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[ROBERT GRADY] Thank you all for coming. We are honored to have two experts in political science and polling as my guests, and we're gonna talk about the upcoming elections. So let me introduce them first. So Dave Brady has been the Bowen and Janice McCoy professor here at the GSB in political science. He's a Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was the chair of public policy at the GSB. He was a political science professor at Stanford. He was actually chairman before that of the political science department at Rice University, and before that he was
chairman of the political science department at the University of Houston. He's the author of eight books and over a hundred academic papers. And just in the spirit of shamelessness, I wanna promote his latest book, because I just got it, called From Dominance to Parity. [DAVID BRADY] Let me say, you can take a loan out of the bank to buy it. [ROBERT GRADY] I figure the people that are here today are political junkies. So I actually read this, and it's fantastic. What it basically explains is that the Democrats dominated American politics and both houses of Congress for basically 50 years, from 1932 till the Reagan election in 1980. And then there was a realignment in 1980, but it was only a partial realignment,
and that began with the Reagan revolution in 1980. And then since 1994, since Newt Gingrich and the Republicans, a Contract with America, took over the House, we've basically been in a period of parity, and it's gone back and forth and back and forth. Ever since, and it's sort of a perfect lead into today because both parties continue to struggle, And what we're going to talk about, there's at least eight Senate races right now that are dead heat toss-ups. But here's the book, From Dominance to Parity. It's going to be a great Christmas present for all your friends. They'll love it. Okay. [DAVID BRADY] Yeah, right there.
[ROBERT GRADY] On the other side, right here. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Very rare. Beautiful volume. [ROBERT GRADY] It'll fit in your rare book collection. Exactly. Okay. On my right is the great Doug Rivers, who is the Ward Krebs Family Professor of Political Science. At Stanford and also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution across the street. Importantly, and this is important, he's also the president and CEO of YouGov Polimetrix. Now, YouGov, for those of you following along at home, you know YouGov does all of the polling for The Economist, all the polling for CBS News.
And so Doug is a very well-established polling expert. Before coming to Stanford, he taught at UCLA, at Caltech. And at the Stanford of the East, Harvard, from which he received his PhD. So, as Ken said, Dave and Doug are both highly, highly decorated political scientists. They've actually run a polling project over at the Hoover Institution where we sort of track the intention of the voters and try to divine what might be the future of both parties. And so we're delighted to have them here. So, issue one, as they used to say on the McLaughlin Group: the mood of the electorate. Doug, let's start with just What is the electorate feeling today?
One big thing everybody has always tracked in polling: right track, wrong track. Is the country on the right track or the wrong track? Where are we on right track, wrong track, and what does that portend for the party of the President of the United States in this election? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah, so believe it or not, we've been on the wrong track for 25 years. But the numbers have worsened over the last year quite a bit. It's a mistake to think that The whole electorate moved with one (unintelligible). We have the MAGA base, about 20 like more percent of the electorate.
They thought the end of civilization was occurring under the Biden administration. Trump got in, and they immediately became very positive, like 95 percent. They dropped about 10 points over the last year. Then you have the non-MAGA Republicans. Sort of in low teens in terms of size. That group started less positive, and they dropped about technical 10 points over the last year, and they're about on the order of 50-50 at this point. On the other end, they're Democrats. They thought that things were going great under Biden.
Trump gets in, they think things are awful. They started at, you know, 95% thinking things were off on the wrong track, 5% on the right track. They've now gone to 99%, and the country's on the wrong track. Doesn't really make any difference what happens. The MAGA group and the core Democratic group are going to always believe opposite things of this world. Then there's this big group in between, which are independents. And that's why our elections are close. They swing a bit one way or the other. They're currently in about 25% think the country is headed in the right direction.
Again, about 10 points worse than they were a year ago. And that's the group that is really moving in this large. [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah, a couple phenomena jump out from Doug's answer right there. One is that we live in a world now where people's view of reality is, even if it's unrelated to politics, is actually determined by their political affiliation, right? So people think the economy is good if there's a Democrat president and that person's in office or and vice versa. Republicans think it's bad, and then a Republican's president, people say the economy is good, whether it's good or bad, just because of partisan affiliation.
And then the other thing is both that group of non-MAGA, let's call them moderate Republicans, and independents, That Trump did capture in 2024 are moving away from him fast. So let's turn to Trump and Trump's approval. So Dave, let's talk about the economy. Obviously, I think most people who worked in politics are believe in the old James Carville maxim, "It's the economy, stupid." Trump's seriously underwater on the economy. How bad is it? [DAVID BRADY] Yeah, unless you went to a Trump rally, he's in trouble on the economy.
Your approval overall on the economy is 77% opposed. On inflation, it's really bad. It's worse on inflation. That's important for him because the major reason, on my view, he got elected in 2024 was the inflation issue plus the immigration issue, but the immigration issue is gone also. He's a negative on that. He's only negative on that about 15 points. And then on the economy, He's in deep in the hole. And when you ask Americans what the most important issues are, the first one's inflation, second one's economy, third one's healthcare, and on all three of those issues, they believe the Democrats are better capable of dealing with it.
[ROBERT GRADY] So let's double-click a little bit on inflation, because I'll take you back to the 2024 election, the polling that Doug and Dave did, in that, that's obviously the presidential election Trump won. And if you look at that, first of all, if you look at what issues people cared about, to Dave's point, if people said abortion was the number one issue, Kamala won that group 65 to 30, right? But that was only 6.8% of the electorate, and it was only 4% of independents. If you asked people, people who responded, "The future of democracy is the most important issue," Kamala won that group 90 to 6, right? But that was only 9.6% of all voters and only 7.8% of independents.
