Why A Third-Party Candidate Poses A Threat To Biden 58:10

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You know who else lives up there? No. Champ. Who's Champ? Champ is the lake monster. He's our Nessie. I literally thought you were talking about Biden's dog that got sent away for biting a Secret Service person. I was like, they sent him all the way to the Adirondacks? That's so extreme.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. And today we're going to talk about money. Who of the 2024 candidates has been able to haul in the big bucks and who looks like they might have cash problems? Saturday was the deadline for candidates to file their second quarter fundraising numbers. And today we're going to talk about money.

And it was our first glimpse at many of the campaign's finances, since most candidates announced their candidacies during the second quarter. So we're going to break down those numbers. Also today, Monday, the centrist group No Labels is hosting a town hall in New Hampshire featuring Senator Joe Manchin and former Utah Governor John Huntsman.

The group has said that they plan to run a moderate ticket in 2024 featuring one Republican and one Democrat, although not necessarily the two featured in Monday night's town hall.

Early polling suggests that such a ticket would pull more support from Biden than Trump in a potential rematch and put Trump over the edge in the two-way vote. But is that a good or bad use of polling 16 months out? Here with me to discuss it all is senior reporter Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Welcome to the podcast, Amelia. Hey, Galen.

Also with us is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Brakich. Welcome to the pod, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. And also with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeff. Welcome. Good morning, Galen.

I do have one very important question before we begin. What is everyone's plans for Barbenheimer this week? It is finally here. Are we going Oppenheimer, then Barbie, Barbie, then Oppenheimer? What are y'all's plans? The play is definitely Oppenheimer and then Barbie because you want to have something serious and then have a nice little palate cleanser afterward. Yeah.

That's my two cents. I heard a different logic, which is that Barbie is living in the world that Oppenheimer created. So in order to fully appreciate the sort of social impact, cultural impact of Oppenheimer, that's the order to go in. Don't we live in the world that Oppenheimer created? All live in it, not just Barbie? We also live in the world that Barbie created. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, okay. Does Oppenheimer live in the world that Barbie created? No.

No, but that's another, yeah, chronological order, right? Oppenheimer than. I believe the plan that my wife and I have is the Oppenheimer than Barbie order. Although I don't actually remember, but I believe that that was what we discussed. How much time do I have to see both of these movies for people who have small children? Ah, yes. We're talking about like over the next year, maybe I will see both of them if I.

So not on the same day, probably. That's a tough beat, I would say. Wait, you mean Sally doesn't want to see Oppenheimer? I'm sure Sally would have a lot of fun jumping on the chairs in the movie theater. Oppenheimer is a three-hour movie. Yeah, I'm not going to do them both. I mean, it's like I never would have done two movies at once.

Anyway, I think that's just like too much. But yeah, yeah. So I don't know. I think like if honestly, if I see one of them, I'll be I'll be lucky. And that means I'm gonna see the Barbie movie. Because if I'm gonna get a babysitter, it's gonna be for something that makes me feel happy. Yeah.

Yeah, I endorse that decision. I'm seeing Barbie first. In fact, I don't have plans to see Oppenheimer yet, but I have a feeling it will be like two days later. You don't even have kids, Galen. Yeah. I know, I know. But I will be at the first showing on Thursday night. So, you know, not before it even comes out on Friday, I will be at the first Barbie showing in Midtown Manhattan with all the, you know, everyone wearing pink and so on and so forth. Yeah, I'm a little jealous.

If I were. Well, get a babysitter, come join. Oh, get a babysitter, come to New York. Come to New York City. Great. Easy. Totally easy.

All right. We will meet back here on a future podcast episode to discuss. However, let's dig in to the real meat and potatoes this week, which is, Jeffrey, you recently wrote an article about the potential of a third party candidate to spoil the 2024 election, which is to say, take more votes away from the candidate who would have won a two way race and instead lead to their loss.

You looked specifically at the centrist group I mentioned, No Labels, and also the Green Party candidate, Cornel West. And based on recent polls, you concluded that both No Labels and Cornel West could spoil the election for Biden in a situation where there is a Biden-Trump rematch by shifting the two-way vote one to three percentage points towards Trump.

There was a little bit of pushback on the internet with, of course, as always, as always, with one reader writing, quote, don't you know better than to take a three percentage point shift going to third party in polls 16 months before the election at face value? And another, Carl saying, quote, read the article and I'm labeling this a bad use of polling. At Galen Druke, I'm available to appear on the podcast. So, so.

Sadly, we're not having Carl on the podcast today, but I do want to discuss the good— This seems unfair to Carl, Galen. I know. I'm sorry, Carl. You're going to read his words and then not give him a chance to elaborate. He said he was available. I don't know. This doesn't seem right. I'll try to channel Carl's message in conversation with Jeffrey. Well, Carl, tell us if Galen gets your message and energy wrong. Okay.

Okay, we'll see. And I'll take him to task later. I'm your defender here. So let's talk about the good or bad use of polling merits. Either way, Jeffrey, why should we take these numbers seriously at this point? And if you want to elaborate on what those numbers actually are, please feel free.

