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You have nausea. Kaylee is jet lagged. I'm recovering from pride. Jeff, what's your problem this morning? I don't really have any excuses. All right, you're carrying the podcast. Yeah, I know. So let's just all leave and just monologues for an hour.
Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. It is the final week of June, and that means that we're attentively awaiting the decisions in several high-profile Supreme Court cases. Those remaining cases touch on issues including affirmative action, student loans, business services to LGBTQ people, and the power of state legislatures.
In anticipation of the ruling on affirmative action, we've seen various public opinion polls with conflicting results on the topic. So we're going to ask good use of polling or bad use of polling. And then in our second good or bad use of polling segment, yes, we do have a double header today. We're going to ask what to make of RFK Jr.'s relatively strong Democratic primary polling.
Plus, the Republican presidential primary field has grown again with the addition of former congressman from Texas, Will Hurd. He joins a crowded anti-Trump lane. So what's up with all of these anti-Trump candidates in a primary full of voters who like Trump? And lastly, this weekend marked one year since the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs, and we're going to consider how that decision itself may have changed public opinion on the topic.
Here with me to discuss is senior reporter Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Welcome to the podcast, Amelia. Hey, Galen. Also here with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Galen. And tech and politics reporter Kaylee Rogers. Hey, Kaylee. How's it going? Hey, everybody. It's going good.
Good to hear. So I should also say that, of course, we're watching the situation in Russia and maybe more to the point how American politics is reacting. We're not going to be covering that today, but I figured I would just shout it out up front. So you didn't think that either a, this was a prerecorded podcast and we were unaware or two that we had simply forgotten. We do know that it happened. Um,
But we're going to be covering other things today. And if it becomes relevant to our area of focus, we will certainly cover it. Let's move on to our good or bad use of polling for today. So we often try to gauge whether Supreme Court decisions track with public opinion.
And various recent polls have been trying to get at exactly that as this term wraps up. And there's one from CBS News and YouGov that asks about affirmative action. The problem is, though, that depending on which question you look at within that one poll, you get two very different answers as to how the public feels about affirmative action. So when asked whether affirmative action should be continued or abolished,
abolished, a majority, 53% of Americans, said it should be continued. However, when you ask whether colleges should be allowed to use race in admissions, an even larger majority, 70% of Americans, said it should not be allowed. So on one hand, Americans say they support affirmative action, but when asked about one of its applications, probably its most high-profile application, they...
oppose it. Jeffrey, why don't you kick us off here? Which is a better use of polling if we want to understand how Americans feel about the issue? I mean, I think I would be inclined to go with the more specific question as the better use of polling. You know, what is the Supreme Court case sort of directly dealing with? It's centered on
The use of race in college admissions. And so that probably tells you more about the specific issue. But I would say that probably what's just important for thinking about issue polling in general is that we've seen this kind of split between a more general question about a topic and
a more specific question, you know, one where there's some more specificity about the particular issue or program or what have you. So like thinking back to the general sentiments around government spending during the debt ceiling debate, people tended to say, hey, we're spending too much or we should cut spending. But then if you ask them, you know, about hypothetical cuts to specific programs, voters or Americans, depending on the poll, they tended to oppose that.
hypothetical cuts. So, you know, if you push them on things, they'll say one thing, but maybe the more general question, you get a slightly different answer. I want to dig into that a little bit more. But first, let's get everyone on the record here. So Amelia, what are your thoughts in terms of which is a good or bad use of polling, or if one is in particular, a better use of polling?
I kind of love that these two questions got asked together. I mean, I think it points to something that we see a lot, particularly in polling around affirmative action, which is that this is a topic that Americans are either ambivalent about, truly ambivalent, have conflicting feelings, or are just confused about.
And either way, that is good information to have when trying to assess how something like a Supreme Court decision banning the use of affirmative action in higher education admissions might land. And I think what we can see from this is that, you know, overall, Americans might not be
super opposed to the substance of what the Supreme Court might be about to do. Again, we don't have an opinion yet. We're just sort of guessing based on how we think the Supreme Court's conservatives might go. If they ban it, Americans might not be opposed to that.
Yeah, Americans might not be opposed to that, although I think there are some caveats with that, too, that we can talk about more. But the term affirmative action itself has become politically loaded in a way that is relevant for the Supreme Court. And so, you know, the Supreme Court is.
having a headline saying the Supreme Court bans affirmative action in college admissions is probably going to have a different impact than the Supreme Court bans the use of race in college admissions.
And one of those headlines is the one that most Americans will read. So I really liked that they did this, and I don't think it's a problem that the answers were conflicting. I think it reflects both a lack of information about how affirmative action actually works on the ground in higher education and also some real jams.
genuinely contradictory feelings about whether using race in college admissions is a good thing. Okay, so more specifics I want to dig into in a second there, but Kaylee, again, let's get you on the record. Yeah, I know it's really boring when we all agree, but I'd agree on that one. I think with issues polling, you know, it's so challenging because, you know,
you're relying on a certain level of understanding and knowledge about whatever that issue is and then asking people their opinion on it. And people's depth of knowledge is going to vary naturally. So I think when you have these broader questions and more specific questions, especially when they're paired together, that's where you can actually kind of glean some kind of information. If you just ask one or the other, it's not super revealing. There was another poll from AP that asked, it was a little more specific in,
asking opinions about affirmative action to do with college admissions specifically. And 63% of respondents had said that the Supreme Court should not block colleges from considering race or ethnicity in their admissions systems. But in a following question, they also said that
race and ethnicity should not be a significant factor. So that was 68% of adults said that. So you're seeing, you know, there's some nuance here. They don't think it should be banned outright, but they don't love the idea of it being, you know, a significant contributing factor or maybe the number one thing that colleges would look at. And it's a complicated issue. So you can see that people kind of have very nuanced opinions on it.
when they do understand it, and then also maybe have some questions or lack of knowledge in certain areas. So I feel like this was a good use of polling for a complicated issue. So before we focus more on polling methodology per se, looking at other contexts, are we able to say how Americans feel about this as an issue beyond just the wording in this specific poll?
