
(29:37):
Black turnout drops nationally 1%, Republicans have a very good
chance of winning. If it goes from 13% to 12%,
that's the case in 2016 and in 2024. What does
intensity in the Black vote look like this time in
the primaries? Are Black voters turning out high?
Speaker 2 (29:53):
They are. They're on fire. So there's a really good
piece my fellow at VoteHub named Ellis Bates wrote about this.
The Guardian also wrote an article just kind of about
his piece. And he was analyzing black turnout in a
lot of these Southern primaries. And again, I want to
say this is Southern primaries on the backdrop of the
VRA being overturned. And I don't know how that will
(30:16):
translate to 2026 November. I don't want to say oh,
because South Carolina black turnout was really strong two weeks
after the VRA was gutted, then, you know, Detroit turnout's
going to be great for El-Sayed this November. I think
that's a bit of a stretch. But if there's any
indicator from primaries, black turnout is much more energized than
(30:37):
it was in 2024. Black turnout was pretty bad in 2024.
And then even worse for Bob Casey, the undervote was bad, too.
You know, a lot of Black voters came out and
filled in one race in 2024 in Philadelphia. So, yeah,
and I don't think those people are coming out to
vote in the midterms, right? If you didn't even fill
in the bubble in 2024, I don't think you're coming
(30:58):
out just for a Senate race in 2026 or something. Yeah.
That being said, I think that broadly, just Democrats in
general are very energized right now. When we're talking about
a D plus seven, a D plus eight environment, what
that looks like, the silver lining for Republicans is I
do think that D plus seven, D plus eight looks
(31:21):
like Democrats running up the score in cities like they
did in 2020 and not 2024. And I'm sorry to Democrats,
it doesn't help you in the House or Senate, but
you know, 50,000 more votes in the Bronx, it doesn't
really help. So, you know, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, no, and I'm glad you brought up the Bronx
because what does this also say about the limitations of
DSA-aligned candidates? And I want to caveat with two different ways.
DSA versus Bernie. Bernie did not campaign for Hong. He
did campaign for Al-Said. Does it show a limitation... of
these far-left progressives winning outside of major cities? Or is
(31:58):
there not enough data to really work with?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
So I think the big limitation here for the kind
of progressive, even DSA-aligned candidates, is they struggle more in
battleground states because the Democratic electorate is obsessed with electability.
They're obsessed with electability. We saw in Iowa, Josh Turek,
in the end, easily dispatched Zach Walz, Elizabeth Warren-backed progressive.
(32:24):
I think a lot of Democrats in Iowa believe strongly
that Josh Turek has a better chance to flip the
state blue. In Michigan and Wisconsin, we had that backdrop
on these races, especially with Hong. I think the Thanksgiving thing, man,
I think Republicans went too hard on Hong in that
last week in retrospect. I think, you know, the Republican
(32:44):
media wing is probably kicking itself for spreading all that
stuff out because I think it got Democrats really scared
that she was attackable and she was going to lose.
You talked about Minnesota early. There's no way that Peggy
Flanagan is going to lose Minnesota in a good year.
There's no electability backdrop. It doesn't matter if Angie Craig
is five points stronger than Peggy Flanagan. Flanagan will be fine,
(33:07):
and Flanagan won. So, I mean, I think there are
a lot of Democrats who really wish they could vote
for Francesca Hong and have her become their governor. The
Democratic primary electorate is very far left and very upset
at the establishment right now. I think they were worried
if they voted for Hong that Tom Tiffany would become
their governor.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Right. No, I said this in another show, that the
Democratic electorate is way savvier than they have been previously.
Not all of them, obviously. Some are just dyed in
the wool, like left-wingers, and they'll vote for any left-wing person.
And maybe some of them will sit out the election
in November, but I don't think it's going to be
very many people. Black voters are especially shrewd. And I'll
(33:45):
tell you something that I never... I talked to a
Democrat consultant and activist about two months ago, and I said,
who do you want for November? And she said, anyone
but a woman. And this was a woman saying this.
And she's like, because they can't win, and I just
want to win. And this is a person who would
have gave her own blood to get Kamala or Hillary elected.
So I think that the Democrats are being extremely shrewd.
(34:09):
I think that will carry on to 2028's Democratic primary.
And also, last point, the difference between Everyone keeps– all
Republicans are going to say to me, how do we
come out of this election and save ourselves? And my
only point I keep saying is if we go– if
it's a D plus eight year or a D plus
five year, you can't make it in a Republican year.
(34:31):
But that 1% national will change a U.S. Senate race somewhere. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
So first, first, I'd love to talk about the woman
thing because I love making this point. So in the
in the 2024 election, I believe it is 12 out
of the 13 best performing Democratic U.S. House candidates weren't
white men. So I think there's this idea, oh, what's electable?
What type of Democrats are electable? And a lot of
(34:58):
people jump to white men. I've heard that from consultants,
you know, people inside the party. At least at the U.S.
House level, that's not true at all. I actually spoke
with Christine McDonald-Rivett from the Tri-Cities in Michigan earlier today
on the Argument podcast. She, I believe, had the highest
best performance score out of any person and any Democrat
(35:18):
in any battleground district in 2024. Right. She's a woman.
I just have to make that point because it's one
of my favorite points to make. Yeah. Electability isn't about,
you know, someone's race or sex. It's about, you know,
what they say, how they connect with voters, et cetera.
So on the second point you said, so Republicans in
2024 had a very good year. Right. They won the presidency.
(35:40):
They won the House. And they got 53 Senate seats,
not 51, not 52. Republicans gave themselves a nice buffer.
And the map in 2026 is worse for Republicans than 2018.
In 2018, Democrats had to win states like Indiana, Missouri,
North Dakota. Those are really Republican states, or plus 20
(36:03):
or more. Now it's down to R plus 12 to
R plus 14 states for the tipping point of the Senate.
Still a really good map for Republicans. That's difficult, right?
But it's a little bit more achievable to the point
where D plus seven or D plus eight environment could
be the difference here. So what I would say is
if I'm a Republican, what I am hoping for in
(36:25):
November is just strong enough turnout in these battleground states,
even if you don't get it nationally. What we see
in the past in these wave years is Republicans in
a place like Oregon or Alabama that believe they don't
have that much to vote for get really depressed turnout
(36:46):
because Republicans overall are just a little depressed right now
in their propensity to turn out. But in these states
like Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, they turn out because they
know there's something big on the line.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yep, 100%, and Texas and Maine are the other big ones. So, Zach,
you're brilliant. Where are people going to read more about
your stuff, what you work on, and what you say?
Because I think everyone should read you.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
So, I'm the head of data science at VoteHub. VoteHub
is a nonpartisan organization. You can find us a lot
on X. Right now, our midterms forecast is out on
VoteHub.com if you want to go and see that. It
updates every day. Me, personally, I'm on X at Zachary Danini.
My first name's Zachary and my lovely Italian last name,
which a bunch of N's and vowels.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
And Zach, of course, is the waspiest looking guy I've
ever met before. Zach, thank you so much for coming
to this podcast. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Thank you very much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment. If
you want a part of the Ask Me Anything segment,
email me ryan at numbersgamepodcast.com. That's ryan at numbers, plural numbersgamepodcast.com.
