WEBVTT - It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind the 2026 Midterm Elections 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome back to a Numbers Game podcast with Ryan Gardeski, 0:00:05.320 --> 0:00:07.640 and I'm your host. Happy Monday. I hope you all 0:00:07.640 --> 0:00:10.920 had a wonderful weekend. Right now, in Washington, d C. 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:15.120 Republicans and Democrats are very busy actively recruiting candidates for 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.840 the twenty twenty six US Senate election. Democrats have to 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:22.400 defend two Senate seats in states that Trump won Georgia 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:24.680 and Michigan, as well as a handful of states that 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:28.760 we're closer than expected in places like New Hampshire, Minnesota, 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.720 New Mexico, Virginia, and New Jersey. Republicans, on the other hand, 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:36.360 have to only defend one incumbent in a blue state. 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:39.599 That's Susan Collins and Maine. The only other Republican even 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:42.559 running in a swing state is Tom Tillis North Carolina. 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:46.040 And remember that's the state that Trump won three times. 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:49.600 Every other state where Democrats have to try to compete 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:53.640 in is basically a long shot. Iowa, Florida, and Texas. 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:57.200 Democrats have a very slim road to the majority in 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.160 the Senate. And it's not just this year. See and 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:01.800 I want to go back in history for a second. 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:03.760 I want to show you how difficult it is for 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:09.640 Democrats to win majorities and large majorities. In twenty twenty two, 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:14.240 Republicans really screwed up and they fell a little short. 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:17.440 In twenty twenty four. They nominated bad candidates, They were 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.400 caught flat foot and an abortion, They were outspent and outgunned, 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:22.880 and voters in Arizona fell in love with the crazy 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:25.800 con artists named Carry Lake two too many times. In 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:30.400 twenty twenty two, Republicans lost Senate seats in five competitive races, 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.720 six if you count the special election in Georgia. Had 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.280 they won those races, it would have taken the Republican 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:39.960 up to fifty five Senate seats. Now, in twenty twenty four, 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.280 Republicans did do better. They happened to win four seats, 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.080 but they came within just a few points of picking 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:50.880 up four more in states that Trump won Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:55.840 and Michigan. Had they won those four plus the five 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.120 that they should have won in twenty twenty two in 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.120 a competitive year for Republicans, it would have given them 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:04.960 a filler buster proof majority, something that they have not had. 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:09.560 Republicans have not had a fillbustproof majority since nineteen twenty one. 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:13.840 Those are all states that are within reach. Those are 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:17.200 all states that Republicans compete in for the presidency. These 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:19.960 aren't long shot elections that they'd have to win, not 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:22.079 like when they won the Senate seat in Massachusetts in 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:24.440 two thousand and nine, for the Senate states in Illinois 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:27.440 or Colorado in twenty ten. Now it's been one hundred 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.200 and four years since Republicans won a Senate supermajority. That's 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:35.320 not the case for Democrats. Since nineteen twenty one, Democrats 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.040 have held the super majority in the Senate fifteen times 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:41.080 or thirty years. Thirty years out of one hundred a 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.600 third has not only had a Democrat majority, but a 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:47.600 Democrat super majority. The Senate has essentially always been a 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:51.400 Democrat institution because they were able to win with a 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.920 grand coalition of Democrats. They had Prairie populace, they had 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:58.080 Southern Conservatives, they had New Deal Democrats in the north West, East, 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:01.840 Progressives in the Northwest and in the Midwest. But as 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:06.320 Democrats and Republicans, to be fair, both became more ideologically rigid, 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.000 they were electoral map in the Senate and the White 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:12.280 House changed, and for Democrats it became smaller and smaller. 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.200 In twenty twenty four, it was the very first time 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:19.040 in one hundred years that Republicans controlled every Senate seat 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:22.560 in a state where the Republican presidential nominee won by 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.760 double digits. That's twenty four states, or in forty eight 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.800 Senate seats. The other five that Republicans hold four in 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:31.960 swing seats seats, one in Pennsylvania, one in Wisconsin, two 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:34.600 in North Carolina, and won the blue state of Maine 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.800 with Susan Collins. But as long as Republicans hold on 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:40.320 to every state that Trump won by double digits, it 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.960 means that their basement number is forty eight. For a 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:48.160 comparison to Democrats, if they just hold on to every 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.240 Senate seat in the state that Harris won by double digits, 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:55.160 they only have twenty six. That's why Democrats are demanding 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:57.960 they massively reformed the Senate because they can no longer 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:01.000 use the same winning playbook they've had for the last century. 