Holy crap, what an amazing night! Where do we even begin this week's episode of The Downballot? Well, we know exactly where: abortion. Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard recap Tuesday's extraordinary results, starting with a clear-eyed examination of the issue that animated Democrats as never before—and that pundits got so badly wrong. They also discuss candidate quality (still really important!), Democratic meddling in GOP primaries (good for democracy, actually), and "soft" Biden disapprovers (lots of them voted for Democrats).
The Davids then catalog the uncalled races for Senate and game out what might happen in the House; review the clean sweep for the good guys in five states that had abortion-related measures on the ballot; and finish off with some delicious, gourmet schadenfreude. You won't want to miss out!
David Beard:
Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir:
And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. And man, oh man, did we have some of those this week. David Beard, where do we even start?
David Beard:
I just feel like the entire life of this podcast has been us warning people. "Oh, it's a midterm, Democratic president, probably going to be a bad year, historically, yada, yada." And now here we are. And it was actually pretty good.
David Nir:
I mean, that's honestly awesome. I'd much, much, much rather it be that way, than it be the reverse of that. I think just about every other Democrat went into Tuesday night with extremely low expectations. I had tried to steel myself for the worst, and it was just one upside surprise after another. And I have been following elections for 20 years. I can't recall feeling that way on election night before.
David Beard:
Yeah, all you had to do was get past Florida, let the Republican wave of Florida wash over you, get past it. As we've learned, Florida will always break your heart. And then, the rest of the country was just victory after victory. It was incredible.
David Nir:
Yeah. We have gotten so used to disappointment that we almost forget what winning looks like. So let's talk about those wins and why we won.
And there's just no doubt in my mind that we have to focus on the one issue that we focused on more than any other on this podcast, as an organization at Daily Kos Elections this entire year, but especially since the end of June, and that is abortion. There is just no doubt about it. Despite the pundits in the fall who tried to tell us that this was not the right issue for Democrats to be pursuing, that Democrats were making a huge mistake in not focusing on the economy or other issues. Abortion was a massive factor in this incredible upset of a night.
David Beard:
And I think all those people, who said that Dobbs would just sort of fade away, and that after three months it was going to no longer be at the front of people's minds, were just crazy. Look at the history of the fight for abortion rights that has been going on for decades or longer, in some places across the world.
And the idea that this massive, massive change was going to cause sort of a temporary spike for a couple of months in Democrats' polling and then just fade away is, in retrospect, just a crazy, crazy idea. That is not how real regular people view politics. They don't view it as this narrative that so many people in [Washington,] D.C., in the sort of punditocracy, want to view it as like, "Oh, Dobbs happened."
Then there was a whole story about it, August special elections narrative, and then other things happened. So we have to move on in the narrative to other issues. But for millions and millions of people, this is a huge core issue that they're not going to forget about and they're going to vote on.
David Nir:
Yeah, this punditocracy was treating abortion rights like gas prices. Gas prices go up, voters get angry, gas prices go down, they start to think about other things. Well, you know what didn't happen since Dobbs? It’s that abortion rights weren't suddenly restored across the country. Nothing made that issue go away. And, if anything, everything that went on kept highlighting it. For instance, let's not forget about Lindsay Graham and his national abortion ban.
Republicans did a really good job of helping Democrats remind voters what the stakes were. Let's not forget the Kansas vote, over the summer, on the abortion amendment, which we'll circle back to, because I think that played a big role on Tuesday night as well.
So yeah, you're exactly right. This notion that it was going to be a flash in the pan, temporary blip... really not how people work.
David Beard:
And I think the other issue, obviously, that Democrats ran extensively on, and a lot of people dismissed as being unimportant, as not being something people would vote on, is democracy protection. And the core protections of the United States, as a democratic country, where people vote and the election results are respected. And a lot of people who are too smart for their own good went around and thought, "Oh, regular people aren't going to care about that. Regular people are just going to vote because of inflation or because their gas prices went up."
And what it turned out is that a lot of people do care about democracy. A lot of people do care about fairness and election results, and those being treated as important as they really are. And they voted on that. And we see election deniers losing race after race. We saw Democrats, who were going to protect elections rights, winning Governor's races, winning Secretary of State's races. And I really believe that issue did matter and did break through.
