The GOP Field Gets Crowded 59:38

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We were in the bathroom getting ready before this. You're like, oh, I had this really tasty mac and cheese. And I was like, Nathaniel, are you lactose intolerant? I would like to know before sitting next to you for an hour and a half. And you were like, no. And I was like, really? You're the only adult in their 30s I know who isn't in some way lactose intolerant. And you're like, well, well, dairy isn't as easy on me as it used to be. And I was like, oh, dear, we're in for a long podcast.

I would like to clarify for the record that when I said I can't digest dairy like I used to, it means that I've gone from eating a pint of ice cream at a time to half a pint of ice cream at a time. Okay. I can still handle my ice cream, my dairy. Is this what always happens when you do podcasts in person? It gets this personal. Oh, scatological humor. Yeah. It can get off the rails fast.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. By the end of this week, the number of major candidates, according to FiveThirtyEight's metrics, running for the Republican presidential nomination is expected to grow to nine. That's because three people plan to jump in in the coming days, Chris Christie on Tuesday and Mike Pence and Doug Burgum on Wednesday. Now, if you're thinking, to what end with regards to Pence or Christie, we're simply

Who, with regards to Doug Burgum? Well, dear listeners, you are not alone. Today, we're going to talk about how these candidates might shape the race. Also, last Friday, the Republican National Committee announced the date and criteria for the first primary debate. It'll be on August 23rd, and candidates have to sign a pledge to support the eventual nominee, among other things. But most notable for our purposes are the polling criteria.

There may not be that many polls that actually qualify according to the RNC. So is that a good or bad use of polling? And of course, over the weekend, President Biden signed into law a suspension of the debt ceiling through 2025, along with some cuts to federal spending. The large majority that the bill received in the House wasn't quite what some skeptics would have predicted earlier this year. So how'd they get there?

And here with me to discuss in studio, no less, we can now widen the shot and you can see everyone here if you're watching along on YouTube or on the ABC website. Here with me in New York in person is senior reporter Amelia Thompson DeVoe. Welcome to the podcast, Amelia. Thank you. It's very exciting to be here in this lovely studio. Take your shoes off. Make yourself at home. Oh, I can take my shoes off? Great. Yeah, whatever you want. Can I sleep under this table? Uh.

I mean, it might be hard with all the lights, but after we all leave, you're more than well, you know, later in the day, no one's going to be using the studio. You can use it as you wish. Also here sitting next to me is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hello. Welcome. Hey, Galen. Thank you. It's going well. I'm always, you know, not sure whether I should be looking at you or at the camera. You should look at me. Pretend they don't exist. OK. All right. Sorry. Hi, Galen. How's it going? It's going. It's going quite well. I'm excited to have you guys here.

I also do, I have some housekeeping notes to share before we dive in. So we're going to be publishing one podcast a week for the time being, and it's going to be on Mondays, along with emergency podcasts as the news cycle requires it. Who's to say how often that will happen? I sure can't. The podcasts are going to incorporate parts of what has historically been the Thursday podcast and the Monday podcast.

and I'm gonna have a little more time to put into each episode, so I'm excited about what we're gonna be doing. In case you are worried about this change, I'll let you know that technically it actually started

two weeks ago but the first week we had basically an emergency podcast because ron desantis entered the primary and then the second week was a holiday week so we only had one episode anyway so fear not you didn't even notice that this already went into effect so let's so consider it galen i know i know just like eased people in um you know some people like change some people don't like change um change galen

It depends on what's changing. That's a cop-out answer. Do you like a good change? Not a bad change? Controversial. I love a good change. I love this change. I hate a bad change. That's fair. Yeah, that's kind of hard to argue with. That's actually my platform.

for only good change. Time for a good change. Time for a good change. Yeah, America, time for a good change. No bad changes. Thank you. Please and thank you. Okay, so let's dive into the matter at hand. Over the past week, Congress passed

passed and Biden signed the debt ceiling agreement that we discussed last Tuesday. So as I mentioned, it suspends the debt ceiling through January 2025, aka the next presidential election. It also keeps non-defense discretionary spending at the same levels in 2024 that they've been at in 2023 and only raises it 1% in 2025.

The agreement marginally expands work requirements for government benefits like food stamps and rescinds $30 billion in unspent COVID relief. It also cuts part of the IRS funding increase from the Inflation Reduction Act and ensures that student loan repayments will restart by the end of the summer.

As part of the agreement, the creation of a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia will be expedited. So those are some of the details, but all told, this deal saves somewhere in the range of a trillion dollars over a decade, during which time the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the U.S. will run $20 trillion in deficits. So Nathaniel, let's start with this. Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay, you were vocally skeptical of McCarthy's ability to get a

a deal after the many rounds of voting that were required in order to make him speaker in the first place. In the end, the vote in the House was 314 yeses to 117 nos, 149 Republicans voted yes, and 71 voted no. Even more Democrats than Republicans voted for the bill, but that's still overwhelmingly the majority of Republicans.

Why, in the end, was the House able to get such an overwhelming bipartisan majority? Well, because it was a bipartisan bill. I mean, you know... Oh, come on, Nathaniel. Well, I mean, it was... I think it was actually... Yeah, so like... So if you call a bill bipartisan, you'll get bipartisan support for it? That sounds like a pretty easy win. It was mutually, you know, arrived upon by Biden and McCarthy and his negotiators. And it seemed like it was pretty equitable. Like it wasn't like...

clearly a win for one side or the other. In fact, there was some interesting stuff about how Democrats were trying not to say that they liked the bill or that they were fine with the bill because they didn't want to make it that Republicans got mad that Democrats were too happy about the bill or something like that. But yeah, as you mentioned, a majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats both voted for the bill in the House.