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:04.240 Think about it, not many Democrats were very upset that 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:07.280 North and South Dakota had as many senators as California 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:11.000 when most of those senators from the Dakotas were Democrats, 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:13.920 which Democrats by the way controlled most of the US 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:16.400 Senate seats in the Dakotas from nineteen eighty eight to 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:21.120 twenty ten. Democrats are also facing a similar structure to 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.440 the electoral College in twenty thirty two going into the 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:30.200 future looking forward. Even before COVID Democrats were seeing exodus 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:34.279 from blue states, but the pandemic exacerbated those trends substantially. 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:38.080 The Brennan Center, which is a fairly left wing organizational, 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:40.400 oother nonpartisan, but they have a left leaning to them. 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:43.400 They estimate that states that voted for Kamala Harris are 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:47.560 set to lose ten electoral College seats, while Republicans states 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.040 regarded states they voted for Trump are set to gain ten. 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.479 Most of those are concentrated in the South. States like 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.160 Texas and Florida are going to gain four each, while 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.360 California and New York are going to lose six, four 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:01.719 from California and two from now New York. Think of this. 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:08.760 Had Harris won all the Blue Wall states Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:10.400 she did when Minnesota, don't know why I said that, 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:14.200 but Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she would have won the presidency. 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:16.440 Two hundred and seventy to two hundred and sixty eight 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:21.919 electoral College votes. Now take away the twelve electoral college votes, 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:24.280 ten that the Democrat states are losing, and the two 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:26.640 that the Midwestern states that are swing states Pennsylvania and 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.680 Wisconsin are said to lose, and even had she won 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:32.840 the Blue Wall, she would have still lost the presidency 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:35.440 two hundred and eighty seats to electoral College votes to 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.080 two hundred and fifty eight. That's with the entire Blue 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.240 Wall enacted. That means for the next decade, for the 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:46.320 twenty thirty decade, Democrats have to recapture the White House 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:50.200 by basically winning the entire Blue Wall plus Georgia and Nevada. 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:54.000 It becomes very very difficult. Maybe that will happen, but 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.360 it becomes much harder where essentially they can't rest in 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:04.560 their laurels institutional support among these historic blue states. And 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:09.320 it means unless the sun belts switches in any capacity, 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.760 which it's moving to the right. With the exception of Georgia, 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.960 everything kind of relies on Georgia. For Democrats, there's really 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:18.560 no path to the White House, and there's certainly no 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:21.640 path to a super majority in the Senate. The coalition 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.520 that every Democrat has basically count on since FDR all 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.240 the way to Obama and even Joe Biden to a 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:33.040 certain extent, is gone. And that speaks volumes of trouble 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.480 for the Democratic Party, especially now as they recruit to 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:39.280 claw back any chance that they have at winning the 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.719 US Senate going forward. We have a writer on the 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:43.640 show coming up to who talks about and writes about 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:46.040 how the Democrats are trying to claw back their majority 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:48.200 in the US Senate if they have a chance, and 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.000 what would it take for Republicans to finally break through 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:53.599 and win a supermajority for the first time in over 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:59.320 a century. Coming up next with me this week is 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:02.479 Arman Thomas. He is a writer for a great website 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:05.640 called split ticket dot org, a split hyphen ticket dot 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.599 org great website on electoral politics. They had a super 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:11.840 interesting article called the real reason Democrats can't compete for 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.640 sixty Senate seats. Arman, thank you for being here. 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:17.080 Thank you, Ryan, it's a pleasure to be on the 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:17.960 podcast with you. 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:20.440 So armand now you look like a fairly young guy. 