Will Kentucky And Mississippi Elect Democrats? 51:48

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com. They're like second cousins. That's not that distant. Second cousin is not...

Okay, fine. Whatever. I have second cousins that I correspond with. My second cousins listening to this right now are going to be so insulted, personally. There you go. Okay, close relative of Elvis Presley. He's not close either. Galen, come on. Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk.

election day 2023 is here. That also means that we are one year away from the 2024 election. And for good measure, we have the third Republican primary debate on Wednesday in Miami. So it is a big week.

And I'm actually going to start today's show with a bit of housekeeping. So first and foremost, for the past few months, we've been putting out one episode per week. No longer. You may have noticed that last week we had two episodes, and that is the plan going forward. So if you missed my conversation with Adam Kinzinger, go check it out. He was a good sport. We talked about some serious stuff. We had some fun. And going forward, you can expect this podcast Monday evenings and Thursdays, except for holiday weeks.

This week, however, will also be an exception because we are going to have three podcast episodes. Yes, three. So today's episode, the one that you are listening to right now, an election night reaction podcast coming out late Tuesday, early Wednesday, and then also a debate reaction podcast coming out late Wednesday into Thursday. So get ready to get sick of me.

And one more thing, you may have noticed some new names in the credits at the end of the show. Please help me welcome Cameron Shortavian, Shane McKeon, and Jayla Everett to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast family. I'm so excited to have them. Okay, so here is what we're going to do today. First, we have quite the good or bad use of polling. Do we live in a big, beautiful world mostly full of good people, or are our lives threatened by terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants?

And maybe more to the point, is that a fair question? Then we're going to give you a rundown of what to expect from Election Day 2023. Can Democrats win statewide races in Kentucky and Mississippi? Can Republicans win a special election in a blue-leaning Rhode Island congressional district? Probably no, but it was nice to have that balance in the script. And we'll wrap up with another Polapalooza.

Here with me to do it all is Director of Data Analytics, Elliot Morris. Welcome to the podcast, Elliot. Hey, Galen. Happy to be here today. Happy to have you. Also with us is politics reporter Leah Escaranam. Welcome.

Welcome, Leah. Hello, Galen. And senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Welcome, Nathaniel. Hi, Galen. So let's begin with our good or bad use of polling. A recent YouGov Economist poll asked 1,500 Americans a series of questions about politics and the state of the country. One question in particular stuck out.

They asked, which answer comes closer to your worldview? Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants, and our priority should be to protect ourselves. Or it's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find ways to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated. The third option was not sure.

The partisan split for this question was striking and maybe also predictable. 67% of Democrats said that it's a big, beautiful world, while 21% said that it's threatened by terrorists and criminals. Republicans said basically the reverse. So 71% agreed with the terrorists and criminals worldview, and 21% agreed with the more welcoming worldview. Independence landed basically in the middle between those two.

On one hand, the wording of the question is pretty colorful and represents a very rigid binary. But on the other hand, it seems like we've at least uncovered some partisan difference here. So what should we make of all of this? Is this, as we say, a good or bad use of polling? Leah, why don't you kick us off? I'm going with bad. All right. And usually I do that thing when you ask where I'm like, well, actually, if you look at it this way and this time, I'm just no, bad.

All right. Expound on that. What words are respondents hearing when they give their answer? Are they hearing the word or the term illegal immigrants and immediately as liberals or as Democrats saying, well, I'm not going to choose that answer because of just that term alone? And the second one where it says allow ourselves or not allow ourselves to become isolated. Isolationist is a

bad word right now if you're thinking about Ukraine and Israel and you are a Democrat or a liberal. I just feel like there are too many stimuli for respondents to react to, and I don't know which one it is. I would actually be curious to see the response with just the first few words, like if the question were,

our lives are threatened or it's a big, beautiful world. I'd be more interested in that than like this kind of hodgepodge of word salad. Is the objection the forced choice or is the objection the wording? It's the wording. It's that like, if you're saying like our lives are threatened versus it's a big, beautiful world, you're kind of getting like pessimistic versus optimistic.

Here, you're just kind of getting like a random sample of things versus another random sample of things. And I don't know what people are responding to. I would be more interested without all of the extra words in there. I don't know if it would be a good use, but it would be like, I wouldn't be annoyed by it. There are several layers to this poll that we can unpack. Let's get Elliot and Nathaniel on the record.

first, though. Elliot, good or bad use of polling? I think it's a use of polling, Galen. I don't think it's the best use of polling, but I actually do disagree with Leah a bit. I think that

It's certainly not the worst poll I've ever seen. I think it's accomplishing what it's supposed to accomplish. Sometimes pollsters ask questions not to see the top line breakdown of the American public's worldview, but to suss out if our interpretation of divides as researchers is matched onto some skepticism.

schema in the electorate. And I think that this poll does a really good job of that. If the researcher's purpose is to see if these words are prompting the expected reaction from partisan groups, then I think it's a good use of polling. But I think if you take this number and say, like,

Look at all these Republicans with their like Trumpy worldview. And look, you know, these Democrats are so flowery and like Cory Booker ish and their view of the world and politics and people around them. I don't know. I think there's there's a little bit more to it than that. But, yeah, I if I had to pay, you know.