I mean, I think that wording really, really matters a lot. And a Washington Post-Schar School poll that was conducted last fall did basically the same thing that the CBS poll did, asked the question in multiple ways. And they found that nearly identical shares of Americans supported a Supreme Court ruling that would ban colleges and universities from considering a student's race and ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions. So 63% supported that.
And 64% thought programs that promote racial diversity in higher education are a good thing, which, of course, is the end goal of affirmative action to promote racial diversity in higher education. And people who work in higher education have pretty universally said that having race
be officially taken off the table as one of the many criteria that they use when they're evaluating an applicant for admission to their institution will hamstring their ability to create, you know, racially diverse college classes. So I think what that points to is that people are
have really conflicting views about how racial diversity should be achieved. I think if you ask them in a poll, and again, like it's a little hard to say how much of this would be social desirability bias, like people feeling like there's a right answer to this question.
But generally people will say that it's a good thing if there is more diversity, more racial diversity in higher education. But many people don't like the idea that something like your race or your gender would give you an explicit leg up over someone who had a different race or a different gender.
And that's where I think it gets really complicated because what people in higher education admissions will say is, well, we don't – it's not like people go into different piles depending on their race. Previous Supreme Court decisions have made it clear that this can just be one factor among many. And so –
I think it's complicated and people actually genuinely don't know where the line should be drawn. It reminds me a little bit of the polling on abortion that we would look at a couple of years ago, where you ask people if they have a view on abortion, they'll generally say they have a pretty strong view one way or the other. But when you get down to the specifics of when should abortion be legal in
they had a really hard time telling you. And I think this is another area where this is something that we have struggled for decades to figure out. And so it's not a simple thing. And I think it makes sense that Americans' ambivalence and confusion would also be reflected in the polling. So when it comes to question wording, there does seem to be some conflicting results. And CBS tweeted out the results of this poll, and they got
Some attention because, of course, the results seemed conflicting. One person, Roy, responded to the tweet saying, example number one million for why issue polls are garbage. Most people aren't informed on the issue and pollsters can't anchor the poll to actual results like they can for election polls. Ignore issue poll results and be liberated. Okay, Roy coming out with some very, very strong comments.
Words there, but let's accept Roy's argument for just one second, because...
Issues do also get a vote sometimes. And there has been an affirmative action referendum in California, which is oftentimes pointed to as an example of affirmative action, while sometimes social desirability bias or, you know, wording. So, for example, affirmative action is ultimately a word that was created by people who wanted something.
the policy in place because it's a more positive sounding thing. Like obviously political consultants do this kind of thing. Like if you ask someone, do you want to tax wealthy people's estates? You'll get a different answer than do you want to death tax, right? Like people use words to try to prompt a certain feeling about a policy. And so affirmative action is like the more positive wording for this policy. When you went to California, very blue state that votes for Joe Biden, you know, by what more than 20 point margin and 2020 at the same time,
They voted against the use of affirmative action in public schools in California by a 15-point margin. And so people will say that when you take away all of the different emotions surrounding the words or some of the confusion or whatever, like people probably understood what they were voting for. The wording was pretty clear on the California ballot. Democrats pushed hard for the state to allow affirmative action in public colleges and universities.
And ultimately, the public said no. And so, I mean, folks point to this as that's how people actually feel, put the polling aside. What do you say to that? I mean, I think you could take that as one piece of evidence for that. I'm not sure that I would say that it is...
absolute proof of Americans' position. To some extent, it's going to depend on who's showing up for an election. Now, granted, I believe that was the 2020 presidential election, so about the highest turnout imaginable.
So in that sense, you probably got a fuller expression of the public's views than you might have if this were a referendum in a midterm year or even an off year. But I think we always have to be careful about overstating the context of how things were campaigned, the messages that were used by both sides in making their case to voters.
Just because California voted the way it did doesn't mean that, I don't know, New York tomorrow couldn't pass something at the statewide level. I mean I'm not sure New York would ever have that kind of situation arise. But just as an example, I mean in what, 2008? Didn't California vote?
against legalizing gay marriage. Obviously, that issue has seen a lot of movement in terms of opinions shifting towards greater support for it. And I think it might be harder to know where things are going with affirmative action in the same way to the point we were talking about earlier that it's maybe grayer than just saying, should gay marriage be legal? But I'm just saying that I don't think
It would not have been appropriate in like 2011 to say that the gay marriage vote in California was proof, proof, proof positive of something is my, my larger point. So taking that example, do you think that this is an issue that could be similar to same sex marriage? Because my sense is that this debate has been around a lot longer than the same sex marriage debate was around in 2008. Like,
use of race in quotas or in public life and colleges and government and jobs. Like the idea for same sex marriage wasn't commonly discussed in the 90s in the way that affirmative action was discussed lots in the 90s. And for, you know, three or four decades before that. Sure. No, I don't want to say that the issues are like parallel. I think I was just trying to say that
one election result for a proposition shouldn't be taken as like a certainty about how it could go if there's a debate in another state where there's a referendum on the ballot involving some sort of affirmative action program for something related to its colleges. I just think it could conceivably pass in another state. So I just – I don't want to like overstate one state's result. Yeah.
And this was a proposition repealing another proposition. So the background of this is that in the late 90s, California voters voted to ban affirmative action or the consideration of race and ethnicity in public education, also in public employment. So it was fairly broad. And so I think also there is potentially an element of
The people who cared about this are the people who are more likely to oppose affirmative action and therefore were more likely to actually like read through all the fine print and vote on it. That being said, I think if I if you had to, you know, if you put a gun to my head and you said, do Americans support affirmative action or not? I would probably say more of them don't.
