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I was sure I had COVID all week and I didn't test positive until Friday. And seeing that it was positive was almost a relief because I was at the point where I was like, am I manufacturing the world's worst sore throat and exhaustion? Because I don't know, I felt like it could have been. The tests are gaslighting you.
Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. When we gathered last week, it was just two days after Hamas's attack on Israel, and we didn't have a lot of information about how Americans were processing it. Now we do. Across numerous polls, American support for Israel has markedly increased, most significantly amongst Democrats and independents. Republican support for Israel was high and remains high.
In Washington, on college campuses, and in American streets, we've seen some tense disagreement about who's to blame and who deserves sympathy. We're going to talk about those divides and see how they compare with the data we have so far.
And I'm also going to repeat myself from last week here. The images that we've all seen over the past week are tough stuff. And while our angle here is data and politics, that's by no means where the story begins or ends. And I just want to say that
Our colleagues at ABC and elsewhere in the media have been working really hard to illustrate the human toll of terrorism and war. So I commend them. And, you know, of course, if this is a part of the story that you want to hear, stick with us. If you want to focus on the other part for now, I also totally understand that.
We are also going to, in this podcast, turn our attention to efforts within the Republican Party to stop Trump from winning the nomination. The Conservative Political Action Committee, Win It Back, circulated a memo describing basically a polling and focus group experiment that they conducted. They tried to figure out what kinds of attacks against Trump could actually stick in a Republican primary. So what did they find, and was it a good or bad use of polling?
And later on in the show, Rachel Bade is going to be joining me from Washington to talk about Republicans' ongoing efforts to elect a new House speaker. But here with me now, our senior elections analyst, Nathaniel Rakich. Welcome, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. For the record, both Leah and I are also joining you from Washington, but that fact is just irrelevant in our case, so...
Thank you for keeping me honest. I really appreciate it. Making me feel like the odd man out here in New York. Also here with us is politics reporter Leah Askarian. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Great to be joining you from Washington, D.C. Love to have you. Okay.
Okay, so I am going to begin by elaborating a little on the polling that I just mentioned showing Americans' reactions to the war. So across at least three polls that we had at the end of last week, a clear majority or plurality of Americans sided with Israel or Israelis, depending on the wording of the
question. Here's an example of one of the changes we saw. So a Fox News poll asked this question. In the Middle East conflict, do you side more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians? Before the attack, 42% of Democrats said Israelis and 35% said Palestinians.
After the attack, 59% said Israelis and 25% said Palestinians. Republicans remained steady at about 80% supporting Israelis in both instances. So some pretty different feelings in the two parties and some significant changes over the past week or so.
Leah, what explains that? The attack itself, I think, was so surprising and the images coming out of it and videos coming out of it and continuing testimonials we've seen from the loved ones of those who died or, you know, pleading for justice.
the return of hostages, I think that was a kind of shock to the system. And that's the kind of thing that does produce, you know, a sharp change pretty quickly. We don't know if this is a permanent change. We don't know if this is a spike in the moments after an attack, especially, you know,
because it was so shocking or whether this is a new kind of reality for Democrats. Joe Biden, in denouncing Hamas's attack, made it pretty clear where he wants the Democratic Party to go in terms of messaging on this. He was very clearly, I mean, he said, I want to make this crystal clear. The relationship between the United States and Israel is unshakable. And actually, I think it was Politico had a scoop that
When advisers tried to kind of make it a little bit more both sides, he pushed back. So given that Biden has kind of actually directed a lot of the public opinion into the party, at least before elections, I think that
It could be something that we see that's more stable, that doesn't change all that much in the next few weeks. But I just wanted to caveat that because we're still in the middle of a really major event. Yeah, there's ample evidence from political science that on foreign policy, voters look toward trusted elites to kind of guide their own opinion. Obviously, foreign policy is kind of a niche issue. It's something that not a lot of Americans are informed about, or they kind of only have
a basic understanding of the issues. And so, you know, what they do is, you know, they go to people who they trust on other issues like Donald Trump for Republicans or Joe Biden for Democrats, and they see what those people are saying and they kind of form their views around that.
In a lot of these polls, too, you see a significant chunk of people saying they're not sure, like a quarter or like a third of respondents in terms of, you know, like I saw, well, there was one poll from YouGov that came out that asked some fairly detailed questions about like, do you approve or disapprove of like
Benjamin Netanyahu and like, do you think Hezbollah was involved in these attacks and just like massive amounts of people, Americans very understandably answered don't know. And I think that just reflects the fact that a lot of Americans don't have firmly held opinions on this. And so, yeah, that may explain why they have shifted
significantly in the last week or two. Yeah. And there's still a quarter to a third of Americans after the attacks who say they're either unsure or they don't know. But when you look at polling from before the attacks and now the war, you see an even higher number of folks saying that they really don't know. So
For example, when the AP and NORC asked, you know, do you sympathize with either Israel or Palestinians? Overall, 37% said neither and another 29% said both equally, you know, and this was as recently as September of this year.
Another poll that gets at some of the more philosophical questions here, the University of Maryland Critical Issues poll asked earlier this year, you may have been following recent developments in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. In your opinion, which of the following is closer to describing the way Israel looks to you? And the options were a vibrant democracy, a flawed democracy, a state with restricted minority rights, a state with segregation similar to apartheid.
For all respondents, 56% said, I don't know. That's a majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats. So given those kinds of options, which...
are often talked about in elite circles on university campuses, within now, to some extent, democratic politics. Most people just can't answer that question, don't have an opinion on it. So I think that's important context for understanding, Nathaniel, what you said about how elite opinion will drive democracy.
public opinion changes in the coming days and weeks and perhaps months, but also that by and large, while this is and has become an even more salient issue in Washington and at the upper echelons of party politics, a lot of Americans do not pay close attention to this issue.