$5,000 for this survey question, I probably wouldn't pay for it. But we didn't have to pay for it. That's a good marker. That's a good marker. How much would you pay to survey this whole question? You said that there's more to it than that. We're going to get to that. But Nathaniel,

Who are you siding with on this one? I was going to say it's a good use of polling. I think it's interesting. And like, you know, I don't object to the forced choice nature of it because I think, you know, sometimes pollsters will have like two statements and they'll say, you know, you may not fully agree with either one, but which one is closer to your worldview? And I think generally worldview questions are interesting. And I think that this one gets at

a really big divide that is hard to put your finger on. So I don't necessarily fault them for maybe some of the wording issues, but this divide between cosmopolitanism and open doors, open minds, open arms on one side and insularity

and suspicion on the other side. And I think that that is a big driver of our politics that is entangled with the urban-rural divide, with education and stuff like that. And so I thought it was interesting to see that in a polling question. That said, I don't necessarily disagree with anything that Elliot or Leah has said. I think Leah makes a

good point about some of the word choices that maybe could have been refined. But again, I'm not sure exactly how you ask this question in a perfect way. And then I think Elliot is right that like, you know, you maybe don't want to take, you know, take the question too seriously or like too literally, I should say, like, you know, like running with it and say painting each party with a broad brush because of it. But

But yeah, but overall, I found it to be an interesting and illuminating question. All right, Leah, time to defend your position again. No, no, no. I'm going on offense here. Get it. Get it. Okay, Elliot, question for you. What is this poll measuring?

Well, this question in particular comes from the political science or whatever, voter psychology literature, I guess, on open versus closed mentalities. So they didn't write this question out of nowhere, right? This is a longstanding question used to see whether or not you're like...

orientation worldview, but psychological orientation towards different groups maps onto politics. So if you view it through that lens, it's a, and I really hate to be such like an academic asshole here, but if you view it through that lens, then it's like a longer continuation of a measurement that like we have a trend for, but yeah, in a snapshot and with the poll sort of reinforcing our expectations for the partisan split, I

I can see how it would be of less utility. But actually, even if you are going to be the academic a**hole here, I still think it's somewhat complicated and unclear what exactly this is telling us. So I looked into the academic research on this a little bit, and there is a history of researchers who say, you know,

conservatives are more triggered by fear. They even go so far as to say, you know, a 2011 brain study of young adults in London found that conservatives have a larger amygdala or fear processing center than liberals, right? So people have gone pretty far to try to prove that there's some sort of

fear reaction to conservative ideology. But there's other research that basically refutes it and says that no, actually, liberals and conservatives both react strongly to things that provoke fear. It's just that it's different kinds of things that provoke fear for liberals and conservatives. So if you asked liberals the question, do we live in a

a planet that is on fire where plastics and carbon dioxide are ruining life and making it unlivable? Or do we live on God's green earth where we want to sort of promote our way of life and continue to have children and raise them in God's image? That would sound like a pretty optimistic view versus a pretty pessimistic view, but you would have reversed the parties that are associated with those things.

Yeah, I think that that is correct. And but it's changing what the survey question is measuring. At that point, it's measuring fear versus anxiety, right? This, I guess, the fear processing part of your brain study where Republicans have a bigger one, right? I think you're right that that's like BS.

But in the context of the literature, this question is getting at a psychological divide over economic redistribution and just the political mapping of redistributive attitudes. So it's important that the groups that they include are inclusive.

in the survey question. If you change the survey question, you're measuring something different. And so at that point, I would say it's a bad use of polling. But I think in this case, it's a use or a good use somewhere along that line. Nathaniel and Leah, react to everything you just heard. Oh, wait, I have another question. How... I'm just starting. But...

My question for Nathaniel is... She's coming for us, Nathaniel. Yeah, bring it on. Bring it, Leah. It's, hey, your lives are threatened. No, not really. My life is really threatened right now. Yes. Okay, wait, I have a new poll question for everyone on this podcast. Who feels like their life is threatened by Leah Scar? I'm calling HR. I know, I'm only a few miles away from her, so... Oh my gosh, guys. I know where you would fall on this poll now.

So, Nathaniel, you mentioned that you shouldn't use this pulling to paint with a broad brush, right? How can you not use this pulling with a broad brush?