do not. Just based on all the polling I've reviewed and the fact that in general, they seem, a lot of Americans do seem really opposed to the idea of something that is not a colorblind treatment in higher education admissions or employment prospects. That being said, I'm
I wonder what the implications will be down the line if the Supreme Court does ban the use of race in higher education admissions and colleges and universities, particularly elite, highly selective colleges and universities, get a lot less diverse. I don't know how Americans will respond to that. But I do think that the vote is reflective of something, which is that even if Americans are ambivalent about this issue,
even if they're confused, that it's not something where there is a strong consensus toward affirmative action as it exists. And I would say that sort of the bulk of public opinion leans in the other direction. Do you guys think that's fair? I think so. And I think that I agree with you, Jeff, that like we don't want to take one election result as like this
this is all the evidence you need and ignore the polling completely. Roy, I got to disagree on that one. But I do think it is a useful bit of information and does reveal a bit of, you know, people can have all kinds of opinions about these ideas in theory, but then when it comes down to brass tacks and it's going to impact them and maybe their job applications or their kids' college applications,
suddenly the reality hits home and they have a different point of view and they're a little more honest about what they think of these practices. An interesting poll that was conducted by New Public Agenda USA Today and Ipsos Hidden Common Ground, it's a very long name, sorry if I got that slightly wrong, was fielded in February and March of this year. And it found that
Majorities of Americans prefer institutions to equally distribute resources to all communities rather than make additional investments in Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American communities to close gaps. Similarly, 63% of respondents did say that racism makes it more difficult for people of color to succeed in the U.S.,
But more Americans said that individuals should play a role in overcoming racism than said that institutions like the government or schools should. So I think there's also something of a complicated interplay here where even if Americans do think it's harder for, say, students of color to be accepted to highly selective colleges or, you know, if we want to expand to public employment to, you
public employment, they don't necessarily think that there should be a government policy to try to fix that. And then, of course, there are the Americans who don't believe that systemic racism exists at all, which, you know, is not a majority of Americans, but that group of people definitely exists, too. Yeah.
You go in another poll with The Economist, broke it down by partisanship and race and so on. And when you ask, you know, does everyone in the U.S., regardless of race, have an equal opportunity for education? Fifty six percent of Democrats said no. Thirty eight percent of Democrats said yes. And of the two parties and independents, they were the most likely to say no. So they said, no, there's not equal opportunity. But when you ask them that,
should race be allowed to be considered in an application to a university, 48% of Democrats in the same poll said it should not be allowed. 40% of Democrats said yes. So it's interesting the way that this sort of splits Democrats significantly. And it's one of the dividing lines within the Democratic Party. So we will see what the Supreme Court does, of course. And
and maybe we'll come back to this issue later on, but we've got a lot to cover today. So I do want to motor. So let's move on to the second in our good or bad use of polling double header.
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You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com. This polling example relates to the candidacy of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr.,
Last week, the New York Times published an article headlined Why Robert Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 bid is a headache for Biden. And the piece reads, quote, Mr. Kennedy's support from Democrats, as high as 20 percent in some surveys, serves as a bracing reminder of left-leaning voters' healthy appetite for a Biden alternative and as a glaring symbol of the president's weakness.
They continue,
They also worry that if Mr. Biden does participate, enough independent voters angry with him for trying to elevate South Carolina may cast a protest vote for Mr. Kennedy to deal the president an early but cosmetic primary defeat. Okay, Kayleigh, is this write-up based on, you know, polls as we've seen ourselves that show Biden in the 60s with RFK Jr. in the 20s in terms of percentage support, is it a good or bad use of polling?
I feel like this is a bad use of polling. We're giving way too much credit here. A headache for Biden? I don't know. I feel like this is more like a hangnail than a headache. It's like, would it be great to have zero challengers in the primary and especially, you know, someone with great name recognition not running? Sure. But like, this is not really a serious issue. I think...
There's certainly criticisms to be made of Biden's campaigning and, you know, what that could mean for the general. But I really don't think that there's significant reason to be concerned about the primary at this point. There's always challengers to the sitting president in the party's primary. It's not special to Biden. It doesn't signify anything unique.
Interesting. Okay. Bad use of polling. Strong bad use of polling. Amelia, where do you come down? I mean, I think I'm with Kayleigh. I think this was a really, I'll say this is a very overstated use of polling. Yes, there is lots of evidence that Democrats are less than enthused with the idea of Biden running for reelection. We have evidence.
lots of evidence of that outside of this polling. We knew that before Biden even jumped into the race. Democratic voters are worried about the fact that he's old. They may not think that he's delivered on key promises. You know, this is not like the fresh new candidate to inspire a new generation of Democrats.
So I think it makes sense. Or even an old generation of Democrats, potentially. Or even an old generation of Democrats. Yeah, exactly.
So I think it makes sense that we would be seeing people grumpily registering their opposition in the polls. However, as this New York Times article makes it clear, if you read the whole thing, Kennedy holds views that are pretty anathema to most Democratic voters. He is much more aligned with the Republican Party on many key issues than
And the main reason that people seem to like him is that they see that he's a Kennedy and the Kennedys still have a good name brand. And they don't know that, in fact, this Kennedy does not is not sort of in the old school mold of Democrat that I think people associate with RFK or JFK. So, you know, I think that.
I think there's a desire for drama in the Democratic primary. I felt that very much in this article. And it's just not there right now. Okay. Right. That same poll that found the 20% support for Kennedy then did a follow-up question asking why and had a whole long list of reasons. And the plurality, which was also 20%, respondents said that it was just name recognition. They're like, I've...
I like the name Kennedy. That's it. I have a response, but Jeff, I'm going to let you go first.
Yeah, I mean, I'll just make it a clean sweep again. I think it was a bad use of polling. I think it's a situation where, I mean, there's just kind of a number of things. Like you can get very, you can almost be tedious and say, Kennedy's support from Democrats as high as 20% in some surveys. As we know, you know, the max is what you should be using to sort of describe how someone's performing. Like Kennedy usually is getting in like the mid-teens in a lot of these polls. Yeah.
