What We Know About Kyrsten Sinema's Odds Of Reelection 57:53

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Galen, why don't we have theme music for good use or bad use of polling? I feel like we need something catchy. We should do it. Dun, dun, dun. See, Jeff's on it. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun. Jeff's a singer. Jeff will do it for us. This is great. Can we just...

I think, Jeff, if you just do that a couple more times, we can use that track exactly. We'll maybe put a little music under it, but if you could... Sorry, could you just do that a couple more times so we can pick it up and use it when we mix our good use of bad use of pulling soundtrack? Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Something like that. All right, there we go. We got it. We're a talented crew. My favorite thing as...

Host of 538 Politics podcast is getting people to sing on mic. Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics podcast. I'm Galen Druk. I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend. We've got a lot to cover today, so we're going to do something of a news roundup. It's been nearly a year since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. So what do Americans think about the conflict and the United States involvement now?

Last week, a Fulton County judge released part of a report into possible election interference in Georgia in 2020. The investigation is widely considered to be one of former President Trump's biggest legal liabilities. So what's at stake as he ramps up his primary election campaign?

Also, last week, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed Medical Center for treatment of clinical depression. Diagnosis and visibility of mental illnesses has grown significantly in the U.S., but what happens when the issue collides with politics?

And we are a week away from the first round of a mayoral election in Chicago that could see incumbent Lori Lightfoot not even make it to the runoff. We're going to talk about that and more. So let's get to it here with me to talk about it all. Senior writer Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Hey, Amelia. Hey, guys. Also with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Galen. Happy Tuesday, I guess.

Yeah. Happy Tuesday. Shorter, shorter week. It's definitely Tuesday, Jeff. You sounded a little uncertain, but I gotcha. Still feels like Monday a little bit. No, I know. Or like maybe Thursday. I don't know. I get really disoriented during four-day weeks.

Yeah, well, we already had a long podcast of things that we were going to discuss today, and it got a little bit longer because President Biden was in Kiev on Monday, a secret detour from a planned trip to Poland. And actually, as we record the podcast right now, he's giving a speech there, but we are going ahead and recording nonetheless. Of course, this Friday marks one year since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine and

In 2022, the U.S. sent about $50 billion in assistance to Ukraine, including both military, humanitarian, and financial assistance. The 2023 budget includes another approximately $50 billion. Now, that is by far the largest contribution of any country, but on par with other Western countries as a percentage of GDP.

So where is public opinion on United States involvement in this conflict today, almost a year on? And how does that compare with where things began? I mean, it seems overall that the public is still somewhat more supportive than not of U.S. aid to Ukraine. You know, if you ask people, do you want

boots on the ground, they would say no. But in terms of giving Ukraine money, weapons, supplies, there's more support. However, it is also clear that there has been a downward trend, at least to some extent. It sort of varies poll to poll in regards to just how supportive people are. And there is a noticeable partisan split that has developed where Democrats are more likely to say that they would like to see the U.S. continue to support Ukraine sort of at current levels or even

even be even more supportive, whereas Republicans have trended toward more of them saying that the U.S. is like doing too much. For instance, use Pew Research Center's wording. So there is a bit of a partisan split that has developed as well.

Yeah, I mean, to jump in and just elaborate a little bit more on those numbers from Pew, which I found really striking. Pew has been asking this question periodically over the past year, whether the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine about the right amount or not enough. And the share of Republicans and Republican leaners who say that the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine has gone from 9% last March to 40% in the most recent poll in January.

So that's a pretty significant shift. And we haven't seen anywhere near that shift among Democrats. The shift there for Democrats has been that in March 2022, 38% of Democrats said that the U.S. was not providing enough support to Ukraine. And that's now down to 23%. But it seems like Republicans are the ones who have really changed their opinion about this.

Although Pew also found that Republicans are now less likely than Democrats to see the Russia-Ukraine war as a major threat to the U.S. So that may partially explain it. When the war started, it was about Republicans and Democrats looked really similar. And now 43% of Democrats think that the war is a major threat to the U.S. versus 29% of Republicans. Yeah.

And just to back up that data that you're referring to, the AP has also been tracking support for involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. And one of the most striking numbers that they found was back when the conflict began in 2022, 60% of Americans supported providing weapons to Ukraine, a clear majority.

Now, in January of 2023, it was down to 48%. And as you suggested, a lot of that movement is coming from Republicans. Why? Is it because of leadership? Is it just because of a sort of fundamental difference in interventionism versus isolationism? Because traditionally, you don't think of like, oh, you know, foreign policy hawkishness, an area where Republicans aren't supportive of a strong American posture. Right.

My thinking is it's sort of a couple things. For one, we do have more Republican members of Congress, for instance, either saying that the US shouldn't be spending as much or should be getting out of Ukraine. And that plus –

perhaps less negative attitudes, at least compared to Democrats among Republicans toward Russia. And obviously a lot of this revolves around Russia and their invasion of Ukraine. I sort of feel like that probably explains some of it as does perhaps a less interventionist bent among a lot of Republicans in sort of the Trump and post-Trump era that we're in now. So,

To some extent, I feel like those have to be at least major contributing factors. It's probably not helping that Biden is a Democrat. He's the president, and he's the one who's out there saying, we need to support Ukraine. I mean, I don't think that explains all of the shift we're seeing, but I think especially in combination with the fact that Republicans have had this turn toward a more isolationist foreign policy view, at least in some parts of the party over the past few years,

could be making it easier for Republicans to say, you know, no, this is like a fight that the Democrats want. Russia's actually fine. Let's not send a lot of money toward Ukraine. So we're noticing the beginning of a trend here. Also within the past week, we've seen it come up a little bit in the

shadow primary, Republican presidential primary, which is that Nikki Haley, when she launched her campaign, was very hawkish toward Russia and other countries that she described as bullies like China and North Korea and Iran. Now, when Ron DeSantis spoke on Fox yesterday in response to Biden being in Ukraine, making his appearance in Kiev, he sort of said, OK, well, the president should be focusing on our own border integrity and basically said that he doesn't think

Russia is as big of a threat as it was made out to be when it comes to threatening NATO. Do we see this becoming a 2024 issue and this sort of trend line continuing? Because it doesn't, at this point, look like this conflict is going to be resolved quickly. DeSantis called Russia a third-rate military power, right? Yeah.

That's just, I don't know, that's like pretty wild. I mean, I think if the war continues, I could absolutely see this staying as a 2024 issue, particularly if Nikki Haley lasts for a while, because she is going to have more of the traditional Republican foreign policy hawkishness.

And she was the ambassador to the UN under Trump. And so she does sort of have these foreign policy credentials that someone like DeSantis does not have. So Nikki Haley is going to want to talk about this, although it is trickier territory for her to take what used to be a very traditional, uncontroversial Republican stance on something like Russia and Ukraine in this newly more isolationist Republican Party.

All right, we are going to talk more about the Russian invasion of Ukraine one year out and where this conflict is headed. But we're going to continue with our news roundup for now. So let's get to our good use or bad use of polling for the day.

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Last month, Democratic Representative from Arizona Ruben Gallego announced that he's running for Kyrsten Sinema's Senate seat in 2024. Sinema switched her party to independent late last year and has not yet clarified whether she is running for re-election. No major Republican candidates have entered the race yet, and it's been an open question how a three-way race between a Republican, Democrat, and independent could play out in Arizona. Last month, Democratic Representative from Arizona Ruben Gallego announced that he's running for

Last week, Gallego seemingly got a boost from one poll showing him leading under any circumstance, whether or not Senma runs and regardless of who the GOP candidate is. This was a poll from OHPredictive.com.

insights, and it got the sort of individual poll write-up treatment. The Hill and other folks that cover this kind of election coverage and polling showed it as a big boost for Gallego without anyone else having declared, not even Kyrsten Sinema. So I'm wondering, is this a good or bad use of polling? Amelia, kick us off.

I mean, look, it's fine to be going out into the field and doing this kind of polling. I think people should not put as much stock in it as they appear to have just because the range of lineups here, I mean, it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight possibilities.

Voters are not thinking in anywhere near this level of detail about next year's potential Senate race. And so to say based on this,

That Gallego leads under any circumstance, which presumably people are going to take that and say, oh, this means cinema shouldn't run. That just seems really premature to me. Like, we don't even know if it's going to be a three-way race. We don't know what's going to happen. And I just think this was given a lot more weight than it deserves. It's interesting. Don't read too much into it.

Yeah, I think I sort of agree with, I think, what Amelia is getting at, which is that I think it's perfectly fine to poll it. I think it's a good poll. Like, go ahead, ask the poll. But I think the framing of it as some sort of evidence of one thing or the other at this very early point is...

Not a good use of polling. We've actually got other polling already from like last month, even from a group that doesn't like Sinema that showed her in a somewhat better position than she was in the polls in the series of surveys that were released by OH Predictive Insights. So yeah,

To me, that makes me say, as always, never use just one poll. You should try to sort of take the collective of them to get a read on what's happening in a race. And obviously it's extremely early and we don't know if cinema is running or what have you. But the fact that people are polling this makes a lot of sense. It's extremely interesting to see an independent or someone who switched parties to independent potentially seeking reelection vote.

But I think you have to always be careful and use all the data that's available to you, not just one poll.

Yeah, that was well put, Jeff. It's like good use of polling to do the poll, bad use of polling to write about it as if this is God's word descending from on high. So OH Predictive Insights in our pollster ratings gets a B slash C. I'm curious, Jeffrey, this poll...

Do they have a dog in this fight? Is this an institution that doesn't want cinema to run or that is trying to sort of sway the course of events through this kind of polling? Or is this just a, we're all curious, let's try to figure it out? I think OHPI is more of the, we're curious, let's see where things stand. They're not

like a democratic pollster or something, trying to push cinema to not run for fear that she'll went over some Democrats and split the field or something like a lot of polls, they probably wanted to get media coverage because it's good for them. It's good for their business. Uh, so you got it, you know, here we are just, just playing it out for them. Um, no, I mean, I don't have any reason to think that there it's, it's some sort of, you know, quiet effort to get cinema to not run. I don't think it would have anything to do with that. It's, it's,

They pulled something that people are interested in or people who are very politically engaged are interested in and released the results into the wild. And here we are. Yeah, that's a good correction, Jeff. I think most people are not interested in this. And that is a reason why I'm interested. I know you're interested, Jeff. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you are not representative of the general voting population. Yeah.

So to give you the breakdown of ranges, because it is while Gallego leads under every circumstance, quote unquote, according to this poll, it's closest in a situation where Gallego would run against Doug Ducey, former Republican governor of Arizona, and Gallego would lead by four points in that scenario. And the lead would go up to 11 points in a scenario where it's Gallego versus Blake Masters, of course, the Republican Senate candidate at

who just lost in a situation with say, for example, Gallego cinema and do see Gallego leads by five points. I'm not sure what information this is giving me to be totally honest, just because it's extremely, extremely hypothetical, but the actual, maybe more interesting and broader question I have is like,

Does this tell us something about Arizona? Or do we have any other clues about the political leanings of Arizona post 2022? Because usually you get into the situation where a once red state or once blue states becomes purple for a while before it just like flips. But are we looking at a situation where the trend lines in Arizona are steep and this is all happening quite quickly?

I think it's really hard to say that off of this poll, for instance. Of course. I mean, I think really the value of this poll is if Sinema does run as an independent and she faces two notable candidates from either party, just how difficult it's going to be for her to win the reelection. And I actually looked up a stat on this.

Basically, every time an incumbent senator in the history of popular elections for US Senate – so go back to 1913 – every time an incumbent has run as an independent or third-party candidate, incumbent senator, the only time they have won is if one of the other major party candidates wasn't getting at least 25 percent of the vote. So you look at this poll.

And you see a lot of times both candidates, the Republican and Democrat, are getting 25 percent or more. And so if Sinema is in a situation where she can't be – make it sort of a two-person race, if one of the candidates, either the Democrat or the Republican, kind of fades to some extent, if she can't make it a two-person race, it becomes very hard to win. And that makes some intuitive sense because we live in a very polarized political environment.

where most people lean one way or the other. Now, there are swing voters, and Arizona might be a state that has a particularly large number of them. I think there's been a lot of talk about the Phoenix suburbs and winning over voters in Maricopa County who may have formally leaned somewhat Republican, but now because the Republican Party has moved too far to the right, they were Doug Ducey Republicans who now vote for people like Mark Kelly, for instance. I mean, that's a simplification, but that's one way of interpreting it. But I think

Even in a place like Arizona, if that is the case, it's going to be really hard for Senator Wynne running as an independent if the Republican and the Democrat are holding on to their bases of support. But I think to your question, Galen, about whether Arizona is sort of rapidly flipping blue or moving into more of a purple phase, this poll is a little bit telling about that. Again, with the caveat that we shouldn't read too much into it. There are really...

a number of people in this poll who are undecided, around 30%, 28%, if it's Gallego versus Ducey. And Gallego has 38%, but Ducey has 34%. So, you know, Gallego, like, it still looks pretty close, and there are a lot of undecided people, which reinforces what Jeff was saying about potentially there being more swing voters.

And Gallego does have more support if it's someone like Blake Masters or Carrie Lake, who was also polled about. But even in those situations, still about 25% of the respondents saying they're undecided. So...

To me, that suggests that a lot of this is candidate dependent. And whether we see Arizona moving very rapidly blue probably has a lot to do with who the Republicans choose to nominate. Someone like Doug Ducey might keep Arizona purple for longer than it otherwise would. But as we saw in 2022, Blake Masters and Carrie Lake,

You know, I guess Carrie Lake was a stronger candidate than Masters, but neither of them won. So I think that this is an issue where who the candidates are and how they make their pitch and specifically how far right they go really matters a lot.

Yeah. So listeners may know we actually rank states according to their elasticity, which is how much the state shifts in terms of public opinion for every one point that the nation shifts. And of course, if you're above a point, then you're more elastic than the nation. If you're below a point, you're less elastic than the nation. Does anyone want to take a wild guess where Arizona stands?

I should remember this since I believe I was the last one to write about it during the 2020 cycle, but I'm pretty sure it was above the one point. I think it was one point, one point of something. So I think it's slightly more elastic than the country. Yes, it is. It's the 17th most elastic state in the country at 1.05. So what's the most elastic state? The most elastic state in the country. Do you know what it is, Jeff? I think it was. Don't look. Oh,

Is it Vermont? Or Massachusetts? That's top... That is top six. Vermont is top six. It is Alaska. Oh, okay. I buy that. Okay. I buy that. That makes sense, too. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Jeff. Didn't mean to put you on the spot. I was just curious. I know Vermont's very blue, but it actually...

because of some of the gubernatorial elections in places like Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire. New Hampshire actually has a ton of independents. Yes. Actual independents. So anyway, those states are always high in that ranking. I'll give you the top six or so. Alaska, number one, then Rhode Island, then New Hampshire, then Massachusetts, then Maine, then Vermont. Does anyone want to take a wild guess? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Does anyone want to take a wild guess at what the least elastic states or districts are? Well, I know Washington, D.C., if it's included, is usually last. But if we're not counting it. Yes, it is. Which is why I said district. But yeah, other than D.C. Then I think it's either Mississippi or Alabama. And I don't remember which, but it's one of them. I was going to say the Deep South.

Yes, it is Alabama, least elastic, then Georgia, then Mississippi. Although these actually these numbers have not been updated since the most recent election. So I would be curious if Georgia has moved further away from the bottom. But yes, it's Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, then Delaware, then Kentucky.

Delaware kind of being interesting. Sneaky, consistently, always Democratic these days, I guess. Not a lot of variation. That's so interesting. Well, speaking of Georgia, let's look at the possible legal issues facing former President Trump in Georgia.

A Fulton County, Georgia judge released a partial report last week into possible interference in the 2020 election and indicated that the full report and decisions about indictments could be coming imminently. The investigation includes former President Donald Trump's call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger imploring him to find enough votes to flip the state in his favor in the 2020 election.

So, Amelia, what do we know so far based on this partial report? I know, you know, you might say, well, why don't we just wait for the full report to come out? But that's not what we're doing because this is a major, pretty significant investigation of one of the few people who is currently running for president. And so we want to talk about it. And what do we know?

One of the first and most important findings from the partial report was that jurors said that they did not see any evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, and that was a unanimous finding. So that's quite significant coming from this body that obviously has been looking into this, has seen a lot of evidence. And then the other finding was that the grand jury believes that

at least one of the many, many witnesses they have seen may have committed perjury. And we don't know who, but it's a little bit of an interesting tidbit. And then...

They also recommended that where the evidence is compelling, some individuals should be indicted, but we don't know who that is yet. So it's a signal on top of some other things that we've seen that indictments are probably coming through a regular grand jury. And so we will likely get more news about that soon. But those were the major findings.

I guess that kind of answers my next question, which is what are the remaining questions that will be answered by the regular grand jury? But maybe more specifically, what are the remaining questions as pertains to Trump? Like what kind of legal liability is he facing?

I mean, it's a little bit hard to say at this point. Lots of potential charges have been floated. You know, I can list a few, like solicitation to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit election fraud, false statements. There's been a little bit of talk about racketeering, which is intriguing because that carries a higher penalty. And Georgia's RICO statute is something that Fannie Willis, the prosecutor, has used quite a bit.

So, you know, obviously not a guarantee that that's what we would see at all, but just some of the possibilities that have been batted around. So we don't know what's going on with Trump. The report...

didn't really give us new information on that front. And we know generally that a number of people could face criminal charges, including Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former lawyer, and John Eastman. But we still don't know at this point who exactly will be indicted.

The calendar that prosecutors are working with here is important because I think that in general, the criminal justice system tries not to be investigating these types of things close to an election. Although, of course, the Republican primary is now fully underway. And so there is a question of how this will impact voters and how they think about voting.

Trump as a candidate this time around. I mean, do we have any indication of how Republicans are thinking? I mean, I don't think we need really to do any polling to figure out how Democrats are thinking about Trump's liability here or sort of Trump's honesty or things like that. But I am curious how this could impact the primary. Do we have any tidbits, Jeff?

Yeah, so for instance, there was some polling done in August of last year that was connected to the raid on Mar-a-Lago regarding classified documents. But they also more generally – the poll asked for morning consult. Politico asked about whether or not a voter, a respondent, thought that Trump had broke the law at least at some point while he had been president.

And overall, 42 percent said yes, definitely, and 16 percent said yes, probably. So that's 58 percent. But then among Republicans, you had 9 percent who said definitely and 15 percent who said yes, probably. So that's about a quarter of Republicans at that point said yes, he probably did or definitely did break the law at some point while he was president.

So at the end, you've got on the other side 60 percent who said probably not or definitely not. So to me, I can't imagine those numbers have shifted dramatically. It is possible since we know from other polling that Trump's favorability among Republicans is not as high as it once was. So it has dropped some. So perhaps –

There are stronger negative views of Trump than there were previously, and that could connect as well to attitudes about his legal liability and whether or not he's broken the law in some way. But I think at the end of the day, it's pretty likely that a majority of Republicans still don't think Trump broke the law. And I think if you ask – we haven't actually seen any recent polling on this question either.

But if you ask them, Republican primary voters, if they thought the 2020 election was fair or not, I think there's not much reason to think that things would be that different from what we've seen in the past, which was that a majority said no, it wasn't among Republicans. So I'd love to see a fresh poll on that though because I am curious in the aftermath of the 2022 midterms when we did see polling that suggested that most people thought the election was fair or

to see if those attitudes have shifted in some market way. But regarding the 2020 election, we saw a very long unbroken streak of a solid majority of Republicans viewing it skeptically, if not thinking something was very wrong. So thinking about the situation with Georgia, I think that makes me a little – it gives me pause about just how much

This would affect voter attitudes because the people who may be most likely to view Trump negatively over legal issues may have been the ones who are already least likely to vote for him. I mean, is there a world where...

getting charged in Fulton County, Georgia would actually help Trump. I mean, it could get attention back onto him. You know, I think one of the things he's been struggling with since he launched his campaign is just kind of relevance and whipping people up

and getting them excited the way that they were about his candidacy in the past. We haven't seen as much of that enthusiasm. And I think, you know, there are ways that he could paint this as a politically motivated attack. We, of course, don't have evidence, any kind of evidence that that's the case.

But Trump has already attacked Willis, the prosecutor on social media, saying that she's a, quote, young, ambitious, radical left Democrat prosecutor from Georgia who is presiding over one of the most crime ridden and corrupt places in the U.S.,

And Willis is she's the first black woman to serve as Fulton County district attorney. And she's part of this broader wave of progressive prosecutors. And there has been some backlash to them. So, you know, I think there's a world in which Trump.

draws attention in the primary from this. Like, obviously, it is not good to be charged with a crime. And I do not think that is like objective. That would not objectively be good for Trump. But in the short term, if he wants people to pay attention to him, you know, this is a way to get eyes back on him and a way for him to make a case about

once again, that he is the victim of all of these behind-the-scenes political machinations where people are out to get him. Again, no evidence that's actually happening, but we know that kind of line has worked for Trump in the past. Yeah, you know, what makes this interesting to me is also from just thinking about the Republican primary is we know that there are a fair number of voters, Republican voters, who want to sort of move on from Trump.

And I would think that him getting charged criminally would give them more ammunition to use in making their case for that. So that's sort of like the flip side of that in terms of how it could be damaging for Trump within the primary context, even if a lot of Republicans think that something was wrong with the 2020 election that this particular call has to do with.

But I think if there is movement within a substantial number of Republican voters to say we want to shift gears, go in a different direction, or at least with a different candidate, I should say, not necessarily a different direction, maybe the same direction, but with someone else, this would be very useful for critics of Trump. Totally.

Totally. I think that's a possibility, too. But either way, it's going to make that a much sharper line. And maybe that'll be useful to Trump or maybe it'll really hurt him. Yeah, I totally agree in terms of focusing attention on Trump. If he were to be indicted, it would be wall to wall coverage. You know, he would be the focus of American news attention and global news attention in a way that we probably haven't seen since his presidency yet.

But I have difficulty imagining it actually helping him. I think there were some ideas that the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago would have a sort of backlash effect and push voters to rally around him. And looking at our tracking of, you know, favorable versus unfavorable views of Trump since he left office, you know, I think that's a good idea.

If anything, he becomes... His favorable numbers become worse around August 8th or so when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago. You know, his unfavorable numbers tick up a little bit, but then...

Really, the reality of his approval amongst Americans is that it's been pretty steadily poor since he left office today. He's underwater by 13 points amongst Americans overall. Of course, that's not Republicans specifically. But if Republicans were sort of rallying around him and then leaving him or rallying around him, we would see more variations.

One question I have in terms of this primary process is, do we see similar to Democrats in 2020 analysis on electability? I think there are definitely folks out there and they probably tend to be more of the sort of Republican elite, people who are paying a lot of attention to politics, who are

who say, we want someone who can win. You know, say whatever you want, but we got to win the White House in order to do anything that we want to accomplish. And we saw time and time again, it was actually a majority of Democrats who reported wanting somebody who could beat Trump over somebody who represented their specific policy preferences.

We haven't gotten much polling on stuff like that in the Republican primary so far, but I think we're going to. And that will also help us better understand how a question about Trump's legal liability could shape voters' preferences.

Yeah. I mean, I do think that Trump getting actually indicted would be a different kind of event in terms of public opinion than the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. I agree with both of you that I think there's also a world, and maybe this is even a more likely scenario, where Trump is hurt by an indictment because Republicans say, you know what, this guy...

just like more stuff keeps piling up and we need to just walk away. But if you subscribe to the Trump has nine lives, um, or nine political lives, uh, you know, theory, then, uh,

I don't know. It doesn't seem crazy to me that this might reinvigorate some of Republican voters' anger about 2020. So I think we'll have to see. And the electability question is really interesting. I don't have a good answer because, as you said, we don't have data coming out or we don't have a lot of data at this moment. And we also don't know what the full field of candidates is going to look like.

But it was just such a preoccupation for Democratic voters in 2020. In the early states, it was all anyone talked about. And so it would be interesting if Republican voters ended up tying themselves in knots about that a bit, too. I have a little bit more trouble imagining that happening in this primary. You know, we'll have to see.

All right. As usually happens on this podcast, we've gotten to a place where we just need more data. Let's move on, though, and let's talk about what happens when a politician seeks care for mental illness and publicly acknowledges it.

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Last week, Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania John Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed Medical Center to receive treatment for clinical depression. He had a severe stroke days before the Democratic primary last year, from which he's been recovering since. According to data from Johns Hopkins, about 10% of American adults suffer from a depressive illness each year, and about a quarter suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

Mental health issues have, of course, become increasingly visible in the U.S., but it can still be something of a touchy subject in the political sphere. So I'm curious, first of all, looking back at history, Jeff, how have candidates dealt with mental health challenges in the past or honestly just health challenges in general? Well, I think the example that every single person

news organization has brought up since the news about Fetterman has been the 1972 Democratic presidential ticket. Thomas Eagleton, who was a senator from Missouri, was picked to be George McGovern's running mate, so the vice presidential nominee. And then it turned out that he had gone through treatment for depression and ended up being dropped from the Democratic ticket and was replaced by

So that example has been thrown out time and time again as sort of an example of people suffering from mental health issues suffering as politicians for it.

The part I do think is interesting there is that Eagleton went back to Missouri or went back to the Senate and got reelected in 1974 and 1980 before retiring, before the 1986 election. So I don't think it's quite as simple as him being vilified or something. But I mean obviously that –

It would be very interesting to see that situation arise 50 years on today with someone who is on a presidential ticket.

For someone like Fetterman, having just gotten elected to a six-year term, there are some more recent cases of people in Congress openly talking about mental health issues, whether it was Seth Moulton from Massachusetts who had been a Marine veteran talking about PTSD. Minnesota Senator Tina Smith has also openly discussed her struggles with depression and

So I think to some extent, we see a more open conversation probably about this now than we did in the past. But as to whether or not, you know, it'll have some electoral effect, I think we're a long way from necessarily knowing that with someone like Fetterman. But disentangling that from partisanship is always trying as well. Yeah, I think we're in a

We're in a really interesting moment for this question because there is so much more attention to mental health issues than there has been in the past. There was an American Psychiatric Association poll from last fall that found that four out of five adults in the U.S. say the state of mental health in the U.S. is a public health emergency that merits more attention from lawmakers. And

About 70% of adults say they are more likely to vote for a political candidate who makes an investment in mental health a priority. So this is something that Americans are aware of, they're thinking about, they want political action on it. The trouble is that there is still a lot of stigma facing elected officials and people running for office who have disabilities of all kinds.

And Alex Samuels wrote a great story for the site about this last fall when questions about Fetterman's fitness to be a senator were first being raised.

And her article pointed out that in addition to the fact that people with disabilities are incredibly underrepresented in elective office, one of the experts she spoke with said that some of the stigma surrounding physical disabilities has decreased over time. There is still stigma, but it might not have been as intense as it was before. However,

cognitive impairments and impairments that affect people's ability to communicate may still be more stigmatizing for politicians, the argument being that

having these impairments makes it harder for them to perform their duties in office. And I wonder, too, if it makes a difference that Fetterman is currently going through these challenges now. I mean, we know that he's a stroke victim. Stroke victims are more likely to experience depression than the general public.

It makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of people in the U.S. know someone who has had a stroke or, you know, have someone in their family or have experienced it themselves. So I also think this is an issue where Americans may have a lot of sympathy.

But it is different, I think, than someone like Smith talking about how she struggled with depression earlier in her life. That's sort of more of a retrospective look and trying to shine light on the issue and share personal experiences.

But I wonder if voters sort of read it differently, if it's something that a lawmaker is struggling with in an ongoing way. So we'll have to see. It's not like he's going up for reelection soon, though. So hopefully at least that pressure is not on him right now as he focuses on his recovery.

Yeah, you know, thinking about the electoral impact of this or what could be down the road, there is at least a study that we found by Peter Lowen and Ludovic Raul. They basically did an experiment, experimental survey where they asked about opposing pairs of fictional candidates. And they sort of gave different traits to each one and running different versions of it. And they did find that –

If a candidate had some sort of mental health issue, like depression, I think specifically is what they asked about, they did find that that individual usually lost support at a statistically significant level in the survey, even after controlling for things like partisanship. So to some extent, this could potentially be a political problem for Fetterman down the road. Obviously,

comparing political problems to your own mental health is – let's not make too much of that, but health versus the politics of it. But if we're just sticking just to the sort of electoral politics situation, that was a very interesting finding. This study is from – I think it was like 2018, 2019 is when it came out. So it's definitely recent. I do think

And they talk about it in the paper that incumbency and people's familiarity with that candidate will matter a lot. So sort of how people view Fetterman in the next few years, how he's recovered, what sort of the public perceptions are of him will play an important role as well in all this. But it is something to keep in mind. Yeah, I'll add that study that you're talking about specifically compared candidates who

are experiencing or have experienced depression versus candidates who experience other common illnesses. And so they compare it to things like hypertension or what have you. And one of the conclusions that they came to is that Americans just view mental illness as being something that can potentially

impair decision making or the things that we think of political leaders sort of doing at a high level. I should say, though, as well, to emphasize what you were saying about context mattering, like some of the people who have been most vocal about experiencing mental illness in office have been veterans like Seth Moulton and Ruben Gallego as well. And

And so telling a story about it and helping people understand what it is and helping people make sense of it for themselves also probably has a significant impact on how voters view it. Like this is in the abstract. None of these hypothetical candidates are someone representing you already or who have been to war or who experienced a stroke or whatever. And I think Americans are definitely, you know, sympathetic people, empathetic people who are able to understand these things in context. I also think for what it's worth,

That as with many things, Americans differentiate between executive positions and representative positions in Congress. And so there may be a difference between a governor or a president experiencing these things versus a member of the House or Senate. You know, whether or not that's fair, I don't know. But I think that those kinds of contexts matter.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I also think we saw from last fall that Fetterman is a politician who is exceptionally skilled at doing that kind of storytelling and that contextual work about sort of how these experiences fit into his life and how they make him understand his constituents better. I mean, I thought that the way that he responded to the attacks on his health was quite skillful. And it does...

remind Americans of how common all of these experiences that he's going through are, whether it's having a stroke or suffering from depression. And, you know, if Americans know people in their lives who have encountered those challenges,

Having someone representing them who has experienced these difficulties and been open about the fact that he's going through it and sought treatment and talked about what all of that means, you know, at a time when people think that we're in a mental health crisis, that could be quite powerful. Yeah.

Yeah, to kind of get back to actually the history of all of this, one of the biggest differences here is that the way that we found out that Eagleton had been treated for depression was through the press. It hadn't been disclosed. It wasn't something that he talked about. And that's historically been how a lot of politicians have dealt with health issues before.

just across the board. I mean, the fact that largely Americans were unaware that FDR was paralyzed from the waist down gives you some example of how well politicians hid their health struggles from the public.

And so this, I think, in and of itself is just a significant break from the past. Like, Fetterman probably could have checked himself into a private clinic and never said anything about the specifics of experiencing clinical depression. But that's not what he chose to do. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in that paper we were talking about earlier, they noted that other studies have even done, like...

just to sort of talk about how common this is, probably historically, is like a meta-analysis of like the biographies of all presidents. Basically, they figured out that maybe roughly half had some sort of psychiatric disorder with the most common one being depression. So, you know, it's not like politicians haven't had this before, but I do think

To your point, Galen, we are in something of a new – and Amelia, you said this too – like a new period where people do seem to be more open about this and transparent about it, at least in the sense of saying I am having an issue and I'm doing this right now to deal with it. So that's different. And I would think it's probably healthy and good. And so – but we'll have to just see how people react to sort of the politics of it.

We will see. Well, we have one more topic to get to on our rapid fire review of the news of last week and this week, and that is an actual election. So the first round of voting in the Chicago mayoral race will take place next Tuesday, the 28th. If no candidate gets above 50% of the vote, which at this point is basically guaranteed, it will go to a runoff. But

Perhaps this round of the election is as interesting as the next because it's not clear at this point whether incumbent Mayor Lori Whitefoot will even make it through the first round of voting. So we touched on this briefly the last time the two of you were on the podcast. But what are the polls looking like right now? How close is it?

It is in sort of the who knows what's going to happen territory in terms of which two candidates will advance. It is, to your point, very unlikely that anyone's going to get 50%. But I just did like a simple average of like five or six polls here that are not connected with any campaign specifically. And you had five candidates at over 10%.

Um, with Paul Vallis leading, uh, he's, uh, the former CFO of, uh, the Chicago public schools with 22% and then Lightfoot at 15. And then Troy Garcia representative at 14. And then Brandon Johnson, who, um, is a Cook County alderman, um, I believe, uh, is at 13%. So like,

Who gets – I mean it looks like Valas has got a good shot at being – of making it to the runoff later in the spring. But who the other candidate is, is hard to say. And it's so kind of all over the place. The polls – I'm averaging them, but they're kind of all over the place to such an extent that if you told me Valas wasn't going to actually advance, I wouldn't necessarily bet against you. Yeah.

For people who don't know any of these candidates, which includes me for the most part, other than the incumbent mayor, what make that make sense to me? Like, what are the issues or constituencies that these different candidates represent and what their sort of strength in the polls or ability to make it through the first round of voting would suggest about Chicago politics? Yeah.

Well, Paul Vallis is someone who is running as a more moderate Democrat. And this is something that has not been uniformly good for him. He was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police and then...

They invited Ron DeSantis to come speak in Chicago. And so there was like this little couple days of back and forth about, you know, the fact that Vallis had been endorsed by them and then they invited DeSantis and Vallis had to kind of respond to that. But he's someone who is running...

on a more moderate platform. Chewie Garcia is obviously a congressman from Chicago right now. And he's someone who actually ran in the mayoral race back in 2015 when Rahm Emanuel was going up for reelection. And he jumped into the race a little bit late because of a really tragic circumstance. The person who had been viewed as sort of the main

front runner, the main challenger to Rob Emanuel, Karen Lewis, turned out to have, I think, brain cancer. And she has since passed away. It was extremely tragic and sad. And Garcia was widely perceived as just like not really being ready for the moment. So he did run, but he

he was not an especially strong challenger to Emanuel. Emanuel was reelected, and then Garcia went on to be elected to Congress. So he's someone who is probably

probably pretty similar to Lightfoot on a lot of the policy issues. And really, you know, Chicago mayor is one of these things where it can be difficult to differentiate what all the different candidates say they're going to do. And it's more about kind of like positioning yourself in a

But, you know, he might be an alternative to people who don't like Lightfoot, but also don't want someone who is presenting themselves as a moderate. And then Lightfoot, of course, is the incumbent. And I...

I think it's important to remember that, you know, at this point, four years ago, I was living in Chicago. I would not have predicted that Lightfoot would become the mayor. I mean, she came out of this very crowded field and ended up winning, and it was quite a surprise. And since then, she's had a very challenging tenure as mayor. She is battling a

a lot of perceptions that she hasn't helped the city, that crime has been going up, and that she hasn't been willing to compromise to kind of move things along within Chicago, which is kind of ironic because she was really elected as an outsider who was going to come in and shake up Chicago politics. The main person who she was running against four years ago was much more of an insider. So, you know, in a sense, she,

like if she's not compromising, then that's sort of what she was elected to do. But people don't like that right now. And obviously there is also the fact that she is a black woman, first black woman mayor of Chicago, occupying a role where racism and sexism could all be playing a role. So those are just, just some of the factors that are going on here.

Yeah, just to also mention Brandon Johnson for a second. So he's a Cook County commissioner. I said alderman earlier. That would be the city of Chicago. But Cook County commissioner is a black progressive candidate. And so I think that kind of muddles both the race and ethnicity aspect of this.

But he's also a progressive, very much like Garcia, for example. So the fact that he's also polling very strongly and could end up being in the runoff, it really just gets to sort of the muddle of candidates. And maybe the thing that has benefited Vallis the most is that he –

As the moderate white guy, in some ways is most differentiated from those other candidates. And so in a really splintered field, he's in a position to maybe get a plurality in advance. Now the problem maybe for him – and Lightfoot has been sort of open about this. She's hoping to make the runoff and face him because she thinks that in a 1v1 mashup –

that that campaign will end up benefiting her in the end because Valis will be seen as sort of out of touch with much of Chicago as like this white moderate guy. Don't know if that's actually true, but that seems to be her campaign's view of things that it's been reported on.

Basically, they've openly said that they want to face him in a runoff. So whether or not that will come to pass, we'll see. But that's sort of another aspect of this. Yeah. And I mean, to be clear, Garcia forced Emanuel into a runoff in 2015. So although Emanuel ended up winning reelection, he is a strong candidate.

And he is, you know, he would be Chicago's first Latino mayor, which means something as well. So it is just a lot of different options that voters are being presented with. And I think there is this sort of general sense of dissatisfaction about how things are going in Chicago that all of Lightfoot's challengers are trying to take advantage of. All right. Well, we will find out next week, but let's leave it there for now. So thank you, Amelia and Jeff.

Thanks, Galen. Thank you, Galen. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and Audrey Mostek is helping on audio editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon. Bye.