The Tortured Pundits Department 49:42

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Is Travis Kelsey an A-list celebrity? Absolutely not. I don't think so. Who's like an A-list celebrity athlete? LeBron, Michael Jordan. Tom Brady. So no, Travis Kelsey isn't there. I think that's fair, yeah. Yeah. Okay, is Tonya Harding an A-list celebrity? No. No. Of all of the names to pull. I don't know. I know, such a big jump. ♪

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. Happy Monday. Yes, we are going to talk about Taylor Swift today. Not the new album that she announced at the Grammys last night. You'll have to join me on my underground podcast or something in order to get that news. But...

We're going to talk about the way that Taylor Swift has entered the political news cycle. So reportedly Biden's campaign is seeking her endorsement. And also folks have been talking about the purported effect that she and Travis Kelsey could have on the 2024 race if they choose or she in particular chooses to endorse. Seriously, look what you made me do, conspiracy theorists of Twitter. Yeah.

Good one, Gail. Nice. Nice. We are also going to head back to the presidential primary trail. There are several contests between now and the South Carolina Republican primary at the end of the month. Two different Nevada races, the U.S. Virgin Islands. Democrats had their primary in South Carolina over the weekend. So does any of this matter?

We're going to let you know. Also, the latest campaign finance reports are in. Biden ended 2023 with more cash on hand than Trump. And two Trump PACs spent a combined $50 million in legal fees last year. We'll dig into those numbers, plus some takeaways from how much money candidates have been raising in Senate races.

Here with me to discuss it all is politics reporter Leah Skarnum. Welcome to the podcast, Leah. Hi, happy Monday. Also here with us is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. I would just like everybody out there listening to know that we have already been recording for 24 minutes because we had an extended, extended conversation about what an A-list celebrity is before this, and we did not come up with a data-driven answer, I am sorry to say, despite my best efforts.

Specifically, whether or not Travis Kelsey is an A-list celebrity. So, folks, if you have data pointing in one way, in one direction or another, we'll be happy to hear it. And you didn't miss anything by us not recording that. Those 24 minutes of my life I am not getting back. It was recorded. It will forever be a secret 24-minute podcast. In the vault. Also here with us, we have a special guest today, FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast intern, Jayla Everett. Welcome to the podcast, Jayla. Hello.

Hello, excited to be here. We're so excited to have you. Clearly, you've already had quite an effect on the podcast just by our first 25-minute conversation to begin with. Anyway, so, Jale, you're going to be joining us for the first segment because you have some thoughts on the whole Taylor Swift thing. So let's get into it, and we're going to start with a good or bad use of polling example, and then we can widen out the conversation into what I guess we can call conspiracy theories. But honestly, I think that word might even be giving them too much of an impact.

too much credit. So a recent Morning Consult poll found that between July and December of last year, the share of Gen Z and millennial women with favorable opinions of the NFL grew 11 percentage points from 53% to 64%.

64% is now the highest ever level of favorable views on record for that cohort. In fact, the poll shows that the NFL's net favorability among women is growing the fastest out of all of the competitor leagues post-pandemic.

Morning Consult credits Taylor Swift with this rise. July of last year is when rumors began that Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelsey were dating. And Morning Consult notes that ever since these dating rumors started, that also young women's viewership of the league's games have increased. As we often say, data can tell us what, but it can't necessarily tell us why. So is the conclusion that this spike in favorability for the NFL amongst young women

young women, is Taylor Swift-induced a good or bad use of polling? J.L., you gotta kick us off with this one. So, I'm gonna say that it's a bad use of polling. And the reason I'm saying this... Coming in strong to start. Here we go. ...is

is that first I want to preface by saying that I think understand who Taylor Swift is. She's an international pop star. She's a sensation. She just won a Grammy last night and she also has 280 million followers on Instagram. Taylor Swift has a big influence and it's clear that obviously Swifties are probably tuning into Chiefs games to hear what she has to say, to cheer her on, to cheer on Travis Kelsey. But...

But I do think that when you're looking at the data and you're seeing the assertion that Taylor Swift is driving this, they don't align with the graph. I think that when you see how it's been on an upward track, the NFL's favorability among women was already growing before the dating rumors even started. We see a jump in February of 2022, which is obviously probably because of the Super Bowl. But we also see another jump in August 2022 and even closer a little bit after February.

of a younger female audience saying that they have a favorable view. And I think that saying that Taylor is contributing to this is a huge part of it. But I feel like it's more of like the cherry on top. It's kind of like the sprinkles. And there's more underneath and there's other factors that are contributing to it. So I'm going to go with bad use of polling. Okay. All right. Let's get everyone else on record. And then I want to ask more about what might be underlying those trends. So Nathaniel, good or bad use of polling?

