GD POLITICS

Galen Druke

Making sense of politics and the world with curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor.

www.gdpolitics.com

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Thursday · 14 min
What Trump’s Voters Are Saying Now
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com Heads up: our 2026 election season discount is currently live! It’s 20% off paid subscriptions for first-time subscribers at gdpolitics.com. Join us for the final stretch of the midterms, election night and the aftermath — then it’s on to 2028! You’ll get Thursday episodes, virtual happy hours, merch discounts and access to our subscriber chat to ask questions and suggest topics. Join us! The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. What would it take for Donald Trump’s voters to give up on him? And if they did, would that mean giving Democrats a chance or just staying home? With less than two weeks until the midterms, those questions are being put to the test. Trump is 23 percentage points underwater with the American public, and Democrats lead on the congressional generic ballot by nine points. My guest today has spent the past eight years listening to voters explain why they support Trump, why they’ve turned against him, and sometimes why they’ve gone back. Sarah Longwell is a former Republican, publisher of The Bulwark, and host of The Focus Group. Her new book, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time, argues that it’s possible to build a coalition that defeats Trump’s style of politics for good. That’s a bigger ambition than winning a midterm. So we examine what would have to change to make it happen and whether the dissatisfaction Longwell hears from Trump voters could translate into lasting support for Democrats. We also discuss how today’s swing voters have changed and when better messaging can help versus when voters simply don’t like a party’s policies. Finally, Longwell weighs in on the 2028 Democratic presidential field, including the picks from our recent candidate draft over at Still Counting.
Monday · 53 min
Will The Midterms Be Free And Fair?
Heads up: our 2026 election season discount is currently live! It’s 20% off paid subscriptions for first-time subscribers at gdpolitics.com. Join us for the final stretch of the midterms, election night and the aftermath — then it’s on to 2028! You’ll get Thursday episodes, virtual happy hours, merch discounts and access to our subscriber chat to ask questions and suggest topics. Join us! Since President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, there’s been an extra question hanging over American elections. Not just who will win, but whether the will of the voters will be respected. With roughly two weeks until Election Day, I wanted to sort through the concerns surrounding the midterms and distinguish the plausible threats from the more farfetched scenarios. So today, Votebeat managing editor and friend of the pod Nathaniel Rakich joins me to walk through what could go wrong before, during and after the election. First, a brief soapbox moment: Republican and Democratic GDers are equally welcome here. Disagreeing about how the country should be governed is why we have elections. But respecting the results once we’ve settled on the rules is a prerequisite for that disagreement to mean anything. And so this is an area of coverage where we don’t really mess around. That said, Nathaniel’s assessment is somewhat reassuring. In Votebeat’s informal survey of 31 election experts, respondents generally expected challenges to the election, but did not expect those challenges to overturn the results. That still leaves plenty of room for damage. We discuss bureaucratic errors, the strain on local election offices, the difference between routine poll monitoring and intimidation, and the possibility of federal interference in counting ballots. The biggest variable in Nathaniel’s outlook is also a familiar one: the margin. A decisive result leaves much less room for mischief. A razor-thin race that determines control of the Senate, with ballots still being counted days later, is a more concerning prospect. So how much anxiety is warranted, and where should we direct our attention? That’s the conversation today. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
October 15 · 18 min
Inside The Fight For The House
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com Heads up: The GD POLITICS merch store is back for election season! We’ve got super comfy “Good Data, Bad Data, Not Data” T-shirts, baseball caps, and totes. Paid subscribers can find a discount code in the paid-subscriber chat! The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. Democrats need to gain just three seats to take control of the House. But with a favorable national environment opening up opportunities in Republican territory, the bigger question is probably how far they can go and what might limit their gains. On today’s episode, Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey and Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin join me to tour the House battlefield. They explain what district-level polling reveals about the election, why some traditionally Republican areas are seeing particularly large shifts toward Democrats, and how campaign spending is keeping vulnerable Republicans competitive. We also debate whether individual candidates can still overcome their party’s political fortunes. From Republican Brian Fitzpatrick’s durability in Pennsylvania to Democrat Jamie Ager’s campaign in western North Carolina, local reputations and issues offer a more complicated picture than national polling alone can provide. Erin and Jacob also dive into the differences between expert race ratings and statistical forecasts, the campaign messages dominating the airwaves, and the lasting consequences of gerrymandering. And they consider what the size of a Democratic majority would mean for Hakeem Jeffries and governance during the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
