Are America's Favorite Governors Really All Republicans? 46:53

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. So wait, what do we think Tucker Carlson is up to? Do we think he's running for president?

No, I think he's enjoying being rich and the Murdochs are over it. Yeah, but you can be president. Okay. That's the fun part. You know what is underrated, Nathaniel? Not being president. Not being president, number one. Number two, just being rich and out of the public eye.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. As we sit down to record on Monday morning, political reporters around the country are on Biden watch. The expectation is that Biden plans on announcing his run for reelection this week, likely on Tuesday. So perhaps he has already announced by the time you're listening to this podcast that

But nonetheless, we're going to wait to discuss that announcement until it actually happens. So today, here's what we've got in store for you. Congress returned from recess last week to at least two ongoing conflicts. One was Senator Dianne Feinstein's absence from the Senate, stalling the process by which Democrats can approve their judicial nominees. The other was what to do about the debt ceiling, which has already been breached and could lead to the U.S. government running out of money as early as June.

We're going to discuss what the latest developments are and what Americans think about it all. Then, who are America's most and least popular senators and governors? Morning Consult released its updated rankings, and you, dear listeners, had some questions about whether they are a good or bad use of polling. And I have some questions about a different poll, one in which YouGov asked how many Americans are down with eating elephants and other things as well. Here with me to discuss our editor-in-chief, Nate Silver. Hey, Nate.

Hey, Galen. Also here with us is politics reporter Alex Samuels. Hey, Alex. Hey, Galen. And senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Hi, Galen. Happy Monday. How are you? Happy Monday. You know, I'm doing well. Well rested. How do I know that the three of you are the real you? You don't have a Twitter checkmark anymore, whereas I do.

How do you have one? That's a really good question, Nate. Did you verify your phone number with Elon? Did he call you up? I don't think I ever verified. No. Anyone with a million or more followers, living or dead, I think Kobe Bryant got his checkmark back and I'm living. And I did too. Nate, I don't believe you. I think you actually paid $8. I actually think it's become so cringe now, the whole discourse. I think it's actually cringier not to pay.

Oh, wow. That's a hot take. It's such virtue signaling bulls**t. That is a hot take. It is. It's cringier not to pay? It's cringier not to pay. Wait, so you did pay? I didn't pay because I don't want to be enhanced. I don't want to have more reach, right? I only want the people I like to see my s**t on Twitter, not annoying people. But I'll pay when I have something to promote, yeah. But no, it's like all these people who are f**king totally addicted, totally addicted to

totally addicted to Twitter, right? Like, pretend like they're too cool for school. I mean, give me a f***ing break. Interesting. I disagree with you, but okay. My hot take is that I would pay $8 if it actually provided, like, a benefit, because I am definitely addicted to Twitter, and, like, if I got a bunch of cool features that we've been asking for for years, sure, I'd pay, but I'm not going to pay for this kind of vague... The value of Twitter for anyone is, like, it's either, like,

Plus thousands of dollars or negative thousands of dollars, right? It's not $8 a month either way. Yeah, my view is like it's not really a good thing to be using very often. And anything that would incentivize me using it more, I think is like, I mean, especially because I'm not selling anything in particular on Twitter is like not good for me in my life. I'd rather spend it in a park or hanging out with friends.

That's just me. So square, Galen. Anyway, before this becomes a podcast about Twitter, which I have aimed over the course of this podcast's history to never do, although sometimes we veer too far into it, we're going to move on and we're going to talk instead about eating elephants. So last week, YouGov published a survey that asked about the ethics of eating animals and the value of animals' lives in comparison to humans.

And while I don't want this podcast to become YouGov poll spawn con either, this one did get me. And to be fair, it's a bit of a more comprehensive survey than just your one-off kind of troll poll trying to get people to respond to something audacious. So first of all, I know that some of you have already seen this poll.

But for those of you who haven't, my guess is that, Nate, you haven't. What percentage of Americans do you think said that they would be open ethically, morally to eating elephant? What, any percent? Has anyone else not seen the response to this? I didn't see the elephant number. Okay, what do you think it is, Alex? I want to say like 12%. Okay, kind of split the difference here. It is 17%.