Yeah, I agree with Jayla. It's a bad use of polling. And it's because you can see the trend alongside all adults and like women in general. And like all of these numbers are going up and have been going up basically since 2020 and 2021 when the pandemic obviously was distracting people. It's been a gradual upward trajectory. And like the NFL is just generally getting more popular. And that means that it's getting more popular among women and among millennial and Gen Z women because they're

Those people are not aliens. They are part of the broader population. And so, yeah, the trend seems consistently higher. I'll also note that the data gets noisier as you get into more specific groups. There's actually a ton of

and bouncing around among these crosstabs among Gen Z and millennial women. Morning Consult did a good amount of cherry-picking here where they said Gen Z and millennial women with favorable opinions of the NFL grew from 53% to 64%. They chose a conveniently low point for 53% and a conveniently high point for 64%. But then actually, after it hit 64% in December, it dropped back down randomly to 56-ish percent in January. And this is not... And January would be...

when the Kansas City Chiefs are literally getting ready to go to the Super Bowl. Yeah, like so it's pretty clear to me that this is just like noise and like, you know, when you just take the smaller samples are going to yield larger margins of error and the numbers are going to bounce around a lot. The like overall trend is upward. But again, that's something that's been happening for years. Yeah, I agree. It's an upward trend for everyone.

It honestly seems a little infantilizing or something to be like, oh, look, young women are now interested in the NFL, and it's all because of Taylor Swift when the actual trend is that everyone is becoming more interested in the NFL. Like, I don't know. I can't speak for Gen Z or millennial women, but is that kind of offensive? I mean, I wasn't, I guess...

You might have heard from my tone when I was like, no, maybe I was... No, this is not a good use of polling. Maybe there was a little bit of frustration in there. Okay, so it's been going up...

since they really did choose a conveniently low place to start off. Like there was a spike among everyone in like February 2017. It's pretty similar now as it was in February 2017. I think like it's technically higher now by like a point or two. But like, we're not like, oh, well, in February 2017, what album was Taylor Swift releasing? Like I think what's probably the better question is like who was playing in the Super Bowl that year.

And I don't know who was playing in the Super Bowl that year. I don't care who was playing in the Super Bowl that year. But I do know that in February of 2017, the reason why there was a spike is much more likely to be because of the teams in the Super Bowl than because of whatever Taylor Swift was doing.

I actually think that it looks like the downslope from that, I think, actually was because of the national anthem and kneeling controversy in 2017, which caused, I think, a lot of Republicans to have a negative view of the NFL, which I think has probably recovered, although I haven't seen the part of it.

the partisan crosstabs. Oh, interesting. And that does make me wonder what it was, like why they started in February 2017. I don't know if you have that data, but like it looks like in our graph, like it started out at a really high point. It dropped and then it's been slowly growing to about where it was in February 2017. But what was it like before February 2017? Was that a high point or was that a low point? You know, is this part of a bigger drop? I don't know.

Okay, so Jayla, what might be some other explanations apart from Taylor Swift for what's going on here? I think a lot of it could be attributed to social media. First, focusing on two aspects. So the first would just be in general, the NFL's social media strategy. Right now, the NFL has 29.3 million followers on Instagram and 13.1 million followers on TikTok.

That shows their clear influence and the reach that they have. But the way that they're using their reach and expanding it is through their content. And I think that when you go into their pages, you're not just seeing things like, oh, this is a commentary on a game or here's some stats that nobody cares about. But instead, you're seeing more things that are interacting with the fans. It's showing jokes the players are telling on sidelines. You're seeing the comments say, can you rate this player's outfit one through 10 or something

They're turning whatever they're doing in the sidelines as their victory dance for a touchdown and turning it into a meme that aligns with whatever song is trending. And the reason I'm saying that that contributes to it is because it might just seem like this small effort, but in general, it's making the NFL seem more approachable and it's reaching out to those audiences. So if you're someone who cares about fashion or you're just in tune with trends, it's saying, oh, well, this is a place for you to come and enjoy this with us too. It doesn't have to be that this is a man's game of football.

And you're here and you've been here or if you're in, if you're new, you're out. It's not that at all. It's saying we want you to enjoy this with us. Another aspect of social media that I think is helping the NFL really tap into a younger female audience is who the players are dating. Well, then we're back to Taylor Swift, aren't we?

No, but I think it's in a different way because Taylor Swift is helping with the Chiefs. That's one team. There's 32 teams in the NFL. Influencers like Alex Earl, she's dating Braxton Berrios, who plays for the Miami Dolphins.

But she also has an influencer reach on TikTok of 6.4 million followers. And so even though for her, she's just making maybe like a get ready with me video to go see my boyfriend's game. What you're seeing in the comments are people saying, I'm a Dolphins fan now. I want to support her. I saw you on screen during halftime.