David Nir:
Yeah, it seemed as though Republicans believed there was no price to be paid for being an extremist, when it comes to authoritarianism, and rejecting democracy, and rejecting the rule of law. And frankly, a lot of reporters went along with this. The traditional way that the media works, of presenting both sides, and refusing to take a side, or calling out lies on one side and admitting that the other side is actually true and correct and right, that I think gave Republicans a lot of permission to think that there would be no price to pay. Because reporters didn't care. But reporters are not voters, and the voters really, really did care. And there are a lot of ways we can look at this. You mentioned all of the races where the big name GOP election deniers lost.
But one other interesting thing that I've been noticing, and will definitely be digging into more in the weeks ahead, is that in a number of these states, the races for secretary of state, the Democrats won by bigger margins in those races than in a lot of the other statewide races. And that blows my mind because I am a massive election nerd. I really care about this stuff. I have been talking about the importance of these kinds of races, especially Secretary of State races, for a really, really long time. And most people, they're not going to pay that much attention to what's going on in specific downballot statewide races.
But we have some pretty clear evidence this time that they really did, that more people were voting for Democrats running for secretary of state than for other offices. And there's only one possible explanation for that. And the answer is that, wow, they actually really, really care about democracy and fairness and elections, and the rule of law.
David Beard:
We spend, obviously, a ton of time thinking about elections, working on elections, as I'm sure a lot of our listeners spend a lot of time thinking about elections, that's why they listen to us. And the average person doesn't. The average voter doesn't. They spend most of their time on their job, on their families, on a lot of other interests, and they spend a very little amount of time thinking about who they're going to vote for.
And I think it can be easy to dismiss the idea that like, "Oh, then they just get a lot of TV ads, or mailers, or whatever, and that's what influences their vote." But I think particularly reporters and pundits can be dismissive of voters. Voters take elections seriously, most voters do, and they want to vote for the right candidate. And even people who strongly disagree with us, people who vote for Republicans regularly, some of them could clearly see that what you need is a Secretary of State, or an Attorney General, who respects the rule of law, who will not try to pretend that somebody who lost an election actually won it. And they were willing to go and vote for the Democrat who was willing to do that, even as they voted for a Republican for Senate, for Governor, down the ballot in other places.
David Nir:
In terms of voters taking elections seriously, I think that brings us to the next topic that we want to talk about, which is that candidate quality still matters. And this is another issue we hit over and over again this year.
But Republicans nominated just an extraordinary array of truly terrible candidates, some of whom were genuinely terrible human beings. And this had an impact. This had an impact. The GOP paid a price.
Now, maybe Ron DeSantis can skate because Florida's become such a weird, odd duck. But there are countless races that we can point to that Republicans lost on Tuesday night, or we found out on Wednesday that they lost, or going to find out in the coming days, simply because they nominated truly terrible people and they deserve everything that they're getting as a result of this.
And the problem is in no way symmetrical. In fact, it's really diametrically opposite. It's almost impossible to think of a Democrat, anywhere this year, who ran in any competitive race, who fumbled away a race because they sucked as a candidate or they were a bad person.
And this is a deep problem for the GOP and I have no idea how they can overcome it. And you know what? If they want to keep nominating terrible people and giving Democrats a huge and important advantage in close races, well, maybe that's something we just need to accept.
David Beard:
And it's really bigger than that because it's an incentive problem. And that's why it's so hard for the Republicans to fix. Because as long as it's Donald Trump's party, the type of people who Donald Trump are going to like and endorse, and probably win primaries. And the type of people who are going to want to run in Donald Trump's Republican Party, are charlatans, are people with bad histories, people who are extremists, who are election deniers. All of that stuff attracts people to Donald Trump's GOP. And as long as it's Donald Trump's GOP, those are the candidates you're going to get.
You can look at the five Republican candidates in the key Senate races this year, which is Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, Donald Bolduc in New Hampshire, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Adam Laxalt in Nevada, and Blake Masters in Arizona. And that is not a murderer's row. It is some of the worst Senate candidates, probably, that any major party has nominated in recent history, particularly Blake Masters, Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz. Like just terrible candidates with terrible favorables, lots of scandals.
And as a result, Oz lost. Walker is probably going to a runoff, and is slightly behind heading into the runoff. Masters is, I think, probably going to lose in Arizona. And you can chalk that up, in at least large part, to the fact that they're terrible candidates with terrible favorables.