October 12 · 57 min
Alex Bores Puts The Odds Of AI Doom At 20%
If you thought there was a 20 percent chance that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, what would you do about it? That’s my guest’s estimate of the risk if we continue on our current trajectory with AI. And he’s trying to write the laws that could change it. Alex Bores is a Democratic New York State assemblyman and the sponsor of the RAISE Act, which requires major AI developers to publish safety plans and report certain critical incidents. He’s also the co-founder of Who Decides, an organization working to shape Democrats’ AI agenda ahead of 2028. On today’s podcast, we discuss what taking these risks seriously actually means. Should the government have to approve AI models before they’re released to the public? Should we pause the development of more powerful AI altogether? And what happens if slowing down rattles the economy or gives China a leg up? I also press him on why New York Governor Kathy Hochul moved to water down his AI legislation, and what that experience tells us about the obstacles to regulating AI more broadly. And we get into partisan politics. If Democratic and Republican voters share many concerns about AI, could making it a partisan issue be counterproductive? And either way, how might AI reshape the politics of 2028? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
October 8 · 26 min
The Fight For The Right After Trump
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com Heads up: The GD POLITICS merch store is back for election season! We’ve got super comfy “Good Data, Bad Data, Not Data” T-shirts, baseball caps, and totes. Paid subscribers can find a discount code in the paid-subscriber chat! The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. Fights between the Left and the Democratic establishment have been front and center this election cycle, but it’d be a mistake to conclude that it’s mainly Democrats whose looks like a question mark. Trump has kept an often discordant coalition together through force of personality, but time is running out on that dynamic. He’s term-limited and 20 points underwater with the American public. And his decisions on everything from Iran and the Epstein files to tariffs and AI have created cracks that threaten to break wide open. JD Vance is the heir apparent, but without Trump, will he be able to keep it all together? And beyond a personal brand, is there a worldview that can unite Republicans? Before Trump, there was the three-legged stool of free markets, traditional values, and national security hawkishness. In the Trump era, philosophies like America First, national conservatism, and common good conservatism have been bandied about under the umbrella of the “New Right.” Amid it all, it seems like there’s no going back to the principles that guided the GOP during the second half of the 20th century. But if not those principles, then what? And how fierce will the fight be? That’s what I’m talking about today with Stephanie Slade, a senior editor at the libertarian magazine Reason and the author of the new book Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right.
October 7 · 17 min
Your Midterms Questions, Debated Over Drinks
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. What’s the next swing state: Texas, Kansas or Minnesota? And how much should we trust the polls pointing toward a big blue wave this November? Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich joined me for our first GD POLITICS paid-sunscriber happy hour to debate the changing electoral map and answer your questions about the midterms. We covered everything from the Senate battlegrounds, to whether campaign ads can backfire, and when we might know who controls Congress. We also took a few detours into bourbon spreadsheets, Brené Brown, politician crushes and life after FiveThirtyEight. It was a lot of fun catching up with friends and spending the evening with you all!
October 5 · 50 min
What Do America’s Socialists Want?
Heads up: We’re hosting our first-ever virtual happy hour for paid subscribers on Tuesday, October 6, at 8 p.m. ET at gdpolitics.com. Special guests Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich will join me to answer your questions live while we sip an adult beverage or two. To join the fun, become a paid subscriber here. I look forward to seeing you there! Today, we’re talking about socialism. Democrats are heading into the 2026 midterms after a “hot socialist summer,” in which Democratic Socialists and DSA-aligned candidates had their best primary season since Bernie Sanders popularized the organization in 2016. There are two DSA members in the House today: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. At the start of the next Congress, there could be seven. They’ve also won state and local primaries. And there are roughly a dozen other candidates — including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Troy Jackson in Maine, and Brad Lander in New York — who are not Democratic Socialists in name but are strongly aligned with the movement. It’s not quite the 45 Tea Party-backed congressional candidates who won in the 2010 midterms, but the dynamic isn’t so different: An insurgent ideological movement, fed up with the status quo, is challenging the powers that be in one of America’s two major parties. So where did the movement come from? What does it want? And can it coexist with the rest of the Democratic Party, or is it seeking a MAGA-style takeover? In this episode, I dig into these questions and more with Charles Homans, a national politics reporter for The New York Times Magazine. He recently reported the article “Moderates See Socialists as a Threat to the Democratic Party. Socialists Agree,” for which he spoke with DSA candidates, organizers, and members in New York, Chicago, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
October 1 · 21 min
Why Alaska Is 2026’s Most Unusual Battleground