But I think it's – as Kayla was pointing out, like people have heard of Kennedy. It's almost like Kennedy is a – another candidate on steroids as like a choice in a poll where there's not significant opposition to Biden. And so if it was just Biden and someone else –
Kennedy is like the super jacked up version of someone else right now. And I think if you take the context of what Amelia was talking about, where his views are just do not fall in line, like you're talking about like a, like somewhat pro Russia anti-vaxxer,
Boy, let me tell you, that seems like the perfect candidate to win the Democratic presidential primary. No, of course not. So to me, I'm highly skeptical. I will say that there is an interesting point in here in their write-up talking about New Hampshire. I think they, again, overstated to some extent because I think if it's Biden versus Kennedy versus Williamson in the New Hampshire primary – or sorry, if Biden is not even on the ballot –
But Biden could very well win as a write-in because this has happened before. LBJ won twice as a write-in in the New Hampshire presidential primary. And so if Biden is not on the ballot, I also think that like most independents –
in this context, will probably end up voting in the Republican presidential primary. So that whole situation with New Hampshire's place in the calendar has not even been finalized yet. It's still hanging out there. So I think at this point, it's a lot of speculation. But I know that we're already seeing stories about, oh, RFK might win the first two contests in the Democratic presidential primary. But of course, if he does that, it'll be situations where neither of those contests will award any delegates. So it's going to be a situation that people should be
a little more cautious about. And again, Biden could very well win as a write-in in those despite not being on the ballot because there is plenty of precedent for that. Not to be pedantic, but what you're describing sounds to me a little bit like a headache. So like, I understand the view that
RFK Jr. is not... I mean, it sounds like a bunch of journalists who don't know how presidential primaries work is probably more accurate. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Or my thinking here is, I don't think the assertion is that his nomination is at risk. I think it's that this is annoying, and this is far more annoying than, like, Bill Weld ever was to Donald Trump. Because he is registering 20% in the polls. Like, that's notable nationally, right? Like, we can talk about how sometimes, like, for example, in 2012, Trump,
you know, Obama got a primary challenger in West Virginia who got 40% of the vote. That is just West Virginia, right? So we're talking nationally here. Obviously, even if Democrats demote Iowa and New Hampshire, the entire press is going to be there. And there's going to be a lot of focus on the fact that if RFK Jr. were in those two beginning contests, that it would be a
self-fulfilling prophecy, but like the amount of press that showing would get would be a headache for Joe Biden. And on top of that, I mean, if you get who's actually supporting RFK Jr., once again, I mean, it furthers your point that this is about name recognition and not actual policies, but he's doing well amongst people of color, young people, women voters. So it's areas where we know that Biden is weak and RFK Jr. is standing out there as a sort of like mirror of Biden's weaknesses and
And I think that's what headaches can be made of. You know, like, will he lose the nomination? No. But like, is this annoying as hell? I have to think so. Again, I kind of go back to my jacked up, steroided out someone else. I will say this. It could be interesting to see if Biden ever actually pays any attention to RFK Jr. And it is true that the scenario laid out where, you know, I...
I think the Iowa thing is going to maybe not matter, but the New Hampshire situation could matter where the only candidate on the ballot or like RFK is one of the names on the ballot and Biden is not on the ballot. And there's going to be a lot of coverage of that. Like will Biden actually say anything about RFK Jr.? Maybe in that circumstance. So in that sense, okay, could be a headache. The thought to me is that Kennedy is getting a lot of support because his last name is Kennedy. And in the months to come,
That could very well change. And because people are disgruntled. And I agree with you, Galen. I think the fact that so many Democrats are disgruntled with Biden is a huge headache for Biden. I just don't necessarily think that like RFK is...
is inherently a problem for Biden. I think that like he is, he has, as Jeff was saying, he has a recognizable last name and most people don't know what he's actually about. And so in that sense,
Yes, it's annoying for Biden, but I don't think it's like a real annoyance. He is not an actual threat to Biden in any meaningful way. And so that's what I think is overblown. Like, I think these articles are making the primary seem more complicated or seem more competitive than it is. Whereas what we're seeing, I think, in fact, is just a symptom of a problem that we already know Biden has.
which is an enthusiasm problem among his voters. And that should be a headache for him. That is a big, big problem for him. But that is not a problem for him because RFK Jr. is running for president. And that is what...
I think the distinction is. Exactly, exactly. It's like they're trying to conflate these two issues, which, as you said, we already knew that there was a lack of enthusiasm for Biden. There was polling, you know, right before he even announced where fewer than half of Democrats even wanted him to run again. That had nothing to do with RFK running and
the reality is like, that's, that's sort of irrelevant. The problem of the lack of enthusiasm is a problem. It's something Biden needs to address. And they do say in this article, you know, they have some interesting reporting about like, I think it was Pennsylvania mayor's like,
going striking out on their own, trying to like tell constituents about things that the Biden administration has done because they don't feel like the campaign has communicated it effectively to voters. Like that's a problem that has nothing to do with RFK though. And whether he was running or not, that would still be a problem. I don't think that RFK's, you know, comparatively high support, you know, compared to Bill Weld or whoever else in 2020 is
I don't think that that's emblematic of that dissatisfaction. That's emblematic of people knowing the name Kennedy. Right. Yeah. If a Kennedy had run against Trump in 2020 in the primary, I mean, Republicans don't, you know, insert like if someone with the last name Reagan had run against Trump in 2020, we might have seen the same thing. Yeah. I mean, I think it's fair to wonder, like, if Kennedy weren't running and it was Marianne Williamson running,
is like the most recognizable person running against her. Would we be getting stories about, ooh, Biden could lose the New Hampshire primary because he's not on the ballot? I mean, that's the question, right? And I suspect that because his main opponent right now is a guy with the last name Kennedy,
That's why that guy's polling as well as he is and why you have these stories, because otherwise I'm not sure they'd be writing them for Marianne Williamson. So that makes me, that's like another reason why I just kind of take this to be like, just kind of a bad use of polling. So I have two, two questions here that I think can help determine whether or not this crosses the headache threshold, which I know is not a numerical one. So one would be, does, does,
I think obviously in this article, when you read it, you'll see that the campaign and the Democratic National Committee take pains to say absolutely nothing about RFK Jr. because they don't want to, you know, the Streisand effect or whatever, they don't want to make RFK Jr. seem more legitimate than he is in their minds. So two questions for me. One, does it get to the point, because obviously if you educated Democratic voters about RFK Jr.'s views, the vast majority of them would not support him.