I think that the two worldviews that are laid out are obviously extreme examples. And I think that it's important to bear in mind that a lot of respondents probably do not fully agree with them, right? It is obviously possible to think that it is a big, beautiful world and that most of the people are good, but that a minority of the people are out to get you and will try to murder you. But I think that each one clearly paints a picture of a worldview that

that people can generally identify with more than the other. And I think that that divide, the open and closed divide, as Elliot put it, is a really important one in U.S. politics that is under-covered or at least covered through imprecise kind of proxy measures. And so I'm interested in

questions that try to get at this. I think it was a noble effort that, sure, to your point, maybe could have been wordsmith a little bit more.

I'll concede to you, too, that it helps divide between an open worldview and a more closed worldview. Sure. But do people view the world in that kind of binary or do we just want to understand them in that kind of binary? Like how...

obsessed are we with putting everybody in two groups, even if it means using a fun concoction of words that might get different responses from different people, just to kind of like split everyone in half. Like I get that for like presidential polling, you have to pick, you have to pick Republican, Democrat or somebody else. But like when it comes to issues and worldviews

Why do we need to do this? Yeah, wait, Leah, I think you're being too generous because you're saying like, okay, you concede that this does conclude some sort of general openness, some sort of general closeness.

But what about the point that you made about all of those words triggering partisan impulses to begin with? I mean, again, I take Elliot's point that we would be measuring something slightly different if we measured like fear of climate change versus embrace of the natural beauty and God's creation or whatever. But you could, I think, still write a closed versus open question that kind of in

inverts these two. You know, do we live in a world full of racism and bad intentions and people who are trying to exploit others and unfair business practices or whatever? Or do we live in a place that's generally good and we should not focus on what divides us, but what unites us? Again, I think that you would just get an inverted result.

Yeah, I think that's an optimism pessimism question. This question that you have asked is not an optimism pessimism question. I think I think it is an open closed question. And I think those are different things. I think it frames the way that each kind of political party stakeholders frame their point of view. Right. Like I think that like if you were to take and you can look at this in the crosstabs like Trump.

21% of Democrats said that our lives are being threatened versus 67% who said it's a big, beautiful world. Whereas for Republicans, it's basically a complete mirror opposite. Like, I mean, they're definitely getting at a divide, but is it like a, is it a real divide or is it a divide that we've kind of manufactured with like political messaging to make people like feel like, okay, you have to choose one of these. And I don't think, I think what's tricky is,

You're choosing one of these, but are you really choosing whether it's a big, beautiful world or whether people are being threatened? Or are you just choosing the liberal kind of message versus the conservative message? And I just don't I just think like in general, we could all use some more nuance in our lives and politics. And this does not help. We know I disagree with you, Leah. Oh, my gosh. I was just on a roll. If you're saying that it's just political messaging or media messaging, even if

then you would be pretending that that doesn't affect the way people view the world. Like, yeah, it could be exactly that. It is. This is the way that politicians speak. This is the way that media presents the world. And clearly it's been consumed and internalized by the people who are reading it, listening to it, watching it. So I think it could be exactly both. And maybe that's maybe that's the sad part.

I think you can create a version of these questions that offer four options, and you could collapse them into some other reporting tool, or you keep them as four options, or you ask multiple questions, whatever. I use a survey battery to get at the open versus closeness

And I think if the recommendation is like do a better job at that, then I could hear it. In this case, though, this question arose out of, well, I don't know when it was created. My familiarity with it being asked is after the 2016 election, trying to find out what types of

of Republicans were more likely to become Trump supporters versus people who would support economic redistribution or, you know, the types of economic policies that Democrats propose. So it was like an extra variable that they could use in their models to predict voting behavior and understand ideology better.

and psychology. So for that narrow purpose, it does a really good job because it offers two options and sort of neatly puts people into buckets. But I think you're right that if we want to understand a little more nuance here, then you have to ask more questions. And I think that that is a valid criticism. So there was a not sure option that you could pick. Do you think the poll would have been better if it said big, beautiful world with all of the rest or place full of criminals and terrorists?

or some combination of the two. No, I think it would be less useful. Yeah, you think it would be less useful if they gave you an in-between option. Because a lot of people would default to that. But doesn't that just tell us that a lot of people see both good and bad in the world, and therefore that would be a better poll because it would be more reflective of the way that people actually view the world instead of forcing them into these caricatures?

Yes, but I think that the forced choice is useful because I think it's like if you had to choose, like there are these two ends of the spectrum, they are extreme. If you had to choose which one you're closer to, I think it's useful to put people in the buckets. It shouldn't, this is why I don't think it should be taken super literally. And, you know, I would be interested in further, I think, you know, like study of, you know, the open and closed divide and mentality and things that probably a survey alone can't do.

