If The Midterms Were Tomorrow, Republicans Might Be In Trouble 46:44

All right. That's Florida. We're going to end on Oklahoma. If anyone wants to sing the song, now's your opportunity. Nathaniel, Sarah. I feel like Jeff loves to like belt it on the live blog. Wait, how do you sing on the live? No, it's just like he's done a number of posts where it's like, Oh, Oklahoma. We tricked you into doing it, Sarah. Exactly. Shucks.

Hello and welcome to this Primary Reaction edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drew. New York's primaries resolved some high drama within the Democratic Party. Representative Gerald Nadler ended up winning his Upper Manhattan primary against fellow Representative Carolyn Maloney in a walk. And downtown, the former federal prosecutor and lead counsel in Trump's impeachment inquiry, Dan Goldman, pulled out a victory in a crowded field.

But if you're curious about the overall political environment in the country, New York's special elections were really the focus of the night. Democrats overperformed in two special elections, pulling out a win in the 19th district, which is four points more Republican than the nation, according to FiveThirtyEight's partisan lean. They also overperformed in New York's 23rd, where the Republican still won.

There are, of course, also primaries in Florida and Oklahoma. Former Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, will now face off against current Republican governor Ron DeSantis, but of course, as a Democrat. And Oklahoma will likely have a new Republican senator in Mark Wayne Mullen. Here with me to dig into all of it, our politics editor, Sarah Frostenson. Hello, Sarah. Good morning. Hey, y'all.

Okay, so I know listeners might be getting tired of hearing about our sleeping habits, but we're almost done with the primary cycle. So I got to ask you, what time did you get to bed last night? I

I think I hit the hay by like midnight. I wish I could say the same for Nathaniel, but I don't think that was the case. All right, Nathaniel, elections analyst also here with us. What time did you go to bed? Yeah, I didn't go to bed until like 4, 430. But it was fine. It was all in the service of election watching. So no regrets.

I heard that you were actually writing an article about special elections, which I think listeners might be able to read by the time this podcast is posted. Can you give us a sneak peek at your main takeaway? Yeah, I was inspired. Well, I mean, that's basically what we're about to talk about, right, Kalen? So just do it. Let's talk about it. All right, let's dive right in. Splash! Nathaniel, you are the segue. OK, thanks, Kalen. Thank you for using me like that. I appreciate it.

You know, with love and affection, of course. Thank you. Yeah. Two special elections last night in New York, as you mentioned, Galen. So special elections to take a step back. Folks who have been reading or listening to FiveThirtyEight for a long time know that they can reflect the results of the upcoming midterm election because they kind of reveal what the national political environment is.

And not necessarily because of who wins, but kind of looking at the margins of special elections relative to partisan lean. So, for example, in the 23rd district last night, this was a Republican leaning seat with an R plus 15 partisan lean. The Republican still won, but he only won by seven points, which means that this was an eight point overperforming.

by Democrats. And so that kind of overperformance, if you see a party do it over and over and over again, can signal that you are in a political environment that leans toward that party. And these were the fourth and fifth special elections since the Dobbs decision. And in four out of the five of those special elections, Democrats had a notable overperformance, overpartisan lean. And the fifth of those elections was in Alaska, which people probably know was a ranked choice election.

It's kind of difficult to know how to count that, whether to count that at all. So these two elections in New York last night gave us almost double the amount of data we had since the Dobbs decision and really showed us that

But yes, it seems pretty clear right now that we are actually in a Democratic leaning political environment, which is pretty remarkable to be in in a, you know, two months before a midterm election with an unpopular Democratic president. So we're kind of an uncharted territory. And the question is, you know, of course, will that work?

environment last until November? Will other events overtake it? We're still haven't kind of entered the thick of the campaign, which traditionally starts after Labor Day. So a lot of questions there. But I think right now, you know, Democrats are obviously thrilled to hold that seat in the 19th district, which was a swing seat that they were genuinely worried about losing. But overall, I think they're also looking at this in combination with the Democratic improvement in the generic ballot, some really good polls for Democrats in the Senate.

and saying, hey, we may actually have a path to avoiding a midterm blowout. Right. And I think that last part is what's key is, as Nathaniel said, we have seen an overperformance for Democrats since the Dobbs decision. But it's not like we're back in 2018 where Democrats are leading the generic ballot by eight points. And I think some of the coverage you're seeing come out now is like, Democrats will win the midterms. And it's like,

Not necessarily. It's like they will be competitive and racist, perhaps, that initially we were writing off given like an R plus five partisan lean, R plus 10 partisan lean. As Nathaniel said, I think there are real questions to the extent to which this holds. But at least right now, it does show a shift in the environment. It is good for Democrats, but it's more of a toss up situation versus like this is a Democratic leaning environment. And I think that's really important to keep in mind.

because some of the news coverage, because it is a new shift, it's exciting, this doesn't often happen in a midterm year, is perhaps blowing some of the enthusiasm out of proportion. A point 538 contributor Jacob Rubashkin made on the live blog last night is,

What you're also seeing is just turnout expectations across the board going up, right? And like, that's something we saw in 2020. Yes, there was high Democratic turnout. There was also really high Republican turnout. And there's no reason to think that that won't be the case here in 2022 as well.