So does it get to a situation where the Democratic apparatus, Biden world, like sort of probably not directly from the campaign, but if it gets to the point where his surrogates feel like they have to do that education, like they have to go out and tell Democratic voters like, hey, this guy doesn't support vaccines. This guy has said pro-Russian or like basically described the invasion of Ukraine in a pro with pro-Russian like sympathetic manner. Do they feel like they have to do that? One. Two is basically
Does this challenge and the weakness that it, although it doesn't in itself represent it, it highlights that weakness. Does it take on a form in any way similar to like Pat Buchanan and Bush Sr. in 1992, where even though it was never plausible that Buchanan was going to win that nomination, it arguably hurt Bush Sr.'s
image by the time he got to the general election. So I think the interesting comparison to the Buchanan-Bush matchup in the 1992 Republican presidential primary, the difference there is sort of an obvious ideological challenge. That Buchanan made sense for a conservative voter. Yeah. Buchanan had a long history in the Republican Party. I mean, you're talking about a guy who was like a Nixon aide who was involved. It
Reagan, aid, like these guys, he was involved in Republican politics for years and years, was well known within the party and was presenting, was basically making the case that George H.W. Bush had not been conservative enough. And to me, the thing is that like RFK Jr.'s challenge doesn't have those elements. I mean, maybe he's making a case about certain things with Biden, but to me, it's like,
So much of the focus on RFK Jr. is on the views that don't fit with the Democratic Party that like, you know, this is not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez running. Like that would be interesting in terms of thinking about like an ideological challenge, right? Like speaking of heights.
Yeah. Oh no, that would be a true, you know, that would be a full on migraine, right? Like, yeah, no, that would be, that would be a, that would be a headache for Biden. That would be real fascinating. Real quick. Yeah. So, so like, that's how I view it. It's like, if someone who was like well-known within the party, uh,
went and did that and was making a clear ideological challenge to Biden, you would have a Buchanan-esque situation. Whereas with RFK Jr., I just don't feel like it quite fits that. It's kind of gadfly-ish.
than anything. He's also getting a lot of attention and support from conservative media figures like RFK Jr. is in a way that like... Which Ocasio-Cortez would not. Well, I mean, she would. I mean, maybe for similar reasons because they would want to make Biden look weak. Maybe Schadenfreude. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. But I
I think the other thing to bear in mind is that we are in the summer of 2023. By the time the New Hampshire primary is actually happening, Republicans will be having an actually competitive primary. I, we would assume I,
I guess maybe it's possible they won't be, but it is much likelier that they will be having an actually competitive primary at that point. And I think in that sense, people are just not going to be as interested in what's happening on the Democratic side. I think part of what's happening now is that we're just in a slow period for the campaigns. The GOP primary is sort of
ramping up slowly. We haven't had any debates yet. There isn't a lot of political drama. And people are looking at these polling numbers and saying, ooh, like, could this be interesting? And the reality is, like, it's not going to be interesting. And Biden, I think, is, to answer your question, Galen, I think is going to really go out of his way to not engage with RFK Jr. because I think the downside of even having
people in, you know, Biden world who are surrogates and not as like not having Biden. Biden's obviously not going to say anything, but even having Biden people coming out and engaging with him, the negatives of that for them are just so much greater than the potential positives. And I just think it's like right now we're just kind of looking for what's going to be the interesting thing in the campaign. And I can understand why you would look at these numbers and say, ooh,
this might be interesting, but if you like do the tiniest bit of scratching under the surface, it becomes obvious that this is again, just a
a symptom of a problem we already knew Biden had, which again does not, I mean, I don't want to underplay how big of a problem that is for Biden. And like, I think, I think Biden is, is going into the primary as a, you know, a weak incumbent in many ways, but it's not because of the people who are challenging him. Yeah.
Yeah, he's got he's not going to be addressed. It's like that Mad Men meme where it's a Ginsburg is like, I feel sorry for you. And Don Draper says, I don't think about you at all. That's exactly what he's going to take. Oh, that's that's really good. I think another way of just just one last thought on this is that to the point that that you guys have been making, it's like clearly Biden has issues with with at least some part of the Democratic base, especially younger people, people of color, you
And that is a challenge for him. And, you know, it is entirely possible that the Biden game plan is win renomination, get to face Trump again, and that will magically solve all the problems. You know, maybe it's that simple from sort of the general election outlook. But, you know, at the end of the day for him, it's like he's, you know, he's looking at polls where his approval rating among self-identified Democrats is like roughly 80%. And, you
That's not a world where he's going to be in danger of – even remotely in danger of losing renomination. Now, if that changes in the next couple of months, maybe there's a universe where someone significant jumps in and then we have something actually interesting happening in the Democratic presidential primary in terms of the context of the candidates themselves.
Um, and not just being about Biden's weakness and Biden's weakness being symbolized by what we're seeing with like, you know, machoed out someone else, RFK Jr. Um, so that's like, that's the sort of, I think a good way of looking at it. All right. We'll leave it there. See, aren't you guys so glad I disagreed with you all? Look at how fruitful that conversation was. It's always better when we fight. Yeah. Well, I, that's why I didn't want to say it was like, I don't, I don't think it's like a,
Straight up bad use of polling. I just think they wanted they like it's it's like you just want you want it to happen. You want to make RFK Jr. happen because we're all a little bored and RFK Jr. is just not happening. Like that's OK. Reality. Well, with that, let's move over to the Republican side of the primary.
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The Republican primary field grew again last week when former Congressman from Texas, Will Hurd, announced that he too was jumping in. That brings the total count of major GOP candidates to 11 or 12, depending on how you count. And at 538, we count 11, but I understand if you count 12.
Hurd jumped into a race dominated by Trump so far with a clear anti-Trump message, joining the likes of Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, and to a lesser extent, Mike Pence and Francis Suarez, who had gotten in the race the week before Hurd. First of all, let's start with this. Jeff, you wrote about Will Hurd when he jumped into the race. What is his pitch to Republican voters? And like, what's his backstory?