It goes along, I think, with the trend of female audiences follow who they support. So that's what we're seeing with Taylor. But we can also see that across influencers. And Alex Earles is just one example. There's plenty of others. Alison Cooch. There's another...

influencer. Her name's Tatiana Robard. And she also is contributing and making that content. And I think that's helping in general with favorability among the team because it's just making everything more accessible. So I think it's Taylor Swift. I think it's the NFL trying to reach that audience. And I also think it's the NFL girlfriends.

This is interesting because it felt like the NFL was really hurting for a moment, like over the past decade with concussions and the long-term health consequences of that, the back and forth over kneeling. It seems like, at least in part, social media has helped that.

make the NFL look shinier and better, at least in young people's minds. While we are on this topic, I do want to talk about the broader influence of Taylor Swift. So a New York Times article came out over the past week suggesting that the Biden campaign's biggest target for an endorsement was from Taylor Swift herself. After it was clear that the Kansas City Chiefs were heading to the Super Bowl in

It seemed like there were some conspiracy theories on right-wing Twitter that was something along the lines of, oh, no, they're going to win the Super Bowl. And this, like, you know, perfect couple, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, are going to endorse Joe Biden. And that, like, there's this, I mean, in some places you can even read about a broader conspiracy where, like, they've been put here to promote vaccines and the Democrats and all kinds of stuff, right? So...

We don't really need to address those conspiracy theories, but does it actually seem like as though somebody like Taylor Swift has the influence to affect an American presidential election in any way? Do you guys remember when Beyonce and Jay-Z endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and held a concert for her, I believe, the week of the election? Yeah, that's why we're in the final years of a two-term Clinton presidency, Leah. I mean...

Endorsements can matter depending on who the endorsement is from, but I don't think they matter in terms of mass support from a celebrity's fan base in Michigan and Pennsylvania. That's not—no.

Yeah, I mean, it's worth noting that Taylor Swift has endorsed Joe Biden before. She endorsed him in 2020 and his, I actually went and checked and like his polling numbers went up 0.5%. Could it have some influence? Sure. Maybe it pushes some people over the fence, but I agree with Leah that I don't think a lot of people are waiting on Taylor Swift to get their political advice from it. There is also some evidence that like voter registration spiked after she was like, everybody go register to vote. But like,

We don't know if those people would have registered to vote anyway in advance of a highly contested election. So just in general, the impact of endorsements, particularly in general election, in a primary absolutely can matter. There is evidence that Oprah significantly helped Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries against Hillary Clinton. But like in a general election, when people already have, you know, like 90% of people already have a party that they are basically wedded to, it's just not going to move the needle very much.

Yeah, it's like the difference between Taylor Swift coming in and being like, here's my new friend who none of you have heard of. And like, I'm going to give him a platform on social media. My friend Joe, you might not have heard of him. That could bring somebody into a race. But like this, this is not the moment for an endorsement to have a major impact. Everybody knows who Joe Biden is. You know, we've seen this for years, you know, like with the MTV Get Out to Vote campaign.

There are, I think, probably positive effects in terms of voter turnout when, you know, celebrities try to get people or there are major efforts to get people to go out and register to vote. But that's very different from endorsing a sitting president who's also a former vice president. Yeah. All right, Jayla, final thoughts here? Yeah.

Just in general, never underestimate the Swifties. However, a whole election. I don't know. I don't think that they're I think that they're going to do what they were always going to do. And I also think that they probably align with Taylor's beliefs, which is what causes her to have that fan base in general. So I'm going to say no.

Well, I'm curious as, not to put you on the spot as our collegiate correspondent, but as a senior in college, maybe who's closer to the demographic of people that were, not that we're, you know, not that we're that far out of college, but closer to the demographic of people that we're talking about. I mean,

Has this conversation permeated at all? Are people like, wow, that's so dumb that people think we're going to vote a certain way because of Taylor Swift? Or do you think people are more like, hey, like, oh, Taylor Swift's interested in the presidential election? This has me talking about the presidential election. I think that there's just a lot of fatigue in general surrounding talks of politics. Mm-hmm.

But I don't think that what's going to spark it is Taylor Swift. I think it's more so the issues. I think the fact that we're graduating, a lot of people are worried about the economy. I don't think anyone's holding their breath for Taylor Swift. But I do think that they'd do a little repost if they saw that Taylor Swift did endorse Biden. So that's something. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jayla. Thank you for having me. All right. Up next, we're going to move on to the primaries.