First question comes from Michael. He says, if you do
a daily show, I'd watch every day. Michael, I really...
I'm not joking when I say I really appreciate that. Like,
I really appreciate you. I'm not kidding because I was
for this podcast. I did not get daily outreach saying
(38:09):
that people liked to hear me talk at all ever.
You write, I get like between eight to 10 GOP
fundraising texts every day. I've manually typed stop and each
one confirms I've unsubscribed. But every day new show up,
including for candidates I've never supported or ones saying they'll
stop texting me. but the link is to a donation page.
Are many people complaining about this? It just can't be me.
(38:30):
Am I going to have to keep texting and stop
until November? Okay, here's what happened, Michael. I'll explain this.
I run one of these companies that do these text messaging.
What happened is, I don't text, but we do fundraising
for candidates. What happens is, is when you donate to
a candidate, you're on their list, their donor list. And
the way that it works is this. If you get
a solicitation from a text message for a candidate you've
(38:50):
never seen before, and you give them a dollar, 90
to 95% of that dollar goes to the company or
the person who owns the list. So I own a
list from the 1776 project pack. My list is over
a hundred thousand names. I have never given it out
to rent ever. I can, but I will never do
it because I love my donors. I don't want to
annoy them. I don't want them to stop giving to me.
(39:10):
So we're my pack for the school board elections. But
what happens is if I were to do that and say,
all right, everyone, it's a free for all take my list.
I would get 95%, 90 to 95% of every dollar
that was fundraised from that initial message. And then once
you're on their house file, every dollar afterwards, the candidate
gets 90 to 95%. So just an asterisk, if you
(39:32):
want to do that, if you want to donate, just
go on their website directly, don't do the text messaging.
Like that would actually hurt the candidate. What I would
suggest to you is stop pressing stop. Because what you're
doing with pressing stop is you're engaging. If they believe
the line is dead, that you don't have the phone anymore,
you don't have the number, you don't, you don't, whatever,
(39:53):
you passed away. I'm not saying wishing that. But if
they believe that you're not engaging anymore, eventually over time,
they will actually not message you. If you press stop,
it means that they know that you are still engaged
in that phone line. So just don't do anything. It
will die off. And one of the candidates you supported
over time sold your list. I mean, I hate to
(40:14):
say it like that, but they did. Okay, your other question,
by the way, you said everyone on the right correctly
hates Senator John Curtis, Senator from Utah, which is true.
John Curtis is terrible. Apparently, both Trump and the Utah
GOP endorsed his opponent, Trent Staggs. If he still won,
how is this possible? So I did look this up
for you because I read this question. Curtis is terrible
on the issues. He's way too moderate for such a
(40:35):
conservative state. Utah is a very interesting beast within itself.
The Mormon Church plays a very big role in politics
in Utah. Utah's population does not like crude people. That's
why Trump performs pretty poorly in Utah, believe it or not.
Despite winning the state, he doesn't perform super well for
a Republican. They outperform him. What I think happened was
(40:58):
Curtis was running on protecting Utah's environment and working across
party lines. And that is very popular and appealing to
a population that like niceness. Mormons do like at least showing.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
That they're nice.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
And Mormons are nice. I'm not, I love, I love
my Mormon listeners. Mormons are very nice and they like
the appeal of nice. And, um, Trent, the Republic, Trent Stagg,
their other Republican, the Trump endorsed candidate was talking about
the election being stolen. And I think it rubbed too
many people the wrong way. That's what I think. And
I asked people from Utah and that's what they told me.
So I'm like, I thought that's yes. Next question comes
from Jay, a longtime listener of It's a Numbers Game.
(41:33):
I have a question. I suspect you'd be a sharper
answer than anyone else. I moved from my family from
New Hampshire to Sarasota last year, so I've lived inside
two very different versions of state-level conservatism. New Hampshire is libertarian, infected,
and allergic to spending. But my read is that the
pre-Trump GOP still holds most of the power there, which
caps how far it can move. Florida is more muscular
(41:53):
and institutional five years out. Which state do you think
is actually more conservative? And does New Hampshire's in-migration from
Massachusetts eventually flip the state? That is a great question.
The Massachusetts migration has kind of already flipped the state.
I mean, remember, New Hampshire only had elected Republicans both
at the state level and at the federal level. But
the people moving from Massachusetts don't like taxes either. So
(42:14):
it's keeping them. They're voting Republican in local government, even
though they're voting for Democrat for federal government. It's like
they do want abortion. They don't want taxes. New Hampshire
has a very Republican state government. And Kelly Ayotte's the governor,
Republican governor. What I think the difference is, because New
Hampshire has a part-time legislature, the state senators and state
(42:36):
house members are paid either $ 100 or $ 200 per year.
I forget which one it is. And there are 400
members of the New Hampshire state house, which is like
one for every 4,000 people. It's very difficult. They're lobbying infrastructure.
And that is a good thing. Florida, having dealt a
(42:57):
little bit with Florida politics, the lobbying in the Florida
legislature and among Florida governor is so intense. This is
why DeSantis, not that he didn't get anything done his
first term, but it was a lot of those COVID
based and rightfully so. But if you look at the
legislative agenda for the conservative victories, a lot of them
come in the second term because DeSantis really needed to
(43:18):
spend an entire term getting his people in the legislature.
He campaigned very aggressively down ballot because they were holding
up immigration stuff. They were holding up tech stuff. They
were holding up, I mean, a lot of the things
that he wanted to do, he really couldn't do under
the existing legislature. And that's the problem in Florida. The Florida,
the tourism industry, the agricultural lobby, all these people really
(43:42):
hold up a lot of things from getting done, which
is why I think New Hampshire could go further if
the population was there. The population is not there. I
think the Florida people want more, but can't get it
because the government's different. That's what I think. But they
have also, New Hampshire does not have as strong a
governor as Florida does. Florida has a very strong governor.
That's why DeSantis was able to do so much. So
(44:03):
we'll see how that continues, depending on if Byron Donalds,
who I believe will probably be the next governor, how
he does and how he uses the strength of the governorship.
Last question, which is not really a question. It is
a comment. It comes from Paul about a previous episode.
Paul writes, Love your show. I heard a comment on
Wednesday's podcast about a candidate from Western North Carolina, the
Senate candidate who's running as a Republican, that he's called
(44:25):
to end FEMA. During Hurricane Helene, recovery for FEMA was
purposely stealing and hoarding food and supplies brought in by volunteers.
They were blocking rescue efforts. They reached a point where
the sheriffs were ordered to arrest FEMA agents on site
and were called blocking rescue efforts by the Democrat. Yes,
you heard that right, Governor. FEMA was also ordered to
skip any house with a Trump sign. I don't know
(44:46):
if that's true. I will take your word for it.
The latter event led Trump to fire several FEMA staff.
There are a ton of news articles on the subject.
No reason to provide links. Our experience in eastern North
Carolina is identical. FEMA showed up about 10 to 20
days after the hurricane and left. Local immediate rescue efforts
had largely been completed. They pay $ 750 cash to anyone
(45:06):
with no insurance whatsoever. No underinsured, no waiting, whatever. OK, now, whatever.