Among people who said inflation was the number one issue, Trump won them 64 to 26, 64 to 26. So he won by 38 points. And that group was the biggest group. More voters thought inflation was number one than any other issue. That group was 25% of all voters and 22% of independents. Now, If you disaggregate where Trump is on inflation today from the YouGov polling, among Democrats, approve, disapprove of the job Trump is doing on inflation, 3 approve, 96 disapprove. No surprise.
Among Republicans, 67 approve, 30 disapprove. So not so great given the partisan affiliations we have to drive them. But here's the number that is shocker. Independents, 18 approve, 80 disapprove. So Trump is minus 62 on inflation with independents. Remember, he won independents in the 2024 election by like 7 points, something like that. [DAVID BRADY] (unintelligible) [ROBERT GRADY] So.
Those numbers are really troubling, and we'll get to what it means for the House, what it means for the Senate. [DAVID BRADY] Oh, okay. [ROBERT GRADY] Go ahead. [DAVID BRADY] Well, that's particularly important among Hispanic voters, because Hispanic voters, Trump did very well among them. The two issues being, depending upon what your ethnicity was, immigration, and the second one was inflation. And on those two sets of issues, it's totally flipped, and that Hispanic vote is now about 35 to 40 points Democrat,
as opposed to where they were in 2024. [ROBERT GRADY] So I'm going to talk for a second before we dive into the House and Senate about a third issue, issue three, which I would call issue selection. In my view, politics is all about issue selection. What do you say you're going to do? What do you say you're going to work on? What are you trying to move? And so maybe I'll start with a question for Doug. Doug, were there any voters out there who elected Trump in 2024 to start a fight with Canada? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] No, nor a war with Iran, nor to build a ballroom or an arch.
[ROBERT GRADY] Exactly. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] You know, he did. Anyone paying attention knew that Trump liked tariffs. The voters, however, most of whom paid no attention to that. So Trump gets in, he puts on the tariffs, and they're immediately unpopular. [DAVID BRADY] Right. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] So between the tariffs and the war in Iran, these are two things that people think are causing prices to rise, and those are both big negatives. [ROBERT GRADY] Exactly, they're correlated with inflation. But just to go back, You're right. If you can pull up a tape, would you go home tonight, of Trump on the Oprah Winfrey show in the 1980s saying how wonderful tariffs were.
So he actually has always believed in them. but correct me if I'm wrong, but in the '24 cycle, Doug, I think, was sampling, what do people think of tariffs? And you really couldn't get a discernible view because 90% of the sample had no idea what a tariff was. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Even worse, we forgot to ask about tariffs for the most part. So I went back to our historical data, like Trump won. We asked how he was handling foreign trade, but we never actually used the word tariff. [ROBERT GRADY] But now you've sampled it, and like you say, consumers, I mean, don't underestimate the voters.
They know it raises their prices. People in industrial manufacturing know it raises the prices of components. Steve, do you have numbers on tariffs? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah, the tariff support's around 25%. He's underwater by. Thirty points. [ROBERT GRADY] Thirty on tariffs. And then when you get specifically to Canada, we'll talk about some of these races, but, you know, there are huge trading relationships in Maine and in New Hampshire and in Minnesota and in Montana and other states, you know, along the northern rim of the United States and more broadly in the country. And that's having an effect and, you know,
taking over Greenland, you know, whatever. Okay. How about on the war? How about on the war, the war in Iran? Where is Trump in terms of approval of the war at this point? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] So the statistic I wrote down before we got there was, do you think it was a mistake to go to war with Iraq? And was it the right decision or wrong decision? Right now it's. 26% of the public thinks it was the right decision, and 56% thinks it's the wrong decision. It's even more if you look among Republicans.
My own handwriting there. Among Republicans, it's 60% think it's the right decision, and 40% think it's the wrong decision. Trump voters. [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] When 40% of your voters think one of the key things you're talking about and doing is wrong, then you're deeply underwater. [ROBERT GRADY] And then I think not only are they unpopular, but to the point you made earlier, they feed right into the narrative of not only not fixing inflation, but actually making it worse. And that in most of the Democratic campaigns,
that's the narrative, is like tariffs and the war are making gas prices higher, in the case of the war. They're making your consumer goods pricey, in the case of tariffs. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Well, the whole Trump strategy, such as it is, is a big middle finger to people who care about inflation. That he had very good ratings on the first Trump administration. Even a year ago, he was plus 10 on inflation. And now he's minus 25 or so. [ROBERT GRADY] You can always spin it. I remember when President Bush would see somebody giving him the middle finger when he was driving by, he'd say, "Hey, look,
they're saying you're number one." No. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] That was great. [ROBERT GRADY] And on issue selection, you didn't even mention some other things, but I'd like to see if you tested them. Ripping down the Kennedy Center because they wouldn't put your name on it, right? Retribution against your- [DOUGLAS RIVERS] So [ROBERT GRADY] Have you tested the Kennedy Center? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yes, we have. In my whole 25 years of doing this, I've never had anything that polled worse. 6% of the public is in favor of tearing down the Kennedy Center.
[DAVID BRADY] What? [ROBERT GRADY] How about having your kids get rich through questionable means? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yes. [ROBERT GRADY] (unintelligible) [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Corruption was not working for a while, like the democracy issues. The Democratic base was big on them. But I think one of the things that's happened in the midterm campaigns where Democrats have learned how to sort of wrap it into Trump is thinking about himself and not you. [ROBERT GRADY] Right. And we haven't even talked about attacking Norway because he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize.
All right. What's interesting, in my view, about the issue selection issue is that he has actually plenty to work with. He has things he could say that would be popular. For example, even on the economy, people perceive the economy, as you said, as pretty bad. But GDP growth is at 2.2%, unemployment rate is 4.1%. But yet the consumer sentiment on the economy, by the way, is just almost touching its post-World War II low, right? It's like 46. University of Michigan survey, which, for context, in 2000 it was 112. So in terms of people's confidence of the economy.
