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Hey there, listeners, Galen here. Before we get started, I wanted to let you in on some big news, which is that after a two and a half year hiatus, 538 is going to again be hitting the road for a live show. We're going to be in Washington, DC on October 25. We will be at sixth and I it's going to be just before the midterm elections. So come and join us. I'm going to put a link in the show notes where you can find
tickets. Again, that's October 25th at six and I in Washington, DC. We look forward to seeing you there. Hello, and welcome to the 538 politics podcast. I'm Galen Druk.
Former President Trump's eight-point improvement with Latino voters between 2016 and 2020 was one of the most notable outcomes of the last presidential election. It was a trend we saw across the country, but was most noticeable in South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley, where even longtime Democratic territory moved decisively to the right.
Whether that trend will continue is a big question for these midterms. This weekend, we got some new data on how Latino voters are thinking about the two parties two years later, and we're going to dig into it. The top line news is that things haven't changed all that much since 2020.
We're also going to talk about some of the political calculations in the Senate surrounding abortion and same-sex marriage in the final seven weeks before the midterms. Why did Lindsey Graham introduce a 15-week abortion ban? And why is Schumer postponing a vote on the Respect for Marriage Act until after the election?
And we have some original reporting on one Republican candidate who told voters in private that how he talks about the legitimacy of the 2020 election depends on who he's talking to. Here with me to discuss our politics editor, Sarah Frostenson. Hello, Sarah. Hey. Hey, Galen. Hey, y'all. Also here with us is elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. And senior politics reporter Monica Potts. Hello, Monica. Hi, Galen. Hi, everyone.
Later in the show, Carlos Odillo of Ekis Research is going to join as well. I also wanted to mention before we get into the podcast today that Sarah Frostenson has some big news. Sarah, you are taking an exciting new job. I can't quite mention the details of it yet. This also does mean that we will be hearing from you less on the podcast later.
which is sad, but I also just wanted to say a big congratulations to you because I know that you're excited about this job and I am excited for you as well. So congratulations, Sarah. Thank you. Thank you. And I think this podcast will still be terrific in the lead up to the midterms. We've got a solid crew. Well, I appreciate it. We won't miss you nonetheless. But let's dive right into our original reporting.
As we've covered in the past, 35% of Republican nominees this fall outright deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Another 14% have expressed doubts about it. All told, 60% of Americans will have an election denier on their midterm ballots. It's become a widespread and important trend amongst Republicans running for office.
What candidates say about the election, though, can sometimes change according to the circumstances. For example, Republican New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc quickly changed his tune on the election after he won the Republican primary last Tuesday. He had previously signed a letter claiming that Trump, in fact, won the 2020 election and campaigned on that message. After the primary, he had an interview on Fox News where he said the following.
You know, live and learn, right? And I've done a lot of research on this, and I've spent the past couple of weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from, you know, every party. And I have come to the conclusion, and I want to be definitive on this, the election was not stolen.
FiveThirtyEight also reported last week that Republican congressional candidate from Colorado, Eric Odland, admitted to an audience of his supporters that he is saying different things about the election in different circumstances. Here's the audio that was shared exclusively with FiveThirtyEight. So what I saw transpired in the 2020 elections, how they were undermined by freedom, how they were corrupted, and now how we have an illegitimate government in power with
I was scared to action. I've turned to prayer like never before. And I'm being real with you folks. I'm being real with you because I've spoken to you. I don't always use this kind of language on the campaign trail because I am so deliberate with what I say because the consequences of not winning are so significant. So I am strategic. Go out and talk about election integrity on the line because it's not an issue that wins us this race. You need to understand that I know what's going on.
I'm much more effective in addressing it as a congressman than I am just screaming from a moving floor. Nathaniel, you are responsible for this original reporting. So can you give us a little bit of the story behind this audio? Yeah, so this congressional candidate, Eric Odland, he said this at a meeting of the Mountain Republicans Club, which is basically a local group of conservative Republicans in his district in Colorado. He said this on June 21st, which was about a week before his primary meeting.
But it seems like, you know, as you could hear from the clip, that he was already kind of looking forward to the general election. The district that he's running in, Colorado 7th, is a light blue district. It has a 538 partisan lean of D plus 6. So, you know, I think he deserves
And how did you get a hold of this audio?
So the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee shared it with us at FiveThirtyEight exclusively, as you mentioned. We did confirm that Eric Odlin spoke at this event and we did our due diligence. And if you also listen to kind of other instances of Eric Odlin's voice, he has a fairly distinctive speaking style. So we did feel confident enough in the recording's authenticity. And we reached out to the campaign multiple times for comment and also the local Republican club, but no follow up.
Yeah, Adlin's campaign still has not responded to the article, at least to me. So that is kind of interesting and maybe says something as well. Did the fact that this audio came from a political arm of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, make us hesitant about using this audio, reporting this out? I mean, how should we think about that context? Because that might be a red flag for some folks thinking, oh, this audio just came from the Democrats.
Yeah, I mean, essentially this is opposition research, right? Like the DCCC is not an uninterested actor in this. So we took that very seriously. We communicated, you know, for listeners. There's oftentimes news outlets, including FiveThirtyEight, will have a department called Standards, and we work with them and we explain the problem and we say, okay, you know, the DCCC has reached out in this race. We have this audio. Here are the ways we're thinking about going about verifying it, doing the due diligence that Nathaniel described.