But it's going on. A word is out. Never talk
to FEMA. Same story in Florida and Tennessee and Georgia. OK,
I understand what you're saying. And I so what I
said was the Republican Michael Watley said he wanted to
end FEMA and move all rescue stuff to a state program.
(45:31):
And I said it was bad for Watley because he'd
said want to end FEMA. I'm not defending the institution
of FEMA. And maybe I should have been a little
more specific about that. I'm not saying FEMA is a
great institution. I'm not saying that FEMA does everything perfectly.
It's not, that's not the point. The point is, he
said abolish FEMA in the audio tape and someone had
taped him secretly saying that. And the problem with that
(45:54):
is that you can splice it Not have the party says,
let's bring the money and give it to the states
for emergencies. Just splice it and say the Democrats can
say this man wants to end FEMA and you hear
nothing else about the recovery. How do you said I'm
for a program to and I said anybody ending FEMA,
but saying, you know, I'm really looking forward to trying
(46:14):
to get a state to give more money to the
states and not ending it. It would have been safer.
So I'm not defending, and it's not people who experience
hurricane and disaster release with FEMA. I live in Louisiana
half the year. Everyone I know here lived through Hurricane Katrina.
They all have horror stories. I'm not defending them as
an institution. But people who think about FEMA but never
(46:37):
experienced them have very high opinions about that. So when
you're being secretly taped, which I know he didn't know,
you need to be very careful with your words. And
that was my part, is that people can slice that
up and misinterpret it to deceive voters ahead of November.
That was the point. That was what I was saying. Sorry,
I needed that clarification. Thank you for holding me up
(46:58):
to it. I'm gladly willing to explain myself if you
guys have an issue with something I said. Thank you
so much for listening to this episode. If you like
this podcast, please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, and on YouTube. And if you have time,
give me a five-star review. It really helps. Talk to
you guys on Monday. Have a great weekend.
Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Groduski. Thank
you guys for being here. Okay, we had primary elections
on Tuesday, and I'm sure everyone kind of heard something
about them. I wanted to talk about it, but the
results didn't come in until early Wednesday morning, and we
had to record the podcast before then, so didn't get
to do it for Wednesday's episode. I want to actually
talk about it now, and I actually did one better
(00:21):
because we had to wait. I have the brilliant data scientist,
Zachary Danini, on with me. If you've listened to the
show before, you know him. He's so, so smart. Um,
he actually, this is how bright he is. He in
the Michigan primary the week before, not only did he
get the percentages about right, like to the zero dot,
he actually got the total number of votes.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I mean, he's brilliant. So we're going to talk about
how this primary is shaken out, why the polls were
so wrong and what it really means for November. But
before we do, let me give a rundown of what
happened Tuesday nationwide. Cause I know a lot of people
are busy. They're not all paying attention to every election.
I'm going to hit the most important elections. state by state,
because there were elections held in Connecticut, Vermont, Minnesota, Wisconsin,
(01:04):
South Carolina, and Alabama. And here's everything you should know.
In Vermont, incumbent Republican governor Phil Scott is very likely
to win his sixth term. But the election for lieutenant
governor is really where the battle is. Vermont, believe it
or not, has a Republican governor and lieutenant governor. It's
the first time that's happened since 2010. In 2024, the
lieutenant governor unseated a progressive for the seat of Lieutenant Governor, obviously.
(01:30):
They're both moderates. Some would say liberal, but it's Vermont.
So take what you can get. Republican Lieutenant Governor John
Rogers defeated the progressive challenger in 2024, winning 46% of
the vote. Former Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray, who left the
seat back in 2022, won her primary to take on
the seat, to try to win the seat again. She
(01:51):
won 61%. It's the most competitive race in the state
that you should know about. Very often, lieutenant governor becomes
the governor. So if, you know, for whatever reason, Phil
Scott eventually, not for whatever reason, eventually he will retire.
When he retires, it will be important to have a
Republican lieutenant governor. And really getting John Rogers a second
(02:11):
term will matter how aggressively Phil Scott can campaign successfully
for Republicans down ballot. He did it before in 2024.
Believe it or not, Vermont had a red wave in
2024 because Phil Scott was so incredibly aggressive at making
sure Republicans were elected down ballot. So We'll see in
Vermont if that holds. Over in Connecticut, incumbent Governor Ned
(02:31):
Lamont defeated a progressive challenger winning 67% of the vote.
He will take on former guest of this show, Ryan Fazio,
in November. But the most shocking part of it was
a 78-year-old incumbent congressman named John Larson. He won his
first seat back in 1998. And he's run for office
almost every two years since 1982. was defeated by Luke Bronin.
(02:54):
He is the former mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. I think
this is one of those things where Bronin had expected Larson,
the congressman, to retire. Sometimes in 2022 or 2024, he
didn't run for reelection as mayor. He's kind of been
hanging out, waiting and waiting, and he just finally said, okay,
the wait's over. I'm going to challenge you, and he
beat him. Larson is the 11th incumbent House member to
(03:16):
lose a primary this year. That is the highest amount
in a non-redistricting year. So not years that end with like,
you know, to like 2022 or 2012 when all the
seats are changed. The highest amount in a non-redistricting year
since 1970. By the way, we still have more seats.
Let's see if anything happens in Florida. Let's see if
(03:36):
anything happens in, you know, a couple of these other states.
But that is really wild. In 2024, only four congressmen,
incumbent congressmen, lost in a primary. So that's a big,
big thing. And I just about Larson, like to quote
Barbra Streisand, sometimes people stay too long at the fair.
Like he should have retired. You've been running since 1982.
(03:57):
That is five years before I was born. Like at
some point, don't you just want to go spend time
with the grandkids or pick up a hobby? I don't know.
Over in Alabama, Republican Rep Marquise became the nominee to
take on incumbent Democrat House member Shamari Figures. This is
the seat that was a Republican seat. The courts turned
it into a Democrat seat. Then the courts, the Supreme
(04:19):
Court overturned that. The courts, the state legislator redrew it
into a more Republican seat. It's still fairly competitive. It's
one of the seats that is the most competitive going
into November. So Rhett Marquise will be the Republican nominee
against Shamari figures. Over in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham's sister,
Darlene Graham, She came in first place, winning 33 percent
(04:42):
of the vote. She obviously had the Trump endorsement and
she had the Graham Institution, Graham Inc. or whatever. She
had that organization behind her. She will go into a
runoff election with Congressman Ralph Norman. Norman has just run
for governor where he came in third place during that election.
But he built up a bit of a statewide name
recognition there. He was very dominant in his congressional district,
(05:05):
which includes Greenville and Rock Hill, which are two fairly
large cities down in South Carolina. That's how he kind
of won. He didn't really come in second place many
places outside of like the area that touches the congressional district, though.
I think he'll have a tough time beating her, but
it will be such a very low turnout election because
it's a runoff special. I mean, I don't even know
(05:29):
how many people will go vote for that. But it
will be such a low turnout that maybe he can
do it, but it'll be very, very tough. It wasn't
super close. And once again, had he come in second
in a lot of different parts of the state, I
would say he has a chance, but it really was
just dominated by his congressional district. Now, here's where things
get very interesting. Over in Minnesota, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan,
(05:50):
she is certifiably crazy. She defeated Congressman Angie Craig in
the Democratic primary for Senate. She won 59 to 39.