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com Heads up: We’re hosting our first-ever virtual happy hour for paid subscribers on Tuesday, October 6, at 8 p.m. ET at gdpolitics.com. Special guests Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich will join me to answer your questions live while we sip an adult beverage or two. To join the fun, become a paid subscriber here. Make sure to mark your calendar. I look forward to seeing you there! The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. Today we’re zooming in on another 2026 battleground state, and this time, fittingly, it’s Alaska. There’s a lot more to this fall’s elections than Mary Peltola’s profanity! Donald Trump won Alaska by 13 points in 2024. But two years later, Democrats are mounting serious challenges at the top of the ticket. In the Senate race, Peltola leads Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan by 2.5 points in the polling averages, and Silver Bulletin gives her a 55 percent chance of winning. Their contest is unfolding amid sky-high energy costs, dissatisfaction with the Trump administration, and a fierce debate over Alaska’s fisheries. The governor’s race is particularly unusual. Candidates are competing to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and while sparse polling and ranked-choice voting make the race difficult to measure, Silver Bulletin gives Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins an 86 percent chance of winning. It would be the first time since 1998 that Alaska elected a Democratic governor. Kreiss-Tomkins is aided by a fractured Republican field and a ranked-choice voting system that voters may repeal this fall. Meanwhile, Republican Nick Begich has a 90 percent chance of holding Alaska’s lone House seat, suggesting very divergent preferences across three statewide races. But we’re not just talking about the horse race. Alaska’s political culture doesn’t map neatly onto the usual red-versus-blue divide. More than 60 percent of its voters are not registered with a political party, rural Alaska often votes Democratic, and moderate Republicans regularly govern alongside Democrats. It is the only state where bipartisan coalitions control both chambers of the legislature. Joining me from Juneau to talk about it all is James Brooks, statehouse and politics reporter for the Alaska Beacon.
September 28 · 45 min
If The Polls Are Wrong, This Is Why
Heads up: We’re hosting our first-ever virtual happy hour for paid subscribers on Tuesday, October 6, at 8 p.m. ET at gdpolitics.com. Special guests Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich will join me to answer your questions live while we sip an adult beverage or two. To join the fun, become a paid subscriber here. Make sure to mark your calendar. I look forward to seeing you there! Today we have a sneak preview for you all. Dear listeners, you are the first to hear the results of friend of the pod Lakshya Jain’s latest polling for The Argument. Democrats lead by 6 points among registered voters and 9 points among likely voters. That advantage is broadly in line with the polling averages and, if accurate, would amount to a wave on par with the 2006 election. Lakshya estimates that roughly 70 percent of Democrats’ gains come from voters switching their support between 2024 and 2026, while 30 percent come from turnout — Trump voters staying home as Harris voters continue to show up. That raises the question nagging pollsters and election watchers alike: If the polls are wrong this cycle, where are they going astray? Lakshya’s biggest concern is that Trump voters who answer polls may be more willing to defect than otherwise similar Trump voters who don’t respond. That kind of nonresponse bias can’t necessarily be corrected by weighting a poll to reflect the right demographic or partisan mix. It could be particularly consequential in states with large populations of white voters without college degrees, such as Iowa and Ohio. We also dig into the issues shaping the election. The economy remains voters’ top concern, but corruption now slightly outranks immigration. And The Argument’s foreign policy polling finds an electorate deeply skeptical of military intervention, with the war in Iran even less popular than the war in Iraq. Joining me to talk about all that and much more is Lakshya Jain, head of political data at The Argument and founder of Split Ticket. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
September 24 · 21 min
Peltola Unfiltered, Polls Galore, And The Likeliest Senate Flips
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. We have so much to get to on today’s episode! We are long overdue to answer your burning electoral questions. You wanted to know about the state of the Senate race in South Carolina, whether President Trump’s approval rating has reached its floor, whether candidates are debating less, and much more. We’re also going to do something we haven’t done in a minute: rank the competitive Senate seats by how likely they are to flip in November. To help with that endeavor, we just got new statewide polling from The New York Times in Maine, Michigan, and New Hampshire. We’ll size up the polls showing Susan Collins ahead in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed ahead in Michigan. That probably would have been enough for one episode, but on Wednesday night, The New York Times published a report about Mary Peltola’s alleged behind-the-scenes behavior on the campaign trail and in her congressional office. TL;DR: The report says she makes really b****y comments in private despite her affable public persona. The more serious allegation is that she shoved a staffer, which her campaign disputes. Joining me to discuss it all are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Lenny Bronner, head of the data outfit Broome Street Labs. For those who want a visual aid during our Senate-seat flippability ranking segment, I’m dropping Mary and Lenny’s rankings below the paywall:
September 21 · 58 min
Is This Time Different In Texas?