And while it wouldn't have been able to pass without Democratic support in the House, I think it was also fair to expect a good number of Democrats to go along with it. I think McCarthy, you know, kind of to my earlier criticism or like skepticism of him, like he did a good job with this. Like he lost the Freedom Caucus. Basically, those are the Republicans who voted no, right? We're the kind of hardcore conservative Republicans who were really kind of hardline about no, we need deeper spending cuts.

but it didn't end up damaging the bill's prospects of passing. So he avoided basically being left with the bag in terms of a default. And it looks like he's going to maintain his speakership. It seems like he pissed off the Freedom Caucus enough that they voted no against it, but

Probably not enough to lose the speakership. There has been some talk about one of these motions to vacate the chair to basically like a vote of no confidence in his leadership. But I haven't seen anybody really take seriously the idea that McCarthy would lose that even if it happens. I guess there is an asterisk that we don't know for sure. But yeah, he did a good job.

you know, getting it through. But let's be specific about what we thought would happen or what you thought would happen when you were originally skeptical and why it didn't come to pass.

what were you thinking was going to happen in all of this that would have made, I mean, because back in the day you were thinking like, oh, the U.S. might actually come closer to defaulting than it has in the past. And in the end, it didn't feel that down to the wire this time around. I mean, less so than during Obama's presidency. Yeah, if people remember 2011, that really was down to the wire. Yeah, I mean, I kind of felt like what was going to happen was that we were going to get really down to the wire and,

that basically McCarthy wouldn't be able to cut a deal that didn't have the buy-in of the Freedom Caucus and basically Democrats wouldn't accept anything by the Freedom Caucus. I kind of figured that in the end, Biden or Democrats might pull one of these escape hatches that was available to them like the 14th Amendment or even like the trillion dollar coin or something like that or the discharge petition that was floating around and that kind of like Biden would be willing to kind of take it a little bit farther to the brink as well.

But it seemed like both of them kind of, you know, came to a obviously a kind of a gentler earlier agreement. And and yeah, we did obviously didn't default. We didn't come that close in historical historical context. And, you know, the bill wasn't it didn't end up being, you know, Biden acting unilaterally or whatever.

But I guess, like, why do you think that was, Nathaniel? And I'm not going to call you out as aggressively as Galen did for fairly making a prediction. You're always asking us to make predictions, Galen. And I just want to say that watching this, it makes me a little nervous about saying anything definitive, lest I be aggressively grilled later. To be fair, Nathaniel was pretty loose with this.

I don't know if I asked him. He was just like out there being like. Oh, so you're saying this is Nathaniel's fault. Okay. Well, anyway. That's fine. Got to be more careful. I can take my medicine. Yeah. But I guess like what was sort of, what were you expecting about the clumsiness

climate back when we were talking about this back in January and how did things turn out now I mean from my perspective I was expecting more of an appetite for a game of chicken than actually seemed to be on Capitol Hill and that was one of the the more interesting outcomes of this whole fight that when it came down to things people were pretty willing to accept compromise and they they were pretty willing you know even Biden came in saying I'm not going to negotiate at all and he ended up you

you know, with some not huge concessions, but significant concessions to the GOP. And so it's interesting that that's where we are, especially thinking about what happened when Biden was vice president under Obama, where there was much more of a kind of battle to the edge.

Right. I think basically what happened was I overestimated like polarization and the impacts of each party's fringe. Right. So like what happened was that McCarthy accepted a deal that, you know, the Freedom Caucus did not like. And I thought that he would be more kind of held hostage by the Freedom Caucus. At the same time, Biden really rejected the calls from the progressive side of the party to invoke the 14th Amendment or something like that. And he genuinely seemed to want to strike a deal with Republicans, which, of course, many progressives have rejected.

criticized him for making bipartisan deals, but it's been a kind of a hallmark of his presidency. And I think in those two ways, you know, Biden and McCarthy did act more kind of pragmatically, conciliatorily than I was expecting. Yeah. And really calling the bluff of the fringes, too. I mean, I think, you know, went to war over it.

Yeah, and the Freedom Caucus, I think, comes out of this looking weaker because they came in basically saying, McCarthy, you're a speaker, but you have to do what we want or we're going to get rid of you. And now, I guess anything is possible, but it doesn't seem like McCarthy is in real danger after cutting this deal that they really didn't like and were vocally opposed to. So it's interesting that they actually kind of turned out to be the losers here. Yeah, I mean, whenever you try to analyze why something

has happened in history, you can always look through many different lenses, right? You can look at the individuals involved, which in this case would be McCarthy and Biden. You can look at the overarching ecosystem, which would be the economy and the risks to the economy. You could look at the different institutional players like the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

When it comes down to it, how much does this just have to do with Biden and McCarthy themselves? Right. Like Biden has pitched himself as a unifier, this bipartisan minded president.

McCarthy, while he had to appease the right in order to become speaker, has long been known in Washington as somebody who's not of the Freedom Caucus types. You know, before Trump in particular was thought of as like quite a moderate and thinking about, you know. Well, I think he was conservative.

thought of as conservative before Trump, but kind of compared to Trump, he's considered more moderate because he's more of an insider. But I think he always wanted to be party leadership and sort of played nice with everyone in order to try to get there. And so wasn't committed to one wing of the party. I mean, does this come down to the politics of the person?

I think some of it, probably. I mean, I think from Biden's perspective, I really would not underestimate just the incredible risk this posed to the economy. If we had defaulted, there's been a lot of talk about whether the US is going to go into a recession later this year.