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We've got a bit of a lull in the primary calendar before South Carolina's Republican contest with a few minor races. So we're going to talk about whether or not any of them really matter. And joining us to discuss is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Welcome, Jeff. Hey, Galen. Thanks for having me on. Always great to have you. So the Nevada presidential

Primary is on Tuesday. That is tomorrow. We're recording on Monday. Then the Nevada caucus is on Thursday. The U.S. Virgin Islands will also caucus on Thursday. And then, of course, there was the South Carolina Democratic primary this past weekend. Let's start with Nevada caucuses.

Jeffrey, why are we having a primary on Tuesday and a caucus on Thursday? Right. So basically, the situation is that up until 2021, Nevada had not had a like a state primary law for presidential primaries since they used one in 1996. They had gotten rid of that law, but they brought it back because of sort of

It was Democratic-run government in 2021. It was part of a whole series of laws they passed to try to ease and make it easier for people to participate. And sort of the view and the shift among Democrats towards wanting primaries instead of caucuses as a more sort of inclusive way of participation. Primaries have – almost always have higher turnout than caucuses because they're just more readily accessible.

to voters. You have longer polling hours. You usually have an absentee voting option. There are many reasons for this. So in 2021, Nevada implements this new presidential preference primary law. So it's available to Democrats and Republicans to be used. In fact, I believe it's if two or more candidates file for it,

The state holds one regardless of whether the parties are going to actually use it to allocate their delegates. And so that's the thing is you have sort of the state-run option versus the party-run option because Republicans in Nevada wanted to keep using caucuses as they had previously done to allocate national convention delegates. So you, in the end, end up with this state-run primary party.

for Democrats and Republicans on Tuesday, but then Republicans are caucusing on Thursday evening

And that's the actual contest that will allocate Republican national delegates. So the primary in effect becomes what is often called a beauty contest, which is an election that has no bearing on delegate allocation and really, really no impact on that front. Although there could be headlines out of it and various takeaways, and there will probably be more people who vote in that primary than vote in the caucuses.

Yeah. So we're in a situation where Nikki Haley has filed for the primary, but not the caucus. And Donald Trump has filed for the caucus, but not the primary. So we already know that Donald Trump will get all of the delegates. Oh, no. Wait, Leah says maybe not. Leah says maybe not. I forgot because you can you can cast a ballot for no preference. There are a few things. There are a few wrinkles. Yeah.

Yeah. So in the caucus, it's there's another there's another candidate on the ballot. It's not just Trump. It's Binkley. Ryan Binkley. Ryan. Right. There's sorry. There is there's Ryan Binkley. And there is also you can choose no preference. Only in the primary, not in the caucus.

Only in the primary. So which is to say that Nikki Haley won't necessarily win the primary. No preference could win the primary. Nikki Haley could lose the primary to, quote, none of the above. None of these candidates is the technical language on the ballot. Nevada is the only state in the country that has a permanent ballot option for

Where you have all the candidates and then it says none of these candidates. God bless Nevada. And so voters, pro-Trump voters in the primary could cast a ballot in the primary. But to sort of say, look, I'm not supporting anybody who's on this ballot. And it's basically Haley. You have Tim Scott, who's not in the race anymore. You have Mike Pence, who's not in the race anymore. And then you have a handful of other minor candidates voting.

They could say, well, I don't want to vote for any of those people because I favor Trump. So I'm going to vote for none of these candidates. In fact, that is basically the – that's been encouraged by some Republican officials like Republican Governor Joe Lombardo has said, look, I'm going to be caucusing for Trump. And in the primary, I'm going to vote none of these candidates because I'm supporting Trump. Nikki Haley decided to file in the primary.

Why she did that? Well, most people expected Trump to easily win the caucuses, right? So I think some candidates like Pence, Scott, and Haley decided it wasn't worth filing in the caucuses, which costs money to file in, and that maybe if you don't participate, maybe it's a chance to win something like any headlines if you're in the primary.

And for Haley, it's actually worked out because this is sort of made Nevada, you know, an uninteresting contest. And so we look ahead to South Carolina, which is her home state and where, you know, it could be sort of her last stand. So I don't know if she knew that it would work out quite this neatly, but but it has in that way. Yeah, I'd be like, it's not great if Haley, for example, like loses to none of these candidates on Tuesday and then Trump wins the caucuses on Tuesday.

Thursday, even though it doesn't matter because no delegates, like if you're actually concerned about winning enough delegates, like it makes sense that Haley is not going to go all in on this Nevada primary. There are no delegates allocated through the primary itself. In terms of headlines, I don't know. It could be, it could be tough.

Yeah, I actually think there's no upside for Haley here, because if she wins the primary, I don't think that's newsworthy because she's the only contender who's still on the ballot. But if she loses to none of these candidates, then that's embarrassing for her. And like it's now been what?

two weeks since New Hampshire, and she hasn't closed the gap in South Carolina polls. She's still trailing Trump by about 30 points. And like we had talked, I think, on this podcast about like, is she even going to make it to South Carolina? And I think some of the like relevant data points are like, is she making progress in the polls in South Carolina? Does she get embarrassed in Nevada by losing to none of these candidates? So like, I don't know. I don't think it's crazy to think she could drop out this week.