But I think that as a single poll question, yeah, actually, I appreciated the forced choice element. I would have said I preferred a third option, too. I think that it offers a little more nuance for our understanding and the models and probably doesn't change conclusions from the psychological research. I mean, if there were a third option, I agree that that would probably get a whole bunch of responses because people tend to think they're both. I think what's...

if you're looking at this as being a useful tool for identifying a particular kind of voter, like you are trying to find Trump Republicans who were being undersurveyed in previous polls. And this

for some reason, helps you identify Trump voters, then sure, go ahead and use that in your internal polling to figure out where your Trump supporters are. In terms of identifying a very particular voter, if the research shows, as Elliot said, that this helps target that kind of voter, sure. But

If it's being framed as a, this is how half the world sees things and this is how the other half of the world sees things, I don't think that's accurate because we don't know what it is in that question that...

voters are responding to or that Trump voters are responding to that makes them say, OK, our lives are threatened. And I think it's probably like my guess would be the term illegal immigrants. I wonder if you had like changed pretty much every other word in that question and kept illegal immigrants, if you would end up with a very different answer, because I do think it's one of those kind of like

one of those terms that gets a response from a very particular kind of person. Or what if you kept every word and just made it undocumented immigrants? Yeah. No, really. I mean, that's why, I mean, if this question helps people poll,

Sure. I mean, there are a ton of questions that you can ask and that pollsters do ask to try to figure out, you know, who's a Trump Republican versus a traditional Republican. And there can be some really weird questions in there. Like people ask, how many friends do you have or what things that like aren't you wouldn't think of traditionally useful to the broader public to understand the world around them, maybe or maybe not. I mean, I think understanding isolation in today's world can be useful, too. But yes, pollsters will throw spaghetti at the wall just trying to figure out what divides people.

Right. I will modify my original answer that it could be a useful kind of polling for pollsters to identify particular people that they want to ask additional questions to. But I do not think it summarizes the world and the people of the world. And I think that putting that framework on every single issue and it gets dangerous.

We don't have to split the world into two categories for everything. Leah, are you saying that this is a use of polling? I am. I'm agreeing. It's a use of polling. You got it. Of all the uses of polling, this is one. We all managed to get on the same page. It's a use of polling. Fantastic.

Now I have a new question. If the survey question is good use of polling, bad use of polling or use of polling, is that a good use of polling? And no, I'm sorry. That is a bad use of polling. And with that, I'm so sorry. But we are going to have- The whole premise of the segment is to put you, is to force people to choose between a binary when even if it's somewhat nuanced, you yourself, Galen, will say, okay, pick a choice. Is this a good or a bad use of polling? And let's be clear, y'all chicken out

Almost every week, because it is hard to put the world into two buckets and pretend that a whole world of diversity does not exist in between the two. And with that, we are moving on to the 2023 election.

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Tuesday is Election Day. Now, last week, we focused on a couple high-profile contests, the abortion referendum in Ohio, and state legislative races in Virginia. If you missed those, you'll find them a little further down in the feed. So today, we're going to focus on governor's races in Kentucky and Mississippi, and a special election in Rhode Island.

and we'll shout out a couple mayoral races as well. But let's begin in Kentucky, where Democratic Governor Andy Beshear is running for a second term against Republican challenger Daniel Cameron, the current attorney general. A recent Emerson College poll found Beshear and Cameron tied at 47%, with 4% of respondents saying they were undecided and 2% saying someone else. Nathaniel, is it fair to say that this race is a dead heat?

I would say no. My gut would be that Beshear is still favored. It's certainly competitive. But we had a spate of polls for a while. Well, a spate is generous because we haven't had that much polling. But we have had polls, including internal Republican polls, that have consistently shown Beshear ahead by a small margin until we got an Emerson poll a couple of days ago that showed basically a tied race. Cameron was actually one point ahead when you included leaners.

And that kind of, you know, set people all a tizzy about the Kentucky governor's race and whether it had closed in the last week or so. And because we don't have much polling, like a lot of that older polling showing Beshear up is from, you know, multiple weeks ago at this point. I still think that, you know, Beshear is a popular incumbent. He has the financial advantage, you

the average of the polls that we have, even if they're a little bit older, is still probably, you know, the thing we should go with. So I would go with Bashir, but I think we should certainly be conscious of the fact that this could be a very close race. Emerson actually previously had a poll

like I think about a month ago that had Bashir up by like 16 points or something like that. And so it was particularly whiplashy for it to go from like Bashir up 16 or whatever it was to essentially a tie. The issue was that there were a lot of undecideds, really too high of a number

undecideds in that first poll and i think there was a lot of reason to think especially given that kentucky is such a red state that the race was going to close the the 16 point margin wasn't like it was you know like oh gosh i'm doing some math here in my head like 56 to 40 it was something like i'm gonna get the exact numbers wrong i apologize but it was something like

Bashir 46, Cameron 30 or something like that. So like that was really low for a Republican candidate in Kentucky who figured that he was going to close that gap. And so the fact that Emerson came out with a poll with fewer undecideds where they pushed leaners and it ended up showing Cameron ahead wasn't too much of a surprise. I guess I was mildly surprised that Cameron was leading, but it was still very close. And so, yeah, so I would say it is maybe a tilt D race. So, Elliot, why does

a state that Trump won by 25 points have a Democratic governor to begin with?

