From Gas Prices To The Threat Of Nuclear Conflict … What Is Shaping The Midterms? 01:00:31

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I mean, like, isn't it a bit pretentious to drink tea? I feel like coffee drinkers are kind of more pretentious. I mean, there are like pretentious coffee stores, but like coffee itself, like Folgers, that sh** isn't pretentious. No, that's not pretentious. Nate, do you drink Folgers? Does that even exist anymore? No, I've never had Folgers in my life. See, exactly. Pretentious. Pretentious.

Yeah, I'm just saying. I feel like, honestly, on a work trip at a Holiday Inn, I've had Folgers. I don't have coffee in those circumstances. I go to the gas station nearby and buy a Red Bull. Okay. No. I can't believe you said that you're the only normal one. This is so not normal. I don't support this. Red Bull is... You'd rather basically drink Robitussin with caffeine in it than have Folgers coffee.

I would rather have Robitussin than Folgers. That's correct.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. It's October and the surprises are rolling in. OPEC announced it's cutting oil production by two million barrels a day. President Biden is talking about nuclear Armageddon. And shoes keep dropping in the Georgia Senate race. To round up everything that's going on, we're going to try to rank the electoral significance of some of the biggest stories in the news right now.

Also, as of Monday, Democrats have a 67% chance of holding the Senate and Republicans have a 70% chance of flipping the House, according to our forecast. Democrats have maintained their single-point lead in our average of polls that ask Americans whether they'll vote for a Republican or Democrat this fall. However, today we're going to ask whether a long-running indicator from Gallup that suggests strength for Republicans is a good or bad use of polling.

Here with me to discuss it all is Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver. Hey, Nate. Hey, everybody. Also here with us is Senior Elections Analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Galen. And tech and politics reporter Kaylee Rogers. Hey, Kaylee. Hi, guys. How's everyone doing? It's a Monday. It's a federal holiday. We're still working. Feeling good? Excellent. Oh, and Kaylee, of course. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

Thank you for remembering, Galen. Wow. That's so nice of you. You know, I'm a really thoughtful colleague. What are you doing to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving this evening? Absolutely nothing. I Skyped with my family yesterday, so. Okay. I mean, how similar is it to American Thanksgiving? It's very similar. You know, turkey, chicken.

Fixins, family, but because I don't have time off and because it's election season, I couldn't swing a trip home. So I'll just celebrate American Thanksgiving instead. Don't they eat beavers in Canada? There is a delicacy called a beaver tail. You may have had the pastry with the, you know, syrup. Guessing that doesn't involve actual beaver. No, it's just a pastry. It kind of looks like a beaver tail. Wait, Nate, are you trolling or did that actually come from somewhere?

Look, things to know about Canada, they eat beavers, they like hockey, and they have a national health care system. Those are three facts about our neighbor to the north. That's all you need to know. You've really revised your review of Canada over the past three weeks. I think the last time we talked about Canada on Model Talk, you were raving about the country. You're like, why aren't they better known for being such an amazing country? We all have to move to Canada. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They stole Thanksgiving, to be honest. That's why.

Our Thanksgiving predates your Thanksgiving. It's a fact. Look it up. Of course. I feel like I've said this on a FiveThirtyEight podcast in the past, so I'm just going to stop being the annoying Canadian exchange student.

In fact, speaking of exchange students, we have sent our intern Emily Vanesky to Canada in your stead. She's in Montreal today. I hope she is enjoying beaver on her Canadian Thanksgiving. Whatever that entails, she can report back to you, Nate, once she's back.

I'll also say before we get going that, as usual, we have a live show in Washington, D.C. on October 25th at 6th and I. You can find tickets in our show notes. But we have a big show today, so let's dive right in. Today's good or bad use of polling comes from our former colleague, Harry Enten. Hello, Harry, if you're listening. Last week, he wrote that, quote, Republicans hold a near historic lead on a key midterm indicator.

Here's what he's talking about. So each month, Gallup asks Americans the most important problem facing the country today. It's an open-ended question, so people can literally say whatever they want. Truly, if the most important issue facing the country today is that Canadians eat beaver, you can absolutely say that.

So for context, 38% of Americans said that it has something to do with the economy. 22% said that it had something to do with the government or poor leadership. And 6% said immigration. 5% said race relations or racism. And it goes on down the line. After asking Americans the most important problem, they ask which party will do a better job of handling that issue. And here's what Harry wrote about that.

Gallup's latest data shows that 48% of Americans believe the Republican Party is best equipped to address the most important problem, while 37% believe it's the Democratic Party. This 11-point Republican edge is one of the best they have ever had. Looking at 20 midterm elections since 1946 when this question was asked, only once has the Republican Party had a larger advantage on this question.

That was in 1946 when Republicans had a 17-point lead on Democrats. Republicans had a net gain of 55 House seats in the 1946 election. And while the correlation is far from perfect, it is plus 0.7 on a scale from negative one to one, it is very much existent. So we're going to break this down. Jeff, would you like to kick us off? Is this a good or bad use of polling? I guess I lean toward a good use of polling.