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.960 When I was growing up, Democrats would regularly have seats 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:29.240 in the Dakota's West Virginia. Obviously there were prairie, populous 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:33.000 and Midwestern Democrats that would would be winning in states 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:35.440 that went for Ronald Reagan and for George W. Bush. 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:38.160 That doesn't happen with the exception of Susan Collins, right. 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:42.680 Tell us why Democrats can't compete in places they used 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:43.280 to anymore. 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.360 Well, I think there's a couple of factors. The first 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:52.520 is simply the ideological positioning of the Democratic Party. Ever 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:57.840 since the you know, the decline of the New Deal 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:02.000 Coalition in you know, the sixty seventies, eighties, you know, 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:05.040 the Democrats have been searching for a solution for who 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:07.720 is someone who can bring together a winning you know, 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:12.000 array of voters. And in the eighties Democrats got the 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:15.400 clocks cleaned, you know, every election that happened. And in 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:19.400 the nineteen nineties, you know, Bill Clinton and the Democratic 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:23.200 Legislative Council made the decision to kind of triangulate and 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:28.840 moderate and focus on winning you know, socially liberal suburbanites 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:33.160 and you know, educated white people, and you know, you 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.840 still saw enough of that more conservative rural, you know, 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.520 Southern Dixie heritage that we used to be in the 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:45.280 Democratic Party. Because Bill Clinton was a Southerner from Hope, Arkansas. However, 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.560 all of this really started to take its current shape 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:51.360 in two thousand when Al Gore was the nominee. Right, 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.120 he was a Senator from Tennessee. He was Clinton's vice president, 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:57.880 but he very much, you know, cast off a lot 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.000 of his old southern heritage and his record that he 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:05.760 ran on in favor of you know, big government, you know, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:10.800 Northeastern style liberalism. And that's kind of the where the 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:14.040 party has been for the past twenty odd years. 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:14.360 Right. 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.120 And you know, West Virginia, which is a stal ward 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.920 of the Democratic Party, voted against Gore in two thousand. 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.320 You know, if he didn't you know, take policies that 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:27.880 alienated his voters, he would have been president. And you know, 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:32.800 every at every juncture the party has had an opportunity 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:36.600 to make decisions about what ideology it wants. The side 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:41.920 that has won out has always been the social cultural liberalism, 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:44.280 you know, based in race and identity. 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:44.840 Right. 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:48.800 Obama beat Hillary in two thousand and eight, Hillary beat 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:53.920 Bernie in twentyeen, Right. And so what that leads to 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:57.960 is just, you know, this is where the party is, 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.240 and people who have voted Democratic, their whole lives. They 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:04.480 were Democrats because it stood for one thing, right, whether 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:07.880 that's faith, a family and a country, or the unions. 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.320 It doesn't stand for that anymore, and you know, so 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:13.840 this kind of sorting is bound to happen. I think 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.600 related to it is also the rise of you know, 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.520 people just being more politically aware of what, you know, 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.760 issues are actually going on. Right in the eighties, it 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:27.040 was only really in the nineties that the top radio 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.240 and cable news and Fox and all of this, you know, 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:33.199 all of these things to keep people politically plugged in 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:36.320 really became a huge thing, right, And in the nineteen 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.800 nineties you saw the first wave of you know, working 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.240 class you know, for lack of a better word, non 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:46.559 cosmopolitan Democrats fall right in the South, in the interior West. 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:49.760 You fast forward to twenty ten, you see a lot 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.079 more of that happen. And now especially you're seeing a 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.840 lot of those same shifts happen with non white Americans too, 0:10:57.679 --> 0:10:59.959 And so I think it's just a combination of people 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.920 becoming more aware of what the parties actually stand for, 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:05.720 right because in the old days you could vote liberally, 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:07.439 but because there was a lack you know, there was 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:10.640 an information gap. People didn't know about it as much 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.160 because people don't pay as much attention. 