How about horse? 35%. I mean, horses aren't as smart as elephants and they probably taste better. That's high. Yeah, I want to say like around 40% for horse. I was going to say 25%. I looked up elephant because you mentioned elephant, but I did not look up horse specifically. I'll say like 25%. 29%. Would everyone on this podcast eat horse?

Like if it was in a certain context, but not generally. You're adventurous, Rikic. I think I would eat horse. Yeah. Yeah, I would eat horse. Come on. It's a horse.

I mean, people eat horse. Like that's normal to eat. I wouldn't like go to like Olive Garden and order a horse. But like if I was in a context where it was expected or normal to eat horse and like this was like part of the experience, then yes, I would do it. So you're saying it's all about peer pressure.

Yes. Alex? No, I agree with Nathaniel. I think, you know, it wouldn't be the first animal that I jump at the chance to nibble on, but I wouldn't say no. I'll try anything once. I wouldn't.

Does that include elephant? I'll try anything once, Galen. Wait, and cat and dog? I draw the line. I draw the line. I'm sorry. I won't try everything once. Toby's in the room. Yeah, I see Toby in the background just quivering, being like, she'll try anything once. He's sitting in my lap. He wanted to hear what you guys had to say about him and these answers.

Okay, so you draw the line. He's judging us. You draw the line at dog but not cat. I draw the line at like domesticated animals typically, which I think is where most Americans kind of draw the line. But I think that's different if you're asking people from America versus maybe people living in other countries. Okay, so for example, in America, we domesticate guinea pigs and like people just have them as pets. In Ecuador, where it's commonly eaten, would you eat it?

Yeah, if I was in Ecuador and they served me some guinea pig. Sure. I think it... Yeah, I think dogs and cats... I'd eat it. It's good. I'd nibble, okay? Would you nibble on a dog?

Yeah, I don't know. Somehow I have difficulty with that. I really have difficulty with dog. I don't think I can do it. Like wolf? I mean, even if you call it by a different name, if you're like, this is wolf, I'd be like, okay, I'll do it. Yeah, wolf meat sounds kind of good. Is that why we call pork pork and not pig? The two main factors, according to the poll, did appear to be both intelligence and domestication. And so I guess with chimpanzee, it's intelligence because I don't think...

Outside of the rare feature film, not too many people happen to own chimpanzees. It went in order. So 86% said it's acceptable to eat chicken. Then 81% cow, 79% salmon, 78% pig. Went all the way on down. It's like all remains like a clear majority through octopus. Octopus is 60%. And then when you go from octopus to horse, it falls to 29%.

And then dolphin, 24%. Cat, 20%. Dog, 18%. Elephant, 17%. Chimpanzee, 14%. The main thing I disagree with here is more people would eat a dog than an elephant. Although, you know, it's within the margin of error. I would way eat an elephant before I ate a dog. Anyway, okay. This is...

It has been fun. What I really want to ask is a different moral question that they posed to respondents in this poll, which is this.

Each scenario involved two sinking boats, one which contained a person and one which contained one or more pigs. In the three scenarios, the second boat contained either one pig, 10 pigs, or 100 pigs. For each scenario...

respondents were asked to choose who they would save, either the person or the pigs. The other half of respondents were shown similar scenarios, with the difference being that the second boat held dogs, not pigs. In the scenarios involving pigs, only around one in 10 people said that they would choose to save the pig or pigs rather than the person. The number of pigs did not have much of an effect on responses. When there was one pig, 7% said they would save it rather than the person. When there were 100 pigs, 10% say they would save the pigs.

People who saw the dog scenarios were roughly twice as likely as people who saw the pig scenarios to choose to save the animal or animals over the human. Unlike with the pigs, the number of dogs did have a significant effect. 14% said they would save one dog rather than one person, while 23% said they would rather save 100 dogs than one person. Okay, what did we learn from that poll?