And I think that's because – look, basically it's just like political analysts are always trying to find different ways to sort of get a feeling of what the nation's mood is. Obviously, we have other polling. We can talk about the generic ballot. But essentially, the economic situation, concerns about inflation are –

I think this ties in to what you're seeing in that polling result. And those could be reasons why Republicans end up having maybe a better than expected midterm result when we actually get to November than what maybe the generic ballot is currently showing. It's interesting to me, like this seems like maybe it's sort of like

Tapping into what could be sort of like the upper bound of like Republicans like scenarios in November because of this situation. But obviously there are other potentially mitigating factors that I'm sure we'll talk about. But that's sort of how I see it. So it's a decent use. All right. Kaylee? It's an okay use of bullying. I mean I feel like it's maybe putting a little too much salience on –

this single metric and how much correlation that actually amounts to. I mean, the reality is that true, like single issue voters are pretty rare and you can kind of cut it down many different ways of an issue that voters believe one party performs better at than another.

What I really think this does is add context to the generic ballot and the forecast and sort of the broader picture of the election. Some of what we're seeing is because of this exact issue with the economy and with inflation. I don't think it tells the whole picture, but I don't maybe that's not really what it's trying to do. All right, Nate, where do you come down? Bad.

Bad. We went from good to okay to bad. Sorry, Harry. I think it's bad. And the reason why is like, I don't like all these measures that are like correlated with the generic ballot or other more robust indicators showing my bias here, I guess, but which are not actually them, right? Because I think it falls in the category of

Trying to outthink the voter. If you ask the voter who you're going to vote for, and they say Democrat or Republican, and then you ask them a bunch of other questions and you say, well, you may have said you're going to vote Democratic, but I've tried to infer or impute from these other questions that you're really going to vote this other way. I just think it's kind of like –

I think it would not be very robust is the kind way to put it. You can like ask as many questions as you want. You can go back historically and there aren't that many elections. You're going to find some through chance alone that correlate well with past outcomes. I just am not a fan of this kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, you can think that you prefer the Republicans on the economy and you can think that the economy is an important issue and you can still vote Democrat. Like that doesn't necessarily...

add up to a meaningful result, especially when it differs from the generic ballot in this way. Yeah. I mean, especially like in an era like now where, you know, some of the reason to vote against Republicans are not about policy. If you're a Democratic or swing voter, potentially it might be about risk to the electoral system, right? Or risks on the Supreme Court and things like that. It's not like Democrats are making the pitch that, hey, we're better on economic policy, right? It's that the GOP has a lot of

baggage for a certain segment of swing voters. I mean, in fact, in different metrics, we see this spelled out. So for example, the most recent New York Times-Santa College polling, Republicans had a 14-point advantage on the issue of the economy, but Democrats had a two-point advantage overall. I mean, people often say that the economy is their most important issue.

But a 16 point gap between sort of where voters preferences are between the two parties and where they rank them on addressing the economy. I mean, is that a little unexpected? Is that more than usual? To me, like, I think this is probably all priced into the top line number, meaning the generic ballot, right? The economy is a big reason why Democrats are

Probably going to lose the House, right? Why the Senate is – I guess it's lean Democratic in our forecast now but not for sure. It's a big liability but like I trust voters to weigh these issues for themselves. That's the whole point of polling I thought is to defer to the voter and let them kind of tell us what they think and not impose some preference on them. Another thing to consider with all this is in Gallup's polling, 38 percent said like the economy was most important.

or some economic element, some part, something related to the economy. And I bet a lot of these people were saying inflation. And it's worth remembering that in our polling with Ipsos that FiveThirtyEight's been doing, we have definitely found certain issues are going to – you're going to get a lot more responses from one party or the other.

So actually in our polling, inflation – Republicans have been almost twice as likely to name inflation as a top issue than democrats. So also keep in mind that if a lot of people are naming things related to the economy, they may be more likely to be GOP-leaning and that might be part of why you're seeing republicans more likely to handle that top issue.

So it sounds like you're coming around. I don't know. I want to give you the opportunity to defend the good use of polling designation that you gave it up front. I mean, I think it's just it's a question of it's it's like an interesting pattern. And it does, I think, to Kaylee's point, maybe maybe it's a good use in the sense that it adds some context to the situation.

So I don't think it's bad, bad. I also am not – definitely was not saying that you should rely on this instead of looking at the generic ballot or something. I think it's still good in the sense of it's an interesting pattern that – I mean even in our forecast, like the 80 percent range. I think we have Republicans at 242 seats as sort of the high end of the 80 percent range of outcomes.

If that were the result in November, maybe this would sort of be something we could look back on as part of the reason why. Is it a question of what gets the most emphasis in the final? We're now in the final month of the election. Say, you know, we're about to talk about this, but gas prices start to increase. The economy becomes more salient in voters' minds that like this is pointing to that potential upside for Republicans. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, if the GOP were able to frame the election on their own terms, then all people would talk about was inflation and the economy. But there are lots of other issues, and both the Democrats and voters have a chance to evaluate those as well. You know, will the economy become more salient as election day approaches? I mean, I think we're going to think more about that. Maybe enough time has passed that abortion seems less salient to voters. But I keep in mind that, like,

Roe v. Wade being overturned is like an issue that has tangible impacts on women who are seeking out abortions. Abortion is now illegal in quite a few states, right? So it's like not like not some like scandal or something where it's purely people rubbernecking, right? It's like it has like a tangible impact and I wouldn't discount that still being important. All right, Kaylee, you have been the middle vote all along. Where do we come down on this? Good, bad, still decent, right?