[DOUGLAS RIVERS] So big chunks of that are Democrats immediately became very negative on the economy when Trump got in. And. The second is, we are not at 9% inflation, but we are at 3.5%. [ROBERT GRADY] And we're at 30% higher prices than 2020. [DAVID BRADY] Yeah. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] There's stuff out there that's easy to identify, like gas prices, mortgage rates, so forth. So I think they're getting some negatives on that.
You know, it's not so much that the economy is terrible, it's that Trump won't acknowledge that there's any problem. [ROBERT GRADY] Right. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Biden did this. That was a disaster. [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah, he said, "You're wrong. You don't believe your own eyes." [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah, both of them do that. But it's interesting. We talked about Republicans that are non-MAGA but conservative.
They would presumably be in favor of the reconciliation bill, the BBBA, where he avoided a $5 trillion tax cut and gave a tax cut to most Americans. They don't even talk about that. They don't talk about tax credits for [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah. [ROBERT GRADY] education, for homeschooling and school choice. You know, and we'll turn to the border. I'm gonna ask you about the border, but. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah, I hate to break it to you.
All the policy stuff that you did, [ROBERT GRADY] Nobody cares. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] People don't miss it. [ROBERT GRADY] (unintelligible) [DAVID BRADY] Exactly right. I was hoping someone was gonna say that. [ROBERT GRADY] Well, even on the border, it's interesting because people did care about the border. They did feel that the number of people crossing was excessive. I believe the data is you had about 2 million people a year, 1.8 million, let's say, crossing, and that's down to like 95,000 right now. So that changed, but I think he stepped in
it in that issue because you look at polling on that, a majority of Americans believe we should have border security, but a majority also believe if someone's been here 10 years and is working and paying taxes and everything else, they should have a path to citizenship. And he's turned it into Kind of ripping people out of their homes and arresting people, truckers at inspection stations because they can't [DAVID BRADY] Yeah. [ROBERT GRADY] pass their CDL requirements. [DAVID BRADY] That's exactly right. [DAVID BRADY] We've been concentrating on Texas.
I was at Rice a long time, so I have friends down there. On the Texas question. Of those five seats, it's our guess that three of them are going to stay Democrat and maybe four of the five. And the reason is. That the Mexican-American vote along the border was heavily influenced by inflation and border crossing. Now the border crossing is switched because, just as Bob said, now you're not keeping people from coming in. That's taken care of in some way. What you're doing is taking people out of communities and ripping them out, and that is not popular. But on the inflation, wherever Trump was in 2024, Mexican-American vote along the border in those border counties where the most of the districts were drawn.
Redrawn. What's happened there is it's about 18% more of the Mexican-American vote says inflation is the most important issue. So I don't see that working. I don't see that working out very well for them. In contrast, the California five districts, four of those five are definitely going Democrat, and the fifth one is up for grabs. [ROBERT GRADY] You know, we'll talk about where we go from here later, but it seems to me that Trump is sort of the extreme example of one thing that's changed in American politics, really since the 2000 election, which is it used to be,
like when we were running in '88, it was like trying to capture the middle, try to capture the suburbs. We stayed right on taxes and defense and crime, but into the middle, to the left, if you will, on environment, education, childcare. And I think since that tie election, both parties was guilty of this, of just trying to maximize their own turnout instead of broaden the coalition. But Trump hasn't even, in my view, broadened the coalition within his own party. So I took your data at the end of the '24 election and gave a speech to a bunch of European LPs. And I pulled out the quote because it happens to be right.
I said, "Hey, if Trump is the president of tariffs, mass deportations, and retribution instead of high growth and safe streets, he'll misread his mandate and he'll pay a high price in the '26 midterms." So you can look it up. There we were. Okay, let's turn to the House of Representatives, the U.S. House. I think it's fair to say the House is always more of a water level election. In other words, where is the current president out of? The individual members aren't as well known, therefore it swings a little bit where the popularity or lack thereof of the incumbent kind of drives it.
It's a sort of referendum on the incumbent. Now everybody knows that historically at the first midterm after a president gets elected, the average incumbent president loses like 25 seats, right? And if they're actually 50% approval or more, or sorry, under 50% approval, the average is 35 seats that they lose. Now, some people say, Dave, in American politics, well, that was history, and that was then, but these days there aren't very many swing seats because all the seats in general election are safe because of redistricting, because of the big advantage of incumbents in campaign finance, and lately because of social media, you get fed everything you already agree with
in your media feed, and even because of this thing, which you can maybe talk about, demographic sorting, where people are moving to be near people that they already agree with. But Dave has done some interesting work on other elections that are basically comparable to this midterm. So. 2000. 1994, which was after the president wins and controls both houses, and then the first midterm, what happens? They were big losses in the following four elections. '94, which was after Clinton had both houses, Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America.
2006, I don't count '02 because it was September 11th, but 2006, which was after George W.'s reelect, and he had both houses, big losses in '06. 2010, which is after Obama won in '08, had both houses, got murdered, lost 63 seats in 2010, and then 2018, which was Trump's first midterm. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah. [ROBERT GRADY] Now people say, oh, most of these seats can't be lost, but tell us about your analysis about seats where the 55-plus seats- Tell everybody what that means.
[DAVID BRADY] So the question is, is this gonna be [DAVID BRADY] a wave election? I call a wave election any election where you're switching 30 seats or more in the House. And so then the question is, well, how many competitive seats there are? So you look at the Cook Report, and I don't want to go into how they do that, but- and some people use the presidential vote in the last election, and that's pretty much a measure of how liberal or conservative the district is in some ways. But in my view, the best way to look at it is to look at What did the incumbent do in the previous election they were in?