Today we’re zooming in on the midterm races in Texas. We started our 2026 tour of the states in Georgia. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, go check it out! If Georgia has become a secondary concern for the parties this cycle, it’s because redder states have upstaged it and Texas is the star of the whole show. In the race for Senate, Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton aren’t just making Texas look like a highly competitive state. They’re making it look like Democrats are favored. Talarico currently leads in the polling averages by three points, and Paxton hasn’t led in the average since the conclusion of the primary in May. In the race for governor, Republican Greg Abbott is favored and leads Democrat Gina Hinojosa by three points on average, though it’s certainly a closer race than Republicans would have imagined two years ago, when Trump won the state by 14 points and Abbott was sitting at a net approval rating of plus 20 percentage points. In the House, Texas steals the show again. It was ground zero for the redistricting wars, with Republicans redrawing the map to give themselves five pickup opportunities. That now looks overly optimistic. Even downballot races are attracting national attention. The Republican nominee for railroad commissioner, Bo French, prompted Karl Rove to endorse his Democratic opponent after his racist posts on Twitter, bemoaning the presence of South Asian students celebrating at a UT Austin Longhorns game. With me to talk about it all are Gabby Birenbaum, Washington correspondent for The Texas Tribune, and James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin, where he directs the project’s polling. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
September 17 · 12 min
Georgia’s 2026 Election Is Already About 2028
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. As Election Day approaches, we’re zooming in on some of the states shaping this cycle with the reporters who know them best. First up: Georgia. The Senate race has slipped somewhat from the national spotlight, but there’s still plenty of action in the races for governor and the state House. Jon Ossoff began the cycle as the only Democratic senator seeking reelection in a state Trump won in 2024. He now leads Republican Mike Collins in current polling averages, while Collins’s campaign has faced an ethics investigation and other controversies. We look at how the race got here and why Ossoff’s growing national profile has stirred talk about 2028, even though he says he isn’t running. Then there’s the governor’s race, which pits former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms against Republican healthcare executive Rick Jackson. Bottoms is emphasizing affordability and her Georgia roots, while Jackson is presenting himself as a political outsider after spending more than $108 million of his own money during the primary. There’s plenty happening down the ballot, too. Democrats hope to flip the state House, while the fight over Georgia’s political maps is far from settled. Republican leaders shelved a redistricting push this summer, but Democrats warn that it could return after the election. To sort through it all, I’m joined by the hosts of the Politically Georgia podcast: Tia Mitchell, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Washington bureau chief, and Greg Bluestein, the newspaper’s chief political reporter.
September 14 · 52 min
The AI Apocalypse Comes To Washington
A dam of pent-up concern over AI safety burst this past week. It started with a warning from AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned from Anthropic and wrote on X: “Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.” He continued: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Since then, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has outlined a plan to slow the technology’s development and give safety measures time to catch up. He also warned that, within six months to a year, swarms of AI agents could take over the entire internet. Sam Altman and Elon Musk both expressed support for Amodei’s warning and proposed approach. Politicians are also taking notice and calling for regulation. The most forceful proposals have come from Democrats, though not exclusively. Sens. John Thune, Amy Klobuchar and Ted Cruz are reportedly working on AI-safety legislation that could be introduced as soon as this week. Bernie Sanders has called on President Trump to pursue an AI agreement with China modeled on the nuclear arms agreements reached by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. At a fundraiser, former President Barack Obama urged Democrats to “aggressively develop political and governing agendas to prioritize the issue in the coming years,” according to The New York Times. For his part, Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.” He continued: “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!” Joining me today to discuss whether AI is going to kill us all — or, at the very least, how the threat that it could is ricocheting through American politics — are two sharp thinkers on AI. David Byler is a pollster and vice president at National Research Group. He writes the newsletter “Real Research on Artificial Intelligence.” Mary Radcliffe is head of research at FiftyPlusOne. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
September 10 · 22 min
‘Still Counting’ After All These Years