I reject your good use of pulling bad use of pulling binary. All right. All right. With that Canadian bullshit. Yeah. Trying to make peace with everyone. I'm going to go with good. I'm going to go with good. If I have to, it's like, it's just going to very, very barely tip over to the good side. To the good side. Yeah. All right. Harry. I think we get something out of it. It's interesting. Yeah.

Well, okay. Here's where I agree with you. Gallup has been asking this question since 1946. There are few polling outfits that have that kind of historical data. And so it is just nice to have some sort of reliability in a changing world, you know, kind of like Queen Elizabeth II.

Yeah, we would have more of that if Gallup would go back to polling the generic ballot some. I know. It would be great. It was a real loss when they stopped doing horse race polling. Well, I mean apart from the fact that their polling kind of sucked. Yeah, I just think that they're a big firm who could make adjustments, figure things out. They're cowards.

Wow. But one day I'll become a coward. I wasn't going to go that far, but... No, they're cowards. That's what it is. That word exists to describe behavior like gallops, right? They're cowards. I'm a coward myself, so I'll be a hypocrite at some point, but that's why that term exists in the English language. All right.

To be clear, Gallup still provides a lot of really interesting, helpful data. So like, I don't, I'm not trying to like totally besmirch them here. You know, when their PR person reaches out to me, I will direct them straight to you. And with that, let's move on and talk about how the biggest stories in the news are shaping voters perceptions.

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It's October, and surprise, there's a lot going on in the world. As I mentioned at the top, OPEC is cutting oil production, Biden is talking about nuclear Armageddon, the January 6th committee is wrapping up its hearings this week, and the mayor of New York City has declared a state of emergency in response to an influx of migrants in the city.

This close to an election, one of the biggest questions is, how will voters respond to these new developments? Will they shape their perceptions of the parties and ultimately the outcome of the midterms? Usually, we might dedicate a whole segment to just one of these issues, but with so much to talk about, we're going to try something new. I'm going to list a development and ask all of you on a scale from 0 to 10 how electorally significant it is. Are you ready?

No, but let's go ahead anyway. Have you calibrated your scale, Nate? Well, I'd like to preface this by saying that for me, a 10 in this exercise is like the Comey letter before the 2016 presidential election or the Cuban Missile Crisis right before the 1962 midterm. So none of these are going to be getting super high marks. Wait, should we just award Comeys? Should it be zero to 10 Comeys?

No, that's not what I was going for. But just, you know, I just think if you're going to talk about like October surprises or big things that could shake things up, none of these are quite on that level, of course. All right. So comment out strongly against this. I was kind of like ranking them and like among the given things available. But if we're talking 10 is Comey letter, what would a 5 be then, Jeffrey? Yeah.

I gave Herschel Walker a five, so we'll talk about that. Oh, interesting. I mean, I think some of these things you have to consider are, I said surprise, but obviously that was for some dramatic effect to a certain extent. Sure.

Some of these are already baked in and may be well electorally significant. It's just that it's not going to change perceptions from where they are now. They have already affected perceptions and are already affecting the electoral. Right. Anyway, we will discuss this all as we go through the list. So let's begin with Trump.

OPEC's oil production cut. They announced last week that they will be cutting 2 million barrels a day of production, which was considered somewhat of a slap in the face to the Biden administration that has worked to diplomatically get on Saudi Arabia's good side and keep oil production flowing in order to keep gas prices low. On a scale from 0 to 10, how electorally significant is this, Kayleigh? Seven. Seven. Okay. All right. Jeff? Yes.

I actually did give this a six. Okay. Nate? Like a two and a half. Whoa. All right. Already coming out swinging. So where there's debate, we will allow it to flourish. Otherwise, we got a motor. But there's clearly a gap here. So let's get to it. Nate, what's your reasoning? So first of all, this doesn't take effect until November. Second of all, like what kind of share of overall...

Oil supplies are there. I mean, the US can open up more oil production on our own. The market didn't react pretty strongly to this. So yeah, if you like guarantee that like gas prices would increase by a dollar, then that would be a high score, right? But I think there's a lot of noise in gas prices. And again, this would have a delayed impact, delayed onset. And I just I think people are like attributing like a big rise in gas prices to this, whereas I don't know if it's clear that would actually translate so linearly.

So let me frame this maybe a slightly different way. Put aside OPEC for a second. Average gasoline prices sat at $3.83 per gallon on Wednesday of last week, nearly $0.07 higher than a week before. But that's significantly lower than the record average of just over $5 per gallon in June.