[ROBERT GRADY] Just two years ago. [DAVID BRADY] Yeah. So, well, no, this is the one. You couldn't use one because the president is involved in [ROBERT GRADY] In those cases, yeah. [DAVID BRADY] that, so I got the president. [ROBERT GRADY] Right. [DAVID BRADY] If I'm looking at 2006, I'm looking at 2002. [ROBERT GRADY] Go back to that. [DAVID BRADY] I'm looking at the last election. And in that case, I broke the tables down by saying, well, any election where the person, the incumbent, won by two and a half points or less,
that means a 2.5% swing changes the seat. And then one where it's a traditional 55-45, five-point swing switches the seat. But I did it at 55 and over and 60 and over, and in wave elections, you'd be quite surprised at how many seats are 55 and over. In some elections, it's even a majority. And in 60 and over, it's like 30, 35% of the seats. So in a wave election, something's happening across the country, a combination of the things we've already mentioned, independents coming out. In this one, if you look at Republicans, how enthused they are, They are by 5, 6, 7, 8 points less likely to vote, say they're less likely to vote.
Doug's polls on The Economist have a very good measure of strict likelihood of voting versus loose, and no matter how you look at that, Republicans are less likely, they're less enthusiastic about election, means they're less likely to turn out. Therefore, the swing is going to be, in my view, the swing's going to be bigger. The president, as Bob said, the president's popularity has dropped, and that's true of all the other elections that we talked about. Nothing like this. And then because Democrats generally 90% vote Democrat, 90% are Republicans, you pick up a few votes there, but in my view, it's independents who swing these elections. And I've never seen such a big gap for independents.
The last gap I had was over 30 points. [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah. [DAVID BRADY] That independents say they're voting Democrat this time and not Republican. He has a couple of good questions on, "Would you be willing to vote for a Democrat? Would you be willing to vote for a Republican?" And this time, non-MAGA Republicans. There's a question we have separate them out, but non-MAGA Republicans are about 9% of non-MAGA Republicans say in House elections, 11% in Senate elections, say they'd be willing, consider a vote for a Democrat, and only 2% of Democrats say
they'd be willing to vote. So that whole set of factors leads me to believe that this is going to be a wave election, certainly in the House. [ROBERT GRADY] Right. [ROBERT GRADY] Now, to back you up on voter intensity, I was looking at a Pew poll which said on the Democrats, This is a week ago Friday. What percent are extremely vote motivated to vote? 63% of Democrats extremely motivated, 46% of Republicans. So pretty good gap on voter intensity.
Now, Doug, there are other people who say That the pollsters undercount, systematically have undercounted Trump voters, undercounted Republicans generally even longer than that, because a lot of people in the media, because Trump staffers say that, White House staffers and Republican operatives all say that. They say, "Oh no, they're undercounted because people don't want to admit they're going to vote for Trump," or because when someone says they're calling from the media, except you're going to tell me they don't call anymore, but someone says they're from the media and they're doing a poll, they say, "Well, I hate the media and I'm not going to answer you." So what is the answer to this, you know?
What do you say about the phenomenon of undercounting Trump voters? [DAVID BRADY] If you can see the look on his face. [ROBERT GRADY] True or false? True or (unintelligible) [DAVID BRADY] I've had like 20 conversations. [ROBERT GRADY] I've never heard this person. [DAVID BRADY] He has written at least three formal papers on this topic alone. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] So it's true. I mean, we consistently underestimated the Trump vote, but the size of that is a lot less than people think. So, for example, in 2024, which was the worst miss of these two, The average poll was one to two points,
too low on Trump. Now that's two to four points on the lead. So, you know, that's a big deal in an election where Trump won by one and a half points. You know, if you were off four points on the lead, it's pretty embarrassing. I was in that category. You know, why is this? Well, it is the things you're saying, which is Trump says it's fake news and they're fake polls and so forth. So we know we get lower cooperation rates from Trump voters.
What we do is we try to correct. So. If we're doing text-based polls these days, which is what I'm heavily doing at the moment. [ROBERT GRADY] Everybody here gets a hundred texts a day on the phone. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Please answer them, because only a hundred people. [ROBERT GRADY] They're either calling or asking for money. [ROBERT GRADY] More of them are asking for money, actually. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Any of that, we can control the party registration of the people.
We know what the vote is in the area. We have models of who's going to vote one way or the other, and then we ask them how they voted in the last election. So we're constantly trying to rebalance so that we get the right fraction of past Trump voters. There still appears to be a small bias in terms of the Trump voters that we get are more likely to be the discontented Trump voters than the happy Trump voters. [ROBERT GRADY] Mm-hmm. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] So it would not shock me to see that we're off by a point or two, in the Democratic direction. But, I mean, we're in a world where Polls are basically Democrats plus 8 to 11. So one or two points is not
[ROBERT GRADY] (unintelligible) the margin. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] going to change that one. It will change a bunch of individual races. And then secondly, the midterm polls have been quite good. Now, every four years we have a midterm election, so there aren't a lot of cases, but there was no appreciable bias in either 2022 or 2018 or 2014 for that matter. [ROBERT GRADY] Beyond this undercounting issue, for people who signed up, some people submitted questions. One of the questions that people submitted was, what can we do more generally to make polling more accurate?
[DOUGLAS RIVERS] Answer our text message. [ROBERT GRADY] All right, before we sum up on the House, one last question. What about redistricting? California went one way, launched this mid-decade redistricting, then a bunch of Republican states did the same thing going the other way, Florida, Ohio, Texas, et cetera. What's the net effect? Net positive for either party or a wash? [DAVID BRADY] Downballot did a considerable amount of work and put together the presidential vote in those districts, in 34 of the districts that have been redone.
So I looked at that reasonably carefully, and, you know, I can't run regressions on that, not much. But so if you look at that, and it then gives how much President Trump won or lost by in the previous election, if it is, as I believe it will be, there'll be 30 seats or more. The best the Republicans could count on out of that is two or three seats. And if it's the worst, I think they might even lose two seats out of there. [ROBERT GRADY] They might lose. [ROBERT GRADY] Okay, conclusion on the House. The blue wave might be bigger than we think.