Okay, well, we'll keep an eye on that. We'll also keep an eye on whether none of these candidates or Nikki Haley ends up winning. Let's talk about another race that just happened that was also a beauty contest. So Joe Biden won 96% of the vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday. For what it's worth, Marianne Williamson actually beat out Dean Phillips. She got 2% of the vote. He got 1% of the vote.

Now, I think we were on watch to see Joe Biden's performance in general, just as a gauge of enthusiasm, not necessarily, well, clearly not as some sort of indication of who would win this primary. Did we learn anything from this? And did enough people even vote to gauge whether people are enthusiastic for Biden or not? I don't think anyone should make any attempt at a takeaway from what was essentially an unopposed primary vote.

Biden won 96%. He won roughly 95% or more in every single county in the state. So obviously, different counties in South Carolina have different demographic breakdowns, and yet this was the result across all of them. And like 130,000 people voted, whereas in 2020, nearly 540,000 voted. So I just don't think there's really anything to say except Joe Biden is the incumbent president

And running for re-nomination and easily won, as we would expect and have expected throughout this process. Well, then I don't think we need to give it much more airtime. The U.S. Virgin Islands. Anyone paying attention to who's campaigning in the U.S.? Has anyone taken the opportunity during this dreary first two months of the year to campaign in the U.S. Virgin Islands? They have not. No, Nikki Haley has.

She's not going in person. Oh. Yeah, so... She literally just got an email about this. Yeah. Literally just popped into my inbox in the midst of this podcast. Wow, that seems like a big mistake on behalf of Nikki Haley's campaign. If you're not going to win the nomination, you might as well at least get a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands. No, I mean, you know, maybe this is why

you know, nobody's going to hire me to run their campaigns, but I kind of do think Nikki Haley should have gone in person. I feel like, so it's a, it's a very small electorate. Obviously there are only about 2000 registered Republicans in the Virgin islands and presumably fewer of them will, will show up. Um,

So, like, I feel like going in person would be a big deal and would actually maybe seriously sway a significant number of voters. And that actually, I think, is a contest that, like, if Nikki Haley won, would get headlines because it was contested. And, like, it's not worth many delegates. It's only worth four delegates. So it's, like, significant.

quite minimal, but kind of as Leah mentioned, like nobody's counting delegates at this stage in the primary. I mean, that's 20% of what New Hampshire is worth. And New Hampshire, if the U.S. Virgin Islands got 20% of the coverage that New Hampshire got, I mean, we would all be able to go to the U.S. Virgin Islands. There you go. I know. We're playing the long game here. So this is one of the main primaries in 2028. Um,

But but no, Nikki Haley has held two, including the one she's holding today. She's held two virtual events there where she's like zooming in to meet with people. And Donald Trump hasn't held any yet, although obviously there's still a few days left until the the actual caucuses, which are on Thursday. And they're they're called caucuses, but they're actually more like a party run primary where they're just like designated voting hours. It's actually funny if you look at like the polling sites, it's like, you know, like so and so's beach bar.

So it sounds like a fun primary to cover. All right. So there are some intricacies to pay attention to over the next couple of weeks, but focus is mostly on the South Carolina primary at this point where, as you said, Nathaniel, the gap between Trump and Haley is,

is consistently 30 points or more. Nationally, Trump is now polling above 70%. The gap is larger than 50 percentage points between Haley and Trump. Are we just on dropout watch? Is there any more to say about the Republican primary at this point?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think candidates say that they are going to stay in until the moment that they drop out, right? So, like, I'm not sure I believe that she'll stay in through South Carolina. I mean, she's made it two weeks, so, you know, she might as well keep soldiering on. But, like, yeah, like, it's not getting better for her in South Carolina. And, like, I do—I'm actually really curious because, like, we don't have any polls with Virgin Islands, obviously. It's such a tiny electorate that kind of most, like, political observers aren't paying attention to. Yeah.

There was one poll of the Nevada primary, right, Jeffrey, that showed none of the above leading, but it was by a polling firm I wasn't familiar with. And John Ralston, who is kind of the Nevada political guru, did not put a lot of credence in that poll. So there is, I think, significant uncertainty about what could happen this week, but I think that what actually happens may not be that important. In that case, let's move on to the latest campaign finance news.

I know that sounds really nerdy, but there are actually some interesting takeaways from the FEC filings that came out last week.

Last week, we got a clearer picture of the campaign's finances thanks to an FEC filing deadline. So...