We have seen gas prices fall throughout the summer, and we've also seen Democrats improve their lot in the polling as that's happened. Part of that is also due to Dobbs. If we were to see gas prices rise, maybe not super dramatically, but steadily between now and Election Day, how electorally significant do you think that would be, Nate? Rise by how much? I mean, yeah, that would be a seven, eight. Yeah. If you guaranteed like a measurable increase

tangible, noticeable rising gas prices, that would be pretty bad news for Democrats. I just think that like thinking probabilistically, it's much noisier than you might think. If gas prices go up, that's not great for Democrats because there are studies that suggest there is some connection between say presidential approval and gas prices. If prices are going up, approval has tended to go down. It's not like a perfect relationship or anything. But

At the end of the day, people are visiting the gas pump pretty often, or at least a lot of Americans are, and you notice when it's going up. So that was sort of my thought on it. Yeah, I was basing it on the assumption that it would raise gas prices. If it doesn't raise gas prices at all, yeah, that's a very different calculation.

The reality is that gas prices are still higher than, say, pre-pandemic, which I think a lot of Americans are still thinking of in their mind as, like, quote-unquote, normal gas prices. And while they have come down from that peak in the summer, like, they're still quite high. And OPEC was partly...

making this decision to try to get them back up. They've found that they've been falling too much, despite them still being higher than what we might consider typical or average. So the intention is for gas prices to increase. I guess the reality is what that will look like, especially in the United States, might still be a question mark. I'm going to revise up to a $5

You guys have convinced Nate. Congratulations. Well, that's funny because you convinced me, Nate. I was like, well, dang. I'm on oilprice.com checking out various crude oil prices and they have risen. Trying to buy some crude? Going to buy some crude. They have risen. I don't know the cause and effect here, but oil prices have risen. That would be a leading indicator for gasoline prices. So yeah, we're going to go from two and a half to 5.7.

Oh, wow. That's more than a 100% increase in the price of Nate's opinion.

Yeah. Okay. Let's move on to Herschel Walker's abortion scandal. We talked about this quite a bit on the podcast last week, and we already had some polling out, very minimal new polling out when we did discuss it. Understanding that Georgia is the likeliest tipping point state in the Senate. We're going to go in reverse order this time. Nate, zero to 10. How many Comey's are you giving it?

Relative to the overall election or relative to Georgia itself? Relative to the overall election. Like a three. A three. And if you were doing just Georgia? Like a nine. Okay. Jeffrey? Yeah, I gave this a five. Okay. Yeah, I mean, basically it comes down to you got a close race.

And it may not actually move things that much, but if it moves it just a little, that could be important because, as you said, it's the state that is most likely to decide control the Senate. It's not like overwhelming. I think it's like 15 percent chance in the forecast. But that's more than any other state. And, you know, to me also, there's with Georgia, there's runoffs in Georgia. If no one gets a majority, maybe this reduces the chance that there's a runoff as well. All right, Kayleigh.

So maybe we should just give the numbers before the explanation because I'm already being swayed. But I will be honest, the number I had originally written down was two, thinking nationally and just thinking about...

Again, was the polling that you cited before, like the Fox 5 poll that came out the day after it broke, Galen? Yeah, so there was the Fox 5 poll. There was one other poll that I think was mostly conducted before. But we saw some, as we discussed on podcast last week, some shift in perceptions of Walker and Warnock in the part of the Fox 5 poll, I believe, that was conducted post-scandal coming out. Of course,

This is minimal polling. So as 538, we're not going to encourage people to put too much stock in it. But people will see that in our polling average, the race has widened from a two point lead for Warnock to a four point lead for Warnock. Weirdly enough, that isn't really because of this scandal. We're still waiting more data. But anyway, go ahead.

Right, well, I mean, in that Fox 5 poll immediately after it had Warnock at 47, Walker at 44, which was, like, pretty well in line with previous polls beforehand. I mean, the main thing about this for me is that

This could potentially be like a last straw thing maybe for some voters, but it's not as if this is like a sudden scandal amidst an otherwise pristine campaign. Like, you know, he's been having scandals. So I think that's one way that it's a little different than something sort of surprising, tainting, and otherwise clean campaign is.

And, you know, Nathaniel wrote a piece for the site about all the reasons why it may or may not impact the race. The fact that Georgia is a particularly inelastic state is, I think, notable in this case. Like there's a lot of these voters are decided already. And whether or not he paid for an abortion or not, it's hard for me to imagine a huge swing based out of that.

All right, so we are going to await more data there, but of course we will discuss it when we get it. That ranking gets a two to five. Let's move on to new data that came out last week. The unemployment rate is back at a record low of 3.5%.

Here's reporting from Bloomberg. Non-farm payrolls increased 263,000 in September after a 315,000 gain in August. A Labor Department report showed Friday the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, matching a five-decade low. This is somewhat complicated news, I think, because of the inflation factor here, but we're going to start with Jeff this time. How are you ranking this from a 0 to 10? Yeah, I gave this a 1.

Whoa. Yeah, because I think that there are other aspects of that report, latest unemployment data, that what the overall labor force has shrunk. People aren't seeking work who are of working age. And I also think that just the fact that people – the public's overall confidence in economic conditions is not great. Consumer confidence is not great. So

This number to me doesn't really represent very much about the state of the economy for a lot of people. So to me, it's just not really all that important at all. I mean now, to be fair, if unemployment were like 10%, that would be an eight. It would be terrible for the incumbent White House party. Yeah.