I think probably the best way to think about this is to take these numbers seriously, but not literally. Well, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that. Yeah, yeah. I know that's a phrase that we've heard a lot over the years in the Donald Trump era. But in the article, I point out that we should be cautious about reading too much into these surveys. But you did have...

sort of a host of early polls, five that I found, where there was either testing out a potential no-labels candidate, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator, or Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland.

and a couple polls that tested Cornel West, who could potentially be the Green Party nominee because he's now running for that nomination. And in each, there was at least some slight shift in the national margin toward Trump. It varied from one to three points. Basically, this was taking this initial data and sort of doing a – it wasn't a thought exercise, but it was showing, okay, we have this very early trend here.

And that could matter if that actually came to pass quite a bit. Will it come to pass in that way? No idea. And I'm pretty clear about the caveats for that. But I think it sort of showed in a close election, which, you know what? I would bet on a close election if I gambled on elections because we live in an era with intense partisanship and

Most presidential elections in recent history have been very competitive. Take the 2020 election. If you had a slight shift to the right, Biden did win the national popular vote by about four and a half points.

But we decide elections in the electoral college, and the tipping point state was Wisconsin, which he won by just under a point. If you shifted the margin in states by roughly one to two points, that might have flipped Wisconsin for Trump but also Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, which would have resulted in Trump winning. So I think the point is that if this continues, if trends continue –

You know, and we see a centrist or left leaning or both candidacies on the ballot. You know, it is possible that those candidates could assist Trump, at least to some extent. You know, magnitude is very TBD, clearly. Does everyone agree here that the general message seems to be if 2024 is close and we expect it to be a third party candidate could spoil the election? Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like, so, so to include no labels perspective, Jeffrey had an interview with folks over there and asked them about this and they pushed back and basically said, you know, they pointed to Ross Perot's candidacy and they said, look, he kind of took from both sides. So he wasn't, you can have third party candidates who aren't spoilers because they're drawing equally from, you know, from the right and the left.

And I think, yes, it is true that there can be third party candidates who are not spoilers, but that doesn't mean that no labels won't be. So I think certainly at this early stage to contemplate a situation in which that happens is,

It seems totally plausible. I mean, we are pretty far out from the election. We don't know what's going to happen. But I thought your article was pretty convincing, Jeff. So the caveats that you usually hear with this kind of polling this far out and with third parties is one that oftentimes you'll see a third party poll relatively well when there's some distance from the election because...

voters haven't really been activated into their partisan ways. They haven't sort of just seen the Republican versus Democrat ad wars, message wars play out. And they're thinking, hey, you know, I would support this independent or Green Party candidate or whatever. And then when it actually comes down to voting, you know, people sort of return to home base and end up voting for one of the two major parties. Is that something that we've seen play out in the past? Like, how do you respond to that caveat, Jeffrey?

Well, I made that caveat in the piece. So, you know, I think that that is a perfectly reasonable thing to point out that historically, in most cases...

Third-party or independent candidates have lost ground as you got closer to the election in the polls. One instance that comes to mind is like John Anderson, who was running as an independent in 1980 against Jimmy Carter, the Democratic incumbent, and Ronald Reagan, the GOP nominee. Anderson was a moderate Republican congressman.

And in the midsummer, I think he was polling at like 22 percent, and he ended up with just under 7 percent of the vote in the end, which was a pretty good showing for a third-party candidate, all things considered. But obviously that represented a pretty significant drop from where he'd been in the middle of the summer. Ross Perot at one point I think led Bush and Clinton in 1992 in the polls, and he was a

And ended up with 18% or 19%, I think, with rounding. So pretty significant showing as well, obviously, like the best modern third party showing in terms of just the national vote percentage. So yes, things can definitely change. And we know that general election polling this far out has very wide error bars in terms of its predictiveness. So, you know, it's

This is not telling us the outcome of the election by any means. I think it's just it shows, though, that there is the potential for a candidate from the center or left to potentially take away some anti-Trump votes if you have a Biden-Trump rematch that might otherwise pick Biden if they just have to consider the head-to-head.

Right. And it shows that the direction of the spoilage, right? Like, you know, I think in the abstract, you wouldn't be sure whether No Labels, which is this, you know, kind of centrist thing,

entity would draw more votes from the Republican or from the Democrat. And I think that these polls show that it would draw more votes from Biden, specifically in a Biden versus Trump matchup. Maybe that changes if it's Biden versus DeSantis or something like that. But I think that is relevant information here. And to be fair, you know, that could change depending on if No Labels puts a ticket forward for president and vice president.

Depending on who they choose, that could influence how voters look at it. If they picked – I mean it's tough to know, right, who they might select. Manchin and Hogan are two examples, but perhaps there's somebody else they select who maybe Republicans find a bit more attractive for some reason. What if it's RFK Jr.?