So it's early, but Joe Biden has a slight edge on Donald Trump, at least in terms of cash on hand. Biden's campaign ended 2023 with about $46 million in the bank. Trump's campaign had about $33 million. The major outside groups supporting the two finished 2023 with roughly even amounts of cash, that is $24 million.

So we're going to talk about what we learned from some of the Senate races as well, which maybe had more interesting tidbits. But just because this is the race that most people are paying attention to and this got plenty of headlines, does this matter? I mean, does a 10 million or so, 13 million gap between...

Biden and Trump mean anything at this point in terms of fundraising and in terms of ultimate performance? Yeah, Galen, you know, if you actually take a look at sort of all the fundraising vehicles that these candidates have, so like joint fundraising committees, like the Biden Victory Fund or what have you, or the national committees, the gap is a bit larger between Biden and Trump.

If you exclude super PACs, which is a bit more complicated and technically outside the purview of these like FEC groups that are more connected to the candidates, Biden's group, including the DNC, had about 116 million in the bank at the end of 2023, whereas Trump had about 70 million. And if you add the RNC, which has not officially backed him yet, it's closer to 80 million. So that's – so it's a somewhat larger gap. But –

It's early. The Republican race isn't officially over and –

I just think at the end of the day in a presidential election, both parties are going to have so much money thrown at this race that it becomes difficult. And we know generally speaking like fundraising matters the most like in terms of like spending on ads and spending on other things. Like it's going to have the most impact for candidates who aren't that well-known. So we – it's a better thing to really hone in on for congressional races for instance, especially challengers who aren't as well-known.

And just there's so much money in presidential races that you get to sort of a point where there's definitely diminishing returns on the kinds of – when you're running ads and whatnot. And really the main thing is does one side just have a ton more than the other? And that's where there could be a big difference. So maybe that possibility is out there, but it's so early that I don't think we could really know that.

Yeah, I mean, to your point about ad spending being one of the ways that you can try to change the dynamics of a race and that may be having more of an impact in races where the candidates are not as well known. The Biden campaign spent an eight-figure sum on advertising during the final months of 2023. Now, in an environment where, like, economics numbers are changing and, you know, just

the political atmosphere in general. There are wars abroad. There are many different ways to try to get a sense of how Americans are perceiving Biden, but it doesn't seem to have moved at least head-to-head numbers all that much, which are very early and hypothetical. Trump still leads by a point or two on average in these head-to-head polls.

Should we take anything away from you can spend in the tens of millions of dollars range on advertising in 2023 and not move the numbers? Is that like a bad sign for Biden in general? So on the one hand, I would say it's early. And so a lot of people aren't paying attention. And so was that necessarily like a good investment at this point?

There's sort of – there's actually a lot of debate over sort of the effectiveness of early ads in a campaign. This has like been an ongoing thing for a while now. A lot of campaign consultants swear that they are valuable and that – especially if you like define an opponent early. Of course in this case, you're talking about two really well-known people, a president and a former president. So defining in the way like I don't know, Barack Obama's campaign claims that it made –

I had all these ads that sort of defined Mitt Romney early on in the 2012 campaign. It's maybe not the same thing, but there's also debate over whether or not those ads that the Obama campaign ran really mattered all that much. Like a lot of political scientists have sort of questioned that based on their research. So it's like on the one hand, it's early and not that many people are paying attention to.

At the same time, it is indicative of a president whose approval rating is at like 39% in our polling average and people are not happy with the status quo.

So it's sort of – but I think at the end of the day, like even if it wasn't a waste of money is maybe hard to say. Like we don't really know what the alternative was. Did it like keep his numbers up in a way? Like I don't know. It's just – but clearly they haven't moved to making things – like making his position in the polls stronger. That much seems to be the case. I think they didn't get worse. So we don't really know if that's –

How much of that spending had an impact? But I mean, I tend to agree with Jeff. Like it is a financial decision and it's part of the budget. You know, like if you have the money and it's potentially helpful to spend, maybe there's an upside. Then I guess why not do it?

Yeah, no, it's just like it's kind of like you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't situation. Like if he didn't spend all that money, there would be a bunch of people being like, what are you doing? Why are you just sitting around not defending yourself? And like there would be all these stories about how, you know, there was dissent within the Democratic Party and stuff like that. And like, you know, how like, oh, like Trump is going to outspend Biden and stuff like that. And like.

But at the end of the day, it might not all matter all that much. And we've talked on this podcast before about how it's kind of like mutually assured destruction. Both sides are just going to earmark hundreds of millions of dollars for TV ads just because they don't want to the other side to be like monopolizing the airwaves.

So should we talk about down-ballot races? We haven't talked that much about down-ballot races on the podcast so far this year. The primary has really eclipsed. Oh my gosh, what are we doing talking about financial reports for the national races when we have numbers for the down-ballot races where they matter so much more?