I give it a two. So a lot of the same thinking as Jeffrey. I think, again, if this was if unemployment increased, I think that would be making waves. But the fact that it's it's still low, I don't know that Americans are like appreciating that, so to speak. You know, I think.

It's like there's two jobs for every unemployed American right now. And yet the majority of Americans in several recent polls say that they believe that we're currently in a recession. There was one from The Economist and YouGov in the summer was the most recent I could find. And 61% of Americans said that we're in a recession. So like the perspective and the perception of the economy is not good, regardless of how many jobs there are. All right, Nate.

Uh, like 5.4. Why did I give the other one? Yeah, it's in the same region, I think. Um, no, if you have like an actual recession, as opposed to a, some people think there's a recession recession, like Democrats would be totally. So non-news still counts as news. I think the fact that the economy is a partial disaster in some ways and not a complete disaster, I think is a pretty material fact.

I mean, non-news still counts as news. That's why I gave it a two and not a zero. But like, why is this less important than the OPEC cut, right? It's a piece of moderately good economic news as opposed to the one's a piece of moderately bad economic news. You know, I don't see why one would outweigh the other.

Wait, what about this read on that data, which is that the jobs report was too strong, which is going to encourage the Fed to enact another pretty hefty rate increase like, you know, a week before the election? I mean, that's a very stock market specific type of reaction that I don't think correlates that well to how voters might view the economy. Yeah, I think what's different here is that it's not...

it doesn't feel like a change the way a change in gas prices feels like a change. And it's a more, the gas prices is such an immediate visceral weekly, you know, estimate for the average consumer. It's something that, and it's an expense that they can't spare. And you know, it's, it's drive, they drive by it. Like it's literally in your face. Whereas like if you were just employed and,

You're not necessarily thinking about what the unemployment numbers look like. It's not going to be a factor in your day-to-day life. Yeah. You don't see the unemployment rate along the highway as you drive to work every day. Maybe we should. Maybe we... I mean, right? People are always saying we need better metrics for establishing the health of the economy beyond just the stock market. So...

Maybe we should put employment figures on the side of the highway. Okay, next. These are all pretty significant things, honestly, just at least as far as what counts as a news event or whatever, in my opinion. Yeah, it felt weird ranking them like this because it was like, I'm not...

I'm not ranking how significant it is. Oh, yeah, for sure. Right. There's a difference between like, oh, this matters for humanity and oh, this matters for the election. Sadly, sadly enough, we're a politics podcast that focuses on national elections. So that's our job for today. All right. So we had another like two to five and a half range there.

Next, President Biden says that the world faces the highest nuclear Armageddon risk since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

You know, he said this, of course, in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine and Putin's nuclear saber rattling. The war has been escalating there, both in terms of Ukraine fighting back and regaining territory and Russia countering with attacks, at least this morning, throughout the country on civilian centers, etc. Electoral significance for Putin.

The midterms, I mean, these are obviously in some ways not the best terms to be thinking about a story like this. But Kayleigh, go ahead. Start us off on this time. I gave this one a three. I think that concerns around Russia and Putin have influence in the election. The specific nuclear risk issue.

It's not that I do believe that Americans care about that. I'm not sure how that translates to them choosing who to vote for necessarily or whether to vote. Yeah, I gave this a two. There is the potential for the situation in Ukraine to get worse from an international perspective, which would obviously affect the United States to some extent and could put Biden in a position where

he has to make some choices that are either going to be received somewhat positively by the public or negatively. So in that sense, it's lurking beneath some of these other issues. Because I think at the end of the day, it's not top of mind for a lot of Americans, and as foreign policy often isn't top of mind. But

It's lurking out there as maybe something that could impact public opinion. Nate? Seven. All right. We got the highest ranking so far in this exercise. Let me revise that. I already changed my mind. It's like a three. Whiplash. Let's separate a couple of things, right? So first of all, what is the risk of nuclear war happening?

In the Ukraine, well, according to manifold markets, which is a prediction market, there's a 9% chance that a weapon will be launched in combat by the end of next year. It's thought that the baseline risk here is like 1% per year. So that means there's like an 8% chance of the Ukraine becoming some type of nuclear crisis. And that is objectively the most important thing in the world by a lot, right? Like an 8% chance that

a nuclear weapons used in combat and we can debate how likely it is to escalate beyond that. Right. But like, that's extremely impactful. And if it were to occur, would totally like dwarf any other issue. Right. If there is a nuclear war, that's going to be the most important issue. I think in that, in that Gallup poll, I think to most voters, the question is kind of marginally final Gallup poll. Right. But we're not talking about the chance of nuclear war happening.