And then, you know, working with them on a plan. And so we definitely did that on the story because we are sensitive to the fact that, you know, this is coming from a motivated actor and we want to make sure that what we are publishing is not just, you know, spreading a hit on a candidate that they're interested in promoting, but that it's something that actually happened. And as Nathaniel mentioned earlier, we could confirm that Odlin had spoken at that event and, and,
You know, listening to previous audio of him in this audio, it definitely seemed to be a match. We reached out to his campaign multiple times. Why are candidates like Odlin and, of course, as we mentioned before, Boldik, saying different things about the election in different circumstances?
So I actually thought that was one of the more interesting parts of the leaked audio was Odlin admits that I don't go out and talk about election integrity on and on because it's not an issue that wins us this race. And he talks about in that meeting just, you know, wanting to be strategic about this, wanting to be deliberate about.
So it does seem as if you're seeing like this bait and switch happen. You saw it with Bolduc in New Hampshire campaign on one thing to win over primary voters who are perhaps more concerned about issues of fraud. But then particularly in these states that are a little bit blue leaning, seeing a different tune in the general that is a bit more acceptable to people who, you know, think that the 2020 election was fair.
I mean, is this sort of an acknowledgement that these claims are in many ways bullshit? Or is this an acknowledgement of just electoral dynamics?
I think it's probably just an acknowledgement of electoral dynamics. You know, I think in this clip, it seems that Odland, he was speaking to fellow Republicans and seemed to indicate that he truly believed that the 2020 election was rigged and, you know, kind of assumed a
similar, that his audience shared a similar belief. And yet we know from polling that, you know, while a majority of Republicans believe this, um, a, a, you know, almost equally strong majority of the electorate as a whole does not believe it, right. That right. Believes in the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Um, so, you know, I, I did hear some, um, you
You know, some interesting kind of alternate views from a couple of readers who felt that, yeah, basically that he was pandering to this Republican audience and that maybe he himself does not believe that the 2020 election was rigged, but is only telling Republicans in private what they want to hear. But I kind of feel like if that were the case, then he would be in the Republican primary, maybe more like Bulldog, right? He would have been more surprised.
open with his views about or, you know, with insisting that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged and then pivoted after the general election. But Rodland took kind of an unusual pathway where he actually kind of flopped a little bit on the issue over the course of the primary campaign. And then, again, you know, publicly, he has not responded to this article. So, you know, we at FiveThirtyEight have this tracker of
candidate's views on the legitimacy of the 2020 election. He is currently listed as an election denier because he has not kind of come out and corrected the record, you know, and said, oh, actually, I do believe that the election was legitimate, which you would expect he would do if, A, he believed it, and B, since he's running in this swingy slash light blue district.
And I should say, you know, FiveThirtyEight doesn't track all of this just so that we can count things. The reason we're tracking all of this is because of the ultimate effect that it could have on how elections are conducted in the United States post the 2022 election if there are people who
truly believe that our elections are fraudulent and want to take actions to, in their mind, quote unquote, correct that or mitigate that or whatever, that could be damaging to our democracy. So the question here is then, does this suggest that people are just saying this to get elected and that once in office, they may well not actually act on what they're saying? Like, how should we process this information effectively?
in the context of that, the more important question, which is how will these potential elected officials who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election going to kind of serve if they get into office?
Yeah, it's a really important question, I think, Galen. And my view on this is, especially after Donald Trump, I think we learned to take the things that politicians say seriously. We all know that politicians can lie or exaggerate.
but um you know i think when you're dealing with something as kind of serious as threats to democracy um you should kind of take them at their word even if maybe you know some republicans are kind of going along with with you know the idea that the election was stolen because they you know know that trump is the leader of the republican party and such you know um we did see obviously you know i think around 150 republicans vote um
not to certify the results in Pennsylvania and Arizona. And even if, as some of them later on claimed, you know, it wasn't because they felt that the election was fraudulent, but they were just making a point or something like that. They were still willing to take a concrete action to show that kind of fealty to Trumpism. And so my personal belief is that if someone tells you that they are going to, would overturn an election if given the chance, then you should believe them.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really hard to suss out the amount of who's doing this for political calculus to try to appeal to Republican voters as part of the base who really, truly believe that the election was stolen from Trump.
versus, you know, these voters are important. I don't really believe this happened, but I'm not going to like full-throatedly deny it. The Post over the weekend had a really interesting report where they asked in the 19 most closely watched statewide races, so for governor and Senate, the Republican and Democratic candidates running in each, you know, would they accept the results in their race? So not asking about 2020, but the upcoming here in 2022,
And, you know, on the Democratic side, all 19 nominees they contacted said they would accept the outcome. Meanwhile, on the GOP side, seven said they would accept the results in their contest. Will 12 either refuse to give an answer?
or said that they could not commit to that. I think that goes back to what Nathaniel's saying, is like some of that might be grandstanding. I think it will matter very differently in races where the result's really close versus ones where it's a blowout. But the fact that this is a conversation that we're now having in the lead up to the election, I think that just signals so much where the party is
where the Republican Party is on a question like free and fair elections and what that means, and especially what that means in a democracy. We're right, like your team doesn't always win, but you know, you go on, life goes on, but maybe not this time around.