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com As you’ve likely heard, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and I have a new podcast going over at Crooked Media called Still Counting. We released our first official episode on Wednesday, and that is what you’re going to hear in the feed today. (It’s this thing we do in the podcasting world called a “feed drop.” The hope is that you will like what you hear and subscribe to the new podcast. So please, dear listener, go subscribe!) To pull the curtain back a little, starting this new podcast is something Nate, Clare and I have been talking about doing since around February or March of this year. We really enjoyed taping live shows at the Comedy Cellar, and audience members would frequently ask us after the shows if we’d consider getting back together. We all have our own projects going – Clare at the New Yorker, Nate at Silver Bulletin, and me here at GD – but the stars aligned just so that it felt like reassembling the band made sense. We got to work reaching out to different podcast shops that we thought might be interested in a FiveThirtyEight sequel, and we had a lot of conversations. One of the things that attracted us to Crooked was that they were familiar with FiveThirtyEight, knew what we were about, and wanted to let us do our thing. That included not aligning with a political party. We set a goal to launch as election season was picking up after Labor Day, and voilà, here we are. In this first episode, we dive into the most competitive Senate races in the midterms according to the polls: Texas, Michigan, Iowa, Maine, Alaska, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Kansas, and Ohio. We also weigh whether the Republican midterm convention is a “good use of convention or a bad use of convention.” And, on a more somber note, we take stock of the year in American politics since Charlie Kirk’s assassination. It was nice to get the crew back together, and we’re still just getting warmed up. So, once again, make sure to subscribe to join us on our new adventure!
September 7 · 45 min
How Far Can The Redistricting Arms Race Go?
Quick note: The mid-decade redistricting wars have been so chaotic that the maps changed again between when I recorded this podcast on Thursday and when you’re hearing it. Hours after I spoke with Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked Republicans’ new congressional map from being used this November and ordered the state to move forward with a referendum on it. Missouri is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, but if the decision stands, Republicans will have one fewer potential pickup from redistricting this cycle. Consider that an asterisk on some of the numbers you’ll hear in this episode. The bigger story remains the same: The fight over congressional maps has transformed the battle for the House. Ten states have redrawn their maps since 2024, and according to Cook’s Partisan Voter Index, the median House district has moved from roughly one point more Republican than the country to about three points more Republican. At the same time, competitive districts are disappearing. In 2000, 164 House districts fell between R+5 and D+5 in Cook’s PVI. Today, Wasserman says there are just 78 — fewer than one in five House districts. And the redistricting wars aren’t necessarily over. Both parties could still try to squeeze additional seats out of states they control in the years ahead. Dave and I first dug into gerrymandering together nearly a decade ago for FiveThirtyEight’s Gerrymandering Project. Back then, redistricting was largely something that happened once every ten years. As Dave puts it today, we’ve gone from redistricting every ten years to what feels like “every 10 seconds.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
September 3 · 18 min
You Can’t Poll Away Uncertainty
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. We are exactly two months away from Election Day and just days away from the official start of election season. It’s going to be two months of new polls, forecast gyrations and, in a word, uncertainty. At this point in an election cycle, back at FiveThirtyEight, I’d sometimes feel that a therapist might be better suited to hosting the podcast, because the job became, to some extent, helping people reckon with the unknown. One way we did that was by trying to quantify uncertainty and put it in historical context — looking at, for example, the average error or the largest error in past elections. And I think that’s plenty useful. But after more than a decade in the data journalism trenches, I can tell you that numbers will soothe the soul only so much. At a certain point, we just have to get comfortable with not knowing. And that’s what we’re doing on today’s podcast, in the final calm before the storm. My guest is journalist Simone Stolzoff, author of How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World That Demands Answers.
August 31 · 44 min
This Is What A Blue Wave Looks Like
We’re a week away from the official start of election season — Labor Day — but the polls are not waiting. New Senate surveys in Texas, Michigan and Iowa are sharpening the picture of the battle for Congress. And polls from South Carolina, Nebraska and Kansas have made Democrats optimistic about competitive races on decidedly red turf. So is this silly season, when Democrats get their hopes up in states they won’t actually win? Or is a blue wave putting much more of the map in play? Lakshya Jain, founder of Split Ticket and head of political data at The Argument, and Zach Donnini, head of data science at VoteHub, join today’s episode to sort through the evidence. We discuss why Texas looks different from Democrats’ previous attempts to turn it blue, how much candidate quality could matter in Michigan, and why a favorable national environment likely isn’t enough for Democrats in South Carolina. We also check in on Zach and Lakshya’s forecasts and the Democratic primary between Ed Markey and Seth Moulton in Massachusetts. (Yes, we are still talking about primaries. Those don’t wrap up until mid-September!) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
August 27 · 18 min
Are Data Centers The ‘Sleeper Issue’ Of 2026?