Flanagan is she's she's she's wild. I mean, she's the
one who wears the T-shirt saying protect trans kids with
a knife across it. She benefited tremendously from the fact
(06:12):
that Francesca Hong, who I will get to in a second,
was running because Francesca was off the charts. So because
other people were crazier, she kind of slipped in. What's
interesting about Peggy Flanagan, though, was the polls had it
as a tight race. SurveyUSA, which is one of the
premier pollsters in Minnesota, said that it was a razor-thin,
(06:33):
toss-up race. Flanagan wiped the floor with her. She won
by 20 points. The other race in Minnesota that people
said was going to be completely lopsided, where it was
going to be one person winning that ended up losing,
was Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, is running for governor
of Minnesota. He lost to Lisa DeMuth. Now, he was
(06:54):
endorsed by Trump. Obviously, everyone in Republican politics, certainly everyone
over the age of 40, knows who Mike Lindell is
at this point. Big supporter of the president, big denier
of the 2020 election. He's kind of, you know, obviously,
anyone who's ever watched any conservative news program has probably
seen a MyPillow commercial. But nonetheless, and yet still, Lindell
(07:15):
had a lot of negative opinions of him, even within
Republican circles. And polls had him finishing by a wide
margin in first place, and he ended up losing to
a distant second place, losing by 11 points. It was
a 20-something point swing between what the polls were saying
and what the election was saying, just like Peggy Flanagan.
And now let's talk about the race that everybody talked about.
(07:38):
The governor of Wisconsin, the DSA-backed Francesca Hong, lost to
Milwaukee County executive by less than 4,000 votes out of
almost 800,000 cast. This is after a poll, after a poll,
after a poll show that she was going to win
by more than 20 points. I mean, one of the
other candidates dropped out because it said, why would I run?
(08:00):
Francesca is going to win this race, which is crazy
because who knows what would have happened had he stayed
in the race? He would have actually been the spoiler
candidate had he stayed in the race because he was like, no,
there's no way anyone can beat Francesca. She is just,
you know, going to dominate. And Francesca was crazy. She's
the woman who didn't wanted to cancel Thanksgiving. She hated
(08:22):
Valentine's Day. She didn't like Christmas. She didn't like Fourth
of July. And her old tweets have been circulating. And
since she lost and like it's just very millennial generation
to share things on social media. I want to give
a helpful tip as a consultant to anyone who wants
to run for office one day. Do a clean wipe
(08:44):
of your social media before you run for office. Just
clear everything before you announce, before anything happens. Because Francesca
had tweets up there that were like, I'm so glad
I didn't shave my legs tonight. People were posting that.
Another one said, I'm going to be balls deep in
a glass of bourbon. I mean, I was like, it
(09:06):
was funny. It was very funny. But if you're already
considered unhinged and crazy and you have and you have
a lot of those things out there, it doesn't help
your gaze. If you're, you know, if Mitt Romney had
a tweet being like something, you know, crazy and wild
or like saying, like, you know, one of my sons
sucks at baseball, obviously didn't have Twitter when when his
(09:28):
son was younger. But whatever, people would have forgiven him
because he's so straight-laced. But when you seem nuts, when
you say things crazy on a regular basis, and then
you have tweets like that, it only kind of reinforces
why people think you're nuts. So I want to ask
the question and pose the question, why did polls get
it so wrong between what they thought voters were going
(09:50):
to do in both the Republican and Democratic primary in Minnesota?
But the Democratic primary is everywhere, because remember this, the
polls were off by double digits in Minnesota. Wisconsin, and
just a week ago over in Michigan, where Abdul Al-Said
was supposed to win by 15 points, and he won
by a single point. So here's, I've been thinking long
and hard about this. And I have two reasons. One
(10:12):
that's good for Democrats and one that's good for Republicans.
One that's good for Democrats is this. A big part
of polling, when you are creating Any kind of campaign,
if you're a campaign manager, and I've been a campaign
manager many times, the first thing you do is you
build a target universe. You say, okay, my guy is
running for mayor. 100,000 people will vote for mayor. Three
(10:33):
people are running. I need to secure 42,000 votes, and
I will absolutely get enough plurality to win this election.
And you build your entire campaign over finding those 42,000 voters.
And you reach, obviously, more. You try to reach as
many as possible. But you always have to get, you
have to ID the 42,000 that will vote for you.
That's kind of how you build that campaign. Polls are
(10:55):
no different. They say, let's look at a likely voter
registration base. Let's say there's going to be, you know,
a million people who vote. And so I'm going to
poll estimates based upon what percentages of which groups I
think are going to vote there. Part of the problem
that pollsters in these Democratic primaries are having is that
voter turnout is explosive. I mean, the numbers are really
(11:15):
sky high in all these primaries. And I think part
of the problem for pollsters is you're building universes that
don't exist because the numbers are too high. And I'll
give you a perfect example. In the Wisconsin governor's primary,
almost over 791,000 people voted this time in 2026. In 2022,
there was an incumbent governor who had a challenger. It
was 463,000. In the competitive election in 2018, which was
(11:45):
a Democratic year, it was 538,000. So it went from
538,000 to 791,000. That's a remarkable, huge increase of close
to 40%. I don't think that they modeled that out correctly.
Over in Michigan, a very similar thing happened. In 2026,
this election last week, 1.53 million people voted in that
Michigan primary. In the semi-competitive election in 2024, where Elise Slotkin,
(12:16):
who's now a senator, was running, there was only 933,000.
Michigan also has a problem where I went back up
to 2012. There has not been a primary since before 2012.
When Gary Peters, the incumbent senator, ran his primary, he
was unopposed. So no election in Michigan has ever had,
(12:37):
for a primary for the U.S. Senate, has ever had
more than 1.1 million votes in it. This one had
1.5 million. This is dramatic. And most, by the way,
had 700,000, 500,000. No one came close to 1.5 million.
Democratic enthusiasm is off the charts. And it's intense. And
(12:57):
it's real. It's not fake. It's not on the internet.
It's not something to rah-rah Democratic support. People need to
understand that. So it makes it very hard for pollsters.
But that is good for Democrats. What is the good
news for Republicans then? The good news for Republicans is
if you look under the hood at most of these
polls and you see which is the demographics they were
really getting wrong. The pollsters nailed the black vote being
(13:18):
against the DSA candidates. We've seen that in poll after poll.
What they got wrong was the white vote. They estimated
the white vote that El-Sayed would win the white vote
by big margins. And they estimated that Francesca Hong would
get around 45 percent of the white vote. She ended
up with 39 percent. I don't think she got there.
I mean, it's hard because there's no real exit polls
to work with. We're really looking at precinct data. It
(13:42):
reminds me of the 2024 poll over in Iowa. Remember
the famous Seltzer poll where it had Harris beating Trump
in Iowa? They said, Seltzer said, that she was going
to beat Trump in Iowa because Harris was at a
35-point lead among senior citizen women and a two-point lead
among senior citizen men. Think about that. senior citizen women
(14:06):
in Iowa, overwhelmingly white, like 98%, overwhelmingly Christian, overwhelmingly evangelical,
not a majority, but a large plurality are evangelical, white evangelicals.
This is not the crowd that would gravitate towards Kamala.