The final Gallup poll, yeah. Per se, we're talking about how much should we update in response to Biden's statement, which I don't know is terribly significant. Biden wants to create deterrence. He is stating out loud that if you do this, I don't think we're going to look away. There'll be very severe consequences, right? But I think it's somewhat priced into Putin's

calculation or lack thereof anyway. Putin understands that if he were to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, that it would not be looked upon kindly by NATO in the US and the West, whether or not it would result in actual action. I guess Biden is like maybe marginally more committed now, but it's an ambiguous statement that I think doesn't necessarily cause you to like to update your views all that much. But

the average political reporter should probably pay more attention to the probability, the possibility, the somewhat long shot, but not crazy improbable probability that you would have some type of severe escalation in Ukraine. That's very important to the future of humanity, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm still struggling to figure out if after that, you're assigning it a three or a seven. Well, it's conditional. I mean, again, the problem is you're

You know, Biden's statement is a three, right? The overall situation in Ukraine is a seven. That's my answer. All right. All right. Do you think currently, though, like Americans' views on the situation in Ukraine is influencing the election seven out of ten? No, but it's just so much more important than all this other stupid bullshit that people worry about that like –

Even if there's a 5% chance or 8% chance. And to be fair, that's by the end of 2023. It might not happen before November. It might not happen before November. We might not get into a nuclear war before November. Yeah, okay. Got it. Last midterm. It can have effects on commodity prices, right? And oil prices. So there are some knockoff economic effects as well. But yeah, I'm just trying to keep things in perspective here.

Yeah, I mean, to me, there's a difference between the current situation and the possibility of more significant situations. I feel like, are you trying to say that, obviously, if anything along these lines were to actually happen, it would be like a 100 on the 0 to 10 scale. And so assigning it a 7 at this point is like respecting the severity given the probability. Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm pushing back a little bit. It's that, you know, the X percent chance of a 100 level event kind of combined with like all the cringy memes people post on Twitter about like the war. It's like it's a war, you know, this is a war involving a nuclear superpower, which is kind of tacitly at war against NATO, not officially. Right. Like this is not something to be like to post like cringy memes about. Are you talking to Elon Musk?

I'm talking to – I'm sub-tweeting like half of Twitter basically, which is what my life has evolved into. I'm glad you're aware. To put it in another way, it's sort of the equivalent of thinking about like an airline crash. It's extremely, extremely unlikely. But if it happens, it's fatal. So just pricing in to like –

If that actually were to happen is, is like a fair way of thinking about it. All right. Well, I have a strong, if irrational fear of flying. So we are going to, Oh, I do too. I do not like flying. I can't believe I actually just made that reference because now it's probably going to haunt me. So, um, well now I'm like more concerned because I,

8% is much higher than the likelihood of a plane crash. Yeah. Yeah. 8% sounds wrong to me, but I'm also not, I'm not a professional. I have an irrational phobia of nuclear war. We had a couple of guests on when the war broke out originally, help us try to quantify the steps or like the risk of nuclear war or nuclear conflict and the steps that would bring us there. I don't know if we'll do it before the midterms, but we should definitely have them back on and talk about it again.

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All right, we're going to start motoring through some of these. So in a significant pivot from nuclear war, the last January 6th hearing in the House is taking place this week. Where are we beginning? I think we're going to begin with Nate this time. We started with Kayleigh last time. What's your number? Like a one. I mean, it's not, again, this is all like the difference between like

the marginal impact of this action versus like the impact of the issue overall, right? Like I don't dismiss January 6th as being a factor for some voters. It's a little bit hard to nail down in a poll. It's another issue like Ukraine that probably is more important in terms of real impact than in terms of like as a voting issue, quote unquote. But like the House has had a lot of hearings about a lot of things. Part of the goal of that is to increase

The salience of that issue in the mind of the press and the public, which I think in some ways has been a smart strategy, but I think that at the margin, one more hearing, even on an important issue, probably is not going to have much more effect. I give it a three.

Just because I think it does create an opportunity for Democrats to raise this issue, bring it more attention. It grabs some headlines. It reminds some voters of why you see polls that say voters tend to think the Republicans are more extreme, to use that term.

So, you know, so thinking also about like the Dobbs decision and how that also plays into that. It just, you know, I just I just see that as potentially a connective tissue there for those. Yeah, I said three as well. I, you know, I don't think that one hearing is going to be a major issue.

It's not an October surprise by any measure, but I do think for people who do care about it or are inclined to care about it, bringing it back in and that salience can be meaningful and maybe, you know, remind a voter who does care about it like, oh, yeah, maybe I should go and vote on election day. Yeah.

So another thing that happened last week is Biden announced that he is pardoning marijuana possession convictions. I think some of the analysis was like, oh, this is a popular thing to do. You know, in general, marijuana legalization is is is one of the things that's like quite popular for not really seeming on the table federally, at least.

is talking about something like this, which is a low salience issue, but quite popular. Is that like a tactic or is he just doing this? And therefore, what would your number be? Jeffrey, let's start with you. Well, clearly it's a 10. No, I'm

No, I gave it a two. It's a move that would be popular based on the polls that we've seen regarding decriminalization of marijuana. Marijuana legalization in general is pretty popular now.

Uh, so, uh, you know, it, it, to me, it's like, well, I don't see it being like particularly harmful for them, but I also see it as something that's not going to move a lot of voters. Like maybe there are a handful of young people or something who are like, oh, wow. Uh, but I just, that, that also is like maybe a stereotype that's not really, really true. You know? So I just, I don't see it as particularly impactful. Yeah.