I know we're still waiting. Yeah, we're still waiting. I know. The recession clock. I know. Recession. I wrote an article, I think, in 2019 that was called Economists Are Bad at Predicting Recessions. And I wish I could just – I should just set it to auto-tweet like every two weeks to remind people that predictions of recessions are very bad. Don't listen. Economists don't know. Sorry, economists. But, you know, if you wanted to –

kind of guarantee that we would in fact go into a recession, defaulting is a really good way to do that because it was immediately going to put all kinds of people who rely on government payments into really vulnerable financial straits. It was going to cause chaos in the markets and the economy is already in a fragile enough place that it was especially risky to think about doing that. So

I always expected Biden to back off somewhat from his I won't negotiate stance simply because the stakes are so high for him. I mean, if he goes into 2024, his reelection campaign with the economy in a tailspin, that's really, really bad news for him because people are already quite skeptical of his handling of the economy, upset about inflation, etc.

So I think from Biden's perspective, it makes sense. And from McCarthy's perspective, you know, I can understand after what happened with his vote in January that he doesn't want to try to cut a deal with the fringes of his party. And he wants to, you know, kind of get past this and get some concessions and move on like they did not make a strong pitch for.

for working together when they almost derailed his speakership campaign. So, you know, in that sense, I think it's not hugely surprising. And I think some of it does have to do with circumstances in addition to personalities.

We talked a little bit last week about whether one side or the other can claim a win here. Obviously, both will spin the results as a win. I think numerically, if you look at sort of where did it come down closer to the over $3 trillion in cuts that the House passed

in their initial bill earlier this year or the zero spending cuts that Biden started with, it's numerically closer to Biden. It's not straight down the middle in that it's not 1.5 trillion, although the Congressional Budget Office suggested that it might be close to 1.5 trillion. But if you read the fine print, it might be even less than a trillion. So there's still some debate over how much was actually cut. But yeah, so whether it's based on spin or based on numbers, can one side really claim more of a win?

I mean, I...

I will admit that I have only been viewing this from a 30,000-foot view. I was going to say a normal American is watching it, but I'm sure that's not true because I'm sure the normal American is like, what? There's a debt ceiling? But I think from my perspective, it seemed like they both got a win and that they both got a deal that was not terrible for them, which it's divided government. You're going to have to give something up, and both of them gave up a little bit, but not too, too much. Yeah.

OK. And I mean, the idea we were talking about this in a chat last week where we were addressing this question of actually who lost more in the debt ceiling fight. And, you know, Biden is spinning this as something that's going to be good for his 2024 chances. But we're so far out from the election. You know, it's something that he can say now. Look, I.

more examples of bipartisanship under Biden and getting things done and government working for you. But the reality is no one is going to be thinking about this when they actually go to the polls. So even if that is

sort of an apparent win for Biden. I don't think that's actually going to pay a lot of dividends for him when it matters. Is it empirically true that Joe Biden has overseen more bipartisan work under his presidency than recent past presidents? I was trying to look this up, actually, to see if there was some study that has looked at this, and maybe there has been. And if anybody is aware of it, please send it to us. But I couldn't find anything. But it does kind of feel that way. But obviously, this is a database podcast, not Vibes, so I'm not going to

I'm not going to go there and say it definitively. Right, because you have, I mean, in a pretty high profile manner, you have the infrastructure, you have chips and science, you have this, you have, you know, some gun control, violence against women, reauthorization. So like, there's clearly some stuff that it's not, it's not just spin to be like, I've overseen bipartisan work. There's something there. We'll have to, I guess we'll have to do the empirical work to try to prove it one way or another. But are you guys ready to move on to 2024? Yes.

So ready. All right, let's do it.

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If all goes to plan, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, and current North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum are all getting into the Republican primary race this week. According to polling averages, Trump still has more than 50% support in the polls, like 53-54% at the time of recording. DeSantis has around 20%.

And everyone else is in the mid to low single digits. Of the three candidates expected to get in this week, Pence polls best at around 5%, which is technically third place in the polls, although I don't know if that's even a relevant statistic given that it's really sort of

If you look at our interactive, very crunched down there at the bottom of all of the people in the single digits, Christie and Burgum don't really register in the polls, maybe 1% or 0%. But I'm going to leave it to you two. Who should we talk about first? Ooh. And why?

I think we should probably talk about Pence first because he's the biggest name and the others will... It's so insulting to Chris Christie. So insulting. Maybe he should be vice president and then we can talk. Ooh, wow. All right. Okay, fine. Come back to us. Come back to us, Christie. We're going to talk about Mike Pence first.

That's not who I thought you were going to pick. I thought you were going to pick Chris Christie, but we're going to do Pence. So I think it's fair to say that prior to January 6th, he would have been considered one of the likeliest future Republican nominees in the country. You know, vice president, big credential. What did things look like on January 5th? And what do they look like now? Well, Galen, if you could press that little tab right there, which is if I think...

Boom. Nailed it. I would like for the record. All it did is that the tab said Civ, C-I-V, and I knew what it was. So I pulled it up. Okay. So this is a graph, which you won't be able to see, of Mike Pence's favorable and unfavorable rating among Republicans. And you can see that on January 6th, before January 6th, he was at basically... To people listening at home, you won't know this, but what

did was he pointed to a tab on my laptop that you couldn't actually see what it was because I had it open because I was doing prep and he just guessed at what graph this might be. Correctly. Intuited. Intuited. So on January 5th,

Among Republicans, Pence's favorability rating was like 90% according to the civics poll. Civics does a good job because they have a running track record of polls of many politicians' favorability going back several years. So it's a useful reference in this tool. There's a big drop off to around 60%, 60, 70% favorability after January 6th. And it's really only deteriorated since then and in January.