Well, I mean, well, the Republicans would probably find that more attractive, considering how he's running his Democratic presidential primary campaign. RFA Jr., unity ticket. That's really, that's an interesting thought. Yeah, but I think you're right, Jeff, here that another caveat is like, when they do this polling, they're slotting in somebody who hasn't really made an actual pitch for president, or they're just asking people about the appeal of a, you know, a moderate independent candidate. So

So it's really hard to get a clear picture on all of this. This may be self-explanatory, but why does it seem that a no-labels unity ticket would pull more from Biden than Trump? I think there are probably a few explanations for it, but at least looking at the polling data that we were looking at, you know, it tended to show a few more Democrats picking the sort of third, the no-labels third-party candidate

than sticking with Biden, whereas Trump generally kept hold of most Republicans, if not all. And of course, with crosstab data, you have to be even more careful because the margin of error is even wider for a subsample than the overall sample that you usually see the margin of error number four. So I don't want to like, we shouldn't necessarily take that as like gospel or something. But I do think that there's, I mean,

You have a lot of Democrats who are expressing concern about the no labels ticket because they think, well, there are some moderates out there who do not like Biden that much, but they don't like Trump either. And if they were pressed to vote, you know, choose between them, they would probably vote for Biden if push came to shove. And it is true that we saw, you know, for instance, in the 2022 midterms,

sizable number of voters who somewhat disapproved, I should say, of Biden who ended up voting for a Democrat in the 2022 midterms. So if you're thinking about

how to avoid losing voters who might hold their nose and vote for Biden. Democrats, I think, are worried about there being an alternative that those voters might decide to go to because they feel more comfortable picking someone like that. And if you think about even just like the ideological dispositions of the parties right now, if you look at a breakdown of people who say they're moderate and who they prefer in elections, they generally vote Democratic these days. And, you know, whether it's an exit poll or national polling, you know,

So if you think about the Democratic coalition, you've got a large block of self-described moderates and a large block of people who are self-described liberals, liberal or very liberal.

The Republican Party has moderates in it, but it has a larger block, at least as a share of the party, that would describe themselves as conservative or very conservative. So if you're thinking about sort of how people self-identify, I think that even is like a baseline understanding of how you could have a few more moderates because there are just more people who are self-described moderates in the Democratic Party who might, you know, end up looking at an option like this. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think this is an exaggeration, obviously, but, you know,

what the hell, I'll say it anyway. Like, I think like the two political parties are not Democrat versus Republican. It's Trump versus anti-Trump. And when you think about it that way, it's much clearer which side No Labels is on, right? Like they are on the anti-Trump side.

They have said they want a that they don't want Trump to be president, basically, and that they basically they've also said that, like, if in their opinion, their presence would throw the election Trump, that they would pull the plug. And so, yeah, I just think that that is more what it's about. And you look also at the candidates that they put up, like Joe Manchin, who is literally a Democrat, obviously. So it's not surprising that he would pull more votes from the Democratic side.

And then Larry Hogan, who is a Republican, but again, like is an anti-Trump Republican and is known for that. And you see this with like Liz Cheney and stuff too, like-

Her favorables are like Democrats love her. Republicans hate her. Like this is this is just the reality right now. Yeah, you sort of read my mind, Nathaniel. My next question was going to be we're pretty used to the Green Party and the Libertarian Party's fielding candidates. And even then, sometimes there's a claim that one of those candidates has spoiled a presidential election.

Or other, you know, Ralph Nader in 2000, as an example, or even, you know, maybe we would have Senator David Perdue in the Senate right now had there not been a libertarian candidate running in the first round of the past Georgia election. So.

I ask, what is No Label's goal here as the sort of new entry into the equation? Well, they put out a policy manifesto on Sunday that I think sort of laid out their goal. And in my interview with them, they sort of said, look, we're putting out the possibility of running a campaign because we feel like the major parties and their

probable nominees or most likely nominees are not necessarily considering sort of that there's this like group of there's a majority of the public that wants sort of a balance on certain issues like maybe they want protections for people who are transgender but maybe they want to keep they want more control over what their kids are learning in the classroom there's these sorts of

And so they released this policy document. And essentially their thought is if we didn't have the threat of a potential third party candidacy, people would be less likely to take it very seriously, like what they've put out. So in terms of like their policy views and what they think like the country should do moving forward. So that clearly is like a major part of their goal to get people to pay attention to what they view as a more moderate centrist policy.

approach to politics. So that's their logic. In terms of whether or not they'll actually run a

And see how things – their polling moving forward over the next six to nine months before their April convention. And if they feel like there's not as much of a ceiling of potential support, that they would pull the plug for – if they feel like there's not as much room out there for them to get to the number they think they need to win, which is like 36%, 37% of the national popular vote.

Obviously, that would be an incredible accomplishment to even have that as a possibility, and I am skeptical that that's feasible. But they do have some arguments to make regarding the fact that people are very dissatisfied with the

the political status quo that a lot of people identify as independent, if they can pull in some Democratic-leaning independents and some Republican-leaning independents somehow, maybe they'd have a path to victory. Yeah. I mean, the specifics of their argument is that according to polling that they've done or looked at, three-fifths of Americans say that they would be willing to support a moderate independent in a presidential election. And then on top of that, when you look at

partisan identification. Now, you know, more than 40% of Americans identify as independent, meaning that only 20 some percent of Americans identify as either Democrat or Republican.

at face value, that looks like good evidence in support of, you know, hey, it's high time for a third party, a serious third party in American life. I know that probably everyone here has criticisms of taking those numbers at face value. So what are they? Well, look, things are more partisan than they appear based on that, that party ID number. Uh,

because most of those independents, like three-fourths or four-fifths, depending on the poll, actually lean toward one party. And people who are independent but lean toward one party vote for that party at close to the same rate as people who openly identify with that party. So if you're a Republican-leaning independent, you probably voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Most of those voters did that. And vice versa, Democratic-leaning independents, most of them voted for Joe Biden.

just like a Democrat did. So that is a really hard thing to break through. And I think the other consideration is,

It's been true for a long time that a large block of the public has identified as independent. It's gone up, but you've had Democratic-leaning independents and Republican-leaning independents for a very long time. I think the challenge is that since like Ross Perot in 1992 or even 1996 when he also ran, sort of the gap between the parties and the attitudes of people within or leaning toward a party in their view of the other party has gotten a lot more negative.