Well, there's a long history in places like Kentucky, and you see this at the Senate level too, in places like West Virginia, Montana, just other parts of the South. Louisiana had a Democratic governor until very recently, where voters don't attach their full partisan identity onto candidates. In election circles, you hear people talk about this as ancestrally Democratic areas.

I think, you know, what's going on is people see Bashir as Bashir, not as Democrat. You go back to the '70s in American history, that was even truer. Candidates were able to detach themselves from their partisan label more than they have been. So to us, it's confounding right now. State Trump 1 by 25 has Democrat. In the larger context, though, it's like there used to be a lot of Andy Bashirs, and he's kind of the last one or the last set of them.

To that point exactly, last week, Morning Consult released a survey of the popularity of every governor in the country. And Andy Beshear's approval was 60% with only a 35% disapproval. That sounds fantastic, except that every single governor in America was above water in that poll. So a better approval rating than disapproval rating. So does America love its governors? In particular, Andy Beshear.

Or was there something wrong with that poll? So I guess this is a two-part question. What should we make of that poll? Hidden goop-bop-boo-op. Yeah, I know, I know. What should we make of that poll? And what should we make of Andy Beshear's standing in it? I think if you look at even like Republican governors in blue states, anytime you have kind of cross-party governorships, they're

Those tend to have pretty high approval ratings. And I wish I had a set of data in front of me. But like Phil Scott in Vermont, Republican is like one of them. It consistently polls as one of the most popular governors in the country. So did Charlie Baker when he was governor of Massachusetts. So, I mean, part of it's just the sheer numbers like you have full support from your party plus a little bit of extra from another party. So that just happens to get you over that.

kind of 50% mark that most politicians are stuck at. There's also just the truth that

Voters see governors as individual operators and they see senators as parts of a part of Congress. The country is incredibly divided upon partisan lines, but they don't necessarily see the governorship, I think, as Nathaniel Elliott just said, strictly along partisan lines. They do see the person in a way that they would not if it's Democrats running the Senate or Republicans.

To that point, you just told me that you spent the morning watching gubernatorial debates in Kentucky and Mississippi. So what are the dividing lines? That was off air, Galen. Right. So, I mean, if Andy Beshear is not coded as national Democrat, how is he coded and how is he defining himself in this race? First and foremost, he's a Beshear. His dad was Steve Beshear. He's Andy Beshear. Also governor of Kentucky.

Yes. At a time where the state was less divided on partisan lines, right? So I think they do see him as kind of just an individual and not everyone. Like, I think this is going to be a close race. And like Nathaniel said, I don't think this is over. Like, I think Bashir could lose. But-

Yeah, he's like he talked a lot about working with the Republican majority and the state legislature during the debate. He talked about maybe he didn't take like a firm pro-choice view, but he also said that not having exceptions in state law for rape and incest was beyond the pale. You know, he was able to kind of walk like he was able to toe the line a little bit.

I think one thing that is at the top of people's minds right now, given some of the polls that we've seen recently, is Biden standing nationally and whether that will shape tomorrow's races, Tuesday's races.

Does Kentucky, based on everything we've just said, fall outside of that purview? We shouldn't take away anything from how Americans view Democrats or Biden. Or is there a sense that Biden's low approval rating would be dragging down Andy Beshear? In the debate, I mean, the Republican nominee was like very much Cameron was very much

the idea that Bashir was a Biden stooge. We saw that actually in the Mississippi debate also. And we're seeing it across the country. I live in D.C. and we see it in polling or in ads for the Virginia legislature. So, no, I mean, the national environment, I think, a

objectively makes it harder for Bashir. The fact that he's a Democrat certainly isn't going to make his life any easier in Kentucky, especially when Biden's approval rating is so low. I do think, you know, this is kind of, well, we're not going to know until after we get the results. But I do get the sense that all the contests on Tuesday are

very much kind of state-by-state affairs though. Like, I don't think we're in for like a blue wave or a red wave election like we've seen in some of these off-year elections. It seems like, you know, people are deciding Kentucky based on Beshear. People are deciding Mississippi based on Tate Reeves. People are deciding Ohio based on like their feelings on abortion. Um,

Virginia and Glen Youngkin, like it seems more localized than it has in the past, but I could be proven wrong, but that's just kind of the sense I'm getting right now. Would you say that if after election day, Democrats have the state house and Senate in Virginia, they've Brandon Presley is, is governor of Mississippi, Bashir wins. And let's say the Ohio issue one goes through. Is that not a blue wave? Yeah.