Could be a problem. [DAVID BRADY] I don't know, ask Doug. He's been disagreeing with me for some time. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah, so we do a. [DAVID BRADY] Oh, wait a minute, did he say yeah? [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah. [DAVID BRADY] Okay, sorry. I'm leaving. [ROBERT GRADY] I'll listen. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Just to disagree with you, Dave. Yeah. So we are in a different world than 2014 or 2006, and certainly 1994.
[DAVID BRADY] Yeah. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] There is this dead spot between seats that were Republican plus 5 and Republican plus 10. So that five-point uniform swing, that is, you move every district five points, gets you Democrats picking up 15 or so seats. Between 5 and 10 points, there's really only about 15 more seats. So you need to be at about 10 or plus to get one of these super plays. And I don't know, our numbers have bounced around on this, so I have no conviction on whether we're at 8 or 11. [ROBERT GRADY] Almost where we're taking and talking about. Here's the data of the 55 plus. So in other words, where it was 10 or more on those ones I mentioned, '94, [DAVID BRADY] Mm-hmm.
[ROBERT GRADY] 34 seats lost, 19 were 55% or more four years earlier. [DAVID BRADY] Yeah. [ROBERT GRADY] In 2006, 30 seats lost, 17 were in 55 plus districts. In 2010, like I said, 63 seats lost, 33 were in supposedly safe 55-plus districts. In 2018, 41 seats lost, 28 of them 55-plus. [ROBERT GRADY] So you do have 10-plus in some of these waves. [DAVID BRADY] The reason I worry about what Doug says, given my prediction, actually, what does it hurt me? I'm retired, so I don't really care. I mean, what can it hurt me that I got the article wrong? So. He's right about that's the dead spot, and it is true that it's not like '94 or 2006. But my view is I think there are enough seats like
that, if you calculated it, and in a wave election, it'll turn 30. But he's right to question what he brought up with. That's the area where you have to worry about you're not gonna get there. [ROBERT GRADY] Right. [ROBERT GRADY] All right, let's turn to the Senate, and maybe we'll do a lightning round and just rip through a bunch of these races, see who's ahead, talk about some of the interesting Features, shall we call it, of the race. Let's start in Maine. Oh, first of all, to set the table, it's 53-47, right? That's what the Republicans have right now. But let's talk about where they're vulnerable. So we'll start in Maine, Susan Collins.
Everybody always says she's going to lose, and she has nine lives. She always ends up winning. Okay, and even with Trump underwater badly in Maine, I think UW has it as a toss-up. I think Cook has it a toss-up right now, but Will you tell? But just to set the table, just one little thing. Okay, the Democrats started this race with a guy who had a Nazi tattoo on his chest and had beaten his former wife and his former girlfriend, so they got rid of him. That was pretty smart. And then they nominated a guy who has two children with his cousin. It's like the second cousin, okay? But do you think maybe they should have learned from the first place?
Am I wrong about that? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Well, I'm from Kentucky, and that would be a positive. [ROBERT GRADY] All right, so Susan Collins. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] So we have Jackson up by two over Collins, which is less than we had Sarah Gideon up two, though. My general view, though, is she's survived five terms. I don't think she's gonna survive a sixth. [ROBERT GRADY] All right, what about. You wanna do Maine or Texas? [DAVID BRADY] I'm not sure.
[ROBERT GRADY] I'm gonna go to Texas. [DAVID BRADY] No, I mean, I'm not sure of that. [ROBERT GRADY] Your home turf. [DAVID BRADY] Although I think Trump, if she does go down, it's a tariff. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] You gotta pick one up, you know that. [DAVID BRADY] It's a tariff. [ROBERT GRADY] It's a tariff. [ROBERT GRADY] I agree. Okay, Texas, your home turf. Okay. That's another one where I always feel like Texas is Charlie Brown and the football. The Democrats always think they're going to win Texas, and I remember Beto O'Rourke, he was going to beat Ted Cruz.
Didn't happen. The football always gets pulled away. But now you have Talarico up eight in one poll I saw. Up six in another, 50 to 44. But you have the tell on this. But Doug said he's been up, and Talarico has been in the last 18 polls in a row, which kind of gets the variability out. What do you think? Talarico? [DAVID BRADY] My good friend in Texas has been saying since '88, he's been telling me, "Nope, this is the year we got it." So that's many, many years that this has happened. And on occasion, I've gone with him and regretted it. I do think that the Republicans have done all they could. They've nominated the worst candidate.
I don't just mean his personal- what he does and stuff like that. I'm talking about he's really boring. [ROBERT GRADY] Trump came in and kicked out a perfectly acceptable incumbent. [DAVID BRADY] Yeah. So my view is. [PARTICIPANT] Yeah. [DAVID BRADY] I'm gonna go along and say I think it will be Talarico, [ROBERT GRADY] Dan Sullivan. [DAVID BRADY] but that won't be the first time I was wrong. [ROBERT GRADY] Okay, let's go to Alaska. [ROBERT GRADY] Dan Sullivan, my good buddy, he's a great person.
Went to Harvard, worked at Georgetown Law School, worked for Condi Rice and Bob Zoellick, was a Marine. He's Attorney General of Alaska. He's a sitting senator. Okay, Democrats here came up with a great new trick. Great, first time I've seen it. Fantastic. They got another guy named Dan Sullivan to file for candidacy, and he's also on the ballot, so there's two Dan Sullivans. So in a race that might be decided by a point, And it's ranked-choice voting. [DAVID BRADY] It's ranked-choice voting. So it matters. [ROBERT GRADY] Now, Mary Peltola, she has been a Democrat congresswoman.