Yeah. Nathaniel, what was the average overperformance in the four or five elections that we've seen since Dobbs? So it was a six point average Democratic overperformance. And if you look at the special elections before Dobbs, that was a two point Republican overperformance. So pretty clear that a switch did flip there.

And that's also counting Alaska, which keep in mind because of the ranked choice voting, like that could still actually go for a Democrat, which if that does happen, that would dramatically shift that average. So just something to keep in mind. Okay. But the generic ballot polling, which is for the uninitiated, basically when pollsters ask Americans, would you vote for a Republican or a Democrat in the upcoming midterms is still neutral. Republicans, there's not really a lead for Republicans. There's not really a lead for Democrats.

That seems like two data points that are in conflict with each other. Which should we trust more? Yeah, I think to Sarah's point, yeah. So the special election since Dobbs, I think, do actually point to a Democratic leaning outright environment. But the generic ballot does point to a neutral environment. Historically, the generic ballot has been a strong indicator, but you also have to remember

kind of remember about how it adjusts itself. And typically it does move against the president's party as the election approaches. So if historical patterns hold, you might expect Republicans to gain three or four points between now and November on the generic ballot. And also to Sarah's point, like they're not necessarily in conflict. They're in conflict a little bit, but you can be in this

good situation for Democrats right now and still end up in a pro-Republican situation. But it's probably going to be less of a pro-Republican situation than you would have if you had been starting from a worse position for Democrats, right? I can easily see a situation where the November election is like R plus three or something like that, which is, you know, good for Republicans. They would probably win the House, but the Senate might be competitive. It wouldn't be a quote unquote red wave. I think a lot of Democrats, if you had told them, you know, back in,

I don't know, last winter when Biden was really struggling, would you take an R plus three midterm? They would say yes. Okay.

Okay, but you're talking about where things might end up. I'm talking about in this very moment, it seems like one picture of the national environment, which is special elections, shows overperformance for Democrats, whereas polls in this very moment don't show that same D plus six or D plus four environment. Just right now, set aside what will happen because

If the political environment nationally shifts, then we would expect special elections to shift too. So what should we make of this right now? I don't think it's fair to characterize them, though, as in conflict because there's a very clear trend in the generic ballot. And that is, you know, starting in June, Republicans had a two-point average lead and that has steadily decreased. And it hit even in early August. And now Democrats are slowly inching up. They have, you know, roughly half a percentage point lead.

And yes, the special elections show a different margin, but we don't have special elections all across the country, right? Like, it's not that I'm saying it's a skewed sample size, but it's smaller. It's, you know, there are other factors at play here. And the fact that both the generic ballot and the special elections post-ops are trending in the same direction, granted at different margins, I think that's indicative of what Nathaniel's saying about the environment being, you know, problematic.

probably better than neutral for Democrats. It just goes back to that question of like, it's not 2018. And I think there are comparisons being made right now that this is like a blue wave, essentially. And that's like a step too far. Nothing is saying that. Of course, of course. But it might be like 2020.

which was good for Democrats. Not amazing, but they would take it. And like the special elections are helpful, but like our best tool for the midterms is the generic ballot. Again, it's like special elections can kind of be a window into how elections might go in November. We're definitely seeing a trend post Dobbs, but they're also, it's not a perfect indicator. You always want to be looking for like the broader national trend, which the generic ballot gives you.

Right. But I mean, of course, the polls aren't perfect either. I guess to give a cop out answer your question, Galen, I would say it's probably a little bit of both. These special election results are actual elections, people going to the polls. And we know, obviously, the polls can be off by a few points. But at the same time, the special elections do seem-- they are taking place under unusual circumstances by definition.

I would say it's probably the real political environment, if it were possible to measure such a thing, it's probably in between the neutral shown by the polls and the D plus six shown by the special elections. Friend of the podcast, Dave Wasserman, has been pointing out since these new results in New York came in that, like you said, these are happening under very particular circumstances where turnout is significantly lower than we will actually expect it to be in the fall.