The current numbers according to Civics, only 38% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of him and 42% have an unfavorable opinion of him. And those are numbers we're used to seeing nationally among all adults, right? Because like, you know, we're a partisan country and everything's 50/50, but this is among Republicans. If you're trying to win the Republican presidential nomination and you are underwater with Republicans, that is a problem.

And if you look at like Donald Trump's numbers and like Ron DeSantis' numbers, they have like 80% of like favorable ratings among Republicans. And like that's basically like it obviously like people almost certainly aren't going to vote for you if they dislike you. So it puts a ceiling on your support right away. And then, of course, there's all the stuff about Trump having a dominant lead and DeSantis being the kind of natural alternative and having to take them down while still remaining on like voters' good sides. It's a hard equation.

Well, and I mean, what Pence did to cause this rapid slide in approval among Republicans was he refused to go along with Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, which Trump felt that Pence should be able to help facilitate. And since then, he has spoken out vocally against Trump. He's even testified in the special counsel investigation looking into Trump. And so he's turned into this kind of adversarial figure. But

you know, he's running against his former boss, which is always going to be a bit of a tricky proposition. And he's got these negative approval ratings. So he's dealing with a challenge that any Republican who wants to come in criticizing Trump is going to have to deal with, which is that the Republican base is predisposed to believe Trump and trust Trump and not trust this person who Trump is saying,

He is the reason that I am not president right now. So it is a challenging situation for Mike. And he does represent this much more traditional brand of republicanism. I mean, he's a very strong social conservative, conservative,

He's a religious conservative, and he's trying to lean into that, but there's just not a lot of evidence. I mean, there's some evidence, for example, that Trump might be weak among white evangelicals, as we've talked about on the podcast, but it's not—

a huge amount of weakness. And it's also not clear that Mike Pence is the candidate who is actually in the best position to come in and scoop up those voters. So it's yeah, it's not it's not a great outlook for him, unfortunately.

Yeah. And the interesting thing is that, you know, being a former vice president is usually a very good place to be when you're running for president. Unless you're Dan Quayle. Well, so the interesting thing is that actually, if our colleague Jeffrey Skelly and the article that will come out when when Pence announces. It's already written.

Take a look behind the scenes, viewers. I thought Jeff was going to write it once Pence actually announced. Yeah, yeah. In those five minutes between when Pence announces and the article goes up, that's when everything got written. Well, as Jeff will write...

He went back and looked at the polling situation for the vice presidents, former vice presidents who have run for president or sitting vice presidents who have run for president. And basically the comp for Mike Pence is Dan Quayle in 2000, which is...

not a good place that you want to be. Obviously, Dan Quayle did not end up being the Republican presidential nominee in 2020. Dan Quayle dropped out in September, I think. Yeah, well, I think it'll be interesting to see whether Mike Pence even makes it to Iowa. Okay, so given everything we've said, a couple questions come to the fore. One,

So that civics poll that you mentioned shows Pence actually underwater. If you take an average of Pence's favorability, he is above water with Republican voters. You know, Jeff will crunch those numbers between now and Wednesday and will publish them once Pence actually announces. Weirdly, I just had a dream in which I saw them last night, which is why I know what the actual average is. What were they?

- Sorry, I don't remember it that well. - He's got a consultant note. - You're pulling up your dream journal. Galen's dream journal is on his page. If this is what you talk about in therapy, Galen, I'm so sorry.

He is... His net favorability is plus 17. So that's all polls considered, which is significantly better than civics. So, I mean, but that's notable, right? Because Trump's kind of trashed the guy. Obviously, he had universal support before January 6th. And universal name recognition. And universal name recognition. So, one, who are his supporters? Is it more complicated than the religious right? And two...

If our data suggests, and his campaign probably likely knows, that he's not going to win the Republican nomination, what's he doing?

Well, I mean, what are any of the people who are jumping in this week doing is the question then. Isn't like unknown better than disliked? You know what I mean? Yes. Yes. Empirically, that is true. If you are unknown, you have a higher – it's still a long shot, but you have a higher chance of winning the nomination historically than if you are disliked. So I think the thing that we kind of forget about Mike Pence is that he was not – like he wouldn't have been –

a strong contender if he hadn't basically been the one person who agreed to be Trump's vice president.

Like what? You don't think that's right? Because he had these very strong social conservative credentials, but that was his base. There's a lot of competition for those people within the Republican Party. And as Trump's candidacy illuminated very clearly, they don't necessarily need someone who personally reflects their values and lives their values in a candidate. And that is one of the big things that Mike Pence had going for him, that not only did he

you know, like push forward religious values at every turn. He really lived them in his life. And we saw from evangelicals embrace of Trump, who is a very flawed candidate from the perspective of Christian theology, that, you know, they were more than willing to go ahead and support him because he was their crusader on so many other issues. And so I don't think that, you know, Pence,

Like, what is—he's the former vice president. He has name recognition. But I'm not sure he was going to bring a whole lot to the table, even if the January 6th stuff hadn't happened, if Trump is running. Oh, if Trump was— Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. But I think if Trump had won—

And then in 2020, then Pence would be the presumptive nominee in 2024. Really? Yeah. I think he would be a kind of a... He would at least be the front runner. He would maybe get challenged. Okay, so why is he running? Yeah. Good question. I think...