In a lot of ways, up until the last week, a lot of Americans could have seen this as a kind of wonky policy issue, right? Like we all know that like the situation in the Middle East in general is complex and has a long history and, you know, that goes through various countries. And right now, I think the question is clearer for people who are taking polls, right? Like,
in this attack, who do you side with or who do you feel more sympathetic with? But just a few weeks ago, the question might have been like a question about Israeli security versus, um,
humanitarian treatment of Palestinians. And that does get into much thornier debates and also really complex policy issues. Yeah. And I think you also made a good point about not knowing quite where public opinion will move in the coming weeks, because in these polls that were taken in the days immediately after the attack, people are thinking about a terrorist attack that they've seen images from, that they've heard testimonies from.
And in the coming weeks, people are going to also be seeing images and testimony from a ground war in Gaza. And that may also shape public opinion. It's important to say, I did want to ask here, like we've talked about shifts in public opinion over the past week.
But there's an important trend here as well, which is there's a partisan gap, right? 80% of Republicans before this even happened in that Fox News poll say they supported Israelis over the Palestinians, whereas Democrats were much more divided. And I'll say even in Gallup polling earlier this year for the first time ever, Democrats reported that they had more sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis. And so I'm curious where that gap stems from in the first place. It is a thorny gap.
Difficult question. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to cover it all. A few factors. I do think that the Democratic Party does have a more racially diverse party. And there have been, I think, more advocates for Palestinian rights from Democratic members of Congress of,
Middle Eastern descent, and they have been outspoken. So I think that is that is part of the Democrats kind of increasing, I think, increasing sympathy recently toward Palestinians. Republicans historically up until the Trump administration, really, like actually it was George Bush said on tape, Axios captured this on tape, I think, in the last decade.
Both parties tend to have isolationist factions of it. And I think we've seen that growing a lot since with Republicans since the Trump administration, you know, America first was, was an isolationist kind of message, but,
So I think previously in a different era of the Republican Party that was a slightly more hawkish on international issues, you know, stepping in to support Israel was kind of a major principle. And I don't think that one has gone away, even during the Trump administration. Right. Like Trump recognized or moved the embassy to Jerusalem. Like that is kind of a it has been a core tenant for Republicans that Israel
has remained largely in place even as Trump has become more critical of intervening internationally. Again, that could change. We've seen Trump in the last like week criticizing Netanyahu. So who knows? But that might be part of where it starts.
Yeah, Leah, I agree. I think that some of it at least goes back to elite messaging. I think that the Republican elites are like very pro-Israel and a lot of Democratic elites like Biden are very pro-Israel as well. But also there is definitely on the left and the progressive wing of the party, there are significant voices like Rashida Tlaib, like Cori Bush, who are
saying basically or being more vocal about expressing their sympathies for the Palestinian side of the conflict as well. And I think that that resonates with the left, particularly kind of the new strand of progressivism that has cropped up since about
2020, 2018, 2016, which is basically the increase in Democratic sympathies for Palestinians in the Gallup polling did tend to start in like 2019, 2020. So probably not a coincidence. And of course, this also kind of dovetails with the, you mentioned the demographics of the Democratic Party. Age, I think, is a big factor here. Like, obviously, younger voters are the most pro-Palestine in the conflict and the
younger voters tend to be Democrats. I can cite some numbers here. So the Fox News poll had age crosstabs. So among voters age 65 plus, they sided with Israel over Palestine, 82% to 5%. So obviously overwhelming. But under age 35, it was much smaller. It was 49% sympathized with Israel, 34% sympathized with Palestine. And that was the post-attack polling.
Yes, this is the recent post-attack poll from Fox News. Basically, the activism on the pro-Palestinian side is very strongly concentrated among young people. And obviously, those people tend to be progressive. Yeah, Nathaniel, I think that's an important point that you make there about the sort of progression of the Democratic Party from 2016 or so onward. I mean, we've seen a significant rise in the influence of
the progressive left. And in fact, over the past week or so, we've seen demonstrations and messages from Black Lives Matter and DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, that have been supportive of Palestinians and
actually more to the point, even Hamas. And that's created something of a conflict within the Democratic Party. I'm curious to see how this progresses. We've already seen members of the Democratic Party in response to this cut ties with Democratic Socialists of America.
And so this is an interesting moment for that far left part of the party, which has been extremely effective at even getting their policy positions and views to become mainstream within the Democratic Party. You know, I'm curious to see how this divide continues. I think the question is whether this is an inflection point, right? Like we saw Jamal Bowman, New York Democrat, let his DSA out.
membership lapse, just, you know, not necessarily this week, but like that was reported this week, I think, by Politico. I mean, we've seen examples across the country of Democrats distance themselves from the DSA. I mean, especially in the 2022 midterms, you know, we did see support for Israel as a issue in a bunch of primaries, you know, like as much as it's a
I think you're right. It's a it's an issue on kind of the far left, a small segment of the electorate. It did define a handful of primaries in 2022, partially because a Democratic group that was intent on electing members of Congress who would be supportive in Israel got involved in a bunch of these races.
Okay, so I think the question is, are Democrats going to kind of change their tone on Israel and Palestine in the coming months, in the coming years, especially in the upcoming primaries before 2024? And when I say the upcoming primaries, I mean, you know, House and Senate, not so much the presidential race. I think that Biden has made pretty clear what his stance is. I just don't know if it's going to, partially because...
We have not seen, you know, as of speaking, we have not seen the land invasion or land attack truly begin in Gaza. And I think we're going to see a lot of images come out in the next week that do kind of test whether this shift, especially among Democrats, is permanent or whether it was strictly a reaction to the Hamas attack itself.