I went with a three, but was sort of thinking the same thing. Like there may be a chance to mobilize some younger voters. You know, maybe it gave Biden a couple like cool points that like, and I don't mean like we was cool, but like, and this is a popular move and that a lot of people agree on as far as the pardons go. Yeah, it's a one. Now, if Biden had actually like,

reschedule marijuana, basically legalize marijuana, that would be potentially a bigger impact. I'm not sure why he doesn't. Maybe there's a little bit of the kind of Gallup cowardliness here thing going on. But, you know, I think pardons are a relatively niche issue for the average American voter. I'm also not sure of the

directional impact, right? Like, yes, marijuana legalization is quite popular

But there is a line of attack here that, oh, Biden is being soft on crime. It's a little disingenuous, but like, you know, I don't think crime is like the sort of issue Democrats want to be debating more. And so this is just kind of like, you know, one of the things when you become president, you get to do certain things by executive action. It may be an impactful policy on that level, but I think it's like not not a big electoral impact.

All right, we're getting down to the last couple here. Last week as well, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a state of emergency due to the influx of migrants in the city, particularly being bused from southern states. He said, according to the New York Times, that the city has been overwhelmed by the roughly 17,000 migrants who have arrived since April, and that he expects as many as 100,000 to arrive eventually.

The city had set up 42 emergency shelters and enrolled 5,000 children in schools. He also allotted a billion dollars to respond to this. And in some ways, this put him in opposition to the Biden administration, which has not really been talking about this issue. We've seen historic levels of migrants reaching the southern border in the past year.

And in a way, maybe for Democrats, this is a more credible commentary on the situation than it would be coming from Republicans who talk about this a lot. And for Republican voters, it's an already high salience issue. So how does this sort of conflict between, in a way, two Democrats, two high profile Democrats figure electorally in this moment, Kayleigh?

For this one, I went with a 7 out of 10. I think, I mean, obviously, as we mentioned, like immigration is such a salient issue for Republicans and this ongoing effort to relocate migrants to different states is

has really forced it into the spotlight in a way that gets people talking and debating. And it's, you know, it's a perennial debate in the United States, but having it bring it to the forefront in places other than the border States right before the election, I think doesn't help the Democrats. And yeah, I think it's, it's a meaningful, meaningful change. Nate. Again, there's like,

The news peg versus the underlying issue. I mean, the underlying issue is like a seven and the news peg is like a zero. So, again, I don't know how to answer this exactly. I mean, it is like marginally unhelpful to Democrats like Eric Adams is doing this. And, you know, he is not necessarily kind of a a I don't want to say like not a team player because his first job is to like actually do what he thinks is the best interest of New York City. Right.

But a lot of politicians that are more kind of in bed with the traditional Democratic establishment will probably avoid this type of move. But, you know, I don't know. Maybe it's a one just because it does kind of give some credibility to the fact that like, oh, even Democratic politicians are worried about this. And that kind of is a narrative that's unhelpful to Democrats. Yeah, I gave it a two for similar reasons to Nate. I mean, it's just a situation where

There's clearly like an issue at the border. There's clearly like a challenge with the ongoing number of migrants reaching the border, like record levels. But from just like a political electoral standpoint, you know, our polling with Ipsos has basically shown very little change in terms of the share of people who say it's a top issue, like immigration as a whole.

and Republicans are much more likely to care, and yet the share of Republicans saying that it's a top issue has been pretty similar across all the polling on this. So I just, I mean, maybe it's reaching new levels or something, and we'll find that the share who think it's a top issue has gone up, but it makes me a little gun-shy to say that, like, oh, this is a big deal. It doesn't, like, keep it in the...

Yeah, I think there is a little bit of a compounding issue here, which is that when you talk about rising gas prices or a Democrat talking about rising gas prices,

talking about like a state of emergency based on migrant arrivals in a northeastern part of the country. Or, you know, you add a couple things together and all of a sudden it changes the environment from over the summer, which was abortion and falling gas prices and Trump backed primary candidates winning nominations and things like that. It changes and that kind of changes the direction of the race overall, I would think. But to some extent, I mean, this happened like what?

on Friday, three days ago. So we kind of know, right? We kind of know like what effect this has on the news cycle. And I think it has not metastasized into like a major story, right? I'm on foxnews.com, which is a place that you would think would emphasize this. And I can't find on the surface any mention of the story. Let me keep looking here. There's a huge position for New York. I'm sure there's another immigration story. There's a headline about the New York Jets, right? Is it a headline about

crime in New York. But not about this declaration by Adams, I don't think. Oh, it was a really hot topic on patriots.win, though. Sorry, I just had to check. It's a real politically diverse group on that. Yeah, yeah. A lot of swing voters there. All right, let's wrap on this. Less than 4% of those eligible have gotten updated COVID boosters. That data was out