David Nir:
And let's not forget New Hampshire. I mean, a blowout win in New Hampshire, especially after Maggie Hassan won her last race by 1,000 votes, that doesn't happen without, in part, Bolduc being so absolutely terrible.
David Beard:
Absolutely. And the other thing that we saw last night is that Democratic primary meddling mostly worked out. Tell us about that.
David Nir:
Yeah, it 100% worked out, in fact. That's the other part of this here, there was so much handwringing during the primary season about races where Democrats looked at the GOP primary field and said, you know what? We're going to have a better chance at winning in the general election if this total schmuck beats out the somewhat less bad guy. Democrats very wisely said, we're going to get involved here, and we are simply going to help the ultra-MAGA brigades do what they're already wanting to do, and that is nominate the worst of the worst, and if we do that then we're going to have a better chance at winning. And that's really important because we need the party that believes in democracy, i.e. the Democrats, to win elections. This isn't just about raw power or screwing with the GOP for the sake of it, this is about preserving democracy.
And so in all of these races where Democrats succeeded in helping Republicans to nominate their least acceptable candidate, on Tuesday night the Republican lost in every single one of these races across the country. People make it sound like this was some massive widespread phenomenon. Democrats did this probably in about 20 or so races, maybe in about half of them the worst GOP candidate actually won the nomination, so we're talking about maybe eight to 10. In all of those the terrible Republican lost. And there were so many handwringers who were worried that Democrats were playing with fire and almost suggesting that it was the Democrats’ obligation to help Republicans nominate non-awful candidates, and that's BS; that's their problem, not ours.
And I want to highlight one race in particular where this was really, really important and that I think prompted the greatest freakout, and that's Michigan's 3rd congressional district. It's a race we've talked about before on this show. It's a district that was redrawn by the state's new independent redistricting commission; it's around the Grand Rapids area; it became significantly bluer; and Republican congressman Peter Meijer, he did exactly one good thing in his life, which was he voted for Donald Trump's impeachment, so that painted a huge target on his back. And Democrats nominated a really good candidate there, Hillary Scholten, who ran a close race against Meijer in 2020, but Meijer drew a primary challenge from an absolute lunatic named John Gibbs. This guy actually suggested that he opposed the 19th Amendment, the one that granted women the right to vote, that's how out there John Gibbs was.
And the DCCC spent some money toward the end of that primary to help Gibbs win, and God, Twitter was absolutely insufferable at that point. Gibbs beat Peter Meijer, and what did Peter Meijer supposed moderate, supposed rule of law lover do after the primary? He endorsed John Gibbs, he proved that he's just like the rest of them. And guess what happened on Tuesday night? Hillary Scholten won. That was a huge, huge pickup for Democrats. We still don't know exactly what's going to happen with control of the House, but no matter what happens, having that seat in Democrats hands and electing another woman to Congress is incredibly important for ensuring either that Democrats hold the House, or are in a better position to retake the house in the future.
David Beard:
And what I want to highlight about that topic in general is that we're talking about money getting spent in these races. This was not some sort of situation where Democrats were going in, thousands and thousands of voters, going in and trying to vote for the more extremist candidate in these parties, it was simply the Democratic party spending some money to highlight the more extremist candidate, which then Republican primary voters eagerly lapped up. The fault ultimately for nominating Gibbs is upon the Republican primary voters who voted for him, not on the fact that the Democratic Party took advantage of the fact that the Republican Party is a big fan of extremists.
One other issue I wanted to highlight from a big picture perspective was the Biden approval/disapproval question that we'd talked about a fair amount on the podcast, around what might happen with these Biden disapprovers who were undecided. The fear would be that they would run to Republicans in the end and cause a Republican year to turn out. And while obviously exit polls have a lot of problems—so you want to take them with a big grain of salt—you can look at and get a general sense of how this turned out. And from the exit poll you can see there are about 44% of people who either strongly or somewhat approved of Biden, and they went obviously overwhelmingly for Democrats. And then there were about 45% of the voters who strongly disapproved of Biden, and they overwhelmingly went for the Republicans, both as you would expect.