I think it depends on the margins, right? Like, you know, Democrats could win, could tweak out in Virginia or they could win by a large margin. You know, same with Ohio, same with Mississippi and Kentucky. Although I do think Mississippi and Kentucky are kind of their own thing because they're state level. I mean, they're all state level, but they're like, you know, more candidate driven. But I think that in that scenario, there are two plausible explanations. One is that Democrats

energy is strong on the democratic side nationally and that should be a good sign for Joe Biden or that in all four individual cases,

You know, Democrats just happen to have the advantage. Like, that's not a crazy scenario, right? Brandon Presley is a strong candidate. Andy Beshear is a strong candidate. Ohio abortion rights are popular. In Virginia, the, you know, the maps just and fundamental for partisanship just favor Democrats. Well, there's also a third option here, which we're going to talk more about Tuesday night, which is have the coalitions changed such that

high education, high attention voters now align with Democrats and are more likely to vote in off-year elections when most people don't even really know that there's an election going on. And I know that Nathaniel and Elliot, you have some disagreement on this point, and we'll talk about it Tuesday night when I think both of you are going to be in studio. So we will have that debate then. Really poking the bear, Galen.

That's my job, literally. It's what it says in my job description. But y'all have already mentioned Mississippi, so let's move there. Republicans have held the governor's mansion in the state for the past 20 years, but Democratic challenger Brandon Presley, distant relative of Elvis. Is it distant? It's not distant.

They're like second cousins. That's not that distant. Well, I mean, I don't mean distant in the sense that there are people alive today who could say that they had a relative on the Mayflower because Elvis just isn't that old. But second cousin is not...

That. Okay, fine. Whatever. I have second cousins that I correspond with. My second cousins listening to this right now are going to be so insulted, personally. There you go. Okay. Close relative of Elvis Presley, Brandon Presley. He's not close either. Galen, come on. And member of the Mississippi Public Service Commission.

He appears to be making the race against Republican Governor Tate Reeves competitive. A new public policy polling poll found Reeves leading Presley 46% to 45%, with about 10% still undecided. The poll also showed that among those undecided voters...

68% have an unfavorable opinion of Reeves, the incumbent Republican. And yet they are still undecided, which tells you something. Which tells you that they're Republicans who don't like their governor. Right. So folks, is Mississippi getting a Democratic governor, Elliott? I think probably not.

All right, and that's the segment. We are moving on to a special election. Go ahead. Elliot, give us your analysis. Well, we talked about the PPP poll. It's a Democratic poll, though, so Reeves plus one. We've talked about this before. It's a partisan poll. You probably take, like, five points off the D margin, so, like, Reeves plus six. That's pretty close to what the polls earlier in the race showed. The average, very crude average. 538 doesn't have an official one, but I just did one. It's like...

When the PPP poll came out, it was like Reith's plus 10. So a better poll for the Democrat, Elvis Presley's long lost cousin, but obviously not one that I think makes it as competitive as people think.

So that's the polling analysis. Also, it's a very red state. Reeves is the incumbent. So, you know, I think that leaves you at a pretty R-leaning prognosis. Yeah. Mississippi is one of those states that actually, like, it's not Wyoming red, but it's very polarized, right? So, like, it's not that hard for Democrats to get to, like, 45% in Mississippi because, like, it has a large black population that gives you a high floor as Democrat. But...

to get above 50 percent, which is necessary because if nobody gets 50 percent, it's going to go to a runoff, that's really hard.

And Reeves, as has been alluded to, is an unpopular governor. He was toward the bottom of those morning consult rankings. Although I guess according to morning consult, he was still slightly above water, but he is relatively speaking, and we never kind of finished that segment, but I think the relative order matters. So you may disagree that every governor in the nation is popular, but I think that the fact that Reeves is at the bottom means that it's not good for him.

And why is he at the bottom, Nathaniel? So he has, there's been kind of a lot of stuff swirling. There's been kind of like a scandal that has rocked state government that hasn't implicated Reeves specifically, I should say, but it's kind of implicated a couple of people in his orbit. Um,

And so basically like they're the scandal is about like, you know, like state government, like doing favors for like powerful people. So kind of the most headline grabbing example was Brett Favre, the former NFL quarterback. His daughter plays volleyball at a college in Mississippi and this grant that was supposed to go toward, you know, like

public goods ended up building this like fancy new volleyball court or stadium arena, I guess, for basically Brett Favre's daughter. And there were text messages about it and stuff and it just doesn't look good.