Recently, I don't remember the order that we were in at this point, but Jeff, we'll start with you. Like a one? A one. Yeah. I just think a lot of people have COVID is, people want to just be done with the COVID pandemic. You know, there are occasional little things that pop up, like you still have to mask in certain conditions or, you know, what have you. But I just think unless you're going to have a real surge and a lot of people are affected, you know,

COVID stuff is going to mostly be a one. Nate? Yeah. Like, I mean, you know, is it possible that we would have a severe COVID surge within the next month? Right. I don't know. I mean, there are people that are worried about new variants, but the people are always worried about new variants. And at this point, their credibility is pretty, you know, as we enter winter and there's increasing vulnerability in the population, you certainly could have a COVID resurgence and,

I think it would be pretty bad from the standpoint of public health and public policy. But I think there's enough predictability that we can probably say it's a little too early for there to be a very serious surge. I think we would have indications of it in other countries. So probably it's not much of an issue for the election, but like, you know, I think people should get their boosters if they're eligible, which I guess everyone is unless they didn't get their first vaccine. And I'd be worried about like a COVID surge

I just don't know if we can have one by November enough to put COVID back on the radar screen for Americans. I also gave it a one. I just wrote about this for the site about how little Americans...

care about COVID anymore, how little of an issue it is, top of mind. One of the things we did, Mary Radcliffe, our researcher here, helped me pull the questions pollsters have been asking people and questions about COVID have been dropping dramatically. Pollsters aren't even interested in asking what people think about it and people aren't interested in telling them.

It's a one because there's always like the possibility that something crazy happens with COVID. It's not a zero. But for the most part, Americans don't aren't thinking about it anymore. It's just kind of a part of life. And the fact that many Americans haven't got their booster isn't going to going to register in a political way. However, signs of a potential new wave coming. I can't smell anything. Reviews of Yankee candles have been going up. You guys seen this?

There's actually a correlation. For every 100,000 new COVID-19 cases per week, no smell reviews increased by a quarter of a percentage point the next week. So something might be brewing. Hold on. Good or bad use of data here? Good.

This is like that spurious correlations website where you can just like click on different things and it's like, oh, they're correlated. So they must have something to do with each other. Wait, hold on. So to be fair, maybe it might not be spurious. Spurious. I'm just saying it reminds me of that. Okay.

I mean, because that's a real... I don't know if it's... Is that still a thing with Omicron? I know that every wave has had different symptoms or whatever, and that Delta was more inclined to make you lose your taste and smell than I think Omicron is, but... It included... I'm quickly reading an article about the study or the review of the data, and it included the Omicron wave, so... I had like a gaslight-y loss of taste and smell, or it wasn't too bad, but it just like...

A gaslighting. Okay. First, I didn't realize you were using the word that you were using. And I was like, things tasted and smelled like gas. No. Yeah. Like it was like exactly enough loss of taste and smell to make you wonder if it was all in your head. It like wasn't much, but it was some like pizza. Your body was gaslighting you. Yeah. No, I do think there's some evidence that.

that Omicron is less associated with this symptom. I don't know where I read that, somewhere on the internet, but I think that might be right. Yeah, I had Delta and I was out. I couldn't taste my two shots of espresso in the morning. It had less of a taste than New York City water, right? Like New York City water still tastes like something. This tasted like an absence of taste that was honestly crazy.

That's disturbing. Yeah. I was lucky. That was not something that I encountered when I had it. No, I just had real bad fever and then like two weeks of feeling very tired. Yeah.

Okay, well, I guess like a lot of Americans, it sounds... Well, like the majority of Americans, it sounds like we've all had COVID and are no longer so worried about it or focused on it. So you've all awarded COVID a zero or a one in this election, which honestly, if you had told me that this time last year, I think I might have been surprised. But I think we should, I mean, in one way or another, consider it a landmark in...

In America's relationship with COVID. Everyone has just come out. I'm not rating COVID as, I'm being consistent here. I'm rating the news about the booster. Because I'm one of the people who thinks that COVID has affected everything, right? It was, you know, lots and lots of people have died or become sick. Everyone's had their life substantially disrupted. It was, is, is and or was...

a traumatic experience. I think lots of weird political events are probably have COVID as a cause. I'm long the importance of COVID in general.

Oh, no, I think this is something that we have talked about and it's something that is very important. But the fact that we don't think it's featuring in a lot of people's decisions in a direct way in this election, I think is something to note regardless. But agreed. I mean, it's had impacts on crime, mental health, isolation, workplace relationships, the economy. I mean, like

Everything we're, inflation, sure, yes. Underlying, I mean, I don't know if you could chalk the war in Ukraine up to COVID, but like basically everything we've talked about here has in an underlying way been affected by COVID. No, some people think that Putin's isolation, he's COVID cautious, might affect his thinking into what appears to have been a fairly irrational decision to go to war in Ukraine. So yeah, I think COVID's like the hidden cause behind lots of stuff.

Many, many, many, many, many, many, many dissertations will be written about this. All right. Well, we're going to leave things there for today. So thank you, Kaylee, Nate, and Jeff. Thank you, guys. Thanks as always, Galen.

My name is Galen Druk. Sophia Leibovitz is in the control room. Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director and Emily Vanesky is our intern. 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.