Yeah, I'm very interested to see about the, you know, where public opinion goes from here as well, because I do think obviously the long term trend among Democrats has been toward support for Palestinians. But then you've seen this kind of sharply
rebound toward Israel in the wake of this attack. But if this is a prolonged fight, if the focus turns into the ground war, as you mentioned, Leah, that could change things. I think I'll make a wonky point and a
broader point. So I guess the broader point first, which is that the spike in support for Israel that we've seen in polls top lines this week has actually been mostly driven by Democrats and independents. Republicans have already been extremely supportive of Israel, and that has basically not changed because they just don't have much further to grow in that regard. And so I think it's
It's interesting that the change over the long term, over the last, you know,
five years or so has been among Democrats and to a lesser extent, independents. And also the change in the short term has been among Democrats and independents. And so that they may be the more malleable group. They seem to be the more malleable group. And as a result, they could kind of go back to the old trend or whatever. I mean, I think that's TBD, obviously. The other thing, the wonky point is that if you look at the wording of some of these polls,
It kind of takes on a different, like it's the same wording throughout time, obviously, because that's what pollsters do. They ask the same question over time in order to build a trend line. But it takes on a different valence in the current context. So, for example, YouGov asked, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or the Palestinians, or is it about equal? So, yeah.
When you said, you know, if you're pulling in 2022 randomly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict kind of refers broadly to everything, right? You know, and that can be taken to include Israel's treatment of Palestinians in kind of domestically, right? But today, when you read that question, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, people, I think, rightly or understandably assume that that's referring to like this specific war that has been going on for the past week. And so,
Those questions may not, despite the wording being the same, they may not actually be measuring the exact same thing, right? So you might see that, you know, regardless of where public opinion goes on this specific conflict,
When it is eventually over and this fades from the headlines, if things kind of resume along the track that they were on before, where people start to think of, quote, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as referring to the entire situation with all of its social and economic as well as military interests.
And this is also a problem with the question, right? Like the Palestinians or Israel, like that's really like a, that's, I mean, that's covering a lot of ground. So right now I do wonder if people are more aware of Hamas versus Palestinian civilians versus Israeli civilians versus the IDF, you know, like who...
Who are they supporting? And if it's a question of, you know, being more concerned about, you know, in 2022, being more concerned about the welfare of everyday Palestinians in Gaza versus today saying that you're citing more with or being more concerned with Hamas in that particular attack.
All right, well, that's a good place to leave things. And it's a similar place to where we left things last week, which is that we are going to continue to get information about how Americans are reacting to this conflict. But I hope that is a good somewhat summary for now. Let's move on and talk about a divide that's been playing out within the Republican Party.
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Over the summer, a conservative political action committee called Win It Back established itself with the goal of weakening Trump in the Republican primary. The PAC has connections to the conservative Club for Growth, which has had a rocky relationship with former President Trump. Late last month, the group circulated a memo with lessons that it had drawn from its efforts to create attack ads to weaken Trump.
And the group essentially performed a polling-based research experiment. So this is our good use or bad use of polling example for today. They write, quote,
We produced more than 40 television ads that we tested in 12 in-person focus groups and four online randomized control experiments. They concluded that, quote, all attempts to undermine Trump's conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective regardless of the setting. So live surveys, online surveys, focus groups, controlled experiments.
They want to say, even when you show video to Republican primary voters with complete context of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it. What they said did work were ads where self-identified Republicans and Trump supporters were, quote, sharing concerns about his ability to beat President Biden, expressions of Trump fatigue due to the distractions he creates and the polarization of the country.
as well as his pattern of attacking conservative leaders for self-interested reasons. They then aired the effective ads in some media markets in Iowa and not in others and concluded that they were in fact effective at lowering support for Trump to some extent. And we will get in more to what that actually means. But let's begin by gauging whether or not this was a good or bad use of polling. Nathaniel, where do you come down? I mean, this was an awesome use of polling. Yeah.
Why? What's even the argument for it being a bad use of bowling? It's basically a political science experiment conducted in real time on in like practice, which is like, you know, you always we love our political scientist friends, but like I love them even more when they actually apply their research to the like real world and like, you know, yay. So so, yeah, it was it was fascinating.
Yeah, I agree with you, Nathaniel. I do think it was a great use of polling. Leah, are you going to be... Are you going to inject some conflict into this? Are you going to agree with us? Was it a good use of polling? I really want to inject conflict just like, you know, as like a personality trait, but I can't. Like, this is a really good... I just like...
that they ask a specific question. It's like, you don't have to guess like, well, what were, like what we were just talking about with, you know, Palestine and Israel, like what were voters really saying? You know, like who are they really referring to? What was the context? It's like, no, we know exactly what they were saying. We know what they were watching. We know who they are. And this is what we learned. And I love that.
All right. I think that was the fastest conclusion we've ever come to and maybe the strongest good use of polling that we've ever had. Oftentimes, folks get dragged on this segment for bad uses of polling. Um,
But this was not the case. Before we go any further, though, and there is more to talk about here, I want to give folks a sense of what we mean when we talk about ads that attack Trump on specific issues that didn't work and ads from Republican voters themselves having reservations that did work. So let's listen to one of the ads that did work.
When Trump became president, what I really liked is he was about the country. I mean, I love that. I didn't and I still don't like when Trump goes about attacking people within our own party. We are a family. We are a Republican party. But he sees it as his party, not really a family, not really a team. 2024, it's just about him saying, "I'm back." It's going to make it tough for us to win. My hope is that
We will have a candidate that can beat Biden. When a backpack is responsible for the content of this ad. Okay, so reminder, that did work. Here's an example of an ad that did not work on a particular issue, the issue in this case being COVID. Hi.