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:16.280 Well, there also used to be more. There used to 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:21.040 be Democrats that really fit the uniform of their state, right, Yeah, 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:24.520 and in a lot of ways that is rare now. 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:26.760 Yeah, And so that's that's what I'm going to get 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:30.520 into as well, which is that, you know, we talked 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:34.040 about the choices that the parties have made ideologically, We've 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:36.720 talked about the fact that people are just more aware 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:41.440 of what's going on. Right. You know, people like Ken 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.400 Conrad and Byron Dorgan, who were senators from the Dakotas, 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:48.040 we're not that conservative, you know, relative that, I mean, 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:51.520 they were more conservative, but not that conservative. It was 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:55.040 still well to the left of the Median Republican on 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:57.840 a lot of issues. It just matters now that a 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.960 lot of people realized, Hey, I can actually see that 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.600 this Democrat, even if he's a North Dakota Democrat, is 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:08.200 liberal and I don't like that liberalism. And then the 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:12.840 third thing is right with respect to education. Right up 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.720 until about twenty twenty, the divide was very much urban 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.200 versus rural, white versus non white. Right, that was a 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:23.920 pretty useful heuristic for understanding where the parties were going. 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.400 And it's why up until about twenty twenty, Democrats had 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:31.360 a lot of hope for places like Florida, for places 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:35.679 like Texas, you know, for you know, even the idea 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.840 that you know, the rising tide of diversity was going 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.200 to lift them up and you know, kind of cause 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:43.640 Republicans to go extinct in their current. 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:45.720 There was the Obama coalition. 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:50.360 Right and well, now again because now what we're seeing 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.439 is the choices that Democrats have made coalitionally have been 0:12:53.960 --> 0:13:00.719 to prioritize college educated white Democrats you know, over everyone else. Right, 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:03.600 that that's the big cleavage and democratic politics today. You're 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:05.640 seeing it a play out in the New York mayoral race 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.000 as well. You know, that's why you're seeing the coalitions 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.120 that you saw now. Right, If you went back to 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:15.880 twenty twelve or twenty sixteen and told someone, hey, you know, 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.600 Texas is going to go, you know, shift, you know, 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:21.920 eight points to the right while Ohio basically barely budgets 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:24.880 relative to the national environment, you'd be told, you know, 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:26.360 everyone would. 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:28.040 Think you're crazy. 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.120 Now, when you talk about Democrats who fit their state, 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.080 that was a lot more common, right, and I think 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:39.000 that has to do with, you know, primarily point two 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:41.720 of what I talked about with respect to the awareness piece. 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:46.960 Right people, activists, the groups, as you know everybody on 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:50.240 Twitter likes to talk about, they have a lot more 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:56.800 influenced in terms of shaping a national discourse. Right, A 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:00.000 Democrat from Alabama in the nineteen eighties or the ninety 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:06.280 nineties could realistically get away with, you know, being pro life, 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.920 pro gun, you know, anti abortion, anti gay, I mean, 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:14.280 transgender stuff was not really a thing back then as 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:17.320 a political issue. But you would assume that if it 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.680 was Alabama, Democrats that could win statewide would not support 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:27.160 that in any meaningful way. However, it's a combination of 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:32.320 the fact that the Democratic Party's organizing muscle is often 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.760 rented out to ideologically captured groups that do it, and 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:38.840 so they have an incentive in making sure that what 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:40.320 they want is featured. 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:43.080 Right, Yeah, they're not Harman. Can I can I ask 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.600 you one thing about that is you write you guys 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.760 write this on split ticket dot org. Polarization has caused 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:52.560 the ban of plausible outcomes to shrink for any given race. 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:56.400 Fourteen of the fifteen elections with candidates effects of twenty 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.920 plus points. Those are people who outran their party. Tw 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.240 points happened in twenty sixteen and twenty eighteen, and the 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:06.960 remaining one happened in twenty twenty. Since then, no election 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:11.280 is seen a candidate quality yield a twenty point electoral effect. 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:15.080 And basically, what you guys say is that candidate quality, 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.480 a candidate who really matched their state really didn't matter 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.600 where you could outrun the presidential candidate by twenty points. 