And so, yeah. And so then and then also on the flip side, you have Presley, who is this strong Democratic candidate, kind of a good old boy, Southern Democrat type, you know, has been airing Joe Manchin-esque ads. So, yeah. So the candidate quality disparity is is is pretty big in Mississippi. But I agree with Elliot basically that I think that the partisanship of Mississippi makes it very hard for Democrats to get those last few points to get up above 50 percent.

Leah, in the debates, how heavily was Brandon Presley leaning into his relationship to his very close second cousin, Elvis Presley?

He didn't actually, wildly. I know. It's like he doesn't think that's going to... I'm not his political advisor. I do think that's probably more of a gimmick for us national media folks than something that people in Mississippi actually care about. I don't know. Have you ever been to Graceland? There's a lot of devotees out there. There are. I don't think he's run... So he's running more on Medicaid expansion than that, I would say. But, I mean, as one does...

I really would actually recommend just watching the first five minutes of this debate to understand why this race is competitive, because you kind of have to see it to believe it. This is not me saying that Reeves is like a terrible candidate, but Fresley had...

He's good at being on a debate stage. He's good at presenting himself as kind of beyond party politics. And, you know, former mayor of a small town, grew up in a small town. I mean, he's just got a pretty wild life story. So I do agree that, you know, we've done this before in Mississippi where, you know, it gets close, but getting to that 50 percent mark is really hard.

But it seems like where Reeves could struggle is on...

not participating in Medicaid expansion, which he spent a lot of the debate kind of defending or at least saying like he would be open to it. He didn't have a super clear answer. And then Presley, he's really embraced the position of being the challenger, you know, and just kind of like finding all of Reeves flaws and putting him in kind of uncomfortable positions and

When you see a Democrat win the governorship in a Republican state, I feel like it's usually because the incumbent or the Republican challenger has done something that's like almost disqualifying. And it's because the name of the person who's running is like somehow they have developed like an incredibly strong reputation. I just don't know if Reeves has...

I don't know the scandal that Nathaniel was talking about. I don't know if it's saturated his image enough to really disqualify him. That I think is the question.

I will say it's actually the last Kentucky governor's race is exactly what Leah described, whereas you had an unpopular Republican governor, Matt Bevin, and you had a Democrat with a famous name in Andy Beshear. And obviously Democrats won that. So those are the ingredients for a Democratic upset in a state like this. Right. And we don't know that like the thing is, it's not like a clear cut case where, oh, the ingredients are there. It's like maybe the ingredients are there. We'll find out. Yeah. Yeah. But he barely won. Right. Beshear barely won. And right.

Bevin was maybe even more unpopular than Reeves is. I mean, Reeves just seems to be barely unpopular in some of the other polling. He's fine in Morning Consult. All right, let's wrap up on a special congressional election in Rhode Island, and we'll shout out a few mayoral races. So in Rhode Island, Democrat Gabe Amo and Republican Gary Leonard will face off in a contest to complete the

Democratic Representative David Cicilline's term.

A recent poll from Salve Regina University showed Amo leading with 46% to Leonard's 35% with 15% undecided. That's not particularly close compared to the other races we were talking about. So, Nathaniel, are we talking about a competitive race here or are we doing the thing that we usually do with special elections where we're looking at the margin to understand where the national environment is when we consider it in the context of all the other special elections heretofore?

Yeah, exactly. It's the latter. This is a safely Democratic seat in Rhode Island. Amo is going to win almost certainly and become the first person of color to represent Rhode Island in Congress, which obviously is historic. But yeah, we'll be looking at the margin in that. And then there are also seven state legislative special elections that are happening on Tuesday. And so I'll be looking at the margins and kind of all of them to see if Democrats continue their streak of overperforming presidential partisanship in special elections.

What's the benchmark today? What's the starting point? To what extent have Democrats been overperforming up until now? Um, they have been overperforming by quite a lot, like 2018 levels. Uh, I believe it was, uh, according to my calculations over kind of like a neutral environment, it was an average of 11 percentage points, um, which is quite significant. Um,

And, you know, it's kind of we've talked about it on the podcast, but kind of very much at odds with what the polls show right now. And so it'll be interesting to see how that resolves itself. Now, for the really fun part of the podcast, everyone gets to shout out a mayoral election that they are watching on Tuesday night that they think will tell us something. Doesn't have to be about the national environment. Doesn't even have to be about politics.

Maybe it should be about politics. But Leah, what mayoral race are you watching? I mean, it's not not the most. Well, you never know if it's an exciting night for mayoral races. Right. Because we have so little polling. So who knows? Maybe something crazy will happen in a race someplace. But what's wild to me is in Philadelphia, while the outcome of the race is pretty clear, it's Sherelle Parker is winning.

very highly favored to win the mayor's race. There is an open seat. But what's interesting about that is she will be, if she's elected, the city's first female mayor, which is kind of wild. And while reading about that, saw that New York City also has not elected a female mayor, which had not really dawned on me. And that's crazy. So...