She's ahead. You know, the polling is late there, a little bit less frequent and reliable than other states, but very tight race. Who wants to call Alaska? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] So first, let me prevaricate. Alaska, Nebraska, and Iowa are all basically about even. Their polls going (unintelligible). Of those three, I think Alaska is the most likely to go Democratic, but easily [ROBERT GRADY] Mm-hmm. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] all three go Republican. [DAVID BRADY] I don't disagree with that. Alaska is, it's an amazing place to watch people campaign. Because, like a big event, I was one time in Cold Harbor with Lisa Murkowski, and there were like 42 people.
50 people there. [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah. [DAVID BRADY] And she was happy. Oh, 42, that's great. [ROBERT GRADY] Big rally. [DAVID BRADY] We flew over, pulled all that and got this. [ROBERT GRADY] All right. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] So, but [ROBERT GRADY] Next one. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Keeping count here. [ROBERT GRADY] Yes. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] If we give Alaska to the Democrats. [ROBERT GRADY] Yep. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] We've now predicted three switches.
[ROBERT GRADY] Already. So then (unintelligible). [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Maine, Texas. That makes a difference. [ROBERT GRADY] We'll come to (unintelligible). [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah. Okay, let's go to Ohio. Could be another Democrat pickup. Jon Husted has never run before. He was appointed to replace J.D. Vance, people will recall. He's running against Sherrod Brown. Now, Sherrod Brown's history is. He was in the Senate for 18 years before he lost in '24.
He was in the House for 14 years before that. He was Ohio Secretary of State before that. He was in the Ohio legislature before that. So he's been around for a long time. He did go to Yale, so no surprise. [DAVID BRADY] He never got an MBA. [ROBERT GRADY] Being liberal. But anyway, I see that as a kind of likely Democratic pickup, but what do you think? Chair Brown? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yes. [ROBERT GRADY] Yes? [DAVID BRADY] Yeah, I think it's still close. [ROBERT GRADY] What's the number say?
[ROBERT GRADY] Brown up. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah. Brown by. They range from about two. [DAVID BRADY] And North Carolina's obvious. [ROBERT GRADY] Okay, North Carolina's the next one, which is ironic. Trump again sort of shoved Thom Tillis out because he did vote against reconciliation, [DAVID BRADY] Yeah. [ROBERT GRADY] which is sort of a cardinal sin. But he kicked him out, and now Governor Cooper's going to win by 20 points.
[DOUGLAS RIVERS] So we're now at The Democrats picking up 5 seats. [ROBERT GRADY] Well, I haven't voted yet. But anyway, okay. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Was Wyoming? [ROBERT GRADY] Iowa. No, Wyoming's not swing. Oh, Joni Ernst, she's retiring. So on the Republican side, you have Ashley Hinson, the young congresswoman. On the Democrat side, you have a young state rep and a Paralympic athlete named Josh Turek. Trump won there by 13 points, but the farmers are very angry about tariffs. Speaking about tariffs, they're angry at Trump.
There's a third-party candidate to Turek's left, so maybe that swings it to Hinson, but even if it's one or two votes, but. Hinson or Turek? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Hinson. [DAVID BRADY] Hinson. [ROBERT GRADY] Hinson. Okay, Republicans hold. Michigan. Okay, everybody's been watching this. Very interesting. Gary Peters retiring, kind of a moderate Democrat. Obviously, Abdul El-Sayed, great speaker. He spoke at his Michigan graduation, but pretty far left, anti-Israel, abolish ICE, Medicare for all, et cetera.
On the Republican side, you have Mike Rogers, pretty popular congressman, has a whole bunch of outside money coming in, but very, very close. Interestingly, on the tariff question, Rogers was out with a spot about a week ago, but The lead of the spot is "Canada is not our enemy" on television. So abandoning Trump on that issue. [DAVID BRADY] What an insight. [ROBERT GRADY] And then you have the whole El-Sayed with the Muslim Brotherhood thing. [DAVID BRADY] Imagine that's the campaign issue you have to go with.
[ROBERT GRADY] Anyway. [DAVID BRADY] Canada is not our enemy. [ROBERT GRADY] It's an interesting thing about- we're going to talk about the DSA on the left, but El-Sayed- Rogers? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Probably El-Sayed. But he's running five points behind the Democratic gubernatorial. [ROBERT GRADY] Yeah, what's Trump in Michigan, like minus 20? And then Sayed's up one? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah, but Trump did win Michigan [ROBERT GRADY] By. last time. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] by three points or so. [DAVID BRADY] I think the Democrats in Maine, the Democrats in Michigan, had they had another candidate, this would be over.
Had the woman who ran against El-Sayed won, that this race would be over. She'd be up seven, eight points. [ROBERT GRADY] Right. So that's the thing. I mean. One of the great ironies of this race is the one thing the Republicans have going for them is the Democrats' lurch to the left in some of these states. We didn't talk about Peggy Flanagan, who's the lieutenant governor of Minnesota, who's like in a close race now with the TV broadcaster Michele Tafoya. And, you know, she's like defending the fraudsters in the Medicaid and hospice cases in Minnesota.
[DAVID BRADY] Yeah. So I show you how bad this is in Montana, [DAVID BRADY] not exactly a Democratic state. I was fishing up there a couple weeks ago, and I had two T-shirts, one with "Elbows up" with the Canadian flags on, saying, "Elbows up, let's do this." And the second one was "Lake Victoria forever." And I was wondering whether I'd get shot or thumbs up. I would say I got about 65% thumbs up. [ROBERT GRADY] People like Canada. [DAVID BRADY] And nobody really gave me [ROBERT GRADY] (unintelligible) [DAVID BRADY] the finger or anything.