And then there were 10% of voters who somewhat disapproved of Biden, you can call it soft Biden disapprovers, and they went slightly for Democrats, 49% to 45%. Now that's not going to be an exact figure, because this is an exit poll, so I wouldn't take that four-point margin as gospel, but I do think what it shows you is that there was about 5% of the electorate, give or take, who were Biden disapprovers who voted for Democrats anyway, either because they were actually disapproving of Biden from the left, or they were worried about Republican extremism, or they were worried about abortion rights, whatever the reason was, those voters took the fact that they weren't happy with Biden and they still went and voted for Democrats, and they were key to this result being as good as it turned out to be.
David Nir:
And I think one big reason for that analytical error is that you see Joe Biden, he's the president, he's in the White House, he sucks up so much attention, especially for reporters, and so you naturally presume that someone who disapproves of him is going to be a Republican voter. Except the problem is that there are two parties on the ballot, and if you're only looking at Biden approvals, then you're missing the part of the analysis that requires you to look at, how do people view the GOP? What are the favorables of the Republican Party? To an extent, what do people think of Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy? What do they think of Republicans generally?
And you're going to find that there are people who say that they don't like both, and knowing what those sorts of people are going to do, that's a tricky thing. And it turns out, Beard, as you were saying just a moment ago, that actually that this group of soft Biden disapprovers, who are probably also GOP disapprovers, well, they split pretty evenly. And you have to remember, you can't just look at presidential approval/disapproval ratings in a vacuum; there are always two sides to every election in this country.
David Beard:
And particularly when Donald Trump has obviously decided not to go away, or retire gracefully as so many former presidents do, and take somewhat of a step back from day-to-day politics, Donald Trump wants to be the center of attention all the time, and it's clearly bad for Republicans. The reality is Donald Trump has never won the popular vote, Republicans usually lose elections ever since he became their nominee in 2016, and he's a drag on the party, but they can't get away from him.
David Nir:
Well, I think now would be a really good time for us to actually talk about some of the elections that are still up in the air. Now we're recording this on Wednesday evening, the show will come out Thursday morning, some stuff will definitely have changed by the time you're listening to this, and especially if you're listening later on Thursday or on Friday. So we're going to keep this overview as general as possible, just be mindful that stuff, like I said, is going to change, so you should definitely be following us on Twitter at @DKelections. You need to be signed up to our newsletter, our free daily newsletter, called The Morning Digest, go to dailykos.com/morningdigest to sign up for that; we will keep you apprised of every call in every key race, I promise you. But for now we are going to do the best we possibly can to give you the lay of the land as things stand at the moment. Beard, what do we got?
David Beard:
There are four Senate races that haven't been decided yet—one of which, Alaska, is between two Republicans, so we're just going to set that aside, because that doesn't change the math of the Senate. So that leaves us with three states. Georgia has been called as a runoff between Senator Warnock and Herschel Walker, so that will be taking place on December 6th. That leaves us with two races where we're still waiting for results from Tuesday night to see whether Democrats will hold these two seats; they need to hold either both of these seats, or one of these seats and win the Georgia runoff, in order to get the 50 seats and retain a majority in the Senate.
So in Arizona we've got about 66% of the vote counted, as of Wednesday evening. Senator Mark Kelly, the Democrat, has an advantage of about five percentage points over his Republican opponent, Blake Masters. There are a lot of votes left to count, obviously most of those votes are votes that were either mailed in and received in the last day or two, so Monday or Tuesday, or mail votes that were dropped off on election day. The difference obviously is that the mail votes have to go through a different verification process than the actual election day votes—those obviously you get checked in and then you just cast your vote—but even if you drop off your mail vote on Election Day, that still has to go through the regular mail verification process.
So those votes don't really lean significantly one way or the other, looking at past history, compared to the early, early vote, which was strongly Democratic, as we expected, or the Election Day vote, which was strongly Republican. So those have been counted, and so mostly we have a big chunk of votes where we're not entirely sure which way those are going to lean, or if they're going to lean one way or another strongly. But I think the broad expectation is Kelly will probably be okay, but obviously with these many votes out, it's just not possible to make a call for anybody at this point.
David Beard:
Then in Nevada, we've got about 77% of the vote in. And there, Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate, is narrowly leading incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto by a couple of points. The good news here is that the ballots remaining are almost entirely mail ballots that were either received Monday, Tuesday in the mail, or that were dropped off in person on Election Day.