Ego is a significant part of it as it is for all them like like Amelia said um I'll be interested to see how hard he goes against Trump because given that he's kind of already burned his bridges with the people who like really love Trump It seems like he would be positioned to to you know Like you know people have been talking about how you know They need to attack like the other Republicans in the race need to attack Trump if they're ever gonna bring him down And it seems like he's somebody who could do that

But I'm not sure that he is, you know, yeah, like he's like too nice almost to do that. And also a lot of like, you know, if you like badmouth anything that Trump did before January 6th, you're also implicitly badmouthing yourself, right? He's in a tough position. I don't really fully understand why he's running other than the fact that, you know, he's a former vice president and he wants to be president and, you know, thinks that now is his time or that his time may never come again and he might as well try. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe he looks at the Ron DeSantis slump recently and, you know, his awkward interactions on the campaign trail, thinks that he could do better, thinks DeSantis is going to crash and burn, and then maybe that 20% support goes to him. Maybe he's trying to stay relevant and the hopes that, you know, in future he'll be able to run again. I mean, maybe it'd be better to...

flame out in the primary? I don't know. I don't understand the psychology, honestly. I think it's 90% ego. Most people...

run a couple times before they end up winning the nomination. And he's never run for president before because he didn't even run in 2016. So you're saying he gets one of his shots now. Yeah, one of his shots now. Sort of get familiar, get that email list going, make impressions on the people who matter in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. I should remind any...

potential candidates for president. Listening to this podcast, though, that it is not true that there is only upside to running for president. I think that has become the conventional wisdom because so many people have done it and benefited from it. Like Pete Buttigieg, a mayor from Indiana, or Andrew Yang,

a tech entrepreneur, people have been able to promote themselves quite a bit, get deals on television, or get set up to run for other office. It's happening right now with Vivek Ramaswamy, who's kind of came out of nowhere and now has this national profile. But there are people like

better at work. I don't think benefited from running for president. I don't think Michael Bloomberg benefited in any way from running for president. I don't think Julian Castro really benefited from running for president. I mean, he marked down some really progressive positions that are never going to help him win statewide office in Texas now. So there are ways that you can actually hurt yourself if you're if if the idea is that like,

why not run for president? You can always just go and get a deal on CNN or run for some different office. No, you might actually make yourself more disliked by running for president. Right. And I think the key is that the most obvious disadvantage to running for president is that you burn your bridges with voters back home. And I think that's why you see

former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie jumping into the race, they don't have that to lose, right? It's not like Mike Pence is going to go back to Indiana and run for something, right? New Jersey, you know, Chris Christie's career is over if he doesn't become president, right? The interesting thing is Doug Burgum, who is currently the sitting governor of North Dakota, who maybe would see his standing at home decrease, but, you know, we can talk about him later. Well, let's do it. Okay, so we've talked about Pence. Christie or Burgum, who's next? Let's talk about Christie. Okay.

All right, let's talk about Chris Christie. And that actually tracks because Chris Christie's story is a bit similar to Mike Pence's in the sense that at least once upon a time, he seemed very promising as a potential Republican presidential nominee or candidate. And by once upon a time, I'm talking about 2012. He was the popular Republican governor of blue state of New Jersey. But things he didn't run in 2012. And things haven't quite worked out for him with Republican voters since then what happened?

Yeah. So basically what happened was I think he is the poster child for not striking when your political window of opportunity is in front of you, right? So as you mentioned, in 2012, he was a popular governor. There were Republican donors knocking down his door to run for president because it was a very weak field. You had Mitt Romney, but he was polling in the

which is not a kind of historically strong place to be for the front runner. This was the cycle when you had like all these like fad candidates. So like there was Rick Perry had a moment and then like Herman Cain. And there was some, Newt Gingrich, like, you know, all these people had little polling bumps and it's very easy to see Chris Christie having at least a polling bump. It would have been on brand if you couldn't remember the name.

Rick Perry's experience in 2012. And yeah, so I think that that really was a very winnable cycle for many candidates who maybe regret not running or not doing a better job locking down support.

Chris Christie passes that year. Things happen. So there was Hurricane Sandy, which he got good reviews for dealing with in New Jersey. But then there was the Bridgegate scandal, which was this is when his aides emailed time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee. Basically, they closed lanes on the George Washington Bridge in order to politically retaliate against the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Who didn't endorse him in his real life.

realization. It was the most New Jersey story ever. It's like traffic, behind the scenes dealings, corruption. I think you're a little too close, geographically close to New Jersey right now to trash it so blatantly. You can save that for when you're back in D.C. No, no, no. D.C.'s pretty close to New Jersey too. You mean culturally? Yeah, it is a swamp. No,

Wow. Wait, are you on New Jersey's side or are you not on New Jersey's side? I'm on the underdog side. I only defend New Jersey in situations like this. I don't know. Never have I ever defended New Jersey this stridently. Yeah, I know. Really. This is like I'm going to hold you to this, Galen. You're very, very strong defense of New Jersey. I don't know. Whatever. I lived in Chicago for a long time. I lived in New Jersey for a few years. I feel like I can talk about corruption lovingly. Oh, yeah. Wow. It's...

Yeah. That's impressive. Yeah, like 10 years of my life. We just started a show called How to Spot Corruption with Amelia Thompson DeVoe. Oh, well, is it like is the first thing move to Chicago and read the newspaper? That's all I've got for you folks. I'm sorry.

Okay, where were we? So... Bridgegate. Bridgegate. Yeah, so Chris Christie's popularity tanked. He became pretty toxic, but then, of course, he decided to run for president in 2016 because, you know, he presumably wanted to run for president and that was always his plan and he was like, you know, why spoil a perfectly good plan?

So he runs for president in 2016, was never polling very good. I think he was at somewhere like 4% in our average at the time when he jumped in. He never really made any moves to improve upon that. And of course, he was kind of best known for basically taking down Marco Rubio in the New Hampshire debate and then dropping out after placing, I think, sixth in New Hampshire.