In the end, what I think happened was the people,
(14:27):
the elderly people, the people over 65 who love MSNBC
and CNN, they're answering their phones at higher levels than normal.
Because in that exit polls, in the Iowa's case, the
exit polls, Harris won the senior citizen women vote by
seven points. Trump won the senior citizen men vote by
13 points. So massive 20 point discrepancies in both those
(14:51):
cases by the best pollster ever. She wasn't picking up
on the fact that white progressives are answering the phone
in greater frequency than other, you know, working class white people.
I am from a working class white family. If my
grandfather got a call from a stranger, he'd tell them,
go F yourself. I'm not telling you anything. So you
could sign me up for jury duty or something like that.
(15:12):
I mean, he would say something like that. They're not
going to answer a poll. My father, who loves Fox News,
watches it religiously, calls me to tell me who was
on this week. He does not answer polls. He tells
me he gets calls for polls and he hangs up
on the phone with them. You're not being heard then.
That's that's fine. And the thing is, among white progressives,
(15:33):
some view themselves as independent. Some view themselves. Some don't
have college degrees. They manage to meet their way in
a general population. So that's why the polls, I think
these exit polls are really off. If you look at
the counties in Wisconsin, remember, polls estimate that Hong Kong
went between 40 and 44 percent of the white vote.
I didn't have I don't have exit polls, but I
(15:54):
looked at the whitest counties in the state. County like
Pepin County, it's a rural county, 98% white. She got 31%
of the vote. Buffalo County, 97% white. She got 30%
of the vote. Lafayette County, 97% white. She got 29%
of the vote. Green County, 97% white. She got 33%
of the vote. I don't think she hit that 40% number,
(16:17):
even though she did very, very well in like Milwaukee
among white progressive areas. I don't think there was enough
because she lost the rules almost everywhere she goes. Same
thing with El-Said. The New York Times created this blueprint
of precinct data, especially in Wayne County, which is home
of Detroit. And outside of the super Muslim areas in
(16:38):
Wayne County, he lost almost every other white majority precinct
in the county. I don't think he hit there. And he,
by the way, polls were saying Emerson said that he
was going to win the white vote by 30 points.
And Detroit News said he was going to win it
by 12 points. There's no way El-Said won either the
white vote by 30 or 12 points, even with the
overwhelming Muslim vote. I think that that is having a
(17:04):
very important problem with the Democratic primary polls. I think
it's also having a very important problem, possibly, with the
general election polls. I am not, you guys know, I
tell the truth. I'm not cheerleading one side or the other.
I mean, I am, but I'm living in the real world.
I've been talking about inflation and the economy and why
(17:25):
it's bad for Republicans. And I'm not sugarcoating anything. I'm
trying to be as middle of the road, knowing I'm
a partisan as possible to give you guys the facts.
There could be a very real case as we saw
in 2016, as we saw in 20, as we saw
in 2024. that the polls are undersampling white working class people.
(17:47):
And that is going to affect races like in Texas,
where James Tallarico is beating Ken Paxton in all of
these polls, not by much, by a few points here
and there, because these polls are finding that Ken Paxton
is only winning the white vote by 14 points, a
population that Trump won by 33 points. You see what
I'm saying? If this is a error, And it's an
(18:09):
error across the board in other polling. How does that
impact Texas, Ohio, Maine, Iowa? These are important questions because
all these races are on a razor thin margin. Fox
News just had Susan Collins down by only two points
in Maine. If there's a five point error among the
white vote, she's going to win re-election. She's got this.
(18:32):
This is what I want to know. And obviously I
can't until election day. But part of something in the
pit of my stomach say they're wrong. They're not hitting
the white working class because they're unless the white working
class is so unbelievably frustrated with the economy. They do
not care about the socialism stuff and immigration, everything else.
They've given up on everything and they only care about
(18:52):
the economy. And maybe that's possible. I'm not saying it's not.
But unless that happened, I think they might be doing
the same mistake that they did in Michigan and Wisconsin
and Minnesota across the board. We're gonna bring on Zachary
DeNini next, and he's gonna tell me if I'm right, wrong,
and what happened in the Midwest. That's coming up, stay tuned.
Zachary DeNini is a data scientist who correctly predicts many things,
(19:13):
somebody who I read constantly. I was on a road
trip last Tuesday, home from Louisiana. I kept saying, what
is Zach saying about the primary? What's Zach saying about
the primary? Zach, when everyone catches on to how smart
you are, I hope you don't forget about this podcast.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
No, thank you. I appreciate it, Ryan.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Let's talk about the polling error in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and
Michigan the week prior. I said before in the monologue,
a big problem is when pollsters create the universe, the
numbers coming out in this primary cycle are so high,
it's kind of impossible to make that universe. And because
the election turnout is so very high, both on the
Republican side of Minnesota and the Democratic side everywhere, that's
(19:53):
what threw this off. Do you agree? What do you think? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
So when polls closed in Wisconsin, the AP's turnout estimate
in the Democratic primary was 602,000, which was pretty normal
based on past primary history. It ended up at about 800,000, right?
So what we are seeing this year consistently is these
high interest, high turnout primaries. And going back to, I
(20:17):
remember I came on and talked to you about Mom
Donnie's win last November. That was the start of just
a higher turnout, more kind of interested in politics, democratic
primary universe. And what I'll actually say is in the
last couple weeks, though, we were getting high turnout, but
it wasn't a massive youth turnout surge. It was better
(20:41):
than a lot of primaries we've seen in the past
when literally over half of voters have been seniors for
youth turnout. But it still is just generally across all
age groups. People, yeah, are just more interested in primaries
this cycle.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
That's very fascinating. If you look at Michigan and Wisconsin specifically,
the DSA-aligned candidates, Al-Said and Hong, underperformed big time in
the polls.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Is it... Okay, so this is my reason, and I
want you to tell me I'm wrong or not. When
you look under the hood of a lot of these polls,
where they got it wrong was they had the white
vote much higher levels of support. The black vote they
actually pretty much nailed, but the white vote they got
almost entirely wrong in both states. How much does this
affect the outcome, not really understanding white working class voters
(21:32):
in polling still?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Regarding these primary races, what you have to remember, especially
about a lot of the white voters you're talking about,
is they like both candidates. If you're scrolling on Twitter
or something like that, and you're seeing online Democratic discourse,
you're going to see pro-Stevens, pro-Crowley, pro-LSA people, right? But
the median Democratic primary voter, even, they tuned into this
(21:54):
race 10 days ago, Maybe they're very upset with the establishment.
They might be more likely to vote for Hong or
El-Sayed because they're not happy with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem
Jeffries and Trump winning. But then you have these really
popular governors who are pushing for these candidates, endorsing them late.
And you just get this very volatile situation where people
like both candidates. They like Whitmer. They like Evers. They
(22:18):
want someone who's passionate. And I think what we saw
in the end is each time, yes, the DSA candidates
really underperformed polling expectations with these white voters.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, and I just have to imagine that because El-Said
and Hong were so caught up in personal stuff that
they came off as weird. And I know this is
just a hypothetical. I don't know the future. But Hong saying,
I want to cancel Thanksgiving and that becoming something so
late in the election. Yeah. It had to affect her.