So a democrat or a democratic-leaning independent now views the Republican Party much more negatively than they did back in the early to mid-1990s and vice versa for a republican or a republican-leaning independent thinking about the democrats. So that I think makes it harder to pull voters away from their party.

or the party that they lean toward because if they think that there's a possibility that voting for that centrist alternative might actually end up helping the party they really don't like win, they're probably not going to vote for that party, that centrist party, and they're probably going to stick with the party they lean toward or identify with. So that's like a really big challenge, the fact that we have such a stronger – it's called negative partisanship, the stronger negative partisanship –

in terms of attitudes, makes it, I think, harder for a centrist alternative to break through than, say, back in the 1990s. Well, and there's another piece of evidence that sort of gets floated when people are talking about no labels, which is just that it seems like there's a pretty good chance that we're heading for a rematch between Trump and Biden. Lots of Democrats didn't want Biden to run for re-election. Lots of Republicans are not super happy about the idea of another Trump candidacy.

Many Americans as a whole are really not excited about 2020 redux, which again seems like there's at least a good chance that that's what 2024 could be. So, you know, you could imagine the argument being made and it has been made.

that this is the perfect moment for a third party entry because people are not just dissatisfied with the two party system. They're not just dissatisfied with the political status quo. We're literally potentially heading for a presidential race between two candidates that their own parties are not very excited about. And I think the challenge for no labels is that

They have to give people something to vote for. They can't just expect people to vote for them because they don't like the two major candidates because of everything that Jeffrey was talking about, because people's partisan allegiances are pretty strong, because, you know, Biden and Trump are still pretty well liked within their own party. And we don't know who the candidate would be.

for no labels. A lot of the issue, I think, for Democrats was that they didn't necessarily want Biden to run, but there wasn't a clear alternative. And I don't think no labels solves that by having Joe Manchin run for president. So it's sort of this problem of

You have to give you just simply giving people an alternative is not enough. You have to give them an alternative that is compelling to a lot of people. And I think to a lot of people, even if they say they would hypothetically vote for a moderate independent, for a lot of people, that would be a compromise on the things that they want. And that is challenging in a moment of intense political polarization, too. Yeah.

Yeah, Amelia, you're speaking my language 100% there. When I look at no labels proposition, I'm thinking like, okay, so yes, there's this argument that oftentimes Democratic or Republican leaning independents return home to the party's

whether it's based on negative partisanship or whatever. But it's also the case that those voters are very rarely given a high profile sort of like moderate independent alternative. And so we don't have a lot of great examples of how they behave in an environment where there is a high profile alternative. But to your point about having something to actually vote for, when I think about Joe Manchin or, you know, John Huntsman or what have you,

Larry Hogan, it's kind of we've actually had this conversation before on the podcast at various times, which is when you look at the quadrants of like, you know, true Democrats to Republicans and then people who have cross pressure, like people who have more libertarian sort of social ideas, but also sort of more free trade kind of economic policies. Somebody maybe like a Michael Bloomberg could appeal to that quadrant of political life is pretty barren.

And what's actually more populated is people who are economically sort of more progressive, but also socially, culturally a bit more conservative. And so when I look at who no label should be targeting, I'm thinking like a kind of charismatic, idiosyncratic label.

outsider in a way, like populist type person. I mean, Ross Perot comes to mind. That was a very particular moment in life where the debt and deficit was really high profile. And he sort of captured that sentiment or whatever. I don't necessarily know if that's what it would be this time around. It could be inflation. It could be some of the cultural issues of the day, whatever you have, whatever it may be. But the sort of like just moderate, just centrist, whatever a

candidate doesn't really seem to fill that niche. That's what I see as the main challenge here. And it's not authentic. I mean, I think that's the other thing that's difficult is that this is a political solution to a political problem that is being created by people who work in politics and think in political terms and look at political data and say, okay, here are the people I know, here are the politicians I know, this is how we're going to fix this problem. But

That's like, in some ways, that's a total misreading of what Americans actually want because they don't want like a kind of technocratic engineered solution to the two-party system. They want someone who is charismatic and cares about them and is running because they really see a solution to fixing America's problems that was not, doesn't feel like it came out of a consulting book. And...

I just feel like I don't know how No Labels gets around that. Like, it's just how do you convince people that this is a really kind of authentic alternative when it is clearly, transparently not?

Well, here's the thing. The candidate that we are describing already ran for president and he won. His name was Donald Trump. Like he just did it within our existing political party. Well, except for the moderate independent part. No, well, actually, yeah. That part. He's culturally conservative and like economically, like he's like, whatever, like, yeah, keep your social security and your Medicare. He's gotten more conservative. But when he first ran, he was perceived as a moderate. He, you know, had like, you know, he changed. He's perceived as a moderate maybe now.

not correctly. And also in comparison to Hillary Clinton. Perceptions though matter. But he, he totally like threw away a bunch of Republican orthodoxy on like fiscal issues. I think because of his background as you know, this well-known entertainer guy on TV, he also, even though he took a more conservative line on some social issues in the 2016 election, he,

There were also independent voters out there who said, well, he's Donald Trump. He can't be that conservative on social issues. And he won the nomination in part because he was able to win over sort of the moderate and somewhat conservative lane in the Republican primary.