Yeah, I would just agree with everything Nathaniel and Sarah said. And also that sort of regardless of the reason, the effect of some of these stances is largely the same, which is that, as Sarah was saying, it undermines trust in democracy and it undermines trust in the conduction of elections in your own state and in other states and in other cities. And so I think that once you start undermining that, there are all different kinds of ways that that can be chipped away at and all kinds of corrosive effects that can have.
This is certainly something that we've covered heavily and will continue to keep our eyes on as we get closer to the election. Let's move on and talk about how the Senate is tackling some hot button issues in the run up to the election.
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We are now seven weeks away from Election Day. The final weeks of a campaign are traditionally not a period for legislating, but instead for turning out and persuading voters, which is why what's happening in the Senate surrounding two hot-button issues is notable. Last week, Senator Lindsey Graham introduced a 15-week abortion ban. Given that it has no chance of becoming law in the near future, it seemed to be a political messaging bill. But the message that it sent perplexed people.
who was it designed to win over? At the same time, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested that the Senate would vote as early as today, September 19th, on the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify same-sex marriage and interracial marriage into federal law. But the group of senators working on the bill announced that there would not be a vote until after the election, in an attempt to win over the necessary 10 Republicans to break a filibuster. That's also a notable choice, given that the legislation is widely popular. So...
What is going on here? Let's begin with Senator Lindsey Graham's proposed legislation. Monica, why did he propose this 15-week ban?
That's something I don't know. I'm also perplexed by this, actually. He previously supported a ban after 20 weeks, and this is more strict, but not that much more. The people who would support a 15-week ban on abortion are probably already voting for Republicans. There are many red states with more strict bans already, and it would really mostly affect blue states.
And so Democrats are already more motivated because of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe coming into this election season, which should have been favoring Republicans and the fundamentals would still favor Republicans. And so Democrats are already animated about the idea of a potential national ban and organizing to vote for Democrats so that that doesn't happen. And so now it seems like Graham has given them some ammunition on that.
Okay, so still seemingly not an answer in terms of still basically the answer being I'm perplexed. I'm not sure what Lindsey Graham is doing. Touche. I think a lot of people feel that way. But does anyone here have an answer for what Lindsey Graham is thinking here?
Yeah, I think this is a storyline that actually hasn't been covered enough. And that is that there is pressure from anti-abortion groups on the GOP for not doing enough. You know, there's been a lot of emphasis around Democratic activists that were upset with
Biden and the Biden administration for not doing more to say, hey, we're going to protect abortion nationally. I don't think it's gotten as much attention, but there is an equal movement on the right, at least among some circles who are very strongly, you know, anti-abortion, who want to see something done more at a national level. And, you know, we'll talk about this a little bit later in the podcast, but it's like a similar dynamic to what we see in terms of some of the pressures that are exerted on Republicans in
As with the same-sex marriage bill that Monica reported about earlier this summer. And so, you know, I think, though, as Monica was saying, the thing is, this is already happening at the state level, particularly in red states. Granted, not South Carolina, where Graham is from, but there's been great success on that front. There are now 15 states where abortion is banned or mostly unavailable.
If a woman is seeking abortion in Louisiana, every single surrounding state does not have access to abortion. I mean, there's been a lot of success. And so I think this national push then has alienated some members in the Republican Party, even like someone like Shelley Moore Capito. West Virginia just recently cracked down on abortion, and it's mostly illegal in the state. She was quoted in the
Politico article on this saying like, hey, I don't think there's appetite for a national ban. And I think it's because a lot of elected Republicans in the Senate are seeing, look, we've already made a lot of progress on this front. We're seeing our party lose gains in the generic ballot, asking voters who they'd support for Congress. Like, let's tone it down, Graham. But I thought it was interesting, like some of the Republicans who have come out in favor of this, notably Herschel Walker in Georgia and Blake Masters in Arizona. Is it
possible that like Graham has a better understanding of what could energize the base Republican voter than someone like McConnell? I don't know. Open for debate. Perhaps a bad take.
Well, okay. A couple of things I'm thinking of here. One, on last week's podcast, we did say that if you had to come up with a broadly popular position on abortion, it might be something like legal abortion under any circumstance in the first trimester. And then in the second and third trimester, basically exceptions for life of the mother, rape, incest, things like that. That seems to be what the majority of Americans could get behind.
Is this something like that? I mean, is Lindsey Graham just attempting to put forward a popular policy on abortion? I mean, I think that this is covered in such a way. And also, if you just straight up pull people, if they want this to happen, the answer is no. But maybe from Lindsey Graham's perspective, he's trying to put forward something more popular than sort of a mishmash of state level restrictions that are mostly just outright banning abortion.
So Marco Rubio, who has co-sponsored the bill with Graham, that's essentially what he said, Galen. I think he had a tweet where he was like, look, this is still more permissive than what most of Europe does. So there is that argument.
And to your point, a 15-week ban has been something that's been popular among Americans. But notably, the landscape has just really changed post Roe and even on a question like this. So in our polling database, we have four questions conducted since Roe was overturned on June 24th that ask Americans their support for opposing or supporting a 15-week ban.
And it's still pretty split in the sense that like this PRI poll found 52% would oppose such a ban while 44% would support. What's notable here, you know, Morning Consult, 46% oppose, 41% support. 53% oppose in an AP DORC poll, 45% support.