(22:51):
I believe it had to. And El-Sayed campaigning with Hassan Piker,
to a certain degree, it had to affect him as
coming up as a little too personally weird for the
average Michigander or Wisconsinite. Could this polling error among working
class whites, we saw it in 2024 to a degree.
(23:11):
We saw it in 2016 for sure. Could we see
it in 2026? And I say that because in like Texas,
in that race, Paxton has a 14-point lead on average
among white voters in Texas. Trump won it by 33.
It's a 19-point swing. It's very aggressive against the Republicans.
Could there be a working-class error among these white voters
(23:32):
that would take a state like Texas or Ohio or
Maine that are just on the cusp of flipping one
way or the other? And if there is that polling
error that possibly is there, could it deliver a bunch
of close elections?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
So I want to go back to that first part
of your kind of question there where you're talking about,
you know, like Hong and Al-Sayed, you know, potentially having
some candidate flaws that made them underperform. And specifically, a
lot of things are similar about these two elections. They're
bordering Rust Belt battleground states. A progressive candidate massively underperformed
polls and the race ended up basically tied. But there
(24:07):
are also some differences here. So Abdul Al-Sayed came out
of a three-way primary field where McMorrow had some buzz.
He edged her out through the non-establishment lane. And then
he ended up beating Haley Stevens, who benefited from $ 70
million loan and APAC spending, Schumer's endorsement, Whitmer's endorsement, you know,
(24:30):
Very good black vote in the end with a lot
of these very successful pro-Obama mailers. Al-Said, yes, he underperformed polls,
but still a pretty damn good performance in my mind. Like,
that's a pretty impressive performance. He would have lost had
McMorrow dropped out earlier. I think that's true, but he
still would have lost by like three points, maybe.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Okay, whatever.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Meanwhile, I want to go to Wisconsin. Francesca Hong's opposition,
she lost to a guy who dropped out. And then
Mandela Barnes and Lieutenant Governor dropped out. And then he
came back. She was pulling ahead 40 to 8. It
was complete disarray. There was no $ 70 million in boosting Crowley.
(25:12):
It was just this frantic late campaign. And she got
stuck at 39%. And he came from 8 to 40
and beat her. So I think that that Hong as
a candidate had more shortcomings. And I'm not just saying
that because she lost barely and El-Sayed won barely. I
(25:32):
just think that if the Wisconsin and National Democrats had
coalesced around Crowley sooner, he would have won by 25,
like Stevens could. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Well, what do you think about the white vote if
there's a poll error in the white vote?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
So I want to get, yeah, to the second part
of that. So generally, I will often say things like,
I don't think primaries have that much bearing on general elections.
I mean, there's so many examples. For instance, you know,
on the Republican side, Doug Mastriano and Kerry Lake are
fantastic Republican primary candidates. They win races easily. They're poor
general election candidates. On the Democratic side, if Francesca Hong
(26:11):
had actually won by 15, I would still be sitting
here saying, I think she's a very weak general election candidate.
But I do think there are some signs here about
white working class voters, because Francesco Hong and Abdul El-Sayed
did very poorly in a lot of areas that Bernie
Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in by 25, right? This is
(26:34):
a different type of progressivism, a different new wave of leftism,
and a It is really, really good in these high-education
urban centers, basically. That's where Hong did well. That's where
Al-Sayed did well. It did poorly in some working-class kind
of white areas like St. Clair County, Michigan, where Bernie
(26:58):
Sanders really did well with these types of Democratic voters,
and Al-Sayed and Hong didn't. And I actually do think
that could carry over to the.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
General a little bit.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
There's a little less interest from white working class.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
You know, you're so right, and I never put it
like this. Bernie Sanders in 2016 was saying things like
open borders is a coke pipe dream, right? He was really, yes.
You're not get caught up in as many culture war things.
It was really economics, economics, economics.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It was, it was, it was a bit pro God.
It was before he was a bit pro God. He
was before woke one.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
It was, it was a different, right, right, right, right.
A hundred percent. There is a certain type of foreign, um,
Third world romanticism that comes out of the Hong and
the El-Sayed type in the sense that they talk about,
I mean, El-Sayed has talked about football as a white
(27:53):
supremacist sport. That's what he wrote in his blog, I think.
And Hong said she wanted to cancel Thanksgiving, which, you know,
broke the internet.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
I think the outside thing was like toxic masculinity, by
the way, but.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It's toxic masculinity. I believe he said it's also structural whiteness,
but maybe I'm wrong. It might be just whatever, whatever
the case is, you know, what I'm saying is, is he's,
he's criticizing football over. He's intellectualizing football from a progressive standpoint,
which is just enjoy a game and shut up. Like
kind of like that's the average Joe Schmoe is like,
(28:29):
I just want to enjoy my Sunday. I don't care.
And to a certain extent, you know where you saw
this on the Republican side, Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against
a joke candidate, and he underperformed in all the white
working class areas after his cold comment that Native-born Americans
are lazy and his defense of H-1Bs and all the
(28:51):
rest of it. And I think there could be this whole,
the narrative that's coming out of both sides of the
camp is you're criticizing Americans too much. And your economic
message is getting lost. Hong talked about sewer socialism, which
was from the 1910s about building sewers and that's socialism.
But it didn't translate because it got all caught up
(29:13):
in culture war stuff and woke to or whatever that is.
I want to ask one other quick question. The black turnout,
black turnout was pretty solid, very solidly against the DSA
aligned candidates in both Michigan and Wisconsin. And it wasn't
super favorable. I don't know of Minnesota, but it was
very much against it in Minnesota and Wisconsin. If the
(29:37):
Black turnout drops nationally 1%, Republicans have a very good
chance of winning. If it goes from 13% to 12%,
that's the case in 2016 and in 2024. What does
intensity in the Black vote look like this time in
the primaries? Are Black voters turning out high?
Speaker 2 (29:53):
They are. They're on fire. So there's a really good
piece my fellow at VoteHub named Ellis Bates wrote about this.
The Guardian also wrote an article just kind of about
his piece. And he was analyzing black turnout in a
lot of these Southern primaries. And again, I want to
say this is Southern primaries on the backdrop of the
VRA being overturned. And I don't know how that will
(30:16):
translate to 2026 November. I don't want to say oh,
because South Carolina black turnout was really strong two weeks
after the VRA was gutted, then, you know, Detroit turnout's
going to be great for El-Sayed this November. I think
that's a bit of a stretch. But if there's any
indicator from primaries, black turnout is much more energized than
(30:37):
it was in 2024. Black turnout was pretty bad in 2024.
And then even worse for Bob Casey, the undervote was bad, too.
You know, a lot of Black voters came out and
filled in one race in 2024 in Philadelphia. So, yeah,
and I don't think those people are coming out to
vote in the midterms, right? If you didn't even fill
in the bubble in 2024, I don't think you're coming
(30:58):
out just for a Senate race in 2026 or something. Yeah.
That being said, I think that broadly, just Democrats in
general are very energized right now. When we're talking about
a D plus seven, a D plus eight environment, what
that looks like, the silver lining for Republicans is I
do think that D plus seven, D plus eight looks
(31:21):
like Democrats running up the score in cities like they
did in 2020 and not 2024. And I'm sorry to Democrats,
it doesn't help you in the House or Senate, but
you know, 50,000 more votes in the Bronx, it doesn't
really help. So, you know, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, no, and I'm glad you brought up the Bronx
because what does this also say about the limitations of
DSA-aligned candidates? And I want to caveat with two different ways.