All right, so let's do it. Let's start off with Kirsten Sinema, who I think got some attention for her particularly low fundraising number for the last quarter of 2023, $600,000. Is that the fundraising haul of a person who plans to run for re-election? It's not a sign that they're definitely doing it. It's not like one of those every now and then you get a number where it's like...

It's like, oh, obviously you're not running. It's like, you know, like he raised like 10 bucks and you're like, what are you doing? This is like a number that probably like...

Some of the speculation, it's not nothing. You know, it's still hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it's so far behind Ruben Gallego, the likely Democratic nominee who raised like three point three million dollars that it's not like a big vote of confidence for Trump.

cinema either. So I think she gets to kind of like keep some of the speculation quieter. Um, but it's not a great sign for her. It's not a great sign for that. She's going to run for reelection and it's not a great sign that if she does choose to run for reelection, that she would be able to run, um,

the kind of campaign that allowed her to flip a seat in 2018. Yeah, I mean, she still has 10 and a half million cash on hand. So like if she decided to rev up a campaign, she has like reserves to do that. But yeah, it's not the kind of number that

normally says you're running for reelection. There have been exceptions, right? Like sometimes you see people who like don't raise that much and then end up still running. But it's usually the kind of thing that people in our business look at to be like, oh, that number is really quite low. And maybe it means that like her heart isn't in it and she has decided not to run. She just hasn't told the rest of us yet.

Also because she's now an independent, so she is running for reelection. She's not going to have the support or infrastructure from either of the two parties to help her run her race. She'd have to do it pretty much completely on her own.

So also an indication that she I mean, if she was pulling in millions of dollars, you would say, OK, wow, this is somebody who plans on running an independent race that will at least make things potentially interesting. But that's not what that number looks like. Right. And as an independent, she actually has to collect a lot more signatures to get on the ballot than she would if she were running as a Democrat. Right.

And that is over 40,000 signatures. And the time is running out to do that. The filing deadline in Arizona is April 8th. So like she is really going to have to. There was a good article in the Arizona Republic the other day about like, you know, basically like time is running out. Like she if she's going to do this, she has to start right now. And there just isn't a sign of that yet.

Is $595,000, is that a I don't care haul? Like I'm not trying or is it I couldn't raise any more money than that haul because I no longer have the connections in my party? And I don't know, but I was wondering. It's a good question.

I don't know. You would think that there would be, to me, I don't know that much about what's happening on the ground with donors in Arizona. And obviously she can raise money from folks who are not in Arizona specifically. But you would think that if she really wanted to, she would be able to raise money from donors

wealthy folks who think Carrie Lake is just not a viable candidate and want an independent alternative, more like business-minded folks, business or whatever, whatever, you know, the Chamber of Commerce type Republican would be giving her money. They're also probably happy with some of the legislation. She's been behind a lot of the bipartisan legislation that Congress has passed over the past couple of years. So you would think she would be able to raise the money if she really wanted to. Yeah.

Funny you say that, Galen. There was literally an article in The Wall Street Journal about this just over the weekend. I didn't read it. Kirsten Sinema gets a look from GOP as Carrie Lake stirs drama. So there are some Republicans who are upset with Carrie Lake because she helped oust basically the chair of the Republican Party in Arizona. Yeah.

Recently, it was a lot of drama behind the scenes and I guess in front because there was a lot of news headlines about it. And without going into the details, the point is that she upset a fair number of Republicans in Arizona. I think the challenge with any of this for Sinema is that she's running as an independent and independent.

Most of the time, the independents who have succeeded in winning have done so by co-opting much of one party's voter base. So the challenge for Sinema is that it looks like she's going to have Gallego and probably Lake as opponents if she does run, and those candidates both are raising money and

more likely to be the types of candidates who will hold onto their party bases. And then that just, I think, greatly limits sort of the ceiling for Sinema. And then she needs to somehow win like a super split three-way race instead of sort of

gathering a big chunk of Republicans or a big chunk of Democrats. And so, you know, you think about like an Angus King in Maine, he's mainly one with mostly Democratic back or he's gotten a lot of Democrats behind him. You know, the last time he ran the Democratic nominee, the official Democratic nominee didn't get much of the vote because King was getting most of the Democratic votes. And there's plenty of past examples of this, too. So Sinema is just in a really tough spot. I mean, even if she does run, I would be extremely skeptical of her ability to win.