And now, of course, theoretically, if reports are to be believed, he's running for president again, and he's in probably an even worse position. Like his national favorable ratings were not good when, you know, in that 2016 campaign, and they are even a little bit worse now, according to Monmouth Polling. He barely registers in the polls. He's like zero or 1%, which is, you know, technically a little bit worse than 4%, but I think they're basically fun.

functionally the same. And yeah, so basically, and so the interesting thing, the question with him is why is he running? And I think that's the interesting. Right. So, I mean, I'm curious. He has telegraphed that his intention is to, you know, bring the heat to former President Trump in this primary and

That, you know, might have sounded a little bit more unique before Ron DeSantis got in and over the past week has done battle with him, although maybe in ways that are different from how Chris Christie will. How credible do you think his attacks will be?

I mean, that's the thing that he's struggling with because I think there's an argument that Chris Christie is a uniquely pugilistic personality. We certainly saw this in 2016, that when he is on and he is zeroed in on someone, he really can make them look very bad. But –

The problem is that to make someone look bad and not to make, for example, Christie look ridiculous or like a bully, you have to have an audience that is receptive to that person looking bad.

The trick for Christie is that Trump is much more liked among the audience that he is trying to reach than Christie is. So it's a similar problem to Mike Pence, although I think Christie has much more of a brand as a fighter and, you know, a guy who's going to get into into little tussles on the debate stage. Not literally, although I don't know what these debates, who knows? But you remember the Ohio Senate primary in twenty twenty two?

- No. - Oh, they almost brawled on stage during the debate. - That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Wait.

I don't think that was the debate. It was like some campaign. Yeah. Campaign for him? Yeah. Like someone stood up and like someone had to like, you know, talk another candidate down. I don't even remember. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's just, it feels like it's like every year, whatever. Anyway. Yeah. So I think, I think Christie is going to, that is something Christie is going to have to deal with. And I, I don't, I think it's going to be really hard for him to overcome because he's already, you know, positioned himself as kind of like the,

the attack dog. Maybe he's in the best position to do that. But anyone who is attacking Trump is going to have to be careful to not inadvertently strengthen Trump. And I'm not sure that Christie is really the most, you know, trusted or sympathetic figure to Republican voters. I think, you know, someone like DeSantis, while there is

a lot of risk for him in attacking Trump is a figure with a lot more credibility among Republican voters if he wants to go after someone who is still very well regarded among the people who are going to be voting in early 2024. Right, exactly. Like the problem is that like Chris Christie is not popular, similar to Mike Pence, or actually he was in an even worse position than Mike Pence because he, I believe, is underwater.

At least he was in the Monmouth poll. But yeah, like and part of that I think is because of this bad reputation that he kind of got leading up to 2016. But part of it is also I think that he is over the last couple of years been a Trump critic also in the wake of January 6th. And I think that the harder he leans into that, the worse that favorability score is going to go. Right. It's not like like basically like the source of truth in the Republican polls.

primary like is like donald trump and like we we recently had an article on on the website by um michael tesler political scientist who um made the case that basically like what is considered conservative is now defined around like basically are you pro-trump or anti-trump and like the more like if somebody like christy like like attacks trump like that is like going to make

like Republican voters view him almost like a Democrat. And then at that point, it's like, well, you know, like basically different. Is it from when Biden or any Democrat or CNN or whatever criticized? I also say Donald Trump is not Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio would like no offense to him was like, you know, he did not seem prepared for the heat that Christie brought. And,

This is what Trump loves. Like this is this is he breathes this kind of thing. So I think just objectively, it's going to be harder for Christie to get his punches to land with Trump, even if this wasn't such an unfavorable landscape to begin with. So I think, you know, if we look back, we say, yes,

Christie has his track record of taking down front runners. I really would not put Marco Rubio and Donald Trump in the same category in terms of their ability to be publicly humiliated by Chris Christie. I think it's going to be much harder to do that for Trump. OK, so Chris Christie, Mike Pence could be facing some similar challenges if they plan to run campaigns that focus on criticizing Trump.

Doug Burgum, though, has a different plan, which is more of a cash-based plan. We think. We think. We think. We think. I mean, he'd be an idiot not to. So...

I, like our listeners, know relatively little about, I think this is the first time I've actually, in a prep doc, just put the Wikipedia article to the candidate and not other information, like a write-up or some data or research or whatever. It was like, here, read about when he was born, what he did for a job, where he went to college.

He was a chimney sweep. I learned that in... From Wikipedia? No, actually from a Fox News article. But yeah, he was a chimney sweep. He worked at a grain elevator. He did something else that's like very, I don't know, sounds like it comes from a 1950s hardscrabble. Like from Mary Poppins? Or Mary Poppins. Yeah, sounds like he might be Dick Van Dyke. I don't know if Mary Poppins is working in a lot of grain elevators, but to be fair...

I mean, you know, you've got to ingratiate yourself to Iowan somehow. And from what I hear, Mary Poppins is gunning for first woman president of the United States of America. Is she eligible? Yeah, I don't know. She's not a natural born... Is Mary Poppins... No, she's not. Galen, I'm really sorry to burst your bubble. I was thinking of pitching a whole like Disney plus, you know, 538 crossover movie where Mary Poppins becomes president. But alas...

Okay, so Doug Burgum, he's the governor of North Dakota and he's a billionaire. Those are the two main things that if you've heard of him, you know. Why is he running for president?