I would have to say that Donald Trump did a great job. I always supported him. I supported him in the '16 and I supported him in the '20 election. But I didn't like his response to COVID. I thought he probably got led a little bit by the bureaucrats. Not everybody's happy with Anthony, but I'm not firing him. I think he's a wonderful guy. I don't know why he couldn't see through him, quite frankly, because
We had some governors that had medical experts on their staffs that never shut down. And I heard him say, "I'm calling the shots and you're not going to do that." We're not going to let them open. You're deciding to do something that is not in the guidelines. I don't know why he didn't listen to them. We struggled mightily. We got down to where we had three people working in our shop. He was saying our response to COVID is right. We did the right thing.
We closed the country down. Bragging about Operation Warp Speed. The vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. I don't know why that would be a great political selling point. It isn't with me. If it were Joe Biden and Donald Trump again, I would 100% vote for Donald Trump. But why would you go down that road again? Win It Backpack is responsible for the content of this ad.
All right, so the memo was clear about what did and didn't work, but it really didn't go into analyzing why certain ads worked and other ads did not.
Listening to those two ads, do you have a sense of what might have been the case? And I should say, not only did the ads that attack him on particular issues not work in terms of decreasing support for Trump, in certain cases, they provoked a backlash and people became more defensive of Trump.
So, Leah, what's going on here? We've known for a while that voters already have opinions about how they feel about Trump. So the idea like the COVID ad that you're going to make like a new argument against him and maybe it's not totally new, but it's not like the go to one.
I can see why that didn't work. I actually am kind of surprised that the first one, the, you know, all about me ad did work. But I guess, I mean, it must just be because it's not adding new information. It's just like a new way of viewing something, right? Like, you know, a kind of shift in the perspective of the voter more than like a new attack on Trump. Like everybody knows that he's, you know, pretty...
into himself. So I don't know. What do you think, Nathaniel? I think you're spot on about the new information thing. I just think that like people are into Trump because of him personally and about his personal traits, right? You know, frequent guests, uh,
you know, on the podcast, Kristen Soltis Anderson talks about how he's a fighter, right? And that's important to Republican voters. And I think that is spot on. And it's not about issues and whether he did a good or a bad job. And people, as we see on issues like trade and stuff like that, um,
Republican voters are willing to change their mind or they don't have strongly held beliefs on certain issues. COVID is an issue that, you know, obviously sprang up in 2020 and there were no clear partisan priors on it, but it kind of just like went a certain way because of, I think, in large part, elite cues, which is turning out to be a theme of the podcast. But I think that voters aren't necessarily going to be
kind of feel strongly enough about specific issues maybe a couple but i don't think covet is one of them to um have it change their mind on trump the person and some of his more positive traits whereas the other ad even you know for years we've known that like you know a lot of republicans who like trump are like yeah like he's great he fights for us but like he tweets too much or like you know i wish he would some of these indiscretions you know he wouldn't have done this and so i think they're willing to acknowledge that his
Yeah, that he's maybe not so much of a team player and can distract from kind of the larger goal of, frankly, the Trumpism movement. Okay, Nathaniel, I actually disagree with you. All right, bring it on. I think far from voters not caring about how he performed on the issues, I think when they think about the issues that they care most about, they think he did well on them.
And that's why a lot of this stuff doesn't matter, because you can attack Trump on, you know, his new pivot on abortion. You can attack Trump on COVID. You can attack Trump on, you know, whatever the debt. There were other ads about how he's the king of debt that didn't work.
But people remember what it was like, Republicans remember what it was like to live in a country with Trump as president. And for them, what they saw was hawkishness on immigration, a good economy, the overturning of Roe v. Wade,
I mean, the overturning of Roe v. Wade didn't literally happen while he was president, but the pieces being put in place for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And so he was, in some ways, I would say, so good on the issues and in a way acts as an incumbent president because they know what he's like as a president and how he performed on those issues that saying like, oh, he shut stuff down. Okay, well, at the very beginning, yes, he called for shutdowns. But for the most part, people remember that Dupre
Donald Trump was trying to open up the economy, right? And like, yes, I'm sure there are some people who will not forgive him for keeping Anthony Fauci around on the Republican side of things. But like,
In the totality of what you remember about COVID, is that really sort of what stands out to you? Or is it more Trump doing battle with Democrats over trying to prioritize the economy over public health concerns surrounding COVID? And I think that like the conclusion is not that we don't care about the issues. It's the conclusion that Trump did well on the issues.
That's fair. I agree with that completely. I don't think it's that far away from what I was saying. So maybe I was I said it kind of imprecisely. But I think that feeds into the general. It's like it's the vibes, man. Right. It's the vibes like voters have a sense that like.
Trump fought for them and yes, and maybe won on the big battles overall and like maybe he made specific missteps along the way like saying Anthony Fauci is a great guy. So I think basically that we agree in that these specific attacks don't undermine the overall vibe that Republicans have of Trump being a strong leader and that includes kind of leading on issues that yes, are important to people.
And then the question of why the one that worked did work is it sort of, it invites you in to be part of the in-group, right? And then once you're there, it expresses concern for the well-being of the in-group. I mean, it's almost acknowledging that like, yeah, Trump did, and you, look, I've now been out in the field more than I have been
over the past two years because of reporting on the primary. And like, this happens time and time again, that once folks realize that they're in a group of fellow Republicans, then the gloves come off and they're totally willing to express all kinds of reservations about Trump. And, you know, he didn't do this and he did do this. And I don't like it when this, and like, I, whatever, these are like people who are more politically keyed in, um, for the most part. But, um,
Yeah. Once you know that you're in that in-group, then of course there are reservations. And the concerns that she's expressing are not policy-based concerns so much as is our group going to do well in the election? Are we going to thrive as a group?