So when you're like in terms of him being viewed as more moderate, I think that was an asset for him in an election against Hillary Clinton, where who was viewed. I mean, both of them had terrible favorable favorability numbers. But, you know, it's sort of a race to the bottom. I think that that helped him in the end. The challenge now for Trump is that he's viewed, I think, much more conservatively than he was back then. So that's like a different proposition. But I

I think Nathaniel, at least Trump 2016, does fit the bill to what we're talking about. Which leaves an opening once again for a charismatic outsider. Like we keep, honestly, I feel like we keep creating openings in American politics for the charismatic outsider. One example that we could talk about right now, which is complicated because he's quite conservative, but he has a very optimistic message, whatever, is Vivek Ramaswamy in terms of how the charismatic outsider is playing amongst the current

Republican primary electorate. Anyway, closing thoughts on no labels, because I'm sure we'll talk about them again. But for now, we should talk about those fundraising numbers that just came out.

So what did we get to? I'm sorry. I'm afraid that I betrayed our listener who I was going to argue. I know this is terrible Galen. I think it's a, I think it's a good use of pulling the way that Jeffrey used it. If you read the whole article and understand the caveats, I mean, Jeffrey, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna drag you on this podcast. Come on. Um,

Good use of polling. Take it seriously, not literally. Well, and also it's like any article that is published in the summer of 2023 has a big old asterisk next to it. You know, like we're talking about hypotheticals. That is the way that we should be approaching any of the analysis that we're doing. And I think, Jeff, you did a good job of talking about what could be without saying this will be. And that's all we can do at this point.

Gold star for Josh. Five angry emails about, you know... Only five? That's pretty good. Yeah, that's not bad. It wasn't too bad. All right. No labels, not generating the, yet at least, enthusiasm on either side, maybe. We'll see, though. I mean, they absolutely could, though. I mean...

Look, I think one of the things just as a final note on this is that obviously I'm very skeptical about a third party bid actually being competitive. And I think there's a lot of evidence and I've laid out that evidence in at least one article and then laid out how a third party candidacy could play spoiler. But we don't know yet.

But I will say that if there is an independent candidate in the race backed by no labels and actually has a lot of money, it is possible that they could give –

a sort of something that we don't usually have, which is a seemingly viable or at least semi-viable, quasi-viable, like however you want to describe it, candidate, like other option. And so like a world where there is an independent candidate winning like 8% of the vote is not crazy to me. I mean, that could totally 10%. I don't know. Like that could happen. I think winning would be an extremely high hurdle and very difficult to pull off. But winning, you know,

a not insignificant share of the vote is like totally plausible. All right. Well, let's move on and talk about money.

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The second quarter fundraising totals are in and looking at fundraising from April 1st to June 30th, here's what we have. So Ron DeSantis leads the pack in terms of total money fundraised at $20.1 million. Next is Biden with $19.9 million, then Trump with $17 million.

From there, the self-funders Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy take the next slots and then on down from there in terms of actual cash on hand. So considering money that the candidates came in with, how much they fundraised, and also how much they spent,

Here's what the numbers are. Trump leads with $23 million, then Tim Scott with $21 million, then Biden with $20 million, and then DeSantis with $12 million. So as you can tell from those numbers, Ron DeSantis has spent a lot of the money that he has fundraised so far. So what were the top line takeaways, Amelia, from these numbers? I've just said a lot of numbers and a lot of millions of dollars. Make it make sense.

Well, so I think we're going to have some back and forth about DeSantis and how much to make of both the amount he's raised, the number of small dollar donors, which is getting a lot of attention, and his burn rate. But the things that I think, you know, sort of really stood out to me as being like interesting and like kind of –

clearer to have an immediate takeaway is that Mike Pence is not doing well in terms of fundraising. And Biden is not spending right now, which, you know, is not something that

Got a ton of attention, but I think it's pretty interesting given the criticisms of his campaign in the past and especially his sort of like ground game infrastructure outreach to key Democratic groups. The fact that Biden has raised a lot of money and spent very little of it so far at least was interesting and noteworthy to me.

And to put some numbers to that, when you say he's not spending money, he's like literally not spending money. I mean, he spent over the past quarter 1.1 million, has a staff of maybe four or five people. Yeah, like less than a dozen people. And it's, you know, he's what? He's he's he announced.

Two and a half months ago? April 25th. Yeah, it's been a while. So, and just to give a sense of context here, at this time in 2011, Obama had raised $47 million in that three-month period, and he had spent $11 million. So, you know, running campaigns differently, it's a different political moment. There are differences, but...

I do think it's noteworthy that Biden is not, you know, for example, out there already trying to set up field operations to reach out to some of the groups that Democrats have been struggling with. Nathaniel, you look skeptical. I don't know. I just think like this is the kind of thing that, you know, like it's July, like there's nothing else going on. People, you know, are going to dig into these fundraising numbers. Sorry, Barbenheimer, but it's true.