And in Nevada, we would expect these to largely favor the Democrat. The question, of course, is exactly how many of those are left. And in Nevada, mail ballots can be received until Saturday as long as they were postmarked on election day. And so the question is how many of those ballots are still left to be counted and what exactly that margin will be because the mail ballot margin has jumped around a bit. They've almost always favored Democrats. But the question is, is it a small margin or is it a large margin? So that one is very much still up in the air and we just kind of have to wait for those mail ballots to be counted over the next few days.
David Nir:
And then amazingly, we're going to another runoff in Georgia. There is a really big difference though between this one and the one that took place last year, which is that after the 2020/2021 runoff that of course Warnock and John Ossoff won, Republicans were super pissed about those results. And you'll recall last year that they passed a huge package of voting restrictions to try to suppress the vote. And that bill included a provision that shrunk the runoff period from nine weeks to just four weeks. The runoff last year was in January. This time it's going to be on December 6th. Republicans seem to think that this offers them some sort of advantage. I'm not really clear why, especially since Warnock is such a vastly better fundraiser than Herschel Walker is.
One thing to note is that you might be aware that Donald Trump supposedly has some sort of announcement plan for November 15th, that's a week after election day, and everyone seems convinced that he's planning to announce a third bid for the presidency that day. But some of his sycophants are now begging him to put off that announcement until after the runoff on December 6th because he completely screwed up the last runoff. We can't say for certain what kind of impact that had on the race, but given that Democrats narrowly won those two runoffs, we can say that it probably wasn't a good thing that Donald Trump was running his mouth off. I think that a Trump presidential announcement next week would not be good news for Herschel Walker.
David Beard:
The other potential factor there is that there's a good chance that we'll know who controls the House of Representatives by the time the runoff takes place. And I think as we'll talk about soon, there's a good chance that's probably the Republicans, if extremely narrowly. And if Arizona and Nevada are both won by Democrats, that would also cement Democratic control of the Senate regardless of the result of the Georgia runoff. And then the race can become a lot less about which party controls Congress, will there be a check on the Biden administration if there's a Republican House in that case, and focus a lot more on the candidates. Because if there's not, that sort of national issue at the same level as there was when people were voting this past time, I think there's a chance that there are going to be Republicans who really, really don't like Herschel Walker who will either stay home and not bother with the runoff or even vote for Warnock if control of the Senate isn't at stake or if there's already a check on Biden in the House. So I think that could go to Warnock's benefit as well.
David Nir:
So let's talk about the House. Obviously it is a real moving target. There are so many races in play. How should we think about this?
David Beard:
So I think the Republicans are still pretty clearly favored to eke out at least 218 seats and have a majority. Whether that's a functional majority or not, we'll see, and we can talk about that later. But the Republicans, as I see it, currently either have called or are pretty strongly favored in 215 seats and the Democrats either have called or are pretty strongly favored in 207 seats, which leave about 13 seats, where it's really not 100% clear who is the favored party at this point, again, as of Wednesday evening. And this will continue to change in the days ahead.
So Democrats would need to win 11 of those 13 seats to actually get a majority of 218 seats. I have them currently, if I absolutely had to push them one way or another, I have them favored in eight, but it's so up in the air a lot of these seats that it's really, I think, not even useful to think about it in that way. I think it's best to think of there being 13 races where it's not clear which party is favored. And so if Democrats can somehow win 11 of those seats, they can win a majority. But I think that's a tough road. I think you most likely end up with Republicans somewhere in the nature of 220 seats, 221, something like that, and just an absolutely crazy majority that they have to wrangle for Kevin McCarthy, if he does end up becoming Speaker.
David Nir:
Yeah. We don't usually talk about the goings on in parliamentary maneuvering on Capitol Hill, but I think it's worth pausing here for a second to discuss that possibility. If Kevin McCarthy is speaker of the House with let's say 220 members in his caucus, you are going to see such a stark difference between his skill set and Nancy Pelosi's. Nancy Pelosi, we talk about the 50/50 Senate and how well Democrats did with that, Nancy Pelosi did an incredible job managing more than four times as many members in her caucus with a majority that was almost as narrow. I mean, she had times where she had 1, 2, 3 seat real advantages in a lot of roll call votes, and she kept it together the whole time.
McCarthy, man, I mean Matt Gaetz is already reportedly whipping votes against McCarthy in a vote for Speaker of the House. Now, I would love to delve into the nitty gritty of how that vote would work. We'll save that for another day. The fact is that McCarthy would have virtually no room for error, and that guy is just one big error. Even if he becomes Speaker, I really don't see him having much control over that nightmare, nightmare caucus. Anyway, let's put a pin in that one. There's still a lot of game left to play. And of course, like I said, we will be tracking all of it really, really closely.