DSA versus Bernie. Bernie did not campaign for Hong. He
did campaign for Al-Said. Does it show a limitation... of
these far-left progressives winning outside of major cities? Or is
(31:58):
there not enough data to really work with?
Speaker 2 (32:01):
So I think the big limitation here for the kind
of progressive, even DSA-aligned candidates, is they struggle more in
battleground states because the Democratic electorate is obsessed with electability.
They're obsessed with electability. We saw in Iowa, Josh Turek,
in the end, easily dispatched Zach Walz, Elizabeth Warren-backed progressive.
(32:24):
I think a lot of Democrats in Iowa believe strongly
that Josh Turek has a better chance to flip the
state blue. In Michigan and Wisconsin, we had that backdrop
on these races, especially with Hong. I think the Thanksgiving thing, man,
I think Republicans went too hard on Hong in that
last week in retrospect. I think, you know, the Republican
(32:44):
media wing is probably kicking itself for spreading all that
stuff out because I think it got Democrats really scared
that she was attackable and she was going to lose.
You talked about Minnesota early. There's no way that Peggy
Flanagan is going to lose Minnesota in a good year.
There's no electability backdrop. It doesn't matter if Angie Craig
is five points stronger than Peggy Flanagan. Flanagan will be fine,
(33:07):
and Flanagan won. So, I mean, I think there are
a lot of Democrats who really wish they could vote
for Francesca Hong and have her become their governor. The
Democratic primary electorate is very far left and very upset
at the establishment right now. I think they were worried
if they voted for Hong that Tom Tiffany would become
their governor.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Right. No, I said this in another show, that the
Democratic electorate is way savvier than they have been previously.
Not all of them, obviously. Some are just dyed in
the wool, like left-wingers, and they'll vote for any left-wing person.
And maybe some of them will sit out the election
in November, but I don't think it's going to be
very many people. Black voters are especially shrewd. And I'll
(33:45):
tell you something that I never... I talked to a
Democrat consultant and activist about two months ago, and I said,
who do you want for November? And she said, anyone
but a woman. And this was a woman saying this.
And she's like, because they can't win, and I just
want to win. And this is a person who would
have gave her own blood to get Kamala or Hillary elected.
So I think that the Democrats are being extremely shrewd.
(34:09):
I think that will carry on to 2028's Democratic primary.
And also, last point, the difference between Everyone keeps– all
Republicans are going to say to me, how do we
come out of this election and save ourselves? And my
only point I keep saying is if we go– if
it's a D plus eight year or a D plus
five year, you can't make it in a Republican year.
(34:31):
But that 1% national will change a U.S. Senate race somewhere. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
So first, first, I'd love to talk about the woman
thing because I love making this point. So in the
in the 2024 election, I believe it is 12 out
of the 13 best performing Democratic U.S. House candidates weren't
white men. So I think there's this idea, oh, what's electable?
What type of Democrats are electable? And a lot of
(34:58):
people jump to white men. I've heard that from consultants,
you know, people inside the party. At least at the U.S.
House level, that's not true at all. I actually spoke
with Christine McDonald-Rivett from the Tri-Cities in Michigan earlier today
on the Argument podcast. She, I believe, had the highest
best performance score out of any person and any Democrat
(35:18):
in any battleground district in 2024. Right. She's a woman.
I just have to make that point because it's one
of my favorite points to make. Yeah. Electability isn't about,
you know, someone's race or sex. It's about, you know,
what they say, how they connect with voters, et cetera.
So on the second point you said, so Republicans in
2024 had a very good year. Right. They won the presidency.
(35:40):
They won the House. And they got 53 Senate seats,
not 51, not 52. Republicans gave themselves a nice buffer.
And the map in 2026 is worse for Republicans than 2018.
In 2018, Democrats had to win states like Indiana, Missouri,
North Dakota. Those are really Republican states, or plus 20
(36:03):
or more. Now it's down to R plus 12 to
R plus 14 states for the tipping point of the Senate.
Still a really good map for Republicans. That's difficult, right?
But it's a little bit more achievable to the point
where D plus seven or D plus eight environment could
be the difference here. So what I would say is
if I'm a Republican, what I am hoping for in
(36:25):
November is just strong enough turnout in these battleground states,
even if you don't get it nationally. What we see
in the past in these wave years is Republicans in
a place like Oregon or Alabama that believe they don't
have that much to vote for get really depressed turnout
(36:46):
because Republicans overall are just a little depressed right now
in their propensity to turn out. But in these states
like Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, they turn out because they
know there's something big on the line.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yep, 100%, and Texas and Maine are the other big ones. So, Zach,
you're brilliant. Where are people going to read more about
your stuff, what you work on, and what you say?
Because I think everyone should read you.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
So, I'm the head of data science at VoteHub. VoteHub
is a nonpartisan organization. You can find us a lot
on X. Right now, our midterms forecast is out on
VoteHub.com if you want to go and see that. It
updates every day. Me, personally, I'm on X at Zachary Danini.
My first name's Zachary and my lovely Italian last name,
which a bunch of N's and vowels.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
And Zach, of course, is the waspiest looking guy I've
ever met before. Zach, thank you so much for coming
to this podcast. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Thank you very much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment. If
you want a part of the Ask Me Anything segment,
email me ryan at numbersgamepodcast.com. That's ryan at numbers, plural numbersgamepodcast.com.
First question comes from Michael. He says, if you do
a daily show, I'd watch every day. Michael, I really...
I'm not joking when I say I really appreciate that. Like,
I really appreciate you. I'm not kidding because I was
for this podcast. I did not get daily outreach saying
(38:09):
that people liked to hear me talk at all ever.
You write, I get like between eight to 10 GOP
fundraising texts every day. I've manually typed stop and each
one confirms I've unsubscribed. But every day new show up,
including for candidates I've never supported or ones saying they'll
stop texting me. but the link is to a donation page.
Are many people complaining about this? It just can't be me.
(38:30):
Am I going to have to keep texting and stop
until November? Okay, here's what happened, Michael. I'll explain this.
I run one of these companies that do these text messaging.
What happened is, I don't text, but we do fundraising
for candidates. What happens is, is when you donate to
a candidate, you're on their list, their donor list. And
the way that it works is this. If you get
a solicitation from a text message for a candidate you've
(38:50):
never seen before, and you give them a dollar, 90
to 95% of that dollar goes to the company or
the person who owns the list. So I own a
list from the 1776 project pack. My list is over
a hundred thousand names. I have never given it out
to rent ever. I can, but I will never do
it because I love my donors. I don't want to
annoy them. I don't want them to stop giving to me.
(39:10):
So we're my pack for the school board elections. But
what happens is if I were to do that and say,
all right, everyone, it's a free for all take my list.
I would get 95%, 90 to 95% of every dollar
that was fundraised from that initial message. And then once
you're on their house file, every dollar afterwards, the candidate
gets 90 to 95%. So just an asterisk, if you
(39:32):
want to do that, if you want to donate, just
go on their website directly, don't do the text messaging.