Like, it's just like, I think it is like basically irrelevant how much money Biden has raised and spent at this point. Because like, first of all, general elections are not won or lost in the second quarter of the odd year. Second of all, like both party nominees are going to have- That's a straw man argument. All-

Okay, that's fair. But like both party nominee, major party nominees are going to have all of the money they need. Like they are going to have access to a ton of cash between them being the nominee and all these super PACs and stuff. And in general elections, like you get like, you know, like billions and billions of dollars are spent and like it becomes diminishing returns. And like, it doesn't really matter in the end. And I just think that how much Biden like is raising right now is just,

not going to be relevant? I don't know that I'm not as interested in how much Biden is raising now. I am interested in the fact that his campaign operation, like to describe it as bare bones, seems generous. And given that we know that he's going to have to run a very different kind of campaign than he did in 2020, and that there are pretty serious concerns with

Biden needing to turn out groups that are lower propensity, the fact that we don't see evidence of any of that infrastructure being created is

is noteworthy. Can he catch up? Sure. But it's kind of, it reinforces a pattern that we have seen from Biden in the past, which is that his campaigns have not made those kinds of investments, particularly the way the Obama campaign did. And that's really hurt him. You know, again, it's like this, it's the summer of 2023. A lot of stuff could change. But if we're looking for signals that

This is a signal of something to me. Two things. So one, for the sake of clarification, Amelia, when you talk about low propensity voters, you're talking about young voters and like Latino and African-American voters, right? In particular. Yeah. I mean, or like, I mean, African-American voters, like, you know, I would put in a slightly different category. But yeah, young voters, especially great example, Latino voters.

So the defense that I have seen, Nathaniel's defense is basically like, it doesn't matter, which, you know, honestly, perhaps it doesn't. The defense that I have heard is that the relationship between the Biden campaign and the DNC is massively different from the relationship between the Obama campaign and the DNC, which is that the Obama campaign was, you know, criticized repeatedly by Democrats were kind of letting the DNC hollow out.

And now the DNC is raising a lot more money and doing a lot more of the organizing that the Obama campaign would have done in the 2012 election. And so that it actually doesn't need to spend as much money in order to do all of that field organizing. And the field organizing may well be getting done, but just by the Democratic National Party, not by Biden's organization itself.

itself. Now, maybe we shouldn't take that messaging at face value. So if folks, you know, have rebuts against that, I want to hear them. But that's what I have heard as the sort of key differentiator between Obama and Biden thus far. Yeah, I've also heard that about the Biden-DNC relationship as opposed to what the relationship was between Obama's operation and the DNC. I will say that Politico put together some numbers where they

pointed out that overall biden's team his joint fundraising operation and the dnc all of that together raised about 72 million dollars in the second quarter

By comparison, Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee raised $105 million during the same period in 2019. So if you're trying to do something apples to apples here, that is a lower figure most certainly. So –

Nathaniel is not wrong though that at the end of the day, there's going to be a ton of money spent in the general election and there will be diminishing returns at some point for all that spending. So the second quarter of 2023 will not tell us much about the final outcome. But I do think that if you saw this pattern continue for the next quarter or even two quarters, that at least would point to maybe some deficiency, possibly anyway. Yeah.

And to that point, let's get back to the primary. In the primary, cash really does matter. It's not a situation where everyone is absolutely inundating the airways. Campaigns may have difficulty raising money, they may spend it too quickly, and whether or not your campaign actually has money ends up becoming sometimes a determining factor in whether you actually even make it to Iowa and New Hampshire. So considering that, how do we place the candidates?

Do we agree that DeSantis is in a difficult spot because of his burn rate and fundraising numbers so far?

Maybe let's start there. I have the spicy contrarian take on DeSantis, so I'll let somebody else make the lame mainstream media take. No, just go with your spicy take. I've already basically set you up for it. I've already made it. Yeah, just do your spicy take. He was a big fundraiser. A lot of his cash came in early on. He raised $20 million approximately, but he spent too quickly and now only has 12. And folks like Tim Scott now have more money than him and may be better prepared to weather this.

the storm, we can tell that DeSantis is worried because he's already firing staff and reshuffling things seemingly in order to position himself to sort of make the distance. There are already analogies to Scott Walker's experience, which is that he came in with a lot of promise and fundraise quickly. The Cokes backed him, but his burn rate was too high and he ended up fizzling out like many promising young upstarts,

In years past. Okay, Nathaniel, contrarian take. There you go. Okay, so I really don't see this, the doomsday scenario for DeSantis. Like, I think, I kind of think it was, the spark for this was the layoff, the staff layoffs, which obviously is something you don't want to see if you're running a campaign. So I won't defend that. But if that hadn't happened and I was just looking at these fundraising reports, nothing would raise a red flag for DeSantis.

me. So the first thing is let's talk about that burn rate. So first of all, he raised more than, than any candidate in the second quarter. I think that is impressive and is worth like, that's a big point in his favor. Um, he did spend, uh, $8 million and that's a 39% burn rate, but that is not the highest share in the field. So Trump actually had a 51% burn rate. Nikki Haley had a 49% burn rate. So like, why are we picking on Rhonda Santas here? Second,

I think that like Ron DeSantis has this super PAC never back down that like he's very famously there have been a lot of stories about how he's delegating a ton of his campaign stuff that they can't coordinate technically. But like basically this his super PAC is taking on a unusually large share of what is traditionally kind of considered campaign work.