And if you feel like the answer might be no because of Trump, but it could be yes with somebody else, then maybe that's more persuasive. 1000%. I completely agree. I think the in-group, out-of-group dynamics are so important. And the memo noted, right, that one important thing to do in the ads is to have the speaker validate early on that, like, I voted for Trump, but...
And both of these ads did do that, but I agree there was a difference in tone where the more successful ad
who successfully brought people into the in-group, whereas the other one, I think, was a little more combative and maybe just like didn't, maybe the answer for why that one wasn't successful actually doesn't have that much to do with the issues, but just has to do with the fact that like they didn't succeed in what was probably its goal of trying to bring voters into the in-group and then criticizing. This might be me totally oversimplifying this,
But isn't this kind of just like, hmm, when you like don't attack people, they tend to be more responsive to your argument kind of thing. Like approach somebody as if they are a peer, as if they are one of you instead of like,
going all crazy at them immediately, which I don't know, seems like a lesson that we can all learn from this experiment. God bless, Leah. Thank you for that. I often wonder that about political ads though, because you're watching like, I don't know, Dancing with the Stars and then an advertisement for Baby Formula. And then all of a sudden it's like,
so-and-so wants to kill everyone, like blah, blah. And it's so sort of like discordant that like it primes distrust. I would think that like people don't think, wow, oh my God, so-and-so wants to kill everyone. I better believe that. It's more like this is tonally wrong.
really unappealing and I don't want to engage with whatever these people are talking about. Yeah, I mean, I think it's the brute force method, right? But it's also like there are important differences because like for, you know, a state legislative candidate, which is on my mind because, you know, when I'm watching the Golden Bachelor, I get lots of ads for Virginia Senate races here in the D.C. area. But
That's so embarrassing. Oh my gosh. I cannot believe. Embarrassing for me or for the Virginia Senate candidates? I cannot believe between eight and nine last night on ABC you were watching.
Yeah, I was watching. Two women get eliminated in the Golden Bachelor. It's at APM on ABC. I haven't watched this week yet, so thanks. It's heartwarming. I mean, I guess that's not surprising that people got eliminated. Anyway, the brute force method, like, I think it still can be effective and, like, you can, like, you know, drag people down a couple of points, but then the issue is your opponent's also going to go nuclear on you and, like, that's how you kind of get dug in and trench warfare and stuff and campaigns and how polarization happens and everything like that. In this case...
It's, you know, like the tax on Trump. Like it's a different thing because Trump is a well-known quantity on like a state legislative candidate. People, Republicans already like him. So yeah, so basically I'm trying to like
mildly defend the instinct of the traditional campaign attack ad, which can be effective in certain circumstances. But overall, I agree with what Leah said, obviously. And is mostly effective when there's an imbalance in terms of advertising. So this is the conclusion that I came to about how much of an impact that these ads actually had in terms of favorability and
and consideration of Trump in the primary. It knocked Trump down six points in favorability and five points in consideration. They say, additionally, we observed a net drop of nine points in ballot support for Trump on the full ballot, so when you include all of the candidates, and a 15-point drop on the head-to-head ballot against Ron DeSantis.
And this is, again, I should say, in discrete markets in Iowa where they did play these ads. He goes on to say, however, these shifts are less threatening to President Trump than they appear because none of the alternative candidates capture a meaningful amount of ballot share. And the control group, again, these are the Iowa markets where they did not play these ads,
offset these gains by continuing to shift in his favor in the same way the national environment has. As a result, the statewide top lines continue to show a significant lead for President Trump. So basically they're saying at the same time that they were playing these ads and knocking him down a bit in other parts of the state where they weren't playing the ads, his appeal continued to grow. What do we make of that level of impact? Yeah, it's not huge, but that's kind of consistent with, you know, like,
tv ads they're you know they're not going to be the be all and end all of a race that said i wonder if you know now that they've done this experiment they will go statewide with this and i think that in terms of the the lack of increased support for other candidates i don't think that's surprising because these ads weren't trying to advocate for another candidate and i think actually frankly if they had they may have been less effective so maybe you need to have some sort of coordinated effort and they these groups can't coordinate well they could coordinate with another super pack i guess but um you know where
One group is airing these kind of sneaky soft trap attack ads. And then another group is airing ads totally independently saying, hey, Nikki Haley's really kind of great. And then maybe you've softened up the certain percentage of the audience who then gets persuaded by Nikki Haley. But again, like TV ads are.
you know, you're not going to win an election just based on the TV ads you need more than that. And and so I mean, obviously, it just speaks to the the uphill climb that the other candidates had. If if this were a ten point race and something like this could make a difference. But with 30 points between them. Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. It's like it's part of the ecosystem of ads, right? Like I wonder when
major campaigns are thinking about how they're going to message on TV. They're thinking like, okay, the campaign itself, the candidate itself, like, or him or herself cannot go negative because they need to be seen as super sweet and nice and whatever.
And so you kind of hope that an outside group will come in and go on the negative and go on the attack against that person. And then when reporters ask the candidate, why were you negative? The candidate can say, I'm not personally. I can't control what those other groups do, which is actually factually true. So this is just one ingredient. And unless it's an ad that – unless you're a single-issue voter –
And it's an ad that completely makes the case, like, you know, if you are voting solely on abortion rights, and it's like the ad makes a crystal clear case that the candidate is opposed to them. Like, yeah, that could have like a big impact.
But in general, it's kind of just slowly. And like you hear too far didn't know that. Yeah. If they didn't know that already and if they knew that the other candidate actually was, you know, for abortion rights. I am curious here, though. I was a little surprised because I was introduced to this memo by way of a New York Times headline.