On top of that, the way that the two coalitions, Republican and Democrat, have evolved over the past few years make it such that there are a lot of higher propensity Democratic voters now who might be motivated by something like abortion, you know, since we're talking about post-Dobbs.

But in the fall, when the electorate gets a lot bigger, that is not going to be as big of a priority for the broader electorate. For that electorate, things like inflation or crime might be more salient and that therefore these special elections might give us a bit of a skewed picture. I think there's also, of course, some suggestion that lower propensity voters are less likely to respond to polls. And so that, of course,

On one hand, we can just take the data that we have and say,

Based on history, we should be paying attention to this, and it's a good indicator of how things will turn up. There's also always reasons to second guess and question historical trends. Like you said, we're in uncharted territory, so we don't know where things will end up. But what do you think about the argument regarding turnout and how different the electorate could look this fall versus what it looks like right now? I mean, yeah, it's a valid hypothesis, but I wouldn't necessarily assume that's true. I mean, like...

Special elections have been predictive in the past, and special elections are always low turnout. And we've seen that when the turnout levels rise to normal midterm levels,

that they are still predictive and granted 2022 will probably be a particularly high turnout year. So again, it's potentially valid. I just think that like if issues like inflation and crime were going to be as powerful as abortion, again, kind of setting aside the fact there's still two months left and maybe let's assume that the midterms are tomorrow or something.

If inflation and crime were as motivating for Republicans as abortion seems to be for Democrats, I think that would be reflected in the special election results. And Dave also pointed out on Twitter that it's not just something that we're seeing of the high Democratic enthusiasm, but it seems like Republican enthusiasm is kind of low. And you've seen lately that gas prices have decreased and maybe a lot of the anger that was there over inflation isn't quite as potent anymore. So it's something to watch for sure.

but I'm not going to draw any conclusions quite yet. Wait, but then in the polling, in even the polling that we've done with Ipsos, Americans still say that the cost of living and the economy are their number one issue. Yeah, that's certainly true. But like salience is important, right? How much is it getting them really fired up to go vote and get the bones out of office?

Well, I would say so this was from an NBC poll over the weekend. And you're right that Democrats are becoming more enthusiastic. And to be clear, it's huge gains. But Republicans still had a two point edge. I don't think it's fair to characterize Republicans as not energized by this midterm election.

And inflation has consistently been the top issue. We've been polling since May. We're going into the field now with our sixth wave. I assume inflation will be at the top. That said, gas prices have come down. We have seen some shift in the inflation discussion. And maybe it's not becoming a salient of an issue for voters in the midterms. I do think, though, again, the special elections we've seen, a lot of them have kind of been in more suburban, exurban areas.

That's something that has increasingly been good for Democrats.

To what extent will this actually play out nationally? Like, you know, do counties along the border, for instance, in Texas, do those still inch towards Republicans? I think there's a lot of unknown factors. The environment is clearly shifting towards Democrats. There's a bit of momentum there, but I do think it's more so it's like things are really competitive versus one party having a clear advantage on this. And to be clear, that's huge going into a midterm, right? I don't mean to undersell that, but it's just...

This idea that like one party has the advantage versus the other, I think, is probably premature to say at this stage. And when it comes to the 19th district itself in New York, which I think has maybe attracted more attention because it is a true swing district. Like we said, it leans four points more Republican than the nation. But Biden won it by a point and a half in 2020. It went for Trump before that, Obama before that.

So it's the kind of environment where if both parties put in significant amounts of money and test out their messages, it could actually be something of a proving ground for the broader nation as a whole.

What kinds of messages were the Republican and Democrat in that race, Republican Mark Molinaro and Democrat Pat Ryan? Was it sort of like Mark Molinaro, crime and inflation, Pat Ryan, abortion? Because I looked at their websites. Pat Ryan's website wasn't like,

all about abortion. I don't know. How should we describe how that race went down? Yeah, I think it was like that. I mean, websites, you know, you're always going to list, you know, check off all the boxes, right? But in terms of the ads that were aired, Ryan definitely focused on abortion.

Molinero, you know, I read a couple of articles, you know, kind of in preparation for covering the race from local media. And it all seemed to be Molinero was like inflation, crime, inflation, crime, just like these really bread and butter issues. And he was he seemed to be staying away from the kind of

Trumpier stuff. He's not like a big time election denier or out there railing against immigration or something like that. So in that sense, I think that it was actually a pretty good microcosm of the messages that each party hopes to use in the fall. That said, the messaging thing, I'm the kind of guy- You don't believe it. Basically.