And we don't have the fundraising for his super PAC yet. That's going to be released at the end of the month. But reports are that they raised more than $100 million. So they are not going to be kind of short for cash. So the other thing is that I already mentioned the $20 million that he raised more than anybody else. But the other thing is that he jumped into the race on May 24th, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley and

And Vivek Ramaswamy had the entire quarter and other people also had the entire quarter raised money. And if you prorate what Ron DeSantis raised for the entire quarter, like if he had been raising at that pace for the entire quarter, he would have raised over 48 million, which is way, way, way ahead of Trump's 18 million. And even if you take in this criticism that I've seen that people, that he raised a bunch of money right after his launch and then kind of it slowed down the pace. If you just go by the pace of

of from June 3rd on, that would prorate to $36 million raised for the quarter, which again, still much more. That's twice as much as what Donald Trump raised. So I just don't see the reason for concern for DeSantis.

How realistic would that be for DeSantis though? Because I mean, one of the things that came out of the report was that he's mostly getting big dollar donors who will be maxed out. He can't go back to those people to donate again. Only about 15% of the money that he raised came from small dollar donors. So that, that,

That does seem like kind of a problem for him. I agree. I think that an over-reliance on big donors is something you don't want to do. And maybe that is why they reacted with the, you know, and maybe they know, I mean, I'm sure that the DeSantis campaign knows things that I don't. And, you know, maybe the fact that they laid people off means that things really are looking bad under the hood. But we also don't really know how many, like, so yes, with that caveat that absolutely you'd rather rely on small donors than on big donors. We also don't know how many of those big donors he's tapped out yet.

Like he presumably does have a very impressive Rolodex of big donors. And maybe they're all used up or maybe there's still more to go. I just think that like...

The narrative is getting too cute by half here. Like, I think it was overall an impressive quarter for Ron DeSantis. There are signs of, you know, like there are a couple of things to be concerned about. But yeah, no, I think it's like hard to say, right? There's no like one metric of fundraising that's like, this is the be all end all, right? Like there are things to like about some candidates' fundraising reports. There are things to dislike about them. And I think overall, DeSantis' positive that way is negative. Yeah.

Nathaniel, I appreciate you coming with the receipts on DeSantis' behalf today. That was a good breakdown. The total receipts. The total receipts. That one's for you, FEC nerds. So, how

However, you were mostly looking at what's already happened. And if you read some of this reporting and read into the layoffs or whatever, it seems like there's some sense that big donors within the party are souring a little bit on DeSantis. Now, the degree to which that will actually happen is yet to be seen. But that leads us to talk about another issue.

sort of high profile number in these reports from Tim Scott, which is that in terms of cash on hand, he is in the ranks of Trump and Biden.

What's going on? I know that that's in large part because of the amount of money he brought into the campaign. And he's also been spending a decent amount of money in the early states, but still has a lot. So what's going on there? Like, is the money that he's spending and will be able to continue to spend changing hearts and minds in the early states at all? I mean, there's some evidence that he is doing better in Iowa polls. You know, he's gone from low single digits to high single digits there.

So maybe that is a sign that he is making progress. I mean, I think there's a lot of reason to think that too. You know, given his message, he's sort of,

trying to be someone that voters who like Donald Trump like, but also someone who voters who don't necessarily want Trump again might also like. And so if you sort of think about his messaging, he had a pretty good rollout, as much as you can tell from a rollout being good or bad to his campaign. And he's got all this money socked away from his Senate campaign. So he's working with kind of a nice chunk of cash to begin with, not to mention I know he has a sizable

cohort of big spending donors backing the super PAC that supports him. So there are, I think, a lot of positive signs for Scott. And he does, because of that big war chest from his Senate campaign, he just has some runway to see just how far he can get, how much he can continue to rise in the polls and the money to spend to maybe do that. How about the self funders?

Are you know, we're seeing Vivek Ramaswamy and Doug Burgum put in 10s of millions of dollars into their campaigns. Is that paying off for either or both of them?

I think it seems to be paying off for Ramaswamy. You know, I wrote an article on the website the other day that said, you know, pointed out that he's risen to fourth place in the national polls. He may be having a bit of a moment. You've seen, I think, one or two polls that have put him at like 10% nationally.

which is pretty good. I think it's TBD, whether he'll be able to sustain that. We may be in for a kind of a discovery scrutiny decline phase. He has a message, A, that

um, that Republican, that are Republican voters are receptive to and be, he has the resources, uh, thanks to his wealth to get them out. Doug Burgum, on the other hand, he's interesting. I don't think we really know, like he has actually spent the most money on TV ads of any candidate in the race. He is a wealthy tech billionaire. Um, and he put, I think it was something like $10 million of his own money into the race.

but we haven't seen a lot of evidence that it has paid off yet. So there haven't been a lot of early state polls, but he hasn't budged in New Hampshire really. I think the last poll I saw there was him at 3%. And in Iowa, actually, no poll has asked about him since he entered the race, which I find curious. So I don't know. I'm open to the possibility that maybe he's in like the high single digits like Tim Scott is, who's also been spending heavily in those states. But