I wasn't too shocked by the pig scenario. If anything, like you said earlier, Galen, the fact that there are people out there who would save one pig over one person I thought was shocking because again, pigs are not really viewed as domesticated animals in the same way that like dogs are. So I wasn't shocked that the numbers for dogs were higher. That said, I thought the numbers for dogs would be even higher than what Yuga found and

And I think one of the reasons why it maybe was a bit lower is because it didn't ask people like one person versus your dog. It was just like a generic dog. And I think when it's framed in that way, people are less likely to kind of, you know, have empathy for that animal versus if it was like their personal pet. I think we also learned that most people are, let's say like the average person, like places some amount of value on the life of a dog that is,

like less than the value of a life of a human, but it can be multiplied enough that if you have a hundred dogs or a thousand dogs or something like that can exceed the value of one human. Whereas for pigs, it seems like maybe the average person or the median person assigns no value to the life of a pig because no matter how much you multiply the pig, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. Anything times zero is still zero. Exactly. Exactly.

The actual thing that got me about this thought experiment is that it is like we keep talking about AI on this podcast, and it is the kind of question that we don't necessarily have an agreed upon response. I mean, there is a majority opinion, but there's not some kind of clear agreed upon morality, even on something as simple as like saving a human's life, like one human's life.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's an interesting question, Galen. I'm always on the lookout for polls that kind of are so lopsided that you can kind of almost quantify like how many people are just like randomly answering online polls or just trolling the pollster, like you said. I feel like there you could probably dig up a person who like, you know, is like a very strong animal rights activist and thinks that,

humans are terrible for what they've done to the planet who would genuinely value one pig over over one human but it is kind of approaching that number where maybe five percent of of people were trolling the pollster or just picking at random and then two percent of people genuinely wanted to save the pig or something like that well put we should move on and get back to our regularly scheduled programming so let's talk about what's going on in congress

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.

As I mentioned at the top of the show, last week, members of Congress returned to at least two ongoing conflicts in Washington, one over at Dianne Feinstein's role on the Judiciary Committee and her place in the Senate in general, also the debate over raising the debt ceiling. So Feinstein herself asked to be removed from the Judiciary Committee,

which Republicans blocked. And so far, she's rejected calls to resign. Of course, if she did resign, she would automatically be removed from the Judiciary Committee and she could be replaced with a different Democrat who could help Democrats pursue their judicial appointments. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for his part on the debt ceiling, proposed a deal that would raise the ceiling while cutting federal spending, which Biden rejected upon arrival. All right, let's begin with the

the debt ceiling. So McCarthy's proposal would do the following. It would raise the debt ceiling for about a year until March of 2024 or thereabout. It would rescind around $50 billion in unspent COVID relief funds. It would enact about $3.5 trillion in unspecified budget cuts by freezing spending at 2022 levels. It would roll back green tax initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act. It

It would roll back the increased funding to the IRS. It would put stricter work requirements on food stamp and Medicaid recipients. And it would block Biden's student loan forgiveness action. Now, put aside for a second if Democrats would ever agree to this. This is the first plan McCarthy has put out there, the only plan that McCarthy has put out there. And so now Democrats can basically campaign on it as this is what Republicans' priorities are. This is what they want to do. Could something like this be popular?

No, I think this would generally be pretty unpopular. So I polled several polls that kind of asked about specific elements of the Republican plan, or at least as close as I could come to it. And so first you have an AP NORC poll, this is from March, that did find that 60% of Americans say that government spending is generally too much overall. But when you ask them about specific things, they actually say that, oh, there's too little spending on that. So

65% of Americans thought there was too little spending on education. 63% thought there was too little spending on healthcare. 53% thought there was too little on border security. Even 35% said there was too little spending on the military, which was the closest. 29% thought there was too much spending on the military.

When you move on to the Inflation Reduction Act repeals, according to Morning Consult, back from when this passed, 64% of Americans supported the tax credits for renewable energy. 50% supported the tax credits for electric vehicles. That's 50% with 33% opposed. So still a significant number are more in favor than opposed to that.

And then when you ask about Biden's student loan plan, that's closer. But according to a YouGov economist survey, 53% of adults support the canceling of up to $10,000 in student loans and 44% were opposed.

But however, I should say that the IRS part, kind of bringing back the funding for the IRS, that probably would be popular. That seems like the most popular part of this Republican plan. So Morning Consult also asked about this. This is from a poll in January and voters support canceling that additional IRS funding 46 percent to 36 percent.

Okay, so how do we bridge that gap that Americans think, actually, by a significant majority, Americans think that the US government spends too much, and that spending should be reduced, but that on every individual program, it sounds like there's not an appetite for reducing spending? Like, okay, then what do Americans want? Good question. Yeah, I mean, I think part of this is probably just due to, you know, Americans haven't thought all that hard about it.

When you ask people just in general, it feels like the government probably spends too much money. But when you ask them to specifically kind of sacrifice something, they're less on board with that. In addition, of course, different types of people want to cut different types of things. So I could legitimately, you could ask someone, one person here, probably on the left, who says, yes, there is too much money

we do spend too much money oh on what what should we cut the military and then you ask somebody on the right and they say yeah we do spend too much money what should we cut oh we should cut you know education and health care funding um and when you put those two people in the same poll obviously they both count for america spends too much money overall but the you know the proof or the the kind of the difficulties obviously are in the details

Yeah. And I think those partisan differences that you kind of alluded to, Nathaniel, are really helping shape at least how McCarthy is going about negotiations on this. So in that same AP NORC survey, Republicans said that too much is spent on assistance to cities. About half said that too much is spent on the environment.

And Republicans were also more likely than Democrats to indicate that the military, law enforcement and the border were underfunded. But Democrats, by comparison, said that too little is spent on aid to the poor, the environment, child care assistance, drug rehabilitation and scientific research. So I think that's one sticking point that will continue to be part of the negotiations, both on Biden's end and on McCarthy's end.

And I should also say that there is a trend in this AP-NORC poll that we've been citing that far more Americans today think that the U.S. should cut spending than did the month before the U.S. shut down over COVID. So it's 60% today say the U.S. should cut spending. It was 37% who said that the U.S. should cut spending in February of 2020. So I think there is some sense that, like, we have spent a lot of money today.

I don't know if it's the interest rates are, you said, you know, the public aren't economists, but maybe they're also aware that interest rates are rising or what have you, at least that inflation has, you know, sped up, although cooled off a little bit in recent months. There does seem to be some awareness amongst the public about how our financial circumstances have changed over the past three years.

I'd also throw in thermostatic public opinion, though. You know, at that time in 2020, Donald Trump was president. There was a Republican president. People tend to think Republican governments spend less. And now you have or not now, but for the last two years, basically, you had a Democratic trifecta, which did, of course, you know, pass a lot of new spending like the Inflation Reduction Act. And so I think, you know, that that can be part of it as well.

Before we get to Dianne Feinstein, does anyone have thoughts on how this all plays out? Because, you know, Biden has said that he's not negotiating budget cuts. He wants a clean debt ceiling raise. And of course, McCarthy has said, no, we want to cut spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. In the past, you know, when this happened under Obama, Democrats did agree to make spending cuts. Are we getting to a place where it seems like Democrats would agree to some spending cuts?

Well, Galen, I can't say I know how this will end, but I feel like probably we're just in for a bunch of brinksmanship again. One thing that we have seen in these kind of fights over and over again is that people...

wait until the last minute to work things out. And really the only thing that can really force them to come to an agreement is this impending deadline. And, you know, it does seem like at some point in June, the U.S. government is going to run out of its quote unquote extraordinary measures that it's currently taking to keep us from hitting the debt limit. And obviously if we go past that, it could have disastrous impacts on the economy.

So at that point, I feel like they will probably work something out, although I'm probably less confident in that now because of how kind of weak McCarthy's speakership and position is than I was back in 2011 or whatever. But yeah, I think this is just the the opening salvo from Republicans. And obviously, I don't think that it is going to become law. But, you know, at least there's a start to the negotiations. Yeah.

Yeah, I think top Republicans said they wanted to vote on the floor by Wednesday or Thursday of this week.

What was confusing me is that it seemed like members across the conference expressed reservations about the bill for different reasons. You know, conservatives wanting deeper cuts and stricter language in some of the areas. Moderates, you know, didn't want to go on record for spending cuts that are essentially going to be dead on arrival in the Senate. And I think some members, too, are upset about cuts to conservatives.

green energy tax credits and would oppose stricter food stamp language. So my understanding is that GOP leadership doesn't intend to change the bill text. And if they don't,

then, I mean, does McCarthy even have the votes to get this out of the House? Yeah. All right. So, Alex, you have been reporting on the other standoff in Congress last week, which was over whether Dianne Feinstein could step down from the Judiciary Committee while keeping her position as a senator. They needed basically unanimous consent in order to do that. Democrats did. They didn't get it. Republicans objected.

And so now Democrats are stuck because they can't get their judicial appointments approved while Feinstein is out on medical leave, essentially. So what's happening? What's going on? What are people saying?

So some Democrats, you know, Amy Klobuchar, Dean Phillips, among others, have been, you know, more bold, I'd say, in calling for Feinstein's resignation. Or at least, you know, they're talking about the subject more openly than I think they had in the past. But other Democrats, you know, Nancy Pelosi has said that, you know, she has essentially earned the right to be in the seat and has even suggested that criticism of her is sexist. Yeah.

So fine science vendors are...

Correct, I think, in the sense that sexism plays a role in American politics. But I think one thing that distinguishes this particular situation from past situations where you've had old people serving in Congress, arguably past their prime, is what is at stake here. You know, her absence, like you said, Galen, is blocking one of the party's biggest priorities and Democrats don't have an easy solution to that problem.

I mean, can you flesh that out a little bit more? Like, why are folks like Nancy Pelosi saying that this is calls for her to resign are sexist? You know, I don't know if I quite agree with that. I think, you know, there are also very old men who have faced pressure to resign and refuse to do so. I mentioned this in my piece, Ted Kennedy, Sean Thurman, Carl Muntz.

Like they all face similar pressures to resign and whether it be due to old age or because they were facing similarly debilitating illnesses. Um, so I don't quite know if I buy the fact that we're only calling out this one specific instance because Feinstein is a woman. Um,

It gets into this weird debate about feminism and what that means and whether it's elevating one individual senator versus the people she represents. So I think that's an argument that I don't quite buy. But one thing we also mentioned in our story is that calling on older politicians to resign has been a particularly fraught topic for women in particular. I mean, I just remember what happened with Arminia.

RBG, you know, during her final years on the court, people who even dared to speak up against her ailing health were labeled as sexist or gross. And, you know, those arguments, of course, did not age well. But I think there is a fear maybe in how this looks when you're so openly calling for a woman to resign. I think the optics of that is what's

leading some Democrats to at least take a more measured approach to how they talk about this. One of my pet peeves is like when people make a comparison, I need like a catchy name for this, right? People make a comparison to something, but the other thing is stupid, right? And they're like, well, such and such old man who had dementia wasn't asked to resign, so why should...

Feinstein be? And the answer is actually the guy should have been asked to resign, right? We don't want people with dementia in the U.S. Senate. But in any event, it would be better if we were more age-aware. Again, there are only like 100 people

In the U.S. Senate, right? Can we have like a standard of like basic mental competence for all 100 of them? It doesn't seem like that high a bar to clear. And people are like actually much too polite about like letting people take their personal time when they are representing us, the people, you know? So I think it's a big, I think it's a big,

Problem for California in general, they don't have a person representing them full time in the U.S. Senate. Again, you can pick anyone from that state. How many people in California? 40 million people. Pick one other person. So that's where I come out on this. No, I agree with you, Nate. You know, it's not like she should stay in office, but like all these other old men should have also stayed in office. It's like, no, they all should have left once they had these like clear decisions.

illnesses and things that were preventing them from doing their jobs. But I think the difference in some of those past cases and maybe why we didn't see as many calls for their resignation, to be clear, there were some calls, but maybe the reason why it wasn't overwhelming was because they weren't that

tie-breaking vote in the same way that she is today. Um, you know, philosophically, that should not matter. It shouldn't matter if you're the 56th vote or the 50th vote. If you're past the age of, or past the age and prime of which you can serve, you should step down. If you can't serve your constituents, you should step down. Um,

But, you know, senators don't really face their voters as often once every six years. So, you know, you don't really know the day to day of what they're going through. And since they don't have to be in front of voters, I think they can sometimes get away with just doing the bare minimum, skating by, doing votes essentially. But I mean, Feinstein's not even doing that. So I don't know how much longer she can go with us. Make her an ambassador to Malta or something. Yeah.

Speaking of the voters in this situation, what do the voters think? How do they feel about maybe Feinstein in particular or older or ailing members of Congress broadly? Well, to preview our next segment, Dianne Feinstein has only a

plus seven net approval rating, which is not very good considering she's a Democrat in a very blue state. And in fact, she has the lowest, if you adjust senators approval rating for the partisanship of their state, she has the lowest such adjusted approval rating of any Democratic senator. So she's not super popular in California right now, at least not as much as you would expect. In fact, she is outside of California, right?

Also not popular, a YouGov economist poll taken in mid-April while this has been playing out showed that 65% of Americans believe Feinstein should resign after being told that she's been absent from Congress for more than a month for medical reasons. And that includes a...

majority of Democrats, of Democrats who believe old age brings wisdom and experience to members of Congress, even a whopping 74% still say Feinstein should retire. And if you look more broadly, more than half of Americans support a maximum age limit for elected officials. So it seems like Americans aren't that divided on this. Americans don't think that we should be in this situation.

Yeah, I mean, you've seen this be an issue in other contexts too, right? Like Nikki Haley launched her presidential campaign saying that there should be a mental competency test, I think, for presidents over 75. But of course,

But of course, an issue with that is something that Alex mentioned in her article, is that how do you design a mental competency test that's kind of fair and unbiased? Is that even possible? So I think it might be another issue where the vast majority of Americans can agree there's a problem, but a solution does not easily present itself. If I had a nickel every time I heard that.

All right. And with that, since I don't have a solution, I guess myself, we're going to move on and we are going to talk about what you just previewed, Nathaniel, the most and least popular governors and senators in America.

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.

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.

Morning Consult recently released its updated approval ratings for every senator and governor in the country. I know this is a somewhat unique poll because it gives us insight into how every statewide lawmaker is doing according to voters in their state in one relatively uniform survey.

It essentially allows for better comparisons than any other survey we have amongst the different lawmakers, which is to say a lot of polls, you know, Siena College will poll maybe just New York. So we'll get a sense of how New York statewide lawmakers are doing. But that's only according to that one survey. And it can be harder to compare, say, a Siena College poll to an Emerson College poll or whatever you may want to do. So this is all one pollster looking at all the states in the country, looking at every senator and governor. Okay.

Okay, so here are the results according to how Morning Consult published them.

The most popular senators are Brian Schatz from Hawaii, Bernie Sanders from Vermont, and John Barrasso from Wyoming, top three. Three least popular are Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, Joe Manchin from West Virginia, and Susan Collins from Maine. The three most popular governors are Phil Scott from Vermont, Mark Gordon from Wyoming, and Chris Sununu from New Hampshire. Least popular are Tina Kotek from Oregon, Jim Pillen from Nebraska, and Katie Hobbs from Arizona.

So we got a couple questions from listeners about this. The first is that Morning Consult, when writing up their findings, didn't use net approval. They just used basic approval or disapproval numbers. Now, oftentimes we use net approval, which is where you take the approval rating and subtract the disapproval rating in order to get a combination of both feelings. Like someone may not have a very high approval rating, but maybe it's because they're not all that well-known anyway, and they have

a pretty low disapproval rating. Anyway, that's not approval. So when trying to determine most or least popular, should they be using net approval? Like how should they go about doing this? Did they do it the right way?

Yeah, so I think they should be using net approval. You know, net approval obviously accounts both for how many people like you and how many people dislike you. And approval rating can be nebulous in that regard, right? So like, let's look at Jim Pillen. He is the newly elected governor of Nebraska. He has a 45% approval rating, which as you mentioned, Galen puts him in the bottom three when looking at just approval rating. But his disapproval rating is just 30%.

And that means basically the 25% of Nebraskans don't have an opinion of him yet, which makes total sense because he was just elected. He hasn't done that much yet. So I'm not sure he should be in that bottom three when his net approval rating is plus 15. You get more information by looking at net approval rating. That said, net approval rating does strip out this...

this question of how many people don't know who you are. And so in that sense, right, a plus 10 net approval rating can be very different if you are, you know, 30% approved, 20% disapproved. Then if you are 55% approved, 45% approved, that's also important information. So really, you'd want to look at kind of all three. But if you had to kind of make a ranking, I would do it by net approval rating.

The next question that we got on this write-up was why Republican governors appear to be more popular than Democratic ones. So 10 of the bottom 15 governors are Democrats and 11 of the top 15 governors are Republicans. So what are we meant to take away from this? That basically Republicans are better at doing what voters want when it comes to the state level?

No. So this actually just kind of boils down to the simple fact that there are more like very red states than there are very blue states. So as I mentioned, I kind of have a trick or a statistic that I do, which is that I subtract out the partisan lean of

of these states from all these net approval ratings. And it comes up with a metric that I like to call popularity above replacement senator or governor. And it basically tells you like how much more or less popular is the governor or senator than kind of a generic politician would be expected to be in that state. So in other words, it measures the strength or the weakness of their personal brand.

And so when you do that calculation and you order the governors by PARG, popularity above replacement governor, actually 10 of the top 15 are Democrats.

Um, and so, you know, and that includes, I think a lot of Democrats who have managed to have these, um, these special brands in conservative states. So for example, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Laura Kelly of Kansas are the top two Democrats. Uh, and Phil Scott of Vermont is the top Republican. So these are obviously people who have built their own brands separate from their, their national party, uh, within their state. Um,

And so no, I think you have to bear in mind the context of the state before you make any pronouncements about like, oh, you know, the governor of Wyoming is doing a great job. Well, of course he is because people in that state are Republicans and they're already inclined to like him. When you look at the bottom 15, according to Parg, what do you find?

Yeah, there's less of a trend in terms of partisanship. You have six Democrats and nine Republicans in the bottom 15. But yeah, so you have some people, you know, not to get too weedsy about specific state politics, but the absolute bottom by Parg is Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma. He's had kind of a lot of trouble kind of clashing with fellow Republicans in the state. In terms of Democrats, you have Dan McKee of Rhode Island and Kathy Hochul of New York. But

People probably know Kathy Hochul has clashed with Democrats in her state for being too moderate. She just kind of had a big showdown that she lost with Democrats in the legislature about getting her choice for Supreme Court justice on their state Supreme Court. It's called the Court of Appeals in New York, but it's their highest court, so we're going to call it the Supreme Court.

Well, Nathaniel, both too progressive and too moderate. So she also just lost going head to head against suburban state legislators trying to change housing policy in New York State to force suburbs of New York City to build a lot more housing in the coming five to 10 years. And Westchester and Long Island state legislators said absolutely not. Interesting. So I guess really getting it from both sides of the Democratic political coin on that one.

Nate and Alex, do you have thoughts on these ratings? Is this surprising? Do you think this is good data? Have you learned something from this? I mean, obviously people feel like it's a cliche, but feel like Washington is broken, right? And the fact that governors face less partisan pressure than senators do because you are only beholden to the voters of your state and you're not voting on national issues with 99 other senators. And so there's more flexibility there.

There are obviously some very right-wing Republican governors and left-wing Democratic governors, but there is more flexibility to be like a Phil Scott or a Edwards in Louisiana, right, where you break the mold a little bit. And people actually like that, right? They actually like the cross-partisan, moderate governor template, and that's easier to do than if you were in the Senate.

If you are a conservative governor working with a conservative legislature and you are giving conservative voters like what they want on fiscal and social issues, I think it would make sense that you're popular. I think a big reason why maybe Democratic governors don't see those same results is because, you know,

States can't really rack up debt in the same way the federal government can, which I think makes it harder for blue state Democrats to satisfy their voters in the same way Republicans can as it relates to fiscal constraints and things like that. That's interesting. Yeah. You know, one, when it comes to these numbers, one of the things that Morning Consult said

pulled out of this data itself in the write-up of this most recent round of polling was looking at two of the most vulnerable incumbents in the Senate in 2024, who are both Democrats in this case, Jon Tester and Joe Manchin. And they come to the conclusion from this data that Jon Tester is well positioned in his reelection bid, but that Joe Manchin is not. Looking at this data, do you think Morning Consult made a good case for why that is? I mean, it's not

surprising exactly, right? I mean, there is something about like Manchin gets himself in the crosshairs a lot, right? Caught in the crosshairs and is a figure of national attention. And Tester is kind of like much more low-key, even though he's actually much more progressive than Manchin. He just kind of like doesn't really like raise a big stink about things. And like, it's interesting, I think that's just kind of keeping your head down and don't try to be like super bipartisan man, right? Maybe there's something to be said for

for that. It's easier too in a small state, although they're both small states where you have more time with the voters and more constituent services and things like that. But it's not surprising given what my priors were, I guess, but it is interesting in terms of their respective approaches to governance. But then Susan Collins kind of has a mansion philosophy and she won re-election by a pretty comfortable margin. So I don't know anything.

Well, I think no, no, no. I think what you have to pay attention to here is how opinion of Joe Manchin has changed. So when he was Mr. Bipartisan and he was pretty openly ostentatiously being like, no, Democrats, I'm not going to agree to your Build Back Better plan. That's too expensive, etc. He was quite popular in West Virginia, but his popularity fell off a cliff after he supported the Inflation Reduction Act.

And so by kind of drumming up attention surrounding his position on all of these bills, he made himself popular. But then when he actually caved, he made himself unpopular. And what I think maybe Jon Tester has done

different from Joe Manchin is essentially he makes his personal identity as a farmer, man of the people, Montanan, et cetera, front and center and doesn't talk about the policy all that much. So he tries to straddle the bipartisan angle from an identity perspective and just wasn't out there saying whether or not he was going to support the Build Back Better plan on all of the Sunday shows, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

That's it. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, when you, Nathaniel, consider partisanship of the state in the equation here, what do you find in terms of the differences between Tester and Manchin?

Yeah. So West Virginia is a lot redder than Montana is. Um, Tester, as we've mentioned, has a higher approval rating. So, so Manchin is still significantly more popular than you would expect him to be. He has a, a pars score, uh, popularity above replacement Senator of a plus 19. Um, but Tester actually by far has the most, the highest par score in the Senate. He's at a plus 45. So he's at 58% approval, uh,

and 33% disapproval in a state with an R plus 20 partisan lean. So it does seem like tester is, um,

is kind of has the right strategy here. In terms of like re-election prospects, I think you actually don't necessarily need something as fancy as pars. I think you can look at the fact that Joe Manchin is underwater in a state that is not the same partisanship, right? If you are an underwater senator, but you're in a friendly state partisanship wise, you can be like, okay, like partisanship is going to carry me over the, you know, over the edge. But like, where is Joe Manchin going to find partisanship?

his extra voters, if his approval rating is a 38% and most, you know, you've tapped out every Democrat basically in the state, maybe. I mean, that's not true because probably a lot of Democrats disapprove of, of him, um, because of his, his moderate positions. But, um,

But I think it's going to be hard for him to get to a victory there in 2024 if he even decides to run. Whereas you can see Jon Tester, like he's got this 58% approval rating. He can afford to lose some of those people to partisanship. Not a ton, but some of them. It's still going to be hard for him. But I'd much rather be him at this point. All right. Any final thoughts before we wrap up this podcast? We covered a lot of ground today.

And some extra ground. You don't want to talk about Don Lemon? Oh, yeah. Well, now that we have more breaking media news while recording this podcast. So Don Lemon announced that he has been terminated. How does that change the American media landscape? New York, New Year's Eve's.

Well, the last time I saw him do New Year's Eve coverage, he was in New Orleans, like, pissed drunk, talking about, like, getting a tattoo or, like, a piercing or something. Yeah. And since then, I think they've told their anchors they can't drink on New Year's Eve.

- Right, like I can make no judgements. If I was allowed to drink on air on New Year's Eve, I would have done the exact same thing, which was he was like talking about his dating history and threatening to get a tattoo. So that is exactly what I would do if you allowed me to be drunk on air Nate. - We should maybe, yeah, maybe we should do it. - We should do a New Year's show guys. - Let's do a live New Year's podcast. - Yes.

Okay. Well, I'm, you know, I'll keep Twitter open, see if we hear any other interesting media news this week. But for now, that's a wrap. So thank you, Alex, Nate, and Nathaniel. Thank you, Galen. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and is also on video editing.

You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast.538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.