[ROBERT GRADY] People like Canada. [ROBERT GRADY] Okay, New Hampshire, speaking of Canada, there you have Congressman Chris Pappas. First ran in 2018. You know who he beat? For all you trivia buffs out there, when he first ran? Karoline Leavitt, the Republican nominee. But anyway, he's a congressman. He's had some bumps along the way. John Sununu, whose father was White House chief of staff and governor, his brother Chris, who was a very popular governor, [DAVID BRADY] Yeah.
[ROBERT GRADY] but he's down like eight points. Can Sununu win? Any chance? No way. Sununu win? [DAVID BRADY] No. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Not no way, but no. [ROBERT GRADY] No. Okay. [DAVID BRADY] No. Sorry. [ROBERT GRADY] Georgia, not going to happen. Six years ago, everybody thought Jon Ossoff would be very vulnerable. He's going to crush this guy, Mike Collins. What's interesting there, if I'm Gavin Newsom, I'm looking at Jon Ossoff going, hmm, could be a new candidate on the horizon.
He's coming across very well. [PARTICIPANT] No. [ROBERT GRADY] One wouldn't have predicted Kansas, and this is what's great about politics, the things people do. Okay, Kansas haven't elected a Republican senator since- in 94 years, but [PARTICIPANT] Democrats. [ROBERT GRADY] Democrats, excuse me. You have Roger Marshall, the incumbent, against Adam Hamilton. So Roger Marshall was an OB-GYN doctor. He sued 700 of his customers, his clients, for late payment, mostly on their deductible, on their copay. And 81 of his clients got arrested.
Like, great marketing thing if you're gonna run for the Senate. Anyway, now it's close with this guy Hamilton, Adam Hamilton. What do you think? Kansas swing? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] I think there's a decent chance. I would favor slightly Hamilton over Marshall, because Marshall is a very bad candidate. On the other hand, it is Kansas, and. Yeah. Frankly, You know, when we call, say, a race is 51-49 and that's 49-51, I say, that was good, that was close. But you can't predict these races that are that close.
[ROBERT GRADY] One other one I'll throw out there because it gets in the realm of dirty tricks, Montana, which is interesting because the Democrats have had a trick of Having somebody, they nominate somebody who's not really the candidate to be the Democratic nominee to get through the primary, and then the real candidate runs as independent. So in Montana, the president of the University of Montana is running as an independent, very good candidate, but the Democratic candidate, this woman, Alani Blankhead, that they kind of got to run, and she was supposed to drop out by plan.
She's a coach for Mighty Sparrow Coaching. Anyway, she won't drop out. She said, "No, I'm staying in." And so now the US attorney, who's a Republican, is ahead 38 to 30 because she's drawing 16% of the vote. So the little run-the-independent strategy backfired. [DAVID BRADY] Mm-hmm. [ROBERT GRADY] But anyway, to add up the Senate so we can go to questions. Say the Republicans are gonna definitely lose North Carolina. Let's say they lose Ohio, Alaska, and Maine, but they hold- and the Democrats hold, get Georgia, hold Minnesota, hold New Hampshire. If you do that math, the whole thing comes down to Michigan. So wouldn't it be ironic if it all came down to Michigan
and the whole thing about nominating a DSA candidate? You see it that close? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] The DSA candidate's Florida. [ROBERT GRADY] Well. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] He's the Muslim brother. [ROBERT GRADY] He's the Muslim brother. [ROBERT GRADY] Medicare. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] No, I think it's going to be 51 or 52 Democratic seats. [ROBERT GRADY] Number? [DAVID BRADY] 51. [ROBERT GRADY] One last thing I'll throw out there. For a quick comment, [DAVID BRADY] By the way,
[ROBERT GRADY] and we can get into it in the questions, but. [DAVID BRADY] If it's 51, Fetterman might switch. [ROBERT GRADY] That's true. That is a wild card. Very good point. People are worried about that on the downside. I do think all this raises another question, which we can talk about in the general session, which is where do both parties go from here? I think on the Republican side, I would say, this is going to be evidence, I believe, that we're passing peak Trump, right?
I live in Wyoming, Jackson. Wyoming is the state in which Trump had the highest margin in the country in both '16, 2020, and '24, over 70% in all three cases. And this year, if you win the Republican primary, you won the seat. In the Republican primary, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor lost to a rancher who just talked about economy and ag and jobs. The Freedom Caucus members of the House who had taken over the House from the regular-way normal Republicans, who, by the way, are 100% pro-life, 100% anti-tax, and 100% pro-Second Amendment, but they were viewed as too liberal.
The Freedom Caucus lost 14 seats, and the normal Republicans took back over. So one question is, is there a gaping hole? How does the Republican Party gonna define itself? And then on the Democrat side, you have tremendous pressure on the left flank from the progressives, from the DSA. You do have Peggy Flanagan. You do have the woman in Florida, Nixon. You do have El-Sayed. You kind of have both parties playing to the fringes, if you will. That's an observable trend the last 25 years.
Isn't there a white space for the middle, for someone to be a pro-growth Republican who says we can have a better country if we invest in research? Yes, let's keep taxes low and regulation low, but. You wouldn't do tariffs, you wouldn't insult your allies. And same on the Democrats. [DAVID BRADY] But that's understandable. [DAVID BRADY] The money comes from the left and the right. So that's part of it. And political activists have always been left and right.
This goes back to the '50s when people went around and looked and gave questionnaires to people at the Republican and Democratic conventions. They're further left and right. So activists are further left and right. The role of primaries, and the congressional level and at the presidential level, Get your turnout's not that high. So it's not surprising to me that you get the problem Bob says. And where independents are not paying much attention, the brunt of each party is going to be left and right. [ROBERT GRADY] There's also name ID.
Here's an interesting fact. If you look at the polling right now, who do you support in '28? Among Democrats, the leader is Kamala Harris. Among Republicans, the leader is J.D. Vance. I'll sit here today, and I don't think either one of them is going to be the president of the United States in '28. I don't think Kamala's even running. [DAVID BRADY] But I don't think even- well, either one will. [ROBERT GRADY] Comment on the way forward, Doug.
[DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah, so if El-Sayed and Paxton lose, then there'll be some movement for Republicans not going for super Trumpy candidates and Democrats not going in the DSA direction. [ROBERT GRADY] Mm-hmm. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] If it's the reverse, then (unintelligible) [DOUGLAS RIVERS] even if there are very narrow victories, people interpret this the way they want to in advance. The overall problem is that among the Republican electorate, it's 55, 60% MAGA. And so anybody that tries to take an anti-MAGA position is going to lose in Republican primaries.
Democrats have less of a problem here, but the. A third of Democrats roughly think socialism is a better economic system than capitalism. DSA has a favorable view. Two-thirds of Democrats say they would vote for a DSA candidate. So being a DSA candidate doesn't get you a majority among Democrats, but it gets you a substantial minority. [ROBERT GRADY] And would you say if AOC ran against Chuck Schumer next time out in some primary? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Oh, she'd win.
[ROBERT GRADY] She'd win going away. Right. Okay, questions from the peanut gallery. Who has one? Right here. I had two questions. Firstly, we keep seeing this narrative of more and more polarization amongst the voters. So have you seen the independent base sort of shrink over the years? [ROBERT GRADY] Question. Did you hear? The question was you've seen the polarization among voters, but has the independent base shrunk during the period?
[DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah, so our colleague Mo Fiorina has been studying this for ages, and his argument I think is basically right, is people have not moved. The distribution still has most of the people in the middle. What has moved is the parties have gotten more extreme. So that these people in the middle who now switch back and forth between the parties, that the parties are driven by their bases. [ROBERT GRADY] Interesting. [ROBERT GRADY] And one number that always strikes me. [DAVID BRADY] 80% of Republicans call themselves conservative or very conservative.
[ROBERT GRADY] Yeah. [DAVID BRADY] Democrats are a little more heterogeneous, but still 60, two-thirds to 70%. But independents, when you sort out leaning, independents are still about 55% In the middle. And if you think about the number of states that matter in a presidential election is declining, and the number of voters in those states is declining, And in those elections it's the independents who [ROBERT GRADY] Swing it. [DAVID BRADY] swing. So if you look at 2016 and 2020, a graph of the counties, it fits almost. There's just a few counties in the middle that switch between 2016 and 2020 that make the difference, and their independents determined those counties.
[ROBERT GRADY] One thing to your question, interestingly, [ROBERT GRADY] the last Gallup poll, last year Gallup poll, you asked Americans to self-ID by party. It is still 27 Republican, 27 Democrat. 45 independent. So, but I think you have more leaner independents in these 50-50 contested elections in the last couple of years. People call themselves independents, an increasing proportion of them are more predictable, even though they call themselves independent, I think.
Other questions? Right here in the back. Thank you guys so much. This has been awesome. I'm curious if the AI backlash has been a part of the polling at all or part of the conversation. I know it's a big topic here, and you guys hadn't mentioned it, so I was curious. [DAVID BRADY] You're lucky because Doug started asking that question a year ago. [DOUGLAS RIVERS] There's quite a bit of interest in data centers, particularly by people who want to build them, If there are hundred of these things on the drawing boards at the moment.
They're highly unpopular. [ROBERT GRADY] In both parties? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yes. A couple of years ago it was economic development, so, we'll give them tax breaks, we'll attract them here. In the last year they've become toxic. It doesn't appear to be. I mean, most of the candidates have run away from this point. So there were Democrats like Josh Shapiro who were pushing them and they pulled back, and certainly on the Republican side. So I don't think it's actually going to be a big issue in this election, but maybe big two years from now. [ROBERT GRADY] Two things I would add, just on the bipartisan point.
You have Kathy Hochul, for example, in New York, who put a moratorium on them. You even have Josh Shapiro putting things up in a place where they would build a lot of data centers because there's a lot of gas, shale gas there. But even on conservative Texas, Greg Abbott put of an audit so that before a data center can be built, they have to prove that they can supply their own energy and supply their own water, and they're not taking it from the grid, and so on and so forth. So, unpopular in a bipartisan way, but the one little caveat is, I think the hyperscalers and others that are sponsors of these things have just woken up to the fact of how unpopular they are, and I think you will start to see them spend a lot of money on public relations and politics to try
to make them more popular, but. Over here in the back. [DAVID BRADY] Last question. I'm curious if you guys look at prediction markets and what you think the efficacy or effectiveness is of those between polls. [ROBERT GRADY] How's she going? [DOUGLAS RIVERS] Yeah, so yes. So the prediction markets take all the polls into account, so they're sort of like poll aggregators, like, Nate Silver. We had a French-Israeli guy who Was convinced that there were a bunch of shy Trump voters in 2020, and he did a bunch of polls with us and bet heavily at prediction markets and ended up making 80 billion dollars.
I have to tell you the results. If you look at the polls he did, they way overstated Trump's support. So they were less accurate than the public polls, but he was on the right side of that bet. [ROBERT GRADY] I think that's all the time we have questions for. I'm gonna say one thing closing. I think personally, I spend a lot of time. I raise kids, spend time in hockey rinks and go around with normal Americans, meet people in businesses. I actually, maybe I'm in the minority on this.
I think most people in the United States sort of want the same things. They want a job that they can count on. They want to have enough money to pay for their parents when they get older. They want to send their kids to a good college so that they can have a better life than they have. They'd like to live in a safe enough town that they're not going to get mugged on the way to work, you know? But Americans are not divided on those questions, and that's what most people want. So I believe coming out of this, we do have a country that's gone to the fringes, but I think there's a gaping hole in the middle for a more analytic and sort of
get-something-done-based approach to the middle where we can move the country forward together. So that's my speech. Thanks for coming. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Brett.