But yeah, we don't really know with Doug Burgum. But the other thing with him is that there's a lot more money where that came from. So if it has been moving the dial, then maybe he could continue to climb. But also if it hasn't, then it's like, okay, well, I used up my one trump card, which is my money. And now what? Yeah, Nathaniel, we'll see where things go. And for the sake of transparency, I will say that we were actually going to talk about Vivek Ramaswamy today and talk about the piece that you wrote. We have gotten

way too excited about all of the other things on the docket today. You know, third party candidacies, money, money, money. We will get to Vivek Ramaswamy, I assure folks. One question, though, before we go, which is that like in 2020, when Democrat, the DNC had its own rules for making the debate stage, one of the

requirements in order to make the first Republican primary debate is that candidates have to have at least 40,000 individual donors with some geographic diversity amongst those donors. And we are also seeing in an attempt to get that many donors, some candidates are

rolling out these like gimmicks where they're basically paying people to donate or entering them into a lottery or what have you so one do we know who's made the debate at least on that key marker so far and in addition are the gimmicks working yeah so you know we don't have uh fully publicized donor accounts for everyone but i think we can pretty safely assume um

I mean, you can look back at Donald Trump's first quarter data, and I don't have the exact count, but he probably has 40,000 donors. So right now, in terms of people who said that they are at 40,000 or more donors, we know that Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Haley, and Scott have it. And Chris Christie also recently said on TV that he has now gotten 40,000 as well. So you have six candidates there who have either –

Release numbers are said to reporters that, yes, we've got 40,000. Obviously, we won't know that until they're actually double checked. But at least our experience in the 2020 cycle is that people were not misleading about their donor counts. We never had an instance where someone was caught like lying or something about their donor count. So that's six. And obviously, you also need three national polls at at least 1% or two national polls and one early state poll at 1% or more. And

And we only have one qualifying poll so far, so it's very TBD at this point on who will actually make it via polling. But I do think the ones we don't have numbers from yet, it does seem like Burgum might be able to get to 40,000 donors given that his campaign said that they had –

managed to get 20,000, and this was as of July 12th, so this was actually a few days ago now, 20,000 people to take them up on this $20 gift card they were giving away for donations of as little as $1. And so if that, you know,

If that was a sign, then they were going to do 50,000 of these to make sure they got over the 40,000 donor hump. It seems like there's a good chance that Bergen will at least have the donors. I can't speak for the polls. As Nathaniel pointed out, that might actually be his bigger hurdle at the end of the day. But that does seem to have been, at least based on what we know at this point, at least a somewhat successful hurdle.

uh, kind of creative tactic. Um, there are some questions about the legality gave people money to give money. So it's, which, yeah, which some, some, some, some, some campaign finance, uh,

experts have raised questions about just how legal that is because there are rules against straw donors where you give money and then you're reimbursed basically for the money you give. And in a sense, this might be a roundabout straw donation situation. But who knows if that'll actually end up being a challenge for them or not. Yeah.

If only we were allowed to make political donations, Doug Bergen would be paying for my lunch today. But sadly, we are not allowed to. There are a couple other. You actually wrote an article, Jeffrey, about some of these gimmicks. Francis Suarez, who I don't think we know if he's made the cutoff yet or maybe he hasn't yet, is sort of rolling out a sweepstakes lottery of sorts. What's going on there? Is that working at all? Have we heard from him? Well.

Well, we, so his campaign specifically, so his, his actual campaign was trying to give away a pair of tickets to Lionel Messi's first game for enter Miami in major league soccer.

I'm not so sure if that's going to be a terribly attractive donation scheme only because maybe it mainly gets people from Florida because it might be easier for them to get to an Inter-Miami game. Nonetheless, that is a pretty hot ticket. I was looking at Inter-Miami's ticket site and for a front row seat, depending on the section, there were some trying to resell for like $10,000.

Eh, we'll see. We'll see about that. But nonetheless, it could be something that people would want to give a dollar for the chance of winning that. And at the same time, perhaps more, like a greater attractive sweepstakes of a sort. Suarez's, the super PAC supporting Suarez was going to give away, if you donated to his campaign, at least a buck, a sweepstakes where you could win $15,000 toward college tuition.

So, you know, maybe if you go to a public university in most states, that might be the equivalent of one year of tuition. So that could actually get, I think, more of a national reach in terms of people being extremely interested. What I will say is that based on the FEC numbers, Suarez did seem to be very well short of 40,000 donors. We don't have numbers for people who give under $200 because they don't have to be itemized in the same way.

But I looked at his campaign and it was like his FEC numbers and there were like 360 donations of $200 or more, which is a lot less than $40,000. Now, granted, and it made up, I should say, most of what he had raised. So we'll see where he's gone in the next couple of weeks. We won't be able to see those numbers for a long time. Maybe these sweepstakes have attracted a lot more donors, especially if they only have to give a buck. So it's...

I would say we're kind of flying in the dark on that front. All right. Well, we're going to keep tracking who ends up making the first Republican primary debate. As a reminder, it is on August 23rd. And if there ends up being a second debate because a bunch of folks qualify, there will be a second on August 24th. So get ready for your end of August vacation to be interrupted by

a hot Republican primary debate in Milwaukee. We're going to leave things there, though, for today. So thank you, Amelia, Nathaniel, and Jeff. Thanks, Galen. Thanks, Galen. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and also on video editing. 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.