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.480 You guys were in twenty sixteen that there were fifty 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:28.720 nine candidates. I'm guessing this is house on cent fifty 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:33.480 nine candidates that outran their They outran their party's presidentially 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:35.840 by fifty nine, fifty or fifty nine by ten points. 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:39.560 Not the presidential lean, but the expected result because oh, sorry, 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.880 expect the result. Placement score accounts for down ballot lag. 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:46.160 Okay, my missing fifty nine out round expected results by 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.480 ten points, twenty four by fifteen points, and eight by 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.520 twenty points. By twenty twenty four, that number had shrunk 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:55.880 from fifty nine to thirteen from for ten points above 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.520 twenty four to three by fifteen points, and eight to 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:06.040 zero for twenty points. Does counter quality really matter at all, so, I. 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.680 Think it absolutely does. I think there's two reasons why 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:13.520 this decline has happened. The first is just the nationalization 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:16.360 of everything, right in the age of the Internet, in 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:21.560 the age of social media, right to more extent, you know, 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:23.920 to a greater extent for the Democrats, but even for 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:28.200 Republicans too as well. You can't really run as independent 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:32.400 of a campaign anymore because everybody has the Internet. You know, 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:34.680 if you're a Democrat running with a D next to 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:37.720 your name and you're trying to flip a seat in 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:41.120 you know, I don't know Wyoming you're gonna have, You're 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:43.880 gonna still be tired with the same brush as the 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:48.880 insurrection rioters in Los Angeles right now. You know, I 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:50.960 don't even know if the Democrats or not, but everyone 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.400 is associating them with the Democratic Party, right, And the 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.680 same is true for Republicans, right because look at someone 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:03.960 like Larry Hogan, objectively a very very qualified public servant 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:08.880 who's won elections in Maryland before, but people associate him 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:13.400 with Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz and other Republicans, and 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:15.920 the median voter in Maryland has died in the world, 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:19.520 liberal Democrat and even if they liked his low tax policy, 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.720 they're just not going to vote for someone who will 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:23.720 vote for Republicans. 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.320 He did very well, I mean he outperformed substantially, so, right. 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:31.880 He still was a great candidate. The problem is if 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:35.200 he ran in two thousand, he probably would have won 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:39.600 the election because polarization was just not as vague as so. 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:41.960 That's the first thing, right, It is just people are 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.080 more aware of what ideology actually means, and they're much 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.040 more able to connect that to whether or not that 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.600 lines up or goes against their own values. That's the first. 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.199 The second is that because of the incentive structure for 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.080 the parties and who's going to fund them, the types 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:00.520 of people who would be able to generate those kinds 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:05.920 of overperformances are less likely to actually be drawn to run. Right, 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:08.080 I'll start with the Republicans. Right, If you look in 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:13.959 twenty sixteen on the massive overperformance side, right, it was 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:18.040 you know John Katko, Tom Price, you know Bob Dold. Right, 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:22.000 these are all very moderate Republicans whose whole shtick was, 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:27.359 you know, I am a Republican, but I am you know, independent, 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:29.199 and I have my own brand which is just you know, 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.800 I am not all about doing whatever Donald Trump wants, right, 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.360 you like it or not. That's what the GOP is 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.359 is whatever Donald Trump wants. This is what everyone is 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:42.840 going to support. Right. The only Republican today who really 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:45.840 still has that kind of brand around is Susan Collins. 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.159 Right, what about Thomas masseying? 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:54.160 I mean, I can check, so Thomas Massey is independent 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:56.480 from Trump, but from the other direction. 0:18:56.359 --> 0:19:01.320 Which yeah, is so much more right wing. Yeah, okay, yeah, no, 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:04.280 I agree. Susan Collins does have the brand of being 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:06.560 at Susan she marches the beat of her own drum, 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:09.840 and I think that she is unique. I think Cinema 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:11.520 would have been there if she could have held on, 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:12.360 but she couldn't. 