And I read the article, then I read the actual memo. And this was the New York Times headline. Now that you've heard everything that was in the memo, Republican group running anti-Trump ads finds little is working. And then the sub headline, with over 40 ads and 6 million spent, a group tied to the Club for Growth is no closer to an answer, a memo to donors says. Some ads even gave Donald Trump a boost.
Now, my classic question, is that headline and sub headline a good or bad use of polling? Yeah, that was a weird headline. I don't think that accurately captured the nuances of the memo and the study's findings. Yeah. And in fact, the ultimate conclusion they came to was like, yes, we figured out basically what works.
It's hard to actually have a big impact at this moment in the race. But if there's a winnowing and it seems like there's only one alternative, this avenue of attack is something that we should pick back up and engage with. Essentially, their conclusion was not like we're throwing up our hands, nothing works.
This was a good use of polling and it was a good use of polling because it captures nuance. And I think that making big categorical summaries or conclusions from this data kind of it takes away the power of that nuance and takes away the nuance.
I think the quality of this finding. So I'm hearing a good use of polling from win it backpack, which we have been calling amongst ourselves this entire time, win a backpack. Good use of polling for win a backpack and seems like bad use of polling for the New York times. I'm so sorry. We can't, we can't have this segment without dragging, um,
Somebody in a polling-related way. Not me. Okay. All right. Next up, we're going to head to Washington and talk about the speaker's race. And we're going to say goodbye to Nathaniel and Leah. Thank you so much for joining me today. Bye. Thank you. Bye.
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As of the time that we are recording this on Monday morning, the House still does not have a speaker. It seemed at one point last week like the Republican caucus had gotten significantly closer maybe to at least having an answer in nominating Steve Scalise. However, after not being able to win enough support, he withdrew his name before ever making it to the floor of the House.
And so now it looks like Representative from Ohio Jim Jordan might have the best shot, although still does not have the votes needed. So here with me to talk about it is Rachel Bade, co-author of Politico Playbook and ABC News contributor. Welcome, Rachel.
Thanks for having me on. Okay, so what's going on here? Can you just give us the rundown of what has happened over the past week or so in terms of Republicans trying to come to some conclusion about who's going to lead them? Ugh, Galen, it's a total mess. So as you had mentioned, after McCarthy was ousted—
There was sort of this big fight going on between Jim Jordan, who's sort of this anti-establishment Freedom Caucus founder, Trump-endorsed candidate, and Steve Scalise, who's number two and technically next in line for the job. Steve Scalise technically came out ahead. He had more votes. He won the nomination.
But then as he started to sort of see which Republicans and if he could get 217 Republicans, which is what he needs to get on the floor. And by the way, that means he can only lose four Republicans total, given that all Democrats will vote against him.
He sort of came to the conclusion that this is not worth it and he's not going to get there. And as you mentioned, he didn't even go to the floor. Basically, he said people were playing games and he wasn't wrong about that. There was an effort behind the scenes by allies of Kevin McCarthy, who the ousted speaker, obviously. He doesn't like Scalise and neither do his allies. And they united to try to undermine Jordan, first by proposing a number of
rules changes that would have made it harder for him to win the GOP nomination before going to the floor. And then they started stirring stuff up, flow
Floating stories that made, you know, Scalise look bad, how much money he spent at, you know, the Capitol Grill here in Washington over the years. A controversy from more than a decade ago about him showing up to speak at a group that actually had white supremacist ties, which at the time Scalise apologized for and said he didn't know that the group was associated with, you know, such negative...
blatant racism, frankly. And you saw conservatives who want Jim Jordan say they're not going to vote for him. And the numbers just grew and grew. And instead of trying to duke it out on the floor like McCarthy did in January, Scleef said it's not worth it. And he took his name out of the running.
And ever since then, the spotlight has turned to Jim Jordan. And now the shoe is on the other foot, right? It is. I mean, what? Okay, so now I imagine negative stories about Jordan are coming out. There's a bunch of people saying that they're not going to vote for him. Like, how does Jordan play this any differently from Scalise? That's exactly right. Yeah.
I would say that with Jordan, sort of the negative read on him was already out there. I mean, this is a guy who tormented Republican leaders for years. He made a name for himself by sinking Republican legislation that he said was too accommodating to Democrats. He cheered shutdowns. He cheered fiscal brinksmanship, you know, pushing for hardline tactics on debt ceiling increases and such. So his sort of reputation was already out there. And that makes a lot of moderate Republicans in swing districts nervous, number one.
Number two, there's a lot of Republicans who frankly liked Scalise and were excited about him who didn't like that Jordan did not give him a full-throated endorsement in public. When Scalise won the nomination, Jordan was actually quite angry and went to Scalise's office and said, you'll have my support for one vote, and if you don't get it, you're going to support me.
This was according to an account by Ann Wagner, who is a lawmaker from Missouri, who actually went public with what happened between the two of them. And so there's a lot of Republicans who don't like Jordan and don't trust him. So Jordan won the nomination. And it's interesting because
you know, he had sort of pitched himself as the guy who can actually unify conservatives who like Jordan and, you know, the more moderate center swing of the party and get 217 votes. But when he actually won the nomination, a whopping 81 House Republicans voted for a backbench lawmaker who just so happened to raise his hand right before the vote and say, look, I'm not happy with how this is going. I'm going to
run for this position as basically a protest candidate. He admitted he doesn't even want the job. And still 81 Republicans supported this other candidate because they didn't want to back Scalise or back Jordan, I'm sorry. And so Jordan has sort of spent the weekend trying to figure out how many Republicans are actually going to vote against him on the floor. And there's a couple of big differences, I would say, between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan. Number one is the pressure campaign that Jordan has at his back.
because he is loved by the base and he has Trump's endorsement. And a lot of, you know, Republican voters have been calling Republican offices saying, vote for Jim Jordan. We really like him. There's this theory out there that the Jordan people have that if he were to push this to the floor, even if he doesn't have the votes, that people will be afraid to vote against him because of the public backlash that they could face from their own constituents. And I do think that there is some merit to that.
because even after, you know, 81 Republicans voted for this other candidate instead of him, a lot of them would not tell me on Capitol Hill how they voted. And that tells me that there really is a concern about opposing him on the floor and what that means back home. But remember, all he needs is, you know, five Republicans to tank his candidacy. And, you know, five is not that many. Yeah.