This is not a huge margin, right? Like Americans are split on this issue. What's notable, though, is prior to Roe being overturned, opposition to the 15-week ban was in the 30s and 40s. So you are seeing more Americans, I think, kind of respond to the overall environment of
the environment where, you know, it's now illegal in 15 states to have like any type of abortion, essentially. And, you know, Michael Tesler, who writes for the site, occasionally wrote a piece that argued, look, what we're seeing is not necessarily a shift in the number of Americans saying abortion should be legal, but you are seeing more Democrats and more independents
saying it should be legal under any circumstance. And that is different from where the abortion landscape has been prior to Roe being overturned. I would also just add that I can imagine a situation in which given
Given the overall environment, the details of Graham's bill could be lost and people would just see it as an abortion ban. And so even if they looked at the details and thought, well, this seems more reasonable than what some states are doing, I just don't think that that kind of investigation and that kind of detail is what would motivate people. Also, I would just say that since a lot of these...
More extreme bans have gone into effect in some states. I think people have seen the complications of how those work on the ground. And so, you know, according to the Guttmacher Institute, there's something like 90% of abortions are before 15 weeks.
But the circumstances that lead to abortions after that are really complicated and laws outlawing them would require some sort of political and legal oversight of what hospitals and doctors are doing. And I think it's also possible that the appetite for that is kind of diminishing a bit. Interesting. I mean, so one hypothetical is what I mentioned, that
Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio could be trying to put forth some sort of unifying, more popular policy for Republicans to run on. As you've all explained, there are complications with that theory. The other theory is pegged to what you said, Sarah, which is motivating Republicans who have long sought to ban abortion and see the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a big win that the Republican Party should act on.
I guess the complication there is that for those people, a 15-week ban, they're probably more inclined to be paying attention to the details. And also, a 15-week ban might not feel like a win. I mean, I think that's fair. I think the one caveat in this, which plays to Monica's point where people following this are not going to get into the nitty-gritty details, but essentially where Graham's bill would have more effect is in blue states where abortion is currently legal past 15. So this...
while still probably, as you're saying, Galen, not enough for the true diehard anti-abortion advocates, it would have a huge real-time effect in blue states where abortion is more permissive. And so I do think that's not necessarily everything on the checklist, but he's doing something. It's an interesting, though, kind of like the pushback you've seen mostly from Republicans on this who don't support Graham and don't support Rubio is, hey, we should let the states decide.
And right, by implementing something like this, again, it's telling blue states what they can and can't do. And so if you're attracted more to the Republican Party because of the emphasis on states getting to decide, this is not that. But if you're an anti-abortion advocate, this is better than nothing, right?
I want to move on to the question of same-sex marriage in the Senate. But lastly here, how has everyone been reacting to this? What have Democrats said about it? Sarah, you mentioned that Republicans were opposed to it, just like, oh, let the states decide. I think it was a surprise for a lot of people. So what was the reaction?
Well, I can say that Republican Senate candidates have been put pretty split on the issue, at least Republican candidates in competitive races. So our colleagues at ABC News have been canvassing where everybody stands on this. And as Sarah mentioned, some Republican candidates are supportive of it. So that includes Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, Marco Rubio in Florida and Ted Budd in North Carolina.
But then others have come out against it. So that includes Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, Joe O'Day in Colorado, and maybe Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who was a little bit cagey, but he said something about how he doesn't want the federal government to be involved.
And I think if you look just kind of at the partisan lean of those states and also those states' views on abortion, which of course correlates strongly with partisan lean, you're seeing that in these states like New Hampshire and Colorado, these are light blue states where support for legal abortion, at least in most instances, is high. Those candidates are distancing themselves from this policy. But in states like Georgia and Arizona that are a little bit
views on abortion are more like 50-50 and they're also kind of like red states. You see the candidates kind of embracing it. One thing that I thought was interesting was that J.D. Vance, who is arguably running in the reddest state that is competitive this year, Ohio, he actually has not come out in favor. He's basically just declined to weigh in, which is interesting because I think that
You know, he's a guy who really needs the Republican base to turn out for him because right now he's down or, you know, roughly tied in the polls. So the one candidate for whom maybe this could help doesn't seem to be embracing it, which is interesting.
All right. So on the question of same-sex marriage, basically, Majority Leader Schumer had indicated that he wanted to force a vote on this issue before the election, you know, force Republicans to take a position one way or another. The polling behind this, I think, suggests why he might have been pursuing that path.
Overall, Americans support same-sex marriage. At this point, around 70% support it, even a slim majority of Republicans. So it's something like 51, 52% of Republicans support legal same-sex marriage. But then there was a sharp turn away from forcing this vote, indicating that instead the Senate plans to vote after the election. What's going on here? Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act and Republicans are pissed. I
So like earlier this summer, you know, the House voted on this bill, right? And in the same way, arguably, that Graham's bill here on abortion was a messaging bill, that bill was too. Democrats wanted to hold Republicans' feet to the fire in the House to see what they would do on both same-sex marriage and interracial marriage.
And 47 Republicans in the House voted in favor of it. Schumer didn't expect that. He was like, "Oh, interesting. Maybe I'll take this to a vote in the Senate." That's when Tammy Baldwin started trying to whip votes to see could she get 10 Republicans to vote in favor of this. You know, there was a lot of talk with Collins and the other like 10 bipartisan senators about what would it take to get this through.