Hurd is a former three-term congressman from Texas. He was formerly in the CIA. He's African-American. I think he's pitching himself as something of a sort of straight shooter who is looking to stop hating everybody. Like basically he's like, I want our party to be positive and forward-looking and I want –
I think we need to move forward from Trump because Trump has been very damaging. He was critical of Trump in light of the recent indictment.
regarding Trump's handling of classified materials and more openly critical in a way than a lot of the other Republican candidates have been maybe skirted being super critical. Like Heard wasn't, he's like, I'm not afraid of Trump in his announcement. So he's like sort of clearly occupying, you know, or joining this group of candidates who could be actually described as sort of anti-Trump or Trump skeptical. So I think that's how he's pitching himself. Of course, you know,
Probably not very well known as a former three-term House member. In the polls that we saw before his announcement, he was at 0% and all but one in national surveys.
So quite a challenge ahead of him. I think also the fact that he has said that he will not take the RNC's pledge regarding supporting the nominee, which makes me wonder if he's actually interested in getting on the debate stage because that's one of the – you have to agree to that. Now, granted, Trump may not sign that.
But Trump's also pulling, you know, slightly above 50%. So he's in a somewhat better position to say, no, I won't sign that yet. In writing about his candidacy, one of the things you focused on was like, okay, now this anti-Trump lean is getting pretty crowded with some of the folks I mentioned. How broad is this lean's actual appeal in a Republican primary contest situation?
And I think there's a couple different ways to approximate that. But what conclusion did you come to? So, you know, I was kind of using a shorthand like this. There's I think there are just a bunch of different ways you could go about trying to enumerate the share of the electorate that might be open to an alternative to Trump. Like it could be as high as an alternative to Trump who is not Trumpy. I think some of the polling questions, the way that they're worded, could suggest that number might be as high as half.
But I think the reality is you have a poll like – there was this survey from YouGov and CBS News that asked if Trump couldn't be the nominee, would you like someone who is similar to Trump or not similar to Trump?
And three-fourths of Republican primary voters said similar to Trump. And to me, that's sort of indicative of what Republican primary voters want is not someone like Will Hurd, who is a candidate who would not be described as Trumpy in almost any way. So that's the challenge for these anti-Trump candidates. And now maybe on the one hand, it makes sense
that you have almost an equal number of candidates who can be described as anti-Trump or Trump skeptical as you do candidates who are pro-Trump or Trumpy or however you want to define those things.
because a bunch of – the party is more Trumpy than not now, and the people – those high-profile figures in it are more Trumpy than not. But are any – are a lot of them going to want to challenge the man himself? Probably not. So maybe it's easier to make a contrast with Trump. So maybe that's why you have the Chris Christie's of the world running and the Will Hurds of the world running, even if they have basically no chance of winning the nomination.
because they can contrast themselves with Trump. They have criticisms they want to make public about Trump, and they may have some hope that they can somehow shift the party at least somewhat in their direction in the long run. But in terms of like how much of the party they actually appeal to, it's pretty clear it's a minority. Right. It's a bigger challenge for the candidates that are trying to kind of like thread that needle, sort of like the Nikki Haley types where it's like,
They're somewhat like maybe very mildly critical of Trump, but mostly on his side. But like, you know, if you're playing this out and you're hoping your campaign goes well and things get whittled down, eventually you're going to be going up against just Trump. And, you know, how do you campaign against somebody while also being their ally? That's a lot harder than coming out the gate, being anti-Trump and positioning yourself as oppositional to him.
I mean, the thing that is really baffling to me about all of these anti-Trump candidates is just why there need to be so many of them. You would think that if there was a real feeling among a minority, but like a significant minority of party elites, that there needed to be a strong challenge to Trump, that they would have some kind of plan.
And what it seems like instead is that a bunch of people who all have various problems with Trump are seeing themselves as the person who can come in and sort of change the race. But there's like the separate question of like, if you're not going to be on the debate stage, then I genuinely don't know what the point is, because then, you know, maybe Trump won't be there either. But like, you don't.
You lose one of your biggest forums to actually engage with the man. But also, the more there are of these candidates, I don't think this is a strength in numbers situation. I don't think this is a situation where people are going to look and say, ooh, there are five anti-Trump candidates who are running. That must mean that there is a strong anti-Trump sentiment. They're just going to sort of
They're all going to be fighting for like a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of oxygen. And I think it just increases the probability that they're all going to be drowned out. And that's what I really don't understand about it because...
It seems like they're being driven by a real conviction that Trump needs to be challenged for the good of the party. And I believe that they feel that, truly. But it's just such a strange strategy. Can anyone else make this make sense to me? Well, I think...
it will reach a point where it truly doesn't make sense if there isn't a systematic winnowing process. So like, yes, a lot of people can jump in and say their piece and Wilhurt can talk from the perspective of being in the CIA and Asa Hutchinson can talk from the perspective of being the governor of a very red state. And Chris Christie can talk from the perspective of being a former ally. And Mike Pence can talk from the perspective of
being an evangelical Christian. And like, they all have their thing they want to say. If they're all still in the race come Iowa, then yes, it absolutely does not make sense. But from that perspective... But if they're not even going to get on the debate stage, Galen, like that's the other thing I don't understand is like, what is the point if you're not even trying to debate? I mean, I think most of them will get on the debate stage. I guess Will Hurd is really just going the extra mile to say like,
I will not support Trump even if he is the nominee. So I cannot take that pledge. Like I, I guess he, I mean, obviously there are other reasons to run apart from becoming the nominee. So we have to consider all of those as well, but you got to sell some books, you know? I mean,
I mean, but I'm like genuinely, I'm trying to think of it because there is the explanation of like you have to have a massive ego to be a politician. And I'm sure a lot of this is ego and people just thinking that like I am the person who can change this dynamic. But I also think that there is genuinely a sort of a feeling of like this is for the good of the party. And that's the lack of thought behind it. But I think that is where the win-win comes in. Clear thought. There –
You know, having a bunch of different opponents is probably not, like, necessarily better for... I mean, say it was only Chris Christie. I don't think that would be, like, better for the movement of anti-Trump Republicans if it was only Chris Christie, like, giving the anti-Trump message. If you thought, like, all the anti-Trump people were, like, we are behind... I mean, I don't know if Chris Christie...