All right, let's move a little further west where we got a candidate with in the opposite situation from Kyrsten Sinema. That's Adam Schiff, who's running for Senate in California. He ended the last quarter with $35 million cash on hand. He's, of course, so California has a top two primary system. So all of the Democrats and Republicans and independents are running against each other. As far as the Democrats go, it looks like second place right now in the polls is Katie Porter.

and then there are also some Republican candidates running as well. What does it look like is going on there? Are we sort of in a situation where we can assume that Adam Schiff is going to make it into the general election and it's really a race for second? Yeah, I think so. He's been leading pretty consistently in Congress

in the polls and the debate is whether you know basically a second democrat i.e katie porter will join him in the general election or whether it'll be a republican steve garvey the former baseball player who is probably not an a-list celebrity

And but basically, obviously, like Schiff and probably no small amount of Democrats would like it to be Schiff and Garvey in November, because basically that is like nine months where Democrats aren't going to be spending millions of dollars and nuking each other in an extended primary, which, you know, like is I mean, money doesn't always work this way. Right. But like, yeah.

That's money that could be deployed in other Senate races like Montana or Ohio or something like that. But in fact, you saw Adam Schiff airing an ad recently that was sneaky and the kind of the type of ad that we have come to see more and more often where he basically, quote unquote, attacked Garvey for being too conservative. By saying, he's a conservative through and through. He supports Trump. He voted for Trump twice. And it's like,

Okay, we get the message. So basically, Adam Schiff has so much money that he is airing ads to help Garvey because Schiff himself doesn't actually need the help to get into the second round. To be clear, Adam Schiff was in the ad and it juxtaposed Adam Schiff to Steve Garvey. It wasn't like he's just airing ads on Steve Garvey's behalf. He's not saying vote for Steve Garvey. Right, exactly. He's saying like,

Look at the difference. I'm a liberal and this guy is a conservative, but two conservative Californians. It's quite clear that when you see somebody juxtaposed to Adam Schiff, you think, wow, I like that guy who's not Adam Schiff. He's trying to choose his opponent. That's like, and we've seen this happen before. It's a wink, wink, nudge, nudge kind of moment where, you know, we saw Claire McCaskill say that she like shotgunned a beer when she did something like this in 2010.

or whatever it was, and managed to choose her opponent. Todd Aiken, who... Todd Aiken. Legitimate rape. That was him. That was him. And she aired similar kinds of ads, like, oh, he's too conservative. And then she got... But then he won the nomination and she won the general election. So it's a thing. Okay. What other numbers stuck out to folks in the FEC filings before we...

end for the day? I would say the number from Matt Rosendale in Montana. He raised just $98,000. He is not a candidate for Senate yet, but he is expected to get in at some point this month or next month. I forget exactly what was reported, but he is kind of the Tea Party candidate, pretty conservative guy. He ran against Democratic Senator Jon Tester in 2018 and lost

Um, so he's not terribly electable. I mean, Montana is pretty red and in a presidential year in particular, sharing the ballot with Trump, Rosendale could very well win. Um, but I think there is general agreement, at least among people not named Matt Rosendale, that, uh,

The other Republican candidate, Tim Sheehy, who is kind of supported by the NRSC, is more electable. He has a good story as being a Navy SEAL. He's also wealthy and can self-fund to some degree. I think we don't know exactly how much, but he at least raised a credible amount of money this quarter, $2.5 million. So basically, Rosendale doesn't look like... He's putting up a number that would normally say he's not running either

But we also have these reports that say he is going to run. So it's a little uncertain there. So if he does end up running, obviously he's going to be kind of at a financial disadvantage. He could lose the primary to Sheehy, despite the fact that I think if all things were equal, you'd probably expect Rosendale to win the primary given his past name recognition in the state, the fact that he is more conservative, kind of more of a true believer, I would say. But yeah, I think that's shaping up to be really one of the most pivotal primaries of the cycle.

With the Montana race, Rosendale does have – it looks like $1.7 million in the bank. So it's not that he doesn't have money to work with to start out if he does decide to run for Senate against Sheehy in the Republican primary. And Sheehy, to be clear, has a little less than that – or had a little less than that at the end of the last quarter.

But yeah, just to raise that little and you're thinking about running – even in a state that is not expensive to run ads in like Montana, if you're facing a potentially extremely competitive primary and any of the early polling we've seen in Montana has shown that she and Rosendale could be a real barn burner, if you will, it seems kind of amazing to me. Like a little bit like kind of political malpractice.

All right. Well, if you enjoyed this, I'm sure we'll have plenty more in the weeds Senate coverage as we move through the year. Of course, it's pretty competitive, as we discussed, I think, in the first podcast of the year where we were buying and selling odds. Folks thought it was pretty likely that Republicans win, but we will see as things continue. Thank you, Leah, Jeff and Nathaniel. Thanks, Galen. Thanks as always, Galen. Thanks.

My name is Galen Drew. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian. And our intern and guest star of the podcast is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast.538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.