YOLO. Again, ego? Like, you know, I think that like governors and senators like want to be president. Like there's nowhere to go once you've become governor of your state and other than to D.C. But as we discussed, it's better to be unknown than disliked. And so it sounds to me in looking at some of the data and write ups and whatever that if you actually had to put your money on one of these three candidates that are getting in this week,

you even though have you probably never heard of him would probably put your money on Doug Burgum because I would he can spend his money into recognition. Right. Yeah, exactly. So he unlike kind of the other kind of wait who candidates are, you know, I think he has like

a path forward. Like, I don't think he's going to win the nomination. I think Donald Trump is the strong favorite for that. And just like historically, it would be nearly unprecedented for somebody kind of polling at zero or one percent to win at this point. But but yeah, but Doug Burgum, he is is a billionaire. He can self fund if he wants to to pour depending on how much he wants to pour into his campaign like that can go far. Like if he wants to just

saturate the airwaves in Iowa and New Hampshire, that'll probably put a dent in the polls. People probably remember what happened with Michael Bloomberg. He jumped in at the last minute in the 2020 Democratic presidential race. And obviously he didn't win, but he was a central figure in the primary, I would say, for a couple of months. And I think that that is kind of what Doug Burgum can aspire to. If you came to me from the future and told me that Doug Burgum finished third in

you know in delegate one delegates from American Samoa yeah basically I would say yeah that tracks tracks okay so he should be aiming for what would like Michael Bloomberg on Super Tuesday only one delegates from American Samoa was well well Burgum is I don't remember I think Nathaniel was saying that he can do better and he's starting earlier he could you know he's got the the green elevator thing so you know you could see him doing something again like finishing third

He's a governor from middle America. It's going to be hard to dislodge. It's going to be nearly impossible, I think, to dislodge Trump. It'll be hard to dislodge DeSantis, although maybe you can make the case that, you know, if he doesn't hold up to the national scrutiny, there is an opening for that kind of alternative slot. But yeah.

Okay, snark aside, he has a really compelling story that you started to get at. Amelia, can you tell us what else should we know about who Doug Burgum is? Oh, he's a very successful entrepreneur. I mean, like American Dream, this man, he created a software company. He sold it for a ton of money. And then, you know, Nathaniel will point out in the article that I have dreamt. I don't know. Why are we doing this?

You're still doing it. Yeah, Nathaniel pre-wrote this. Anyway, it's fine. This is how journalism works. If you don't realize that, I'm so sorry. And also, I can tell you something about Santa Claus. But anyway...

Yeah, and then in 2016, he jumps in to the gubernatorial primary, and he looks like, you know, he's going to get blown out of the water by someone who is already a very established politician in North Dakota, and he goes on to win. And he's self-funded in that case, right? And he's self-funded. So it's not really that difficult to see why Burgum is looking at the situation that we have now where –

There is this perception of weakness on, you know, on the part of DeSantis. There are all these other low polling candidates, none of whom seem particularly compelling. And he's thinking, I have all this money. You know, I do have a track record as governor of North Dakota.

And he can kind of mold his own image, which is not something that pretty much – I mean other people like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley can to a certain extent, but they're already fairly well-known and they don't have bottomless reserves of cash. So he's in an interesting position. You've convinced me that he's one to watch, Nathaniel. Yeah.

So something that I learned from also having a similar dream to yours, Amelia, was that his plan centers around basically talking about the economy. He's kind of a nerd on economic policy and economics.

It depends on which way you squint. He could be either seen as a rock-ribbed conservative or more of a moderate type. It sounds like he wants to run in maybe more of a moderate lane, although I'm not really sure. I think we're going to learn a lot about him when he announces. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting. But I thought the most interesting thing in your piece, Nathaniel, was actually pointing out how much of a difference the money can make. So he has over a billion dollars.

If he were to spend, for example, $20 million by the end of the year, or I think it was $50 million by the end of the year.

that would put him in the ranks of very few people who have ever run for president, right? Yeah, there's a table in my piece of everybody who's raised $50 million by the end of the odd year before the election. And it basically, it's, you know, it's full of a lot of people who didn't win the nomination, but like people whose names you've heard of. So it's like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and, you know, I think, you know, Ted Cruz in 2016, right?

A couple of people who flopped like Tom Steyer. Tom Steyer is right at the top. He's the cautionary tale, right? Who is, you know, he's the random rich guy who came in, spent a bunch of money and they basically had nothing to show for it. But not a politician. Exactly. But Burgum, the crucial difference is that he has political experience, which I think is a big differentiator. And he's a rich guy, which those two things together can be powerful.

Well, we're going to have to meet back up and talk about how Burgum spends his money and what kind of message he puts out. But for now, let's talk about whether he'll even make the stage in the first place.

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Last Friday, the Republican National Committee released the criteria for the first Republican primary debate, which is going to be held on Wednesday, August 23rd. We'll see you there. The criteria include various qualifications. Participants need to have 40,000 unique donors with some geographic differences.

diversity of those donors. They need to sign a pledge committing to support the eventual nominee and to not participate in non-RNC sanctioned debates. They also need to poll at 1% or above in three national polls or 1% in two national polls and 1% in an early state poll. But here is where things get interesting, at least from our perspective as the poll people.

Me too.

We'll talk about it. Ask the question on presidential preference prior to any question which may allow potential bias and also not be conducted by a polling company affiliated with a candidate or candidate committee. So some pretty stringent rules there in terms of which polls even qualify towards getting that 1%. Now,

Is this a good or bad use of polling? And there's a lot of different criteria here. So maybe some are good and some are bad. You can tell me. But who wants to go on the record first? Amelia, are you ready? I mean, I think in general, it is a good use of polling to try to use polling to set some kind of standard for who can make it into the debates. I mean, I think we all, having lived through the 2020 Democratic primary, it's just it's

incredibly chaotic when you have lots of people, especially people who really have no chance of winning up on the stage, distracting from the people who do have a chance of winning. That being said, these criteria taken together seem like they are potentially going to pose some problems for the Republicans.