I mean, Chris, let's like, I don't, I don't know if Chris Christie is the person, but like Jeffrey, I think you've talked about Larry Hogan being someone who could maybe pick up some support. And you really think like if, if all the anti-Trump people support,
If they all said, hey, we're all in on, let's say, Larry Hogan, and we're going to endorse him, and we're going to push for him, you don't think that would be more effective for their cause than having five or six random people all polling around zero? No, their best hope is they all drop out and support Ron DeSantis. That's really their best hope. Honestly, that's their best hope. Yeah, but I mean, DeSantis is...
you know, very Trump adjacent. So in a lot of ways he doesn't solve the, like for those who truly oppose Trump within the party, DeSantis doesn't necessarily solve that problem. My, my attitude with Hogan was not that in any way, I just make this clear that he could actually challenge Trump. Oh yeah. Make some noise. Just yes. And clearly the guy eats up a lot of headlines. People love to go talk to him, ask him things. So he would get a lot of attention and,
He doesn't have Christie's baggage. You know, he didn't shut down a bridge, um, uh, among other things like, uh,
So to me, it's sort of like you need somebody who is sort of outside, so a governor in this case, someone who doesn't have a bunch of obvious red flags, and someone who has a compelling story. Hogan survived cancer, governor of Maryland. I just think in that way, he would have been a better choice for – if you have like anti-Trump forces within the party trying to coordinate –
showing evidence of candidate coordination, then that's the kind of candidate they would have wanted. Not that he could ever have won, but I think he would have been a more compelling figure to make the case against Trump than having, to Amelia's point, a number of people trying to do that, one of whom is pretty well known in Christie, but the rest of whom are not
very well known at all. Now, not that Hogan's that known nationally, but he's known among the media. So maybe he's like a Huntsman type character. You know, John Huntsman, his run where he was clearly like too moderate to win, but the media kind of loved the guy. I mean, you would have a similar vibe here, but now in this universe where Trump has defined the Republican Party.
Right. And I think that's to your point, Amelia, this is just the evidence that there isn't this coordinated, strong faction within the Republican Party to have a counter to Trump. You know, there's not that big of an anti-Trump appetite. And that's why, you know, the two people leading...
The primary are Trump himself and Ron DeSantis, who's very Trump-like in his policies and positions in populism. I sort of agree that there isn't a well-coordinated anti-Trump movement. I have to think there's also some sense here that people are just going to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Like if you had fielded a poll of Republican primary voters in the summer of 2015 and asked like,
What percentage of you would like the presidential candidate to be like Donald Trump
like 14% of Republicans would have said, yes, I want the candidate to be like Donald Trump. But obviously through accumulating power and getting your message out there and like being in the media, you can change people's minds. So I think, I think to some extent, people are just hoping and praying that you put enough different stuff out there and something almost as like magically as Trump came on the scene that like that comes on the scene and like, you know, catches people's imaginations. And like, look,
It doesn't happen that often, but sometimes the primaries work this way where for some reason or another, something catches fire and captures voters' imagination in a way that you couldn't have predicted until it happened. And that may just be an element here as well. But again, I don't want to give like too much
too much credence to what I think is ultimately several attempts that are extremely, extremely long shot and not well coordinated. But again, it will get to the point where it truly does not make sense from an anti-Trump perspective if they are still in come the early primary states. Well, and it's, you know, the Republican Party's in an unusual position with this primary where it's, you know, it's, they don't have an incumbent, but it's not quite totally an open primary either in that they have Trump, a one-term president who would like to serve again. And,
That's, you know, that's not typically, it's obviously happened before, but it's not typically how it goes. So you're left with people challenging and trying different things and approaching it differently, just because it doesn't follow the normal sort of narrative that we're used to. Yeah, Kaylee, good point. So let's wrap things up for today by taking a look back at how public opinion has changed over the past year. We started things off by talking about
public opinion in relation to the Supreme Court. So we'll wrap the same way. This Saturday marked one year since the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade.
In the years since the court found that there's not a constitutional right to abortion, 20 states banned or restricted the procedure. More than 60 clinics closed, according to The New York Times. And according to data analyzed by FiveThirtyEight, tens of thousands of women traveled to different states to access abortions.
During that time, it also appears that minds changed. We saw notable shifts in favor of legal abortion, an area where opinion had been pretty steady for decades, and those views likely had consequences for elections over the past year. So,
A year on, Amelia, you have taken stock of some of those changes in public opinion and also the changes on the ground. So if you could just sort of give us a – I laid out some of the numbers, but give us a little bit of a lay of the land because you've been working with WeCount on some of this data. Like how have things changed on the ground so far?
after a year? So on the ground, in terms of people's ability to actually get an abortion, what we've seen is a number of states just going completely dark. So, you know, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, a bunch of other states, just not possible to get a legal abortion there. Of course, that does not mean that people are not getting abortions there. We know that people are getting pills through the gray market and ending pregnancies through other means.
So we know that abortions are still happening in those states, but they're not legal abortions. And we have seen from this data that we've analyzed that is the closest thing to real-time data that we have about how abortion numbers are changing in the U.S. Again, this is legal abortion numbers that...
The number of abortions has fallen very dramatically in parts of the country where abortion has been banned or restricted. And it's risen very dramatically in other parts of the country where it's remained illegal. And those data in combination with the fact that, you know, we can talk to abortion funds, we can talk to people who have crossed state lines, we can talk to doctors and clinics about what they're seeing on the ground. We know that many, many people are traveling. Um,
And so the reality is that some people are almost certainly not getting out of states where abortion is banned and are not terminating pregnancies other ways. And those people will carry pregnancies to term or their pregnancies will end another way, some pregnancies and naturally, obviously.
But the real trends that we're seeing is this tremendous disruption in people's lives as they go to really significant lengths to obtain an abortion when one is not legally available close to them. OK, so this is an incident where I think oftentimes we see in politics that.
thermostatic public opinion, where some sort of like prevailing view gets some power, legislation passes, et cetera. And we see that, you know, public opinion will move against it. But I think you could say there's probably two things going on here. One, things are really changing on the ground. So any changes in public opinion may be a reaction to just how life has changed for, you know, people observing the world around them, particularly in states that have had significant restrictions. There's also something else going on here, which is like,
Now that conservatives had a big win, oftentimes, you know, they'll just be a countervailing force that's like, oh, okay, things are getting too conservative. So I'm just going to like feel a little more liberal in my views as like a, as a, as a countervailing political force. I mean, don't ask me why this happens. I think it probably makes intuitive sense, but it is a phenomenon that has lasted a long time in American public life. So two things going on here. Those all have come together in, and maybe there's more going on as well.