Yeah, so that seems like a somewhat different approach than at least the one that McCarthy took, which is find the people who are saying they're not going to vote for you and figure out what you have to offer them in order to get them to vote for you. This is more of a stick approach than a carrot approach, it sounds like, from Jordan. Is he offering any carrots? Like, is he saying to moderates or centrists, these are the things that I can do to temper my reputation or to...
meet you on certain issues and say, I will bring a floor vote for this thing that you care about, or I'm open to Ukraine aid or something like that? Yeah, it's a good question. I think both Jordan and Scalise have learned from McCarthy's mistake in doling out all these little favors to people.
And then later people accusing him of lying to them. That was a big problem with McCarthy. People, conservatives said he gave them all this stuff and then he went back on his word. And that just, you know, eventually led to his ouster or was a big part of his ouster. We have not heard of any promises like committee posts or certain legislation being moving, various favors that have been offered by either Scalise or Jordan, right?
What Jordan has done is try to tell these lawmakers who are concerned about him that he doesn't like shutdowns and he doesn't want to do shutdowns anymore. Of course, history, of course, you know, shows a very different side of Jordan than that. But basically, he's been telling people that, you know, when the government runs out of money in a couple of weeks,
I'm going to be willing to back a continuing resolution. And that would keep the funding, keep the government open. And hopefully he was saying sort of allow him to play hardball with the Senate to get certain spending cuts. One other thing, though, I think we should mention about
Jordan is different and his strategy is different. There's a little bit of hypocrisy going on, shocker, here in Washington, right? Rachel, you're too honest. You're too honest for the players. Jordan last week, Jordan McCarthy, in their bid to try to undercut Steve Scalise,
they pushed this idea that you shouldn't go to the House floor for a vote until you have 217 Republicans supporting you. Like, we shouldn't have an embarrassing display like we had with McCarthy in January, that it would be bad for Republicans. So they were pushing this idea. And Steve Scalise, you know, he ended up saying, I'm not going to do it. I don't have 217. I'm not going to go to the floor. Now, as you mentioned, shoe being on the other foot,
You know, Jordan and his allies are thinking, again, they can go to the floor and put this public pressure campaign on lawmakers. It's a totally different pitch than he was making to lawmakers last week. And I will say that some of this pressure could actually backfire. Dan Crenshaw was on CNN on Sunday, and he talked about how he was a Jordan supporter.
But all this pressure from the outside, including like Sean Hannity is reaching out to lawmakers and being like, oh, we hear your boss doesn't support Jordan. Why don't you support him? Like, can you talk about why you don't support him? This pressure campaign, Crenshaw said, is going to backfire and it's going to only hurt Jordan. So that's another whole dynamic we need to watch this week. So it sounds like you're describing a situation where –
Jordan is going to go to the floor, not have the votes, and have to go through several rounds of voting? Is that what it sounds like based on what you're hearing? At least that's the sort of strategy that they're putting out there right now. I mean, things could always change. Like if he is not able to flip votes over the weekend and he decides it's too embarrassing to go to the floor, we could see him bow out in the same way Scalise did last
last week, but this is Jim Jordan. I mean, the guy loves a fight. I've covered him for years. You know, I remember him telling me one time that he'd rather appear on MSNBC than Fox News because he loves to, like, brawl and he loves to, like, throw a punch and he loves the challenge. And...
Because of that and just sort of knowing him, I wouldn't be surprised if they stuck to the strategy that they're laying out now, which is to just go to the floor and fight. I mean, I think the main scandal that folks might be familiar with as regards Jim Jordan is the Ohio State University doctor who was abusing wrestlers, etc., and former wrestlers saying that Jim Jordan knew about it but didn't do anything.
Is that coming to the fore here? Have you heard any concern amongst lawmakers of having the Speaker of the House have those allegations against him? His opponents are certainly talking about it and whispering about it. I don't think I've heard from any Republicans say they're concerned about this on the record. But, you know, behind the scenes, there was a couple articles being sort of passed around lawmakers between Republicans last week that suggested that, you know, this –
Ohio State scandal is, you know, it's not over. It might have come out years ago, but there's ongoing lawsuits. You know, could a Speaker Jordan be subpoenaed and required to testify? If he is, who's paying for his legal bills? Is it going to be House Republicans' campaign coffers? So opponents of Jordan are certainly passing it around. I will say when you talk to members who are most concerned about him, that doesn't come up very much. Mostly they're concerned about strategy and strategy.
The fact that this guy has, you know, over a decade of history pushing for conservative priorities. And not only that, it's not just the policy differences, but it's the strategy. It's
saying no until you get everything you want. What does that mean when Democrats control the Senate, control the White House? What sort of grid walk are we going to see here in Washington? People are really concerned about that. And again, also concerned about Scalise allies feeling like, okay, Scalise bowed out. People didn't even give him a shot. So why should we give this guy a shot? Like, why should we fall in line with,
when people were trying to undercut Steve Scalise and just didn't give him the time of day. So there's that sort of anger that's still fueling a lot of what Republicans are going to be doing this week. So who's the unity candidate? Who steps in? If Jordan doesn't work out, who's the Paul Ryan of the moment where everyone's like, OK, you know, this is the only person who could do this job right now. This is the only person that could get to 217 right now.