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. I want to give listeners a heads-up about some exciting news: Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I are starting a weekly podcast with Crooked Media called Still Counting! We’re getting the gang back together every Wednesday to talk politics and numbers starting September 9, and you can subscribe now on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. There’s already a trailer in the feed to give you a taste of what’s to come. To be clear, GD POLITICS isn’t going anywhere. I’ve loved making this podcast for you all over the past year and a half, and I’ll continue chatting with friends, experts, authors, and others every Monday and Thursday. Now you can also hear from Clare, Nate, and me on Wednesdays! ----- We’ve been talking for a while on this podcast about how AI is liable to disrupt American politics, whether through joblessness or a bursting stock market bubble. We’re not ruling any of those out, but the most immediate disruption appears to be data centers. According to a recent Fox News poll, American voters oppose building a data center in their area to support artificial intelligence technology by 40 percentage points. Politicians are taking note. Both Democrats and Republicans who championed new data centers in their states just last year have since taken sharp turns on the issue. Last week, the Senate GOP campaign arm released a memo warning that the issue could sink Ohio Senator Jon Husted, writing, “If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice — and they will not go near the next one.” The memo goes on to say, “This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle.” Today, Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor at Votebeat, help me unpack that conclusion. We also dig into questions about whether the primary vote in Alaska is predictive of the midterm results this fall. Plus, after a fake pollster caught our attention last week, we’re digging deeper into the Wild West of startup pollsters and how they shape public perceptions of political races.
August 24 · 47 min
Millennials Are Taking Over American Politics
Today’s podcast is about the youth. And when I say youth, I am being generous. What I really mean is millennials, a group that today stretches from the sprightly age of 30 to the ripe old age of 45. (We also talk about Gen Z, but that’s a group that still hasn’t come into its own politically and economically. The youngest Gen Zers are still five years away from the voting booth.) But millennials are here. They run the largest AI companies in the world, sit in seats of power from Congress to the vice presidency, and are increasingly reshaping American politics in their image. If you’ve followed Democrats’ mini-summer of discontent, you’ve noticed that, at least within the Democratic Party, they are much more progressive than their elders and more likely to back insurgent candidates who pitch wholesale change. Though it’s a group that leans left, the young right is also different. They’ve ditched Fox for podcasters, care more about cancel culture than traditional values like same-sex marriage or abortion, and share a skepticism of the status quo with their left counterparts. In talking about the youth, or the younger half of the country (the median American is 40), we try to get a better sense of this moment in politics and where the ascendant generations are taking us next. We touch on recent intraparty fights and dive into the new political tribes that describe our divisions. Joining me on this episode is Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights. She also writes the newsletter Type A- and is the author of the book The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
August 20 · 22 min
Could Texas Tip The Senate?
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. On today’s podcast, we tour the seven states most likely to decide control of the Senate with Silver Bulletin Senior Elections Analyst Eli McKown-Dawson. At the top of the list is… Texas. Silver Bulletin’s forecast currently gives Democrat James Talarico a 59 percent chance of defeating Republican Ken Paxton. We unpack what the model sees in Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Alaska and North Carolina—and why candidate quality produces some eye-popping results. If you’re skeptical of those numbers, we also examine evidence that summer Senate polls have historically overstated Democrats’ eventual performance. Is today’s favorable polling simply another midsummer mirage? Eli explains how the forecast accounts for early polling uncertainty and why presidential year misses don’t necessarily tell us what to expect in a midterm. We also recap Tuesday’s primaries in Florida, Alaska and Wyoming. Democratic socialist Angie Nixon defeated the much better-funded Alex Vindman in Florida’s Senate primary, three Trump-endorsed candidates lost and two pro-Israel moderate Democrats won decisively in South Florida. Meanwhile, Alaska voters may get to choose between not one but two Republican Senate candidates named Dan Sullivan. Finally, a purported polling firm released numbers in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary and Los Angeles mayoral race, then admitted the polls were fake and called the whole thing a “short-term social experiment.” Are we buying that explanation, or did they simply get caught? We discuss how election analysts vet new pollsters and keep fake, amateur and AI-generated polling out of their averages.

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