How has public opinion changed over the past year? So overall, when you look at the trend lines and there's a question that gets asked on a bunch of different polls, it's just a simple four part question. Do you think abortion should be legal in all cases? Legal in some cases, illegal in some cases, illegal in all cases. We are seeing a little bit of a shift.
It's not a huge shift, but the share of people in polls that we on our team collected over the past almost two years, the share of people who think that abortion should be legal in some cases has gone up, and the share of people who think that abortion should be illegal in all cases has gone down. And that is a trend that I've seen replicated in other places. I am fairly confident that that is real.
And I think that is reflective of something that is happening more broadly, which is that before the Dobbs decision or really before the Dobbs leak,
People didn't think that Roe was actually in danger. People were pretty okay with the status quo. I mean, we saw consistently 50 to 60% of Americans wanted Roe versus Wade to stay the law of the land. They didn't really think that such a big disruptive change would happen.
And they didn't like to think about the issue of abortion. I wrote a story back in 2021 when the Dobbs oral argument happened. And I talked to a bunch of people about their views on abortion. And they just really hadn't thought super carefully about it because they figured we have this Supreme Court case that's governing the country. The law is what it is.
And like, I don't really have to engage with this. And most people will not have to think about this issue on a day-to-day basis. I mean, the number of women who will have an abortion in their lifetimes as a share of all women is relatively high, but that's like a one-time thing that happens. People don't always talk about it to their friends and family. Often they don't because of stigma. And it's not the kind of thing that is going to be, you're going to be thinking about all the time, even if it has happened to you, although having it happen to you does change your views.
So what I think we're seeing is that people's views are crystallizing in a way that they didn't before Dobbs. And people are becoming much more skeptical of the idea that politicians should be making these decisions. And that's something that we're particularly seeing among a subset of
of Americans, Democrats, women, and young people. And we're not just seeing that in questions about the overall legality of abortion. We're seeing that in views on whether abortion should be legal in the second trimester, whether abortion should be legal in the third trimester. Those have historically been pretty unpopular positions. Americans historically have said, yes, abortion should be mostly legal in the first trimester. Kind of like, eh,
they're not as sure in the second trimester and they don't think it should be mostly legal in the third trimester. We're seeing really dramatic shifts, not to full majorities among those groups, but huge shifts over the past few years toward individuals
even wanting abortion to be mostly legal in the third trimester. And in my conversations with Americans, what I heard from them was just a real feeling that politicians are getting this wrong and that they feel like they have more of an understanding of why someone would have a third trimester abortion. And they really don't feel that that should be regulated by the people who are not party to that decision.
So I think, and people are feeling much more strongly about those views than they did before Dobbs. That's the other piece of it. Yeah. So it's those sub groups that you mentioned, I think that are getting close to a majority, right? Like looking at the Gallup polling. So in 2018, it was 13% of Americans who said that abortions should be generally legal in the third trimester. And now it's 22%. And for second trimester, it was 28% in 2018. Now it's 37%.
So significant rises sort of overall, but still not that close to majority compared to the first trimester, which is 60% in 2018 and 69% now. Right. And I want to be clear, you know, it's still, there's still much more of a consensus for first trimester abortion. But the thing,
about what's happening now is that there are also plenty of states that have banned first trimester abortion or are restricting, continuing to restrict first trimester abortion. So in a sense, what has also happened is the politics of this issue has shifted where it used to be more complicated to
They would say like, oh, we need to make it easier to get third trimester abortions. And Republicans had a really easy to retort to that. And now things are more complicated for people who are on the side of wanting to restrict abortion because they're having to defend things that, you know, overall Americans are pretty uncomfortable with. And Republicans are not really backing off.
of those stances. And what we saw in state legislatures this year was that a number of first trimester bans and restrictions passed, even despite this environment that would suggest that that's really not what most Americans want. And so I think that is also making people feel more strongly about this, particularly on the left, because they believe that public opinion is on their side and that Republicans are doing something that is...
is genuinely not what the American people want. And that's something I heard from a lot of people I talked to as well. There's like just a lot of anger about it. Amelia, do you think this is just a, you know, hypothetical, because I don't think that the data you looked at would be able to answer this, but I'm just curious if like those changes, you know, when there's the status quo, then you can kind of just keep your status quo opinion. But now that there's all these changes, it kind of forces people to engage with the issue more.
anew, maybe read more about it, maybe learn more about it. And that could be shifting things as well, just because they're confronted with the fact that maybe the laws in their state have changed or, or, you know, the neighboring states or what have you. We definitely see that. I mean, we see polling showing that people in states where abortion is more restrictive now think that the law is too restrictive. And this is also an event that had
just huge penetration. Pretty much everyone heard about it. That's really unusual for something like a Supreme Court case or really, you know, like any major political event for everyone in the country to be reading about it and talking about it. And for those conversations to continue, I think it makes total sense that people's
You know, I'm hesitant to say that people's minds changed because I think overall on the question of abortion, good or bad, I don't know if people's minds have changed super substantially, but I think people are...
really questioning the policies that are being enacted now and are unhappy about the direction that things are going in a way that they definitely were not before Dobbs. And so there is much more of a backlash than I think maybe even Republicans would have expected because they had successfully curtailed abortion access in a lot of these states prior
prior to the Dobbs ruling. And people didn't really care about that because they weren't really paying attention. And they also were, you know, like pretty, you know, they're kind of okay with restrictions, not okay with bans. And so now...
It is sort of forcing people to rethink what am I actually comfortable with? And more people are coming down on the side of, you know, hey, maybe maybe politicians just shouldn't be messing with this at all. All right. Well, we are going to leave things there for today. Of course, we have a week of Supreme Court decisions ahead of us that we will be discussing.
tracking. But for now, thank you, Jeff, Amelia, and Kaylee. Thank you. Thanks, Galen. Thanks, Galen. My name is Galen Droop. 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 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.