Like that would actually hurt the candidate. What I would
suggest to you is stop pressing stop. Because what you're
doing with pressing stop is you're engaging. If they believe
the line is dead, that you don't have the phone anymore,
you don't have the number, you don't, you don't, whatever,
(39:53):
you passed away. I'm not saying wishing that. But if
they believe that you're not engaging anymore, eventually over time,
they will actually not message you. If you press stop,
it means that they know that you are still engaged
in that phone line. So just don't do anything. It
will die off. And one of the candidates you supported
over time sold your list. I mean, I hate to
(40:14):
say it like that, but they did. Okay, your other question,
by the way, you said everyone on the right correctly
hates Senator John Curtis, Senator from Utah, which is true.
John Curtis is terrible. Apparently, both Trump and the Utah
GOP endorsed his opponent, Trent Staggs. If he still won,
how is this possible? So I did look this up
for you because I read this question. Curtis is terrible
on the issues. He's way too moderate for such a
(40:35):
conservative state. Utah is a very interesting beast within itself.
The Mormon Church plays a very big role in politics
in Utah. Utah's population does not like crude people. That's
why Trump performs pretty poorly in Utah, believe it or not.
Despite winning the state, he doesn't perform super well for
a Republican. They outperform him. What I think happened was
(40:58):
Curtis was running on protecting Utah's environment and working across
party lines. And that is very popular and appealing to
a population that like niceness. Mormons do like at least showing.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
That they're nice.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
And Mormons are nice. I'm not, I love, I love
my Mormon listeners. Mormons are very nice and they like
the appeal of nice. And, um, Trent, the Republic, Trent Stagg,
their other Republican, the Trump endorsed candidate was talking about
the election being stolen. And I think it rubbed too
many people the wrong way. That's what I think. And
I asked people from Utah and that's what they told me.
So I'm like, I thought that's yes. Next question comes
from Jay, a longtime listener of It's a Numbers Game.
(41:33):
I have a question. I suspect you'd be a sharper
answer than anyone else. I moved from my family from
New Hampshire to Sarasota last year, so I've lived inside
two very different versions of state-level conservatism. New Hampshire is libertarian, infected,
and allergic to spending. But my read is that the
pre-Trump GOP still holds most of the power there, which
caps how far it can move. Florida is more muscular
(41:53):
and institutional five years out. Which state do you think
is actually more conservative? And does New Hampshire's in-migration from
Massachusetts eventually flip the state? That is a great question.
The Massachusetts migration has kind of already flipped the state.
I mean, remember, New Hampshire only had elected Republicans both
at the state level and at the federal level. But
the people moving from Massachusetts don't like taxes either. So
(42:14):
it's keeping them. They're voting Republican in local government, even
though they're voting for Democrat for federal government. It's like
they do want abortion. They don't want taxes. New Hampshire
has a very Republican state government. And Kelly Ayotte's the governor,
Republican governor. What I think the difference is, because New
Hampshire has a part-time legislature, the state senators and state
(42:36):
house members are paid either $ 100 or $ 200 per year.
I forget which one it is. And there are 400
members of the New Hampshire state house, which is like
one for every 4,000 people. It's very difficult. They're lobbying infrastructure.
And that is a good thing. Florida, having dealt a
(42:57):
little bit with Florida politics, the lobbying in the Florida
legislature and among Florida governor is so intense. This is
why DeSantis, not that he didn't get anything done his
first term, but it was a lot of those COVID
based and rightfully so. But if you look at the
legislative agenda for the conservative victories, a lot of them
come in the second term because DeSantis really needed to
(43:18):
spend an entire term getting his people in the legislature.
He campaigned very aggressively down ballot because they were holding
up immigration stuff. They were holding up tech stuff. They
were holding up, I mean, a lot of the things
that he wanted to do, he really couldn't do under
the existing legislature. And that's the problem in Florida. The Florida,
the tourism industry, the agricultural lobby, all these people really
(43:42):
hold up a lot of things from getting done, which
is why I think New Hampshire could go further if
the population was there. The population is not there. I
think the Florida people want more, but can't get it
because the government's different. That's what I think. But they
have also, New Hampshire does not have as strong a
governor as Florida does. Florida has a very strong governor.
That's why DeSantis was able to do so much. So
(44:03):
we'll see how that continues, depending on if Byron Donalds,
who I believe will probably be the next governor, how
he does and how he uses the strength of the governorship.
Last question, which is not really a question. It is
a comment. It comes from Paul about a previous episode.
Paul writes, Love your show. I heard a comment on
Wednesday's podcast about a candidate from Western North Carolina, the
Senate candidate who's running as a Republican, that he's called
(44:25):
to end FEMA. During Hurricane Helene, recovery for FEMA was
purposely stealing and hoarding food and supplies brought in by volunteers.
They were blocking rescue efforts. They reached a point where
the sheriffs were ordered to arrest FEMA agents on site
and were called blocking rescue efforts by the Democrat. Yes,
you heard that right, Governor. FEMA was also ordered to
skip any house with a Trump sign. I don't know
(44:46):
if that's true. I will take your word for it.
The latter event led Trump to fire several FEMA staff.
There are a ton of news articles on the subject.
No reason to provide links. Our experience in eastern North
Carolina is identical. FEMA showed up about 10 to 20
days after the hurricane and left. Local immediate rescue efforts
had largely been completed. They pay $ 750 cash to anyone
(45:06):
with no insurance whatsoever. No underinsured, no waiting, whatever. OK, now, whatever.
But it's going on. A word is out. Never talk
to FEMA. Same story in Florida and Tennessee and Georgia. OK,
I understand what you're saying. And I so what I
said was the Republican Michael Watley said he wanted to
end FEMA and move all rescue stuff to a state program.
(45:31):
And I said it was bad for Watley because he'd
said want to end FEMA. I'm not defending the institution
of FEMA. And maybe I should have been a little
more specific about that. I'm not saying FEMA is a
great institution. I'm not saying that FEMA does everything perfectly.
It's not, that's not the point. The point is, he
said abolish FEMA in the audio tape and someone had
taped him secretly saying that. And the problem with that
(45:54):
is that you can splice it Not have the party says,
let's bring the money and give it to the states
for emergencies. Just splice it and say the Democrats can
say this man wants to end FEMA and you hear
nothing else about the recovery. How do you said I'm
for a program to and I said anybody ending FEMA,
but saying, you know, I'm really looking forward to trying
(46:14):
to get a state to give more money to the
states and not ending it. It would have been safer.
So I'm not defending, and it's not people who experience
hurricane and disaster release with FEMA. I live in Louisiana
half the year. Everyone I know here lived through Hurricane Katrina.
They all have horror stories. I'm not defending them as
an institution. But people who think about FEMA but never
(46:37):
experienced them have very high opinions about that. So when
you're being secretly taped, which I know he didn't know,
you need to be very careful with your words. And
that was my part, is that people can slice that
up and misinterpret it to deceive voters ahead of November.
That was the point. That was what I was saying. Sorry,
I needed that clarification. Thank you for holding me up
(46:58):
to it. I'm gladly willing to explain myself if you
guys have an issue with something I said. Thank you
so much for listening to this episode. If you like
this podcast, please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, and on YouTube. And if you have time,
give me a five-star review. It really helps. Talk to
you guys on Monday. Have a great weekend.
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