Well, that's the problem. There's no Paul Ryan. I mean, after Boehner decided to step down rather than go through being ousted because he had the same threats hanging over his head, people knew who to look for. I mean, Paul Ryan had just run as Mitt Romney's running mate. You know, he was seen as sort of the golden boy, big in terms of like budget reforms. The base loved it, taking on entitlements, etc.,
And it was an obvious choice. There's no one like that here. And so I think this week, a couple of things are going to happen. If Jordan falls through, there's already talk behind the scenes about filing a privileged resolution that would essentially...
give Patrick McHenry, who's the acting speaker right now, more authority. Patrick McHenry has come out and said, look, I don't think I have power to move legislation. We're basically stuck trying to elect a new speaker until we actually get a new leader. But there's actually things Congress can do to give him more power. And so there are some Republicans who are feeling out Democrats to find out, OK,
Could you guys help us give this guy more power? If we do, what do you need? Like what sort of concessions do we need to give to Democrats? So I think that that is something that's going to become a real conversation this week. If Jordan doesn't make it, there are also other people waiting in the wings to raise their hand though. And again,
This is the big problem Republicans have. You know, any leader's downfall is another lawmaker's sort of opportunity right now. And so if Jordan goes down, you could see someone like Tom Emmer, the House majority whip, raise his hand and say he wants to run for speaker. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw that. There's other Republicans like...
Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, who's sort of been floating his name out there. So other people could sort of pop up. The question is, can any of them really get to 218? And can they do so in a timely fashion, given that government runs out of funding in a couple of weeks? And also we have a war in the Middle East adding pressure to all of this. The Senate is coming back this week and they're going to start moving a package to give funding to Israel to defend itself. And
the House is going to look terrible. I mean, they already look terrible. This is unprecedented. But, you know, at some point it's going to become untenable. And at that point, people are going to be really looking, you know, if we can't get a Republican speaker, what do we do? Yeah. What's the I'm just curious from a human perspective, what's the mood amongst lawmakers right now? Everyone's angry. Everyone's angry. It's like, you know,
People were first mad at the Gates crew for doing this, you know, for taking out McCarthy, Matt Gates and his allies. And then the fury turned to the McCarthy people for undercutting Steve Scalise and working against him. And then, you know, after Scalise withdrew and Jordan, you know, raised his hand again, you know, the fury turned to the Jordan people from the Scalise people. And after...
After Jordan goes down, if he goes down this week, you know, conservatives are going to be mad. And what makes you think that they're going to agree to a Tom Emmer as speaker who's not necessarily one of them? So it's just it's a lot of.
It's kind of like Mean Girls on Capitol Hill, honestly. It's like Mean Girls for 56-year-old men who have way too much ambition to actually make anything productive in here. Well, maybe if they make it to Wednesday, everyone will wear pink. We'll see. But I think we're going to leave it there for now. Thank you so much for joining me today, Rachel. Happy to do it.
Before we go, I want to tell you about another podcast from my colleagues at ABC that you might like called Reclaimed the Forgotten League. If you're a baseball fan, and probably even if you aren't, I probably don't need to tell you how important statistics are to the sport. They're a large part of how we determine who is great.
but you might not know that those record books aren't totally accurate. They don't include the names of the black players who were kept out of Major League Baseball. Reclaimed the Forgotten League explores the stories of the greats who played before Jackie Robinson integrated the sport, as well as the ongoing struggle to get their legacies and stats recognized by the MLB. I want to share the trailer of this new podcast with you. If you want to hear more, click the link in our episode description and follow the show for the rest of the story.
I've got a question for you. Who's the greatest baseball player of all time? Whether you're a baseball fan or not, you probably have someone in mind. Like Babe Ruth. His name, as you all know, is Babe Ruth. Hank Aaron. Baseball legend Hank Aaron. Shohei Otani. These are the greats of America's pastime, right? But what if I told you that names have been purposely excluded from that list?
Players kept out of our record books, out of our halls of fame, and out of our shared memory. In 1947, Jackie Robinson famously broke the color line. But before that, there was a whole other chapter of American baseball. A chapter that belongs to thousands of Black players who competed in a segregated league.
This is not in the pages of American history books. And so countless generations of us went through our own formal educations without knowing one of the most significant chapters, not in baseball history, but in American history. In this season of Reclaim, we're going to open that chapter and tell the stories of the Negro Leagues. I'm Vanessa Ivy Rose. I'm a baseball fan. And I'm the granddaughter of one of the greatest batters you've never heard of.
Norman "Turkey" Stearns. -Turkey's first season with the Detroit Stars, by all accounts, was unbelievable. -In an era defined by discrimination, my grandfather and other Black baseball players found a way to play the game they loved, and they were incredible. -Most of the time, Negro League teams beat the Major League teams. I'll leave it at that. - Mic drop, mic drop.
I've wanted to talk about these baseball legends for a long time, not just to tell you about their triumphs, but also to tell you what they witnessed about this country while playing America's sport in segregated towns and stadiums. It was not uncommon for these athletes to ride into a town, fill up the ballpark, but yet not be able to get a meal from the same fans who would just cheer for them.
Today, descendants of these athletes, like me, and baseball's institutions, like MLB, are reckoning with this history. What would justice look like after so many decades of exclusion? Who are you to tell us that we are now major leaguers? We always considered our relatives as major leaguers.
So I asked who you thought the greatest baseball player of all time was. But the truth is, you can't really answer the question because you don't know all the greats. Yet. From ABC Audio, Reclaim, The Forgotten League, premieres on October 2nd, wherever you get your podcasts.
All right. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. We had production help from Cameron Chertavian and Shane Mackey on. 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 tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.