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.399 Yeah, right, And you see it more with Democrats, just 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:20.159 because the nature of the way the electoral map, with 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.200 the Senate bias and all is is that Democrats have 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:27.399 to find more right wing people relative to the party 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:33.040 who run to be competitive. But still, just because of 0:19:33.240 --> 0:19:37.840 how ideologically polarized everything is gone, you wouldn't be able 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:42.760 to get pro oil, pro gun, anti abortion, anti gay, 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:47.080 anti trans Democrats, you know, elected, right. I don't know 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:50.760 if you remember there was a guy called Charles Graham 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:55.920 from North Carolina. He was a Lumbee, Indian state representative 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.119 from North Carolina. He was a Democrat, and the Lumbies 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:04.520 are conservative leaning group of voters, and historically they've been very, 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:07.800 very Democratic, but now because of Trump, they've gone towards 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:11.560 the Republicans. And Graham was their state representative for a 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:14.639 long time. And when he was in the House, in 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:16.560 the state House, when they were doing all of the 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:19.600 bathroom bill stuff, I think he was one of two 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:24.640 Democrats to vote for that anti transgender bill. Naturally, as 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.280 you would expect, you know, when you're trying to get 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:31.040 national donor money, he had to repudiate a lot of 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:33.840 those votes that he took which were representing, you know, 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.879 the authentic beliefs of his community. And so that just 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.359 goes to show you that, you know, there are some 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:47.480 things that no matter where it is, the Democratic Party, 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:50.160 I mean, both parties have things that you that they 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:53.760 just will not compromise on. Yeah, the Republicans it's fealty 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:57.000 to Donald Trump and for Democrats it's you. 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:02.080 Know, children is I'm just kidding about that, Yeah, what 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.920 you said, But the main thing transing children. 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:09.919 But the reason for being in the Democratic Party is 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.359 that Democrats view themselves as the party that will expand 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:17.720 civil rights right right, since nineteen sixty four and all 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:19.879 that when they started to lose the white vote. That's 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:22.119 kind of been the whole thing is we're going to 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:26.240 expand the moral arc of the universe bends towards right. 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:28.760 You taught when you see this debate now, right, whenever 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:30.679 there's people who say we need to moderate on some 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:34.320 social and cultural issues, the go to response is, who 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:36.120 do you want to throw under the bus? Right, because 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:38.720 the idea that you can make a strategic retreat on 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:43.040 anything is viewed as retreating from civil rights. 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:45.280 That's a great point. That's a greeting on. 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:49.800 Civil rights is anathema to you know, the religion of politics. 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:53.120 That is how Democrats view everything. 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:55.399 That's very well put. And I actually want to go 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:57.800 up one little history lesson before that. There was a 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:00.480 guy named Bob Connelly and he ran the the US 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:03.119 and in South Carolina against Lindsey Graham in two thousand 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:05.520 and eight. South Carolina was not as deep a red 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:07.080 state in two thousand and eight as it is today, 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:11.720 but Bob Connelly was a conservative Southern Democrat more right 0:22:11.720 --> 0:22:14.240 wing than he was more right wing than Lindsey Graham, 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:17.480 and the Democratic Party of South Carolina endorsed Lindsey Graham 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:21.320 for reelection over the conservative Democrat. But I want to 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:24.000 go into the article back for one second. You mentioned 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:29.040 something that was really interesting. Democrats since twenty sixteen have 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:33.640 done a better job with quality flips. They've won more 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:38.120 quality flips than Republicans have. What is it about Republicans where? 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:41.080 And if you look at a map right of super 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:44.080 Republican states, states that Trump won by ten points are greater. 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:47.400 There are twenty four states. They all have two Republican senators. 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:49.840 For the first time in one hundred years that every 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:52.160 state that elected the Republican nominee for president by double 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.840 dig just has two Republican senators. That's forty eight. There's 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:58.879 only fifty three Republicans. So in all the swing states, 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:02.720 which there are a number, they've only elected five. Why 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:05.320