One area that we have to address today, of course we started talking about abortion at the top of the show, but you'll recall that abortion was literally on the ballot in five key states. There were ballot measures relating to abortion and reproductive rights that went before voters in California, Vermont, Michigan, Kentucky, and Montana. And it was a clean sweep for the good guys.
So we can group them into three categories. California, Vermont, and Michigan all had measures on the ballot to amend their state constitutions to affirmatively recognize the right to an abortion. So those states all passed those measures by considerable margins. And now those constitutions will enshrine a right to an abortion and hopefully serve as a model for other blue states that really ought to do the same thing. This means that especially in a swing state like Michigan, that even if Republicans do regain control of the state government... and by the way, one of the most amazing things that happened on Tuesday night was that Democrats have won a trifecta, meaning they won both chambers of the Michigan legislature and the governorship for the first time in a bajillion years. But if Republicans ever take back state government in Michigan, they would find having almost impossible time rolling back abortion rights because it's in the state constitution now.
Now let's talk about Kentucky. Kentucky had a measure on the ballot that was very similar to the one that was defeated in Kansas this summer that would've amended the state constitution to say it does not include a right to an abortion. And voters turned that back. Now, it was a much smaller margin than in Kansas, except Kentucky's much redder even than Kansas. Donald Trump won the state by about 26 points. So the fact that there was a pro-choice majority in deep red Kentucky is really, really amazing.
Similarly, in Montana, also another very red state, voters there rejected a measure that wasn't directly related to abortion, but that emerged from the same anti-abortion rights movement, the measure would have required doctors to provide life-saving care to infants who are born but have absolutely no chance of living. It was incredibly cruel. It would require doctors to wrench dying babies from the arms of their parents who just want to hold them for a few minutes before they give up their short little lives and do unspeakably cruel things to these fragile bodies that are already going to die. It was absolutely, absolutely evil stuff and Montana voters rejected it. So again, a huge clean sweep for progressives on abortion rights. We got to put abortion rights on the ballot everywhere every year, don't you think, Beard?
David Beard:
Absolutely. I'm not sure that there is a state in the country that would pass an abortion ban if they voted on it through a popular vote after Kentucky defeated theirs. There aren't many states out there that are more socially conservative than Kentucky. Again, I say that from love because I was born in Kentucky, but it's a deep, deep red state at this point.
The other flag I want to make is Michigan. Michigan was one of the ground zero states for this abortion fight. It was also one of the ground zero states for the democracy fight, and it had one of the best performances for Democrats in the whole country. They basically won everything at almost every level. And I think that shows that those issues, the more that they mattered and the more that they pushed through, the better Democrats did.
David Nir:
And there will be ballot measures on abortion on the ballot in 2024. Activists are already moving forward in South Dakota. And if they can win in Kentucky, like you said, then they can win in South Dakota and lots of other states like that. So stay tuned on that front because there will be plenty more to come.
David Beard:
And lastly, we want to wrap up with a bit of schadenfreude. Obviously after an election night like Tuesday and so many expectations around the incredible Republican red wave that so many people were so sure of. We can't help but look back at a few predictions that maybe were not quite right. But first I want to start with an anonymous top Pennsylvania Democrat, who after the John Fetterman debate performance, who people were concerned about, because obviously he stumbled over his words a number of times. There were some answers that weren't great and concerns about, obviously, his medical history and his recovery from the stroke.
But instead of having a reasonable response to that, this anonymous top Pennsylvania Democrat went to a journalist and said, "If I'm the Democrats," this person said, "I'm putting my money in Ohio." Well, that person shouldn't work in politics anymore, because Democrats won in Pennsylvania and they lost in Ohio, which is what I think most people would've expected based on the fundamentals and based on Fetterman's continued popularity throughout the entire campaign. So the over reliance on this one debate that probably changed very few minds is just absolutely, absolutely crazy.
David Nir:
Yeah, and that's a perfect example of Beltway Media Group think. And also, you know what? I am so beyond sick of these Democratic operatives and strategists and consultants treating reporters like their therapists. Go find a real therapist. Go out there and spend your time doing real work. Why was this supposed top Democrat wasting time talking to a reporter, to kvetch about John Fetterman, instead of helping John Fetterman win? Well, I hope Fetterman has some guesses as to who that is. I certainly have no idea, but that person ought to be persona non grata forever.
David Beard:
The other article I would like to quote a few excerpts from is from the New Yorker from November 4th, titled “Why Republican Insiders Think That GOP is Poised For a Blowout,” and it has such wonderful quotes such as, speaking about the defection of Hispanics to the GOP in Nevada, the Republican strategist told me, "The reasons that Democrats have fucked this up is that they won't stop talking about abortion. And the reason they screwed it up with Blacks is they won't stop talking about abortion. It's like they're a two-issue party. It's this and Trump. They can't stop. I don't think they have anything else." Well, it turned out we didn't need anything else. That was plenty.
David Nir:
Yeah. And let's not forget about the fretting about how Black voters, especially Black men, were deserting Democrats supposedly. Man, is there anything the pundits got right this year?
David Beard:
I know. There is so far no evidence. Obviously, there'll be lots of investigations into precincts and a lot of vote analysis, but it doesn't look like any of that came true. Then a couple more quotes before we wrap from that same article. "The Republican pollster who has been regularly surveying Pennsylvania, told me that when it came to the Democratic focus on abortion, there just doesn't seem to be any specificity. You'd want to do it with high-education, high-income supporters. It's like, no, they're running on abortion constantly.” I'm like, “Scranton.” And again, apparently abortion is something people like to have available in Scranton. Surprise, surprise.
David Nir:
Guess what? We won a huge race in Scranton last night. Democratic Congressman Matt Cartwright, who was running in a Trump district and a top GOP target. He won reelection, because they like abortion in Scranton. They like it everywhere.
David Beard:
And then to wrap on another quote from that same pollster, from the same article. "I can show you the trajectory of all our races. We took a benchmark in July. Okay, this is going to be harder than we thought. And then it looks like a V. We went straight down. And then once we finally got to October, we have enough money, the electorate becomes more fully engaged. And then the other side of the V is straight back up. I can show you the same story in probably 25 races." And what that tells me is that the polls were all over the place for Republicans, because I personally really, really doubt the idea that the electorate had this massive change up and down. And then obviously clearly didn't end up on the V for Republicans anyway.
But I don't think this is what was happening. I think the race was a lot more stable than that. And these insider polls that jump all over the place are not accurately reflecting what the public is thinking. And so that's something that we should take forward into future cycles as well. Like these insider polls that pop up and down and start influencing the narrative, they're probably not worth that much.
David Nir:
Yeah, there was this almost meme, this notion that during the summer when Democrats were doing well in Kansas and doing well in all of those House special elections, that somehow Democratic voters almost had the playing field to themselves. Republicans were disengaged. And then in the fall that they were going to become reengaged by the economy and inflation and GOP scaremongering about crime. And man, that just didn't happen. I mean, we still have a ways to go before we see what all the data looks like, but Tuesday felt certainly a lot closer to the summertime elections, than it did to an election in a normal midterm, that's for sure.
David Beard:
And in terms of looking at evidence that helps you predict an election, the things that really held up this election were A, the generic ballot polling from nonpartisan pollsters, which was right about neutral, give or take a point on either side. And that's probably about where we'll end up. And then the special elections that took place. And the Washington State top two primary that were actual elections that people voted in, in August, and surprise, surprise, were actually how people voted in November as well. So those are the kinds of things you can actually take from and extrapolate to think how an election might go. Random insider polls from Republican pollsters, probably not.
David Nir:
Yeah, there's obviously going to have to be a big rethink, not just from pollsters themselves, but also from analysts about how they consume polling. It is a huge, huge topic. I'm sure we will talk about it plenty in the coming election cycle. But for now, I think it's time to call a lid on this week's episode of The Downballot. Like I said, we are following all of the uncalled races like hawks. Follow us, DKElections on Twitter. Sign up for our newsletter, dailykos.com/morningdigest. You'll get that in your inbox at 8:00 AM Eastern for free every weekday.
We will cover everything and we will continue this conversation next week's episode. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope that The Downballot was illuminating and informative this entire election cycle. We will continue to be here for many, many, many weeks to come. So please tune in again next week. And thank you to those who have subscribed. We will have another great episode next Thursday.