Uh, yeah, that's, that's interesting. And I'm watching that. Um, there is a Republican running in Philadelphia who's worth watching, who's gotten some, um, kind of national attention. He's, he, he is the kind of Republican who his, his name is David. Oh, he, he could win over some democratic voters, um, or has in the past, but, um, it would be, it would be quite an upset if he won. All right, Elliot.

I'm Texan, so I'm watching Houston. It's the race. I think the main candidates you should be watching are Sheila Jackson Lee, who's a U.S. rep from the area, and probably little-known state senator John Whitmer. He's a little more bipartisan, at least in this campaign. They're both Democrats, though, so there's not too much for us to read into it from the national stage. But yeah, I think it'll be some news in the Texas media and important to some people where I'm from. So that's why I'll watch it.

And lastly, Nathaniel. Bridgeport, baby. Bridgeport, Connecticut. Crazy, crazy situation in Bridgeport.

So many shenanigans. Okay. So basically what happened is there was this contested Democratic primary for mayor between the incumbent mayor, Joe Gannon, and Democratic challenger, John Gomes. But the race was marred by allegations of ballot harvesting, which is illegal in Connecticut, which of course is, you know, when people drop off absentee ballots for other people that they're not allowed to. So in Connecticut, you can do it for

a limited number of people can do it for you, like, you know, family members and such. But there was actually a video of somebody, a city employee dropping off a bunch of absentee ballots into a drop box.

And so this actually ended up going to court. And a judge found that, yes, there is evidence that enough votes were cast illegally that this could affect the results of the primary, which was won by the incumbent Gannon. On Tuesday, we are getting a general election between Gannon, a Republican, and then also the Gomes, the Democratic candidate, who is now running as an independent candidate.

If the incumbent Gannon wins the election, the judge has said, you have to go back and do the Democratic primary over again to make sure that Gannon is the legitimate winner. If he wins the primary again, then the general election can stay. So basically, we're doing this in opposite or, you know, kind of backwards reverse order.

But if Gomes wins the new primary, which hopefully will be free of voter fraud, then there'll be another general election. So the outcome in Bridgeport will tell us basically whether a whole election needs to be redone. It's really a wild situation. Of course, I should mention voter fraud is extremely rare, but when it does happen in rare instances like we saw in North Carolina a few years back, the system catches it, there are legal remedies, this judge ordered a redo of an election,

And yeah, crazy, crazy times in Bridgeport. Crazy stuff. All right. Well, we missed one big race today, and that is the one happening in exactly a year. And what I'll say is if you want an assessment of where the race for president stands now, one year out, tune in next Monday. I think we're going to dedicate the whole show to it unless something crazy happens. And, you know, something crazy always can happen.

But bar any breaking news, we're going to dedicate an entire show to an assessment of the 2024 presidential one year out with polling different angles. It'll be data rich. It'll be fun. So make sure to tune in.

But for now, thank you, Leah, Nathaniel, and Elliot. And before we go, we have another Polapalooza segment. Keep sending in your recommendations for what we should call this if you don't think it should be Polapalooza. Although here on the team, I think we're pretty partial to Polapalooza, so it'll have to be really strong to supplant it. So here are a few more polls that caught our attention this week.

Another week, another poll making Democrats nervous about Joe Biden's reelection prospects. This one from The New York Times and Siena College. In surveys conducted across six swing states, the poll found former President Trump ahead of President Biden 48 to 44.

But make no mistake, Trump is still unpopular with voters. A generic Democrat beats Trump 48 to 40. But of course, there are no actual generic Democrats or generic Republicans for that matter. And in this case, a generic Republican beats Biden 52 to 36%.

When you look at the issues that might drive next year's elections, things don't get much better for Biden. An ABC News/Ipsos poll out this weekend found that the issues voters cared about most one year out from Election Day are the economy and inflation, and voters trust Republicans more when it comes to those issues. According to the poll, less than half of Americans say abortion is a very important issue. More important, they say, is health care, education, crime, and gun violence.

Some good news for Democrats, though, on healthcare, education, and gun violence, Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans. And finally, YouGov asked more than 10,000 Americans, do you personally know anyone who has taken a Zempik or similar drugs for weight loss purposes? 21% said yes, 70% said no. And happy daylight savings time, here with a friendly reminder to set your clock smack if you haven't already, and if you're annoyed about it, you're

you're in good company. 62% of Americans want to end the changing of the clocks, according to YouGov. My name is Galen Drew. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at 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 wherever you listen to your podcasts or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.

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