Listeners will know that I am a macro trends guy and I don't necessarily put a lot of stock in in what the campaigns do. It can matter, you know, on the margins. What about candidate quality? Yeah, it can matter on the margins. But ultimately, I think that this was about the national mood and not necessarily about specific candidate. I mean, if one of the candidates had been truly awful, it would have mattered.

But they were both strong, actually. They were both local county executives. Pat Ryan was a veteran. Mark Molinaro is a Republican rising star. So, yeah, I think both parties are well, Democrats, I guess, are going to take away from this. You know, we need to lean into abortion as an issue. I think they took that away from the Kansas amendment vote as well.

That may be true, but ultimately I think that the kind of macro trends will decide the midterms rather than it's being a simple measure of Democrats talk about abortion. We can't lose. Well, this is a primary reaction podcast. So let's talk about some of the primaries that took place on Tuesday night.

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You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lips and Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lips and Ads. Go to Lipsandads.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-ads.com. Okay, I think the primary that has received the most attention out of the batch was actually

My own home district. Bias. New York's 12th district. I got to say, I don't know why outlets that were putting more emphasis on this election than the special elections. I don't really understand why, because ultimately, I don't think it taught us all that much about anything in politics other than uptown Manhattan politics. But maybe disagree with me. But everyone loves uptown Manhattan. Uptown girl.

I mean, incumbent versus incumbent. They're both like it's like for DC journalists in particular, I think it's important because they're both committee chairmen. They've both been around a long time, certainly for New York journalists. It matters because a lot of them live there. So I get it. And maybe I agree with you that special elections are more interesting. But so to describe.

Overall, what this primary was about, Gerald Nadler and Carolyn Maloney have both been decades long representatives. Gerald Nadler on the west side of Manhattan, Carolyn Maloney on the east side of Manhattan. There are certain stereotypes that are associated with both of those things. Maybe east side a little more elite, west side still elite, but like more Jewish. The district that he used to represent used to be also very gay.

And the district that Carolyn Maloney used to represent also included parts of Queens and Brooklyn, which this district doesn't anymore. There was also a third candidate. There were more than three candidates running, but like third main candidate running Suraj Patel, whose main argument was generational, saying that, you know, let's get these old folks out of office, basically. What struck me about this.

race was not that there were big ideological differences or anything like that. It was more just like,

What happens when Democrats run against each other on identity issues? And I think that happens throughout New York City and maybe broader primaries in general. Gerald Nadler's argument was like, hey, New York City needs a Jewish member of Congress. Carolyn Maloney's argument was, hey, elect a woman. I mean, it was literally like, don't send a man to Congress to do a woman's job, vote out the old boys club. And Suraj Patel's argument was, we need a new generation of leadership. That new generation of leadership is also people of color.

And so it truly, like, I don't really know that they were arguing about the issues all that much. It was truly identity politics.

Just period. Like self-interested identity politics, I think, is the way to spin it, as you were saying. Well, isn't that often how it works? Well, I mean, no. I think ideally identity politics is more so about appealing to your base, right? And I don't think Nadler was just trying to appeal to Jewish voters, Bologna just trying to appeal to women voters, and Patel just necessarily to younger voters or just voters of color. I think it was like, this is why I as a candidate...

appeal to you. And yes, you do see that, you know, in other campaigns to be clear. But I think oftentimes there's a little bit more finesse on trying to resonate with different parts of your base. I mean, one thing that's interesting is like, I don't think you can just look at Patel's vote tally, which is 19% and say that all could have gone to Maloney if he ran, but

they have faced each other before. There's rivalry there. And it's interesting that say you did give all of Patel's votes to Maloney, you're looking at a very different race and Nadler would have only won by like two points. So I thought that was interesting to the extent to which he did end up playing a spoiler, perhaps more significantly for Maloney. Yeah, ultimately, I'll just say

The result was 55% Gerald Nadler, 24% Carolyn Maloney, as you mentioned, 19% Suraj Patel. And then it went on down from there. Yeah. And kind of on that theme, you know, again, here comes the macro trends guy. Like, I think probably the results show that all the identity politicking probably didn't matter all that much. I think it was a question of geography and then some key endorsements at the end.

So geographically, most of this district, I want to say 60, 61% was Maloney's. But as you guys have mentioned, Suresh Patel, who has basically taken almost half of Carolyn Maloney's vote in past primaries, was also in the running. So basically you split that 60%. If you look at maps, precinct maps of the results, now they did really well on the west side.

Maloney did a lot more spotily on the east side. So she just wasn't doing the numbers that she needed to do on her home turf.

But wasn't most of Siraj Patel's vote coming from Queens and Brooