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Wait, have we fact-checked that? I mean, to be fair, maybe we can't be certain about that. How long have people been performing in the Super Bowl? Like, when did the Super Bowl halftime show become a thing? I'm looking at the... So, New Kids on the Block performed in 1991. And I feel like that has to be a stepping stone. And then Gloria Estefan, 1992. And Michael Jackson, 1993. So that...
progression right there, right? It's all started with New Kids. I don't think I know who New Kids on the Block are. Oh my f***ing god. Can you sing one of their songs for me maybe to jog my memory, Nate? They're a boy band. How do you not know who they are? And no, I am not going to nor would I know. I really think maybe if you just sing one of their songs, I might immediately know who they are. It's a f***ing trap, Galen. I'm not doing it.
Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. I never thought I'd lead with a story like this, but folks, it is UFO season.
The U.S. shot down three unidentified flying objects over the weekend. We're still waiting to find out what the deal is with those objects. But this focus on slow-moving objects in the U.S. airspace was kicked off by a Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. shot down earlier this month. And so we're going to take this opportunity to talk about public opinion on China. Tensions between the U.S. and China have grown in recent years.
And we're going to talk about how that could shape domestic American politics as well as foreign policy. We're also going to ask whether the Republican Party can actually, quote unquote, decide. Prior to 2016, the conventional wisdom was that if a party apparatus coalesces around a presidential primary candidate, it can channel resources to help that candidate win.
Plenty of reports have documented a desire amongst GOP elites to settle on a candidate who isn't former President Trump in 2024. So will things be different than in 2016? We shall see. And we've also got quite a high-profile good or bad use of polling example. So let's get to it. Here with me to discuss, our Editor-in-Chief, Nate Silver. Hey, Nate. Hey, everybody. Also here with us is Senior Elections Analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Galen. Happy Monday. Happy Monday.
Happy Monday. So we have a lot to get to, as I mentioned, but I'm just like curious here. Any theories on what is going on with these UFOs? I mean, so there are a few theories, right? Like clearly or not clearly. Yeah, I feel like actually nothing is clear about what's happening. It's a little bit like after 9-11 where like.
the threat alert for anything goes way up. You know, clearly, I guess we made some decision that like, we need to be more sensitive to UFOs. I mean, there are a bunch of theories, right? Theory number one is that like, we are trying to sweep up all the Chinese balloons and other objects, right? It's kind of all part of the same operation. Theory number two is you have this Chinese balloon, which for various reasons, we decided to
intercept and capture. And now we have a new policy where we're just more policing UFOs in general. I would give like one of those two theories, like a 95% chance of being right. And then theory three is that it's aliens. That they are worried about our development of
artificial general intelligence, which has come a long way in recent weeks. And they're invading us or sending probes to warn us that, hey, these computers are getting too smart, right? They're getting too smart. Be careful. Okay. Philosophical question. If you knew right now that at some point in the Earth's history, aliens would come to our planet,
And you got to choose whether or not it happened during your lifetime. Of course. What do you mean? Yeah, obviously. Okay. Why? It'd be exciting. Wait, you don't want aliens? What if the aliens were not nice? Still be interesting. I mean, you know, I don't know. You wouldn't want to be, you wouldn't want to like have like a front row seat.
for the most pivotal period in human history is what I'm saying. I mean, who's to say that what if we just killed them and then it was over and that wasn't the most pivotal moment in human history anymore? Or what if they just killed us and I guess that was the most pivotal moment, but then it was also the end moment. Any encounter with aliens would have to be the most pivotal moment in human history to that point, I think, right? Am I wrong?
I think you're wrong. I mean, what about when humans became real? You know, what about when evolution got to the point where humans started to exist? That's the most pivotal moment in human history. That's also like not really a clear line though, right? It's like thousands and thousands of years of evolution, you know? It's not like 2001 where there's the monolith or whatever it is. Jeff, you're being conspicuously quiet here. Are you an alien? Uh,
I'm not sure if I would want aliens to come. I mean, I've seen a lot of sci-fi movies. I enjoy them immensely. But if aliens are coming here and we have reason to think that they'd be coming a long way, there's a decent chance that they're not coming for benevolent purposes. So to your point about being concerned about what if they're not nice, I think that there's a decent likelihood that they wouldn't be.
Okay, we're going to get to the more serious angle on this topic in a second, which is public opinion of China. But first, today's, as promised, high profile, good use or bad use of polling example. So last week, Biden did an interview with Telemundo during which he was asked, how do you win Democrats again? Many of them are concerned about your age. This is what he said.
Well, that's not what I hear. Look, do you know any polling that's accurate these days? You all told me that there's no way we were going to do well off your election. I told you from the beginning we were going to do well. You all told me I couldn't win the general election. We did well. I feel good about where we are. I feel good about the way things are. And I feel good about the reception I get. And I think it's awful difficult to...
poll these days. You know, you guys, I'm not, don't hold me to the number, but I think you have to something to make like 51 calls to get one call through. And ask any pollster how accurate they think their polling is. So I ask you, is this a good or bad use of polling? Jeff? It's a disappointing use of polling. When you get down to it, it's sort of the classic, the politician doesn't want to talk about a number that doesn't reflect well on him or her. And I
So they try to say, well, polling's just not very accurate. So I don't have to necessarily answer your question by saying I am concerned about this. It's a way of avoiding talking about the kind of the awkward situation, the elephant in the room. So in terms of like polling being accurate or not, it's just kind of a stupid statement, you know, point blank. Nate? Yeah, look.
I think President Biden is worried about those numbers because when the politicians say, oh, the only poll you can trust is the poll on election day, they don't say that when they're winning usually. You know, I don't think Biden's going to get a super serious challenge, but I'm not sure about that. I assume he's running and it's just all perfunctory, but I'm not sure about that. But like, look, Biden, for better or worse, tends to tap. He's kind of a weathervane of
conventional wisdom and conventional thinking inside the Democratic Party in particular, right? And like a lot of people who like work in politics actually have all types of misconceptions about the polls, starting with, as we talked about last week, Galen, about like 2022. But 2020, I mean, the polls are
Estimated Biden properly actually overestimated him, right? They didn't have him as the winner and he won but he won by a little bit less than Then the polls would have predicted right? Yeah, that was kind of the most odd Assertion that the poll suggested he wasn't going to win in 2020 and that he still won because the polls Overwhelmingly suggested that he would win and he won by a narrower margin, but you can always sound smart and
by disparaging the polls, right? You sound like you're in indict. But like, look, I don't accept politicians to really be driven by accuracy and truth. So, you know, no exception here. So am I getting bad use of polling? Is that what I'm hearing, Nate? It's a bad use of polling, yeah. But I think he's threatened by it. The other thing that is important to say here, especially in the context of politicians dismissing polls, is like,
The polls showing that Democrats, you know, want somebody else to run. It was like a majority of Democrats showing that at some point or his approval ratings being in the low 40s.
Yes, the polls are not perfect. But when we've had a big response to them being, quote unquote, inaccurate, it's because they've been off by two to four points. Right. So if those polls are off by two to four points and say like, oh, in fact, his approval rating is really 44 percent instead of 42 percent, or it's really that 62 percent of Democrats don't want him to run again in 2024 instead of 66 percent of Democrats. That's ultimately not that significant.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think about those polls. It's more important is that like it's not like Biden's like losing to some alternative. Right. It's not like if you ask people, oh, it's Biden and Gavin Newsom. It's not like Gavi boy is winning that matchup necessarily. Right. But, you know, but he's old. I feel like that's the elephant in the room that people aren't like discussing enough. What's going to be like 82 if he's inaugurated for a second term? Mm hmm.
Yeah, I mean, to your point, Nate, I mean, it's extremely early, to be fair, but even just some of the sort of test polls out there of Biden against, say, Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg, it's like he's not really performing all that well in those polls either for an incumbent who, at the end of the day, like first term incumbent.
Usually they seek a second term and he's pulling poorly in those. We don't expect Harris or Buttigieg to run against Biden, but I just think it –
Getting those poll results and then seeing polls that say that a majority of Democrats would prefer someone else as the party's nominee in 2024, like those things clearly align to some extent. So so I think, you know, the numbers are not good for him. But at the end of the day, that doesn't mean he's going to actually have a serious primary challenger. Is he or not? I mean, I guess not. Like, why is he why is he waiting to declare himself?
He's signaling through back channels that he'll run again, right? Like, what's the purpose in waiting? Doesn't that just give people like us reason to do more stories like this and be like, why isn't he declaring? Is he not going to run? Is he too old, right? Because if he isn't running, then you want your party to have time to like pick a nominee. Is there any incentive to wait to announce for structural campaign reasons?
kind of putting together the campaign before you actually make the announcement? Because in the grand, I mean, I think we all assume he's running again. And in the grand scheme of things, February or whatever, if he announces, say in March or April, like that's not, if we know that he's running, that's not a late time to announce. But if you know that you're running, then run. Right. Yeah. I don't know if it's just, I don't know if it's down to the fact that he just wants to avoid being in full on sort of campaign mode this early. I don't know. Like,
That might be part of the equation. It might be a campaign consideration in terms of the infrastructure for it, having sort of the proper rollout that they want to have. There could be a lot of explanations for that, but I, you know, we'll wait in limbo. We will continue to see what happens. That was rated a bad use of polling. Overwhelmingly, I'm sorry. Let's move on and talk about American public opinion of China linked to this spy balloon that was shot down earlier this month.
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Last week, the House voted unanimously to condemn, quote, the Chinese Communist Party's use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over United States territory as a brazen violation of United States sovereignty. So it was 419 yeas to zero nays, you know, in a divided Washington, of course, situation.
significant signal there. As we mentioned briefly in response to the State of the Union, pessimistic views of China have become increasingly bipartisan and unanimous. According to Pew Research data out last fall, the percentage of Americans with an unfavorable view of China grew from 47% in 2017 to 82% now. And in fact, that data is actually from before this most recent incident. So it was 82% in 2022.
I'm curious, there are probably obvious answers and less obvious answers, but why have perceptions on China grown so negative over that time? I mean, I think there's probably a fundamental thing that's going on here, which is that China has very clearly become the United States' main sort of rival as a leading power in the world. And I think historically...
When one country begins to view another as maybe a threat to it being...
the most powerful country that there is a tendency for people to sort of have greater negative attitudes at the same time there are also maybe specific things you know there's concern about human rights violations in china there's concern about it being like a national security threat just broadly i mean you have states that are passing laws to to basically prevent people from downloading tick tock government use phones because they're worried about tick tock being sort of like a vehicle for for china
And even things like something that we've been following state legislation across the country on a number of issues and something that keeps popping up in a lot of states is legislation to limit or even ban foreign countries, but especially China from –
owning real estate or real estate that's over a certain size to maybe keep it from getting hold of large farming tracts or even various real estate developments, basically just keeping money from Chinese companies or the Chinese government.
out of these places. And so like, there's all that. And then of course, the maybe the biggest elephant in the room is COVID-19. There could be some blame from COVID-19 having started there, you know, and then you can bring in conversations about like, how Chinese governments behaved on that issue, and also, you know, potentially xenophobia. So mix all this stuff together. And you can see how attitudes toward China have gotten more and more negative.
Yeah, no, this trend has been apparent for several years. So which means that you can't just point toward one incident, right? The unfavorable views of China have grown basically every year for six years in a row. COVID is obviously, I think, part of the story. Hong Kong is part of the story. But also, like, this is one of the relatively few issues where there is a fairly bipartisan movement.
hawkish view toward China, right? Like both Democrats and Republican elites think of China as being threatening to American interests. And it's becoming an increasingly uncontroversial view, I think, in some ways.
Yeah, I should also mention there's Taiwan to build on Nate's point about Hong Kong. It's like Taiwan, which is a democratic country that we support, but China says is part of the one true China, is sitting there as another thing to sort of speak to the point of having more bipartisan agreement on this issue compared to most others in Washington and around the country.
So, Nate, are you sort of saying that there is... Well, I'm curious almost which comes first, the chicken or the egg, when it comes to public opinion, that because there's basically bipartisan agreement, voters hear politicians of all stripes talking about threats coming from China, and then public opinion moves more quickly because there's a sort of unanimous bipartisan opinion and there's not one party basically saying, like, we should be softer on China or we should take a more conciliatory tone or whatever. Right.
Or have politicians moved because the public was already there, that overwhelmingly Americans already said, I see, you know, China as a growing threat to, say, economic interests or human rights or whatever? I think we're abstracting this too much. I mean, I think the public is correct about this, right? Yeah. That may well be. So you're saying that the public and politicians have moved in tandem on this, basically? Yeah.
Yeah. And don't get me wrong. I mean, you may find opportunities in the future for one-upsmanship over China. Certainly, I think Biden was not in a position where he could just be like, oh, yeah, just a little weather balloon. Let it go. It's a cute little balloon. Let it float on to Mexico or whatever. No, he couldn't do that. But like, I think, I mean, look, I mean, they are like...
the major superpower rival, right? Aren't they? I mean, they're like the biggest... Yeah, I don't really think that's up for debate. Second biggest economy in the world. I think second or third biggest military rival in the world after I think Russia might be too still, right? In terms of like technology companies, the only country that has a
comparison with the US is China in terms of scientific frontiers, right? Artificial intelligence, all this stuff, like China is going to be the big rival there. So yeah. Yeah. This also just may tie into larger conversations about things like trade and everything being made in China and Americans sort of having once been a bigger manufacturing country and
people being just sort of like, ah, it's made in China. You know, that just sort of being like this kind of like annoyed thing, but it's the reality of like our consumer culture and, and, and how like production has shifted. But I could just like, if you want to like look at sort of like a layman's
frustration with China, you could just even start there. But then at the same time, I think elites in Washington are like, China's clearly our number one rival, and we should figure out better ways to approach that, whether it's issues like trade or national security and what have you. So it feels like it could sort of be, maybe it differs into how people gain to these negative attitudes, but
At the same time, I guess the thought of them moving sort of in tandem makes sense to me. Yeah. So Pew actually asked respondents, when you think of China, what do you think about first and foremost? And the top thing was human rights, basically, which included lack of freedoms, genocide, Uyghurs, et cetera. That was the number one category at 20%. Second category was the economy at 19%, so basically tied.
which included things like made in China, manufacturing, bad products or knockoffs, high growth rate. The next in line was political system, which was another 17%. So close behind, you know, just dictatorship, communism, things like that. Then behind that was threats, which included things like China wants to be the most powerful country in the world, et cetera, et cetera. It goes on down. 7% of Americans said COVID-19.
It's interesting, though, when you look at, so Pew not only polled Americans, Pew also polled a swath of countries across the globe on views of China. So it was 14 nations in different parts of the world. And you see it hits 2020. And a lot of opinion levels are sort of plodding along. And then it just ticks up dramatically, right? Like, you look at something like
The Netherlands, it jumped from 40% disapproval rating to 73% disapproval rating in one year. Sweden is, you know, you see a similar story. It jumps up to 85% disapproval rating in the span of a year. So I think there are like U.S. specific reasons, and then there's also sort of global reasons here.
Something we've talked about on this podcast before is like, when does foreign policy actually break through? When does it go from something that is mostly in the realm of something that elites debate and something that presidents are largely in control of to something that Americans really care about and are assessing their leaders based on it? Like, do you think that relations with China has it broken through in a way where voters are going to be voting on, you know, foreign relations with China, things like that?
I don't think – I mean if people ask what the most – I'm looking at the Gallup poll. When Gallup asks open-ended question, what's the most important problem? I mean like does anyone say China? I think sometimes it's like 1% or 2% or something. Only 1% say Russia. Yeah. Children's behavior, the way they were raised, some of these answers are funny. Yeah, China is like 0.5%. So in that sense, it's not as important in terms of day-to-day politics. But like look, I mean I think –
The consensus of like most military analysts is that it's not at all inconceivable that China could invade Taiwan or take other aggressive actions toward Taiwan at any point, really. And like that would be the most important story in the world, I suppose. I do think kind of the balloon being shot down marked kind of the unofficial beginning of the fact that we are in Cold War 2.0. Right. Is that a hot take? I don't think that should be a hot take, really. Right.
I mean, I don't think that should be a hot take. Really? Right. Lots of qualifiers. I think I think it's too soon to say that. Look, I mean, NATO as a proxy, not the actual NATO, but like NATO supported implicitly state is at war with Russia, like a hot war. You know what I mean? Well, that's a Russian China thing, right? I mean, that's a hot war.
There were many wars by proxy in the Cold War, and this is not that different than a war by proxy like in Korea or Vietnam. Okay. Jeff? Yeah, I mean, I think the proxy war thing is definitely an important part of that comparison. Like, we don't really have that with China necessarily, but we do have it with Russia at the moment with what's going on in Ukraine. But when it comes to, like, public opinion, I think what's – I think, like, the Chinese balloon thing –
Is the kind of event that can surge an issue to sort of the front of the line? I don't know. I'd be interested to see when Gallup does their next round. Like, I don't know. I haven't looked at it, Nate, but I assume it was probably for like January. I'd be curious to see what, you know, what the next round of most important problem is if China has shot up a bit or national security has shot up a bit in some way. Like those factors are just more salient now in the aftermath of the Chinese balloon thing. Yeah.
It's these sort of events, you know, and if China were to send a bunch of ships into, what is it, the Strait of Formosa or whatever, and put pressure on Taiwan or take some aggressive action toward Taiwan that the U.S. is responding to in some way and Biden is getting on national TV to talk about it, like,
That's how that issue becomes suddenly a much bigger deal to the American people. So some of it's down to just sort of events, but obviously our leaders have some influence over politics.
whether those events happen or not because of, you know, backroom conversations and, and, you know, diplomatic conversations with another country. Um, and we don't, you know, we're not privy to those, but obviously like the secretary of state canceled a trip to China over the Chinese blimp thing, which could be a pub could be public evidence of maybe we're not talking too much right now. Um, or not talking as much as, as would be ideal if, you know, you're trying to maintain peace and stability in the world.
I'm curious how you see this playing into electoral politics over the next couple of years as, you know, Biden presumably runs for reelection and Republicans jockey for the nomination. I mean, to some extent, I think we've already seen maybe a preview of that. Maybe this is sort of classic, I mean, at the end of the day, but...
Biden shoots down – orders the shoot down of the balloon once it gets off the South Carolina coast. Republicans have been critical for saying he didn't act quickly enough or decisively enough and he waited too long.
And so I would assume that to Nate's point earlier, you said this, I think there's going to be one-upsmanship on sort of our relationship with China and Biden saying, well, I'm taking a – I'm using a firm hand or taking a stern line on China. Yeah.
whereas Republicans will say, well, he's been too weak on China. And then it will be up to the public to sort of decipher whether or not, you know, which they sort of feel is more true. And obviously, events that can happen in the next few months and whatnot can help play into attitudes and obviously partisanship, because Republicans will be like, yes, of course, Biden was too weak. And Democrats will be like, no, Biden has done a good job on it. And then the few independents out there will sort of make up their minds one way or the other, I guess.
Yeah, it's interesting. In this poll, the Pew Research poll from 2021, that asked about the main things that Americans think about when they think of China, also asked about policy responses. And 70% of Americans said that they prefer to promote human rights in China, even if it harms economic relations, as opposed to 26% saying prioritize strengthening economic relations with China, even if it means not addressing human rights issues. That's
Then on sort of more basic things like whether or not to limit Chinese students studying in the U.S., 55% of Americans supported that. And then 53% of Americans supported getting tougher with China on economic issues. So it's not even, you know, this may put more attention on military issues, but it seems like immigration, cultural stuff, economic stuff as well is at the top of Americans' minds.
Yeah, I mean, that speaks to the discussion of banning TikTok or keeping the Chinese government or Chinese companies from owning large tracts of land. We're seeing national and state action on those issues, which I just to your point, Galen, it shows it's more than just simply the national security as like the military side or something. Yeah, yeah. All right. Let's talk about whether the GOP can decide.
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Last week, Americans for Prosperity, the donor network created by Charles and David Koch, published a memo suggesting it will support an alternative to Trump in the 2024 primary. The memo read, quote, The Republican Party is nominating bad candidates who are advocating for things that go against core American principles, and the American people are rejecting them.
It continues, quote,
Numerous reports have documented a desire amongst other party activists to similarly move on. And this is a topic that we've touched on in recent episodes, but today we're going to focus specifically on it. Can the Republican Party apparatus decide on an alternative to Trump in 2024? And if it does decide on who that should be, can it actually make it happen?
So we're going to tackle this question from a couple different angles. But just as a starting point, I'm curious to hear your arguments. Can, as the political science theory goes, the Republican Party decide? I think to some extent it can. The whole idea of the party decides is that
the various figures within a party, whether it's, you know, important figures like governors, senators, representatives, but also major interest groups and donors and leaders of those various groups sort of try to find someone to back who sort of can do the most for all their interests, but also gives them a good shot at winning. I mean, that's just sort of a rough sketch of the whole idea. And I think that the concern about Trump is,
uh... among many of the sort of leadership class if you will the republican party and its various constituent groups
could make it possible for them to rally around one person to oppose him. Will that person actually be able to beat Trump is tough to say at this point, obviously, but I think in theory they can. It just sort of remains to be seen. But I think you're starting to see, you know, whether it's this story or some others about like evangelical leaders being concerned about or being reticent to throw their support behind Trump or every other criticism that came out just after the midterm elections from Republican leaders. I think all of these things...
point to the possibility that they can decide, but whether or not they actually are able to do that remains to be seen. And just how much power they have to do that is maybe the big open question about the entire theory. In 2016, there was talk about did they sort of just decide to not do anything? They sort of abdicated their responsibility in some ways. But at the same time, voters in primaries are going to have a big say about this.
Because of social media, Trump can say a lot and do a lot of things and get a lot of attention and get in touch with people without having to rely necessarily on so-and-so saying, I endorse Trump. So again, there's a lot of moving parts to this. Look, let me say a few things. People in general overgeneralize from the most recent example. People thought after 2016 that the entire –
party decides theory was a joke. And yet in 2020, you're like the literal embodiment of the party decides on the democratic side where Jim Clyburn is
A key mover of a certain constituency makes an endorsement at trigger's momentum where a bunch of candidates drop out and endorse Biden. He should spin the polls like literally faster than anyone we've ever seen. To be fair, I think that after 2016, people acknowledged that there appeared to be a difference between the power of the Republican Party and the power of the Democratic Party in terms of corralling voters in power. Yeah, but that's overfitting. That's overfitting the model, right? People also said, well, Bernie, that Bernie, because in some ways what Bernie did was...
more impressive as a data point against the party decides than what Trump did, right? Because the party clearly liked Hillary and clearly disliked Bernie, right? It was not the same as on the GOP side where like, they just didn't like anybody really. Okay, fair point. And I'll say we aired the primaries project on in this podcast feed earlier this year. And kind of the argument that
There is basically that through, as you said, social media, small dollar donors who can donate through the internet. Every time somebody makes a news making statement or clip or debate moment or whatever, you can raise a bunch of money. You can talk directly to voters. The party apparatus served as both a booster for candidates, but also as a barrier for other candidates to prevent people from necessarily breaking through that they didn't want.
Part of the reason we're talking about this is because over the past couple of weeks, there have been a bevy of articles coming out along these lines. You know, Politico magazine published an article last week titled,
titled, The GOP is Starting to Plot Against Donald Trump. USA Today published, Republicans Want to Dump Trump. Will They Rally Behind a 2024 Alternative Fast Enough? Of course, Americans for Prosperity also put out that memo. We talked about a report that The New York Times did where they reached out to the different delegates at the Republican National Committee in California earlier. Do we have enough evidence here that
indeed the party actually doesn't want Trump, the party apparatus, the activists, the rich donors, whatever, want somebody who isn't Trump? Or is the media sort of skewing our perspective here? I think it's tough to say only in the sense that I think it's good that there are a lot of elites who do not want Trump. And a lot of them didn't want Trump in the first place back in 2016. And a lot of them went along with Trump within the Republican Party.
because he won and he was going to do things like appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court and get a tax cut and do all these various other things as president. And now at the same time, those people exist, but now you do have, I mean, in a lot of ways, Trump reshaped
a large portion of the Republican Party, like people who are in the House of Representatives now look a lot Trumpier than they did, you know, when he took office, for instance, and the Senate for that matter. And so I think about, you know, big names in the Republican Party, a lot of them like Trump, and a fair number of them have already endorsed him, and more probably will as things move along. So I think it's like, on the one hand,
There's definitely a lot of conservatives who do not like Trump and want an alternative. But because Trump reshaped the GOP to a sizable extent, a lot of the institutional structure of the GOP
does like Trump, um, and might be okay with him going again, but maybe they're concerned about, you know, can he win this time around? Um, and, and so, you know, we're still early on. People are not, people are keeping their gunpowder dry. They're not necessarily diving in to say I endorse Trump, but that doesn't mean they're not going to eventually endorse him. Um, so that, that's like a thing that I just, I'm not sure about. Yeah. And to Jeff's point,
I also wonder if the anti-Trump forces are more likely to talk to kind of the centrist or center-left mainstream media than the Trump ones who have less trust in the media. But I don't know. I mean, it certainly seems like even Fox News is pretty DeSantis-friendly and so forth. And I think DeSantis does have this advantage that –
he is not running as the moderate alternative to Trump, right? He is running as, well, different campaigns for different people. In some ways, he's outflanking Trump on the right on some issues by trying to be more hawkish on like LGBTQ rights in schools and how that's taught or critical race theory in schools and how that's taught, right? Those are things that Trump rhetorically will talk about, but not acting in the way that DeSantis is.
I think DeSantis also has a pitch to people that, hey, I am comparatively sane relative to Trump. I am also more electable. So the fact that he has like different arguments he can make that can bring together different parts of the constituency, I think is, you know, it makes him fairly formidable. But I don't know. We should start maybe counting endorsements before too long.
Yeah, well, okay. So to the point specifically about DeSantis versus Trump, friend of the pod, Nate Cohn recently wrote about a notable disagreement in the polls over Trump's standing. He writes, quote,
a 30-point gap. He goes on to say, in just the last two weeks, an Emerson College poll found Mr. Trump leading Mr. DeSantis by 26 points, 55% to 29% in a multi-candidate field, while a Bulwark North Star Dinata poll over a similar period found Mr. DeSantis leading by 11 points, 39% to 28%.
Cohn writes, this is not normal. This is also a recent development. In the three months before the midterm election, 10 polling firms showed a much more typical 12 point spread in Mr. Trump's share of support between 45 percent and 57 percent. I know that was a lot of numbers, but that is all to say that there is wild disagreement in the polling right now over how Trump is actually doing.
Nate Cohn suggests his own theories. I'm curious if you were able to read the article and sort of what you think about this disagreement in the polls, since what we're trying to figure out is can the party decide maybe, you know, a factor here is also how much support do the Trump alternatives already have? Because probably a party can't necessarily move mountains, but it can shift, you know, it can shift them a bit one way or the other if the support is already there.
I mean, I think his argument is basically that the higher quality polls tend to have DeSantis doing relatively better, especially like the state polls. I mean, for one thing, pollsters are trying to accomplish different things. Some of them are actually trying to simulate or project what the primary electorate might look like a year from now.
Some of them just are surveying a bunch of adults and they'll say, add in a question about 2024 primary preference and take all the Republican-leaning adults and put a sample out with that, right? So, like, it seems like if they're trying to, like, actually be more predictive of the polls to find some, like, somewhat likely or realistic voter universe that DeSantis does a little bit better in those. But I don't know for sure. I mean, you know, I...
It all seems like Trump has rebounded slightly in some of those polls, but, but I don't know. I mean, again, we've talked about this before. To me, the fact that like DeSantis already is polling as well as he is, given that he's not as universally known as Trump, given that it's to the average person pretty early to me, that's like not a great indicator for Trump. Just like all the indicators of like Democrats being lukewarm on Biden and
would be taken seriously if there were some alternative Biden. I mean, I, you know, I, I, I still think I'd like rather be, um, I don't know, I guess I'd rather be in DeSantis' position than Trump's, I think. If you take all the different risks that Trump has, right. In terms of like, you know, legal risks and he's old health risk and everything else. Yeah. I mean, with the polling sort of the breadth of the results, um, that we're getting, uh,
It is challenging. To Nate's point, it's Trump tends to do better relative to DeSantis and the wider sample, the less restrictive one.
So I don't know. It's going to be something to watch. I am a little skeptical of a poll that has Trump at like 25 percent because of things like name recognition being a factor and the fact that his favorability among Republicans remains very high. I mean not as high as it was, but high.
Uh, but, but none. And so to me, it's like that favorability number is sort of part of why I think, you know, he, he can definitely win the nomination again. Um, as we sort of see how the, the, the actual horse race polls sort of developed from here. Um, but to Nate's point, I think DeSantis has a lot to feel good about. We know from past, uh, races that if you're polling, uh,
relatively high, but your name recognition isn't 100% yet. Like DeSantis, maybe his name recognition among Republicans is like 80, 85. I don't know. I haven't carefully looked at it, but it's not as high as Trump's name recognition, obviously. But if he's polling in some polls neck and neck with Trump or even ahead of him, that would suggest that he has room to grow and that Trump
may have maxed out his support. But the fact, you know, it's so early that I don't want to make any crucial judgments. But I know that that's a trend that we have seen in the past, and that would be a positive for DeSantis. Well, it's so early, but aren't we already at a point where in past cycles, the polls have been relatively predictive at this point? Yeah, I mean, they're more predictive than people assume, right? I think they're not predictive to the point where you have two candidates who are doing well
And you can distinguish between them. You know, I don't know if they're that predictive, right? That like, oh, Trump is ahead two points in the real clear politics average, therefore he's the favorite. No, it's like a blurrier view than that, especially because you do want to adjust polls for name recognition. And if you do that, then, you know, that calculation might have DeSantis a little bit ahead. But it's, you know, I mean, I think it would be a surprise if one person not named Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis won the Republican nomination. It would not be the biggest surprise in like,
election history by any means, but it would be a decently serious surprise, right? And we're saying that even though we're about a year away from the first votes being cast. It's worth noting that it's relatively unusual to have someone like DeSantis, who has not held national office
sort of polling in this position. And so, you know, that also maybe speaks favorably to his position as a candidate and why he he if we're talking about the party deciding and Republicans looking for an alternative to Trump, why he is very clearly the most obvious candidate for that, at least at this point. If the Republican Party does want to
put its finger on the scale, not the Republican Party per se, like the RNC, but if donors, elites, whatever, want to put their finger on the scale in DeSantis' favor, what can they do right now? Well, the Koch brothers can start a systematic national campaign of ads playing up Ron DeSantis if that's the guy they want to get behind.
Or maybe a national campaign attacking Trump as like having been a traitor to conservatism in some way, like find something to pick on. Like I would imagine it would be that kind – like to have an impact broadly on public opinion. But then of course behind the scenes also talking to every leader in the party and getting down even to like leaders at the state level and those early states, talking to them about why –
Trump isn't the right choice for the party. I mean, so it's sort of like I think there's a part of influencing public opinion. And then there's also part of influencing other party leaders so that they won't get behind Trump. Now, obviously, that didn't necessarily matter in 2016. But I think we face the real prospect of a much smaller primary field this time around, at least in terms of like serious candidates, people who actually could legitimately win the nomination.
And under those circumstances, I would imagine that that would make it easier for the – for anti-Trump forces to coalesce around somebody. So to me, those are sort of the like obvious things. But at the same time though, like do people like the Kochs want to do that? Like do they want to – like does Americans for Prosperity want to sort of go all in from the start or do they want to play – they're saying these things. But do they actually want to wait and see a little bit longer before –
Um, because if Trump ends up being the Republican nominee and he's ticked off at them, like, does that affect their influence and their ability to get what they want? Yeah. It's, I mean, one issue with the party decides theory is that it's never been explained to what extent endorsements, for example, are a cause versus correlate of candidate success. Right. Um,
Maybe it's just that people who are informed about politics and for whom they have a life invested in politics and therefore political outcomes matter, maybe they just kind of lead the voters in like kicking the tires on candidates and evaluating candidates. And so, you know, it's not their endorsements per se that matter. You know, I mean, one of the things too about like you have this narrative, which I kind of like partly believe, but that the GOP is making a mistake by like
Not just making it to Santas versus Trump and allowing Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and so forth to run, to which I'd say a couple of things. One, the problem in 2016 wasn't so much that they liked Trump, but that kind of all the alternatives sucked, right? Can I say that word? In fact, I think you've said exactly this before on the podcast. Yeah, all those candidates sucked.
It came down to like Ted Cruz versus Trump where they're like, I'm not really sure if I want to go to bat for Ted Cruz if he's the most valuable alternative who has lots of his own liabilities, including electoral liabilities. I think he might have had a tough time being elected.
So, you know, and the other thing is like, is it too heavy handed if you, uh, shoe aside Nikki Haley and, and Mike Pence and whatnot and say, no, Ron's our boy. Right. Like maybe it does seem too heavy handed. So, so, so I don't know. The other thing, I mean, you can imagine this happening behind the scenes, but also the reporting backs it up that a
A lot of party leaders, particularly in Iowa, as they're having conversations with these candidates who are planning on getting in, like Nikki Haley plans on doing on Wednesday. I think all of the reporting is that Tim Scott will get in the race. I think Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Ron DeSantis supposedly in May. They're having conversations with these other non-Ron DeSantis candidates saying, hey, we're all for it. You should definitely run, but you need to get out of the race before the voting actually happens if things aren't working out for you.
And I think in a way, if it's only Ron DeSantis versus Trump, then it just becomes all about Trump attacking one other person, right?
But if it's a bunch of candidates all making different arguments, it becomes less about like, oh, is the party disrespecting Trump specifically? There's a lot of different, you know, people to blame in a way. I don't know. You know what I mean? Yeah, you have the optionality of, I mean, first of all, DeSantis has not run for national office before. He is a national figure of sorts, right? But like, there's always the X percent chance of some
or something that just goes very wrong when he tries to sell his actual message to voters, right? It happens a fair bit. Kamala Harris was thought to be a frontrunner, although never polled like DeSantis did. Rick Perry? Didn't even make it to Iowa in 2020. Rick Perry stands out to me. It's like, oh, popular governor comes in. It's like, oh, Mitt Romney's most formidable challenger. And then Perry just completely imploded, basically. Rudy Giuliani? No, if your only goal was to decide...
Deny Trump the nomination and you had complete control over the candidates over how they behaved You might want as a hedge to give some running room to none Trump Nanda Santas alternatives in case of the wrong with the Santas or in case I mean, you know in a previous iteration of GOP I would have thought that Nikki Haley was a fairly formidable nominee. I am skeptical about her chances now I'm not sure she's matcha enough but like but you know, it's unpredictable to some degree and
Did you just give MAGA a hard G? MAGA-y? MAGA-y? I don't know. You know what I meant. Yes, I did know what you meant. Jeff, before we wrap up here, you wrote a whole long piece looking at the history of presidents who do not secure a second term, but then pursue a future term.
presidency, I guess a future term, sorry, a non-consecutive term for president. I know how to speak. I'm sorry. And basically charted the different ways that this could go for Trump based on a few historical examples. I know it's a long article and folks should go and read it themselves so they can read the full history. It's called How Donald Trump's Unusual Presidential Comeback Could Go.
But briefly, like, what are the different paths that you see this taking based on history? Obviously, the nomination system for president has changed a lot over the years. And in modern times, no president like Trump has –
tried to run again after leaving the White House. It hasn't happened. And so dating back to the 1970s is sort of the modern nomination system as we know it. But it has happened before. So you have to go back further. And it's like, you know, it's not necessarily that something happened in that campaign that is, you know, exactly like for like for what could happen this time. But like, if you sort of squint and are looking down from 30,000 feet, you can sort of see some similarities. So like,
On the one hand, Trump could find success. Maybe he brings in enough of his party to get support like Grover Cleveland did when he made a comeback in 1892 and ended up winning. Some of that came down to Cleveland just being this national figure still and sort of the most obvious person to rally to for the nomination. And in the end, no one else was able to sort of make a better case than him.
At the same time, maybe a majority of Republicans rally to somebody else in opposition to Trump, which is basically what happened to Ulysses Grant in 1880 when he made a comeback attempt after leaving the White House and had a lot of support, in fact, plurality support going into the 1880 Republican convention. But in the end, Republicans rallied to James Garfield as an alternative. And then there's the sort of
craziest possibility and definitely the least likely. But in a world where Trump feels like, oh, the party's working against me and this is a rigged thing. He loves the word rigged.
Is it within the world – he's talked about it many times but threatening a third-party bid and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 ran for the Republican nomination, nearly lost it to Taft and ended up running as a third-party candidate. So those are sort of the three –
So the three scenarios, as I saw it, for Trump's campaign, one that I don't really touch on and one that didn't exist in ye olden days necessarily, or at least as obviously as it does now, is somebody announcing they're running, but then they drop out before the voting even happens. And I'm not really sure that that's something that we would see Trump do, but we also have no idea how his like –
the criminal charges and various other things that his legal woes could come into. You could sort of talk about Trump's possible pass through.
For sure. I found the article very informative, even if we're relying on 19th century examples. You know, as Nate said, we don't want to have too much recency bias in our understanding of politics. So sometimes it's OK to look back at the 19th century. Hey, I recall Nate for the for the model in 2020. He was wondering about like sort of the effect of the economy. Right. And he reached back further because he was like, we don't we don't really have something like the covid shock to compare to.
So, I mean, I think it's reasonable as long as you're not overweighting it, but you're saying it could happen. Well, and the fact that like it hasn't happened recently I think is a negative for Trump. I mean obviously people aren't like necessarily trying either, but still parties fundamentally don't want to relitigate old news. And that's why from the start I've been like a little skeptical of like do people really want another Trump Biden election? You know?
Especially if you're a Republican and you lost the last one, and maybe you kind of don't think you lost, but the fact is that Joe Biden's in the White House. So yeah, I don't know. I still think the fact that this hasn't really happened recently is a data point against Trump. Yeah, and I mentioned actually in the article that I sort of felt like the 1880 example with Grant was maybe the most obvious, or at least at this very early vantage point, which was basically just like Grant had been very popular before.
that was like a hero of the civil war had been president but his presidency had seen a lot of rough times uh in fact at the end of like an economic crisis he was associated with a lot of scandals and there were a lot of republicans who did not want to re-litigate all that by having him be the party's nominee again and you know he had plurality support but he didn't have a majority and i can see those parallels with trump so um at least from an electoral standpoint
All right. Well, we will see what happens. We're going to leave it there for today. Thank you, Nate and Jeff. Thank you, Galen. Thanks for having us, Galen. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director and Audrey Mostak 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 wherever you get your podcasts or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.
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