And then that kind of fell apart when Schumer and Manchin surprised all of Washington by coming to an agreement on the reconciliation bill, which of course included big climate change provisions. I think from that point onward, you know, the Romneys of the party, who are always for different reasons going to be a bit more, you know, resistant to this or a harder catch, wanting to frame things around religious liberty because of faith and because of that part of the Republican Party, right?
But that contingency became a lot more vocal. And I think you saw some of the careful negotiations that were happening in the background fall apart because there's less incentive for Republicans to kind of give Democrats a bipartisan win on this. This is a very cynical take, but I think the timing of this and when this bill fell apart is really important to its story.
Well, OK, but that that tells only one half of the story, which is why Republicans may be annoyed with Democrats. And Republicans, I'm sure, have a million reasons to be annoyed with Democrats. The other question here is even after Republicans had telegraphed that they were annoyed about the Inflation Reduction Act and weren't going to play ball on this.
Schumer's position was, well, we're going to make you vote on it anyway because this is popular legislation and we're going to force you, even if it fails, to take an unpopular vote that then, you know, for example, same-sex marriage is popular in Wisconsin, in a state like Wisconsin. You know, it's even popular in a state like Ohio. And sort of force candidates to take votes that might annoy their constituents in the run-up to a midterm election.
So the question for me, the other half of the story is, why did they then decide not to hold the vote? Yeah, I think that's a good question, Galen. I mean, I assume that the answer is they feel like it's actually a vote that they could win, that it could get 60 votes and they want to make sure that happens. But that before the election, 60 votes aren't there and that they hope that maybe after the election it will be.
But to your point, you know, I'm not sure why someone like Ron Johnson should want this vote to happen before the election because it would show, hey, I'm moderate. I support same-sex marriage. So I'm curious who the Republicans are who would support this after the election but not before it and why they feel pressured from the right considering that the primaries are over. And Monica, you have actually written about this. So I'm curious what you have to say.
Well, I would say I actually kind of agree with Sarah. I always think it's a little too clever by half to think that on the campaign trail you can say, oh, look, this senator voted against this really popular legislation. I think the big headline would be either that the vote failed or that Democrats passed another bipartisan bill, which would sort of feed into this narrative of,
A big string of successes for the Biden administration. Biden protected same-sex marriage. Biden is getting a lot done. You know, I think those are sort of the big takeaways that voters would get from that without necessarily knowing the nitty gritty of the negotiations.
But also just in general, the bigot, the sort of the only group that really still does not support same-sex marriage in big numbers is white evangelicals. And there I spoke to Andrew Lewis at the University of Cincinnati. He's a political scientist, and he really pointed out that white evangelicals are sort of the biggest group.
most motivated Republicans in a lot of instances. They come out to vote. They set the issues that are important for primaries. And this is not something that they support. I think the
Public Religion Research Institute found that only 35% of white evangelicals support gay marriage. That's actually down from last year. And there's been some movement around sort of laws against LGBTQ rights in Florida and other states that have sort of brought this issue to the fore again. It had been pretty settled since 2013.
And so it could just be that they don't want to make their base mad before the election, or it could be that they have serious reservations about what they call religious liberty, which there is a lot of support among white evangelicals. The idea that people should be able to refuse service for same-sex couples in things like making wedding cakes and performing other services, that if people have sincerely held religious beliefs that...
that those marriages are not legitimate and they shouldn't have to do anything in their businesses or in their private lives to support them. And so that's what they're saying publicly is that they're trying to make sure religious liberties are protected. And that could be real. You know, that's a concern and an issue that is popular among white evangelicals.
And it seems like, in fact, one of the sticking points in this legislation is what religious liberty provisions to add to it to gain support amongst Republicans.
So given all of this, does this seem like the kind of thing that would pass in a lame duck session? I mean, this year's lame duck session could be very interesting. Well, I guess since Democrats have passed more things in the regular session, perhaps it is maybe less likely that it becomes an absolute hailstorm of legislation. But what is your thinking at this point about how this moves forward?
Yeah, I think this very well could pass in the lame duck session. To your point, Galen, it was Barack Obama's first lame duck session after the 2010 elections when that was a very productive lame duck session. And actually, that's also when Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed. So there's kind of a precedent for an issue of LGBT rights being waited until after the election to be resolved. So yeah, I feel like especially if they're kind of working out a religious liberty provision that
It seems reportedly that that would get multiple Republicans on board. And again, just given how popular gay marriage has become, I feel like it will probably pass. Interesting. That's what I was going to – so you think, Nathaniel, it would pass even if Republicans won a majority in the Senate? Yeah. And in fact, that – well, I was going to say that might make it more likely to pass. More likely. Wow. Yeah.
Because it would create an urgency to it. And they're like Republicans would be like, sure, whatever. We're about to have a majority. So you guys can have this. It's not McConnell's playbook. That's probably too hot of a take. Well, but he doesn't get to say until January 3rd, right? True, true. I think the hotter. Yeah. I mean, it seems like there are clearly a number of Republicans and Democrats on both sides who truly do want to play ball with the other party and sort of like get things passed, get things out of the way.
After seeing what happened with abortion...
It would seem like one tactical position that Republicans might take is like, we don't want to have to be out here defending an unpopular social position in another election or risk that it gets overturned at the Supreme Court or even have to deal with candidates campaigning on it being overturned at the Supreme Court. So let's just get this out of the way. It's become relatively uncontroversial as far as hot button social issues go anyway. So let's get this out of the way and then we can stop talking about it and no one's going to ask us about it anymore because it won't be relevant. Yeah.
I think that could be right. I mean, I think also the very real possibility that if same-sex marriage were overturned at the federal level, it would put millions of people's lives in disarray, which would turn it into an issue like abortion has been. One with real-world consequences coming up constantly that people saw and worried about and campaigned on and mobilized over.
All right. Once again, we will see what happens. But let's move on and talk about what kind of movement we have seen amongst Latino voters since the 2020 election. And to do that, Carlos Odia is going to be joining me. So I'm going to say goodbye to all of you. Thank you, Sarah, Nathaniel, and Monica. Thanks, Galen. Thanks, y'all. Thanks, Galen.
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Over the weekend, the New York Times released its latest polling with Siena College of the 2022 midterms. Overall, the poll found Democrats leading Republicans by two points on the question of which party voters will choose in the midterms. That's very similar to FiveThirtyEight's average, which is Democrats leading by 1.4 points.
But perhaps the most notable part of this poll is that The Times oversampled Latino voters with the goal of better understanding opinion amongst a group of voters that, while still largely favoring Democrats and is not a monolithic voting bloc, has shifted to the right recently.
It's an important trend because Latinos make up the largest racial or ethnic minority group in the country at nearly 20% and are a quickly growing part of the electorate. In this most recent poll, the Times found that 57% of Latino voters plan to vote for Democrats, while 32% plan to vote for Republicans, with 12% undecided.
It suggests that while there hasn't been a continued improvement for Republicans, Democrats are still doing noticeably worse with Latino voters than they once did. Here with me to talk about those results and add some context from his firm's own recent polling is Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research. Welcome back to the podcast, Carlos. Galen, thanks for having me back. Post-Labor Day, Hispanic Heritage Month, festive all around. I know.
Here we go. And I should say an oversample of Latino voters, what that does for us is essentially that when you say poll 1,000 people, usually when you look at the crosstabs, there are much larger margins of error because you're dealing with a small sample of, say, Latino voters or whatever crosstab you're looking
at. In this case, because the Times went out of its way to talk to a lot more Latino voters, the results that they end up getting are more accurate. They have a smaller margin of error and can give us more insight into any movement amongst Latino voters since 2020. So, Carlos, what did you make of the results?
Yeah, first of all, it was a great article, great write-up, great poll itself. And I don't just say that because the results would kind of agree with ours. I think I would say it regardless because of how thorough, you know, just from a nerding out on the details perspective, if you look at the methodological note that they went along with it, the amount of thought and care that went into it.
constructing this sample, conducting the survey and their analysis of it. Like you said, a lot of the narrative around Latino voters nationally gets written around polls where you're getting, you know, like 100 interviews, if you're lucky.
You know, this is an oversample. I think they had at least 500. Now, when we poll specifically of Latino voters in a state, we're trying to get 400 to 600 interviews to give you a sense of scale. And yet still, again, the way that they constructed it, the thoughtfulness, you could just it was a quality poll. And again, a very nuanced approach to the analysis that I think gives a better look than a lot of the conventional wisdom that had been hardening of late around the Latino voter.
Okay, so you said this agrees with most of the research that you've done, which is, to kind of put it succinctly, not good or bad news for either party in a way? Yeah, that's right. I would say it's, as we say, it's Latino voters in limbo. You know, we have looked for the story of further decline since 2020, right? There was a shift.
Latino voters between 2016 and 2020, where if three in 10 Latinos voted for Trump in 2016, it was closer to four in 10 in 2020. Now, in a very polarized electorate, that feels like seismic, right? It feels enormous. The question has been, would the trend, would it reverse? Would we see a rebound? Would we see further decline or would it stay stable? And a lot of the
chattering class would lead you to believe it had gotten much worse. A lot of the other voices I hear was arguing that perhaps there'd be a rebound to the kind of Latino support you saw for Democrats previous to the Trump era. We see the stability story. We're seeing that we're kind of still stuck in the 2020 moment, no matter how we look at this. In most places, I should say, there is no further decline. Things don't look better
They don't look worse for Democrats with Latinos than they did in the last election, nor do they look better. But the conditions are very unstable. There's just a large share of Latinos who remain on the fence.
They are probably going to break late. I think right now nearly a third of voters we are seeing in a kind of a persuadable category. It is shrinking a little bit in our latest round that is coming in, and yet that is still a very large chunk of the vote that is still out there, that is still sitting on the fence. It's a reminder to both parties, right, that there is more for them to get out there, that there is a swing to the vote, and that while you have Latino voters who in past elections have been with Democrats,
They have now in a persuadable category. Republicans have so far failed to win them over. They have not done, they've done a poor sales job themselves.
So I want to look underneath the hood a little bit because we saw from this time, Sienna poll that Democrats are leading Republicans by 24 points on the generic ballot. That's a bit of a decline from what you used to see, which is Democrats have like a clear two to one advantage over Republicans with Latino voters. There's also a lot going on underneath the hood and some areas where Democrats perform even worse. Um,
when you ask about specific issues. So I kind of want to ask about the strengths and weaknesses for both parties here. Since the story has been mostly about improvement for Republicans recently, what are the main strengths that the Republican Party has amongst Latino voters?
So it's all about the economy. And I should say the economy is never just about the economy, right? It's about economic values. It's about who understands me and my family and what we're going through better in this moment. It was concerns about the Democrats' approach to the economy that rattled many Latino voters and allowed them to put aside other fears about Trump and Republicans in 2020.
it is those same concerns that today are keeping them on the sidelines. There is, in general, a perception that Republicans are perhaps more decisive on economic matters, that they certainly prioritize it more, that they talk about it more, that they are business obsessed. I was looking at the crosstabs in this poll and
And it actually looks like when you ask about the economy, specifically 43% of Latino voters agree with Democrats, 41% of Latino voters agree with Republicans. So that brings, you know, like a 24-point gap to a two-point gap, which also suggests that there are other things going on that people are making up their minds when considering other issues besides the economy. So that suggests that there are some strengths for Democrats. What are those? The thing that holds together...
A coalition of Latinos behind Democrats is a sense that Democrats care more, contrasted with a Republican Party that does not care.
That is at the core of it, right? It holds it together, right? Democrats get the benefit of the doubt in terms of who I think is going to care more about my plate. Now, there is a gulf between caring and then fighting and delivering, which is the task ahead for Democrats in this moment. But we looked at it any way we could. You look at persuadable voters. I think there's some sense that they might be more aligned with Republicans on non-economic values, on social values.
And we just don't see that.
big majority of these persuadable Latinos oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. They're opposed to Dobbs. We looked at hits against Democrats and, you know, a defund the police hit against Democrats they found unconvincing. We looked at religious values and they don't believe that the Republican Party is more closely aligned with their religious values. If anything, they think there isn't a really big difference when it comes to both parties, when it comes to representing where they come from and their religion. So it is to say that these persuadable Latinos really are there
because of the economy. And I hate to dumb it down in that way. But anyway, every time we look at this, every which way we look, it's the obvious culprit. And what we've talked about this before, so I know some of the background here, which is that you could describe a lot of these persuadable voters views on the economy as really subscribing to the American dream, to having an optimistic vision about what America represents, what is possible in America.
You know, is that just like out of step with where the Democratic Party is from? We talk about this sometimes on this podcast, like a pheromonal perspective, which is that Democrats are more critical about the American economy and possibility in America, especially as it pertains to racial and ethnic divisions. And so I guess my question is here, like, how do Democrats speak to that persuadable voter?
who doesn't really view the country and the country's economy in the same way as the loudest voices in the Democratic Party. That's right. And, you know, one thing that always comes up in focus groups among more
Latinos closer to the immigrant experience, the sense of gratitude for this country, that no matter how bad things get, it is still better than where I came from. And so there is, it's relative. And so there, so criticism of the country can land kind of poorly in that regard. And as Democrats, right, Democrats believe in improving the state that we're, Democrats are maximizers, not settling for the status quo, wanting to improve. And sometimes that can come across as hard critique, um, that doesn't resonate with a more, um, uh,
with a Latino who has a different starting point when it comes to the country. On the economy in particular, I think it is about, as you said, American dream, right? What is American dream? Social mobility through hard work. It's valuing hard work. It is a sense that Democrats perhaps don't prioritize the economy. Not that Democrats are bad at it necessarily, but that they talk about a lot of different things
In a way that the economy is not. Whereas you hear Republicans, especially in some of these states, and at least at their best, quote unquote, it's jobs, jobs, jobs. It's prices, it's costs. It is relentless in that regard, right? And so what Democrats can do in this moment is prioritize the economy. I think the challenge, I think it's helpful to understand who these Latinos are, that they are Latinos who are already more inclined toward the Democrats, right?
that the barrier there is a concern around the economy and a concern that Democrats don't understand where they're coming from. What Democrats can do is prioritize the economy, not chase all the other shiny objects. The polls might show you that some other issue is polling very well in a given moment. But among these voters, what they most need is reassurance.
They most need to make sure that these Democratic candidates understand where they're coming from and that they are hardworking Latinos who are trying to provide for their families and make this country stronger and that Democrats get that. If Democrats can show that, there's a consolidation that can happen.
And so Republicans, their task is to basically continue to convince folks that they are prioritizing the economy. Obviously, there are some aspects of the Republicans pitch that aren't about the economy, such as, you know, election denialism. How does this poll as an issue amongst Latino voters views on the 2020 election, Joe Biden's legitimacy?
There's been a lot of research on that front. We participated in some of it. What I'd say is it's obviously not top of mind. I wouldn't call it salient. And I don't think we've seen necessarily the salience increase among this persuadable Latino set. That said, when you sit down in a focus group and you start talking about it, I think it feeds in to some of the narrative about Republicans' extreme instincts in a way that undercuts whatever appeal they might have had. So in general for Republicans, their challenge is
If their advantage is that they are seen to be ruthlessly obsessed with the economy, there is a flip side to that ruthlessness, which is that they are extreme and out of touch and that they don't care. A lot of the more extreme items of their agenda, the culture war that they're undergoing, the election denialism, the Dobbs and their positions on abortion feed more into the concerns that have held many of these more conservative and moderate Latinos back from supporting Republicans in the past.
You mentioned that some of these cultural issues on policing and what have you do not register nearly to the same degree as the economy. Looking at the issue polling in this Times-Siena College poll,
I mentioned that the economy was an area where Republicans perform much better than the simple split between the two parties would suggest. In crime and policing, they do perform better than the simple split would suggest. So the gap in terms of Democrats' advantage on crime and policing is six points, whereas overall it's 24 points.
On illegal immigration, the gap is 11 points as opposed to 24 points. And then when you look at the other questions that they asked about gun policy, legal immigration, climate and energy, either closer to that 24 point gap or even exceeding it. So on climate and energy, Democrats beat out Republicans by a 35 point margin.
Does that suggest to you that there is some softness amongst Democrats on issues of crime policing and illegal immigration when it comes to Latino voters? I think the best way to answer that is that there could be. So there is a voter who trusts Republicans more on crime and safety. They bought into the rhetoric. They get the Republicans talk about it more.
The question is, is it actually salient? Is it top of people's minds? Are they actually voting on that issue? I would agree if the top issue of the election was crime and safety, then perhaps you would see a better margin for Republicans. But it hasn't been. It doesn't override other concerns there might be. Immigration is a little more complicated. I'd say you could kind of break it up if you want to do it crudely into two buckets, the border and then a pathway to citizenship for those who are already here. And the border is seen really as a law and order public safety concern.
of people who just want to see the border under control. The persuadable Latinos both agree that there needs to be more put toward border security and that there needs to be a pathway to citizenship for those who are already here. They're not at loggerheads in that regard. It is not like many other voters in the electorate, right? These are people who actually want to see immigration policy executed in a humane and orderly fashion. And that means both
dealing with the border in a safe, orderly, humane way, and helping those who are already here. You mentioned that this is a little bit different from other voters in the electorate. But I do have to say that in looking at a lot of this data, it did strike me that Latino swing voters were
are not all that different from the swing voters that you might call them swing voters. I don't know how you would exactly describe the coalition shift, but the weakness that the Democratic Party has seen amongst plenty of white voters over the past seven years.
Does that does it strike you that way as well, that like actually a lot of the advice that you might give to either party about how to win over this segment of the electorate, like non-college educated white voters in the upper Midwest who are not maybe particularly religious and prioritizing things like the economy and not nearly as liberal as Democrats on social issues? You know, this is how you might suggest that Republicans and Democrats campaign to them.
It honestly seems like it's not that different from how you might suggest the party's campaign to these swing Latino voters. That's right. Look, Latinos aren't extraterrestrials. They are Americans who live in the same community as all these other voters and share a lot of the same concerns. I would say where it is different is where Latinos feel like they fit sometimes within American society and within the party coalitions. The sense that Democrats might take them for granted and neglect them and the Republicans don't give a **** about them.
as a group, that there is an ethnic or racial dimension to how both parties view them and place them. But otherwise, the concerns are the same. If anything, you would actually expect Democrats to look closer to a 50-50 electorate if it weren't for all of the different ways in which Republicans have screwed that up over the years. How have the parties internalized what happened in 2020? And are we seeing a difference in terms of how they're campaigning on the ground this cycle?
I think if you look at Arizona and Nevada, you can see how the lessons have been taken to heart, I think by both parties to some extent, but Democrats in particular. The focus on Latinos didn't stop after the election. And I talk about the miracle of Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly's numbers among Latinos have been remarkably resilient. No matter what else is happening around him, up and down, he has polled reliably among Latinos. And that
kind of obscures to some extent the fighting that's happened behind the scenes where there's a ton of spending and organization that is propping them up at the same time that Republicans are attacking. That said, I think with Republicans
Some part of it is real in terms of, for example, candidate recruitment and seeing a new generation of Latino Republican candidates. But other parts, for example, if you look at spending on Spanish language communication has really lagged. Democrats have way outspent Republicans when it comes to Spanish language communications. And you could see the effect on that in the polling in a place like Nevada.
Interesting. All right. So this is some good insight into where we are right now. Two months out from an election. I hope to have you back on. We can talk more about your data as it comes in and after the election for sure. For you, what are the biggest questions that you have going into this election?
Well, I think where we started is we're kind of stuck in this 2020 moment, but there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of certain certainty in the vote. People don't know where they're going to land and in the polling, by the way. I think there's just a lot of noise in the polling that we're all trying to sort out at this point. What gives me pause for the Democrats is Biden approval, that while Biden jobs approval may have ticked up a little bit in recent times, there was such a precipitous drop in
It is way below where vote choice is at this point that if Biden job approval ends up being predictive, then we could see worse numbers. There's a lot of runway left, right? And there's just a lot of uncertainty. I think we're going to see a high turnout election on both ends. I think we'll see high turnout among Latino voters. In 2020, that actually benefited Republicans because it was less likely voters who were more favorable to Republicans than the likeliest voters.
I think the question is, how will that play out this time around? There are just too many variables at this point. Latinos are a wild card. People coming into the electorate. 50% of Latinos didn't vote in the last election. What is this electorate going to look like? It's not going to be the same 10 set when we talk about the 4 in 10 who voted for Trump. And so just a lot of open questions that I hope we can come back and talk about as we get more data. Yeah, absolutely. I look forward to that. Thank you so much for joining me today. Let's leave it there, Carlos.
Thank you, Galen. Carlos Odio is the co-founder of Ekis Research. 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.