Okay, to make this easier, I'll just go point by point and you say good or bad. So we're going to start with... Can we do a thumbs up and thumbs down? Yeah. So we're... Well, the listeners back home have to be able to... Oh, I'm so sorry. We don't just have viewers. So... I forget what medium this is. I'm terribly sorry, listeners. We've been dazzled by the lights of the world. Yeah, exactly. We came to the big city. So the opaque one first, not overly weight responses by any individual cohort beyond the margin of the error of the poll. Good use of polling or bad use of polling?

I mean, I just I don't know what it means. Right. I don't know what it means. I think bad use because I don't know what it is. But if they can explain it and it makes sense, then I'm willing to change my mind.

We are. We have asked the RNC to clarify that. And as of before the podcast, they had not gotten back to us. OK, so we'll take that for now as at least not entirely coherent use of incoherent use of polling. I like that as adding to our metric. Next one. Ask the question on presidential preference prior to any question which may allow potential bias. I like that. Yeah, that's a good use of good use of polling. Fabulous.

not be conducted by a polling company affiliated with a candidate or candidate committee. That's good. Good use of polling. Obviously, otherwise, you just have their pollster get in and go in the field before the debate and be like, look, our candidate's doing so well. Okay, so we have out of the three, incoherent and then two, good uses of polling. Lastly, survey at least 800 registered likely Republican voters through a mix of live calls, integrated voice response on my panel on text message.

- This is gonna be a problem. - This one's medium. So like, I appreciate what they're trying to do, which is like, they want a like, you know, a poll with a large sample size, like, you know, those polls have lower margins of error and like, that's good, but also like,

that's not super realistic in this day and age. Polling is expensive. There are not a lot of polls that do this. So I have here in my hand- And there's the likely voters piece too. That's true, yes. Which I get- They could do registered voters. Right, they could do registered voters. They want people, it's like really hard to figure out who is a likely voter when we're so far out from voting. So that's the part that I actually, of all of it, like the sample stuff,

I get. I think it is going to be a problem for them potentially down the line. The likely voters part, I'm less on board with. Amelia, I'm with you because it adds a lot of subjectivity into the results of the poll. When you put a likely voter screen on your data, somebody could go from polling at zero to polling at two. And it's really up

to there's a lot of different ways that you can screen for a likely voter. You can just ask them, do you plan on voting in the primary? You can look at their history and determine for yourself whether you think they're going to vote in the primary. And also at this point in the process, we're mostly looking at registered voters anyway, not likely voters.

So, and even registered voters is dicey because people can register. People who vote in the primaries might not be registered right now. Right, right. We're still very, very early. It feels very early to be focusing on likely voters. And then because of the problems that I think Nathaniel is about to talk about, it also winnows the number of polls that they can be drawing from quite substantially. Yeah.

Right. So I have here in my hand a list of 13 polls that have been conducted that meet these criteria. The entire cycle, 13 polls the entire cycle. Only nine of them were conducted this year. So if you go, what, there have been five months so far in the year. So that's like basically like two polls per month. The window for the polls and criteria is July 1st to I think August 21st, like two days before the debate. So like- It's a whole hot six weeks. Based on the pace that we're at, we're looking at like what, like-

four polls? Right. And so I should also note that one of these polls was conducted by Donald Trump's campaign. So that would be thrown out. So actually, there have only been eight polls that meet this criteria so far this year. So it's just not a lot. And it's really going to rely on pollsters like

stepping up and like proactively being like, you know, yes, basically they're going to make this decision because they're going to be like, do we want to have 801 respondents or 799 respondents to be like chosen or like to be a criteria for this debate? And like, I think a lot of pollsters aren't going to want to spend all the money to go all the way up to 800 respondents.

And so it puts quite a lot of power in the hands of these pollsters who are willing to go into the field. And, you know, they could it could make the difference in terms of who makes it onto the debate stage, which I'm sure the candidates are very unhappy about. Usually the sample is more like 500, right?

Yeah, or even less. Or even less. Okay, so basically the RNC is telling pollsters spend significantly more money reaching 50% or even 60% more respondents or your poll won't count. And then pollsters have to- But pollsters might not see that as a bad thing. Because I remember in 2020, a lot of pollsters were not happy about the fact that their polls were being used because of margin of error and things like that. Like it can be arbitrary whether a candidate gets 0% or 1% in any given poll.

So, yeah, they're going to have trouble, I think, finding the pulse. So based on this, we wouldn't be surprised if the RNC revises some of this or –

I think we have to see what happens. I mean, I think maybe there is a world where more pollsters do jump in and we just get more, you know, bigger sample size polls. And, you know, that's a good thing. That'll be a good thing if that happens. It's just going to be a problem if we're going into the August debate and we have two polls that are going to decide who's going to be on the stage. Then I think the RNC is probably going to be under a lot of pressure to rethink it.

Alright, well, if you work at the RNC and you have thoughts on all of this,

reach out. Please explain to us what the second bullet means. What the waiting means. We've asked you. We would like to know. I mean, I sense that what they're trying to do is remove the subjectivity of the pollster, but they're adding the subjectivity back in through requiring it to be a likely voter poll, which doesn't totally make sense to me. Anyway, it's not meant for me. It's meant for democracy. So please explain. It's used there. We'd love to hear from you at podcast.538.com. But

But for now, thank you, Amelia and Nathaniel. This has been fun. Thank you, Galen. Thanks, Galen. My name is Galen Drew. Kevin Ryder is in the control room and Ben Shelfifer is on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us, as I mentioned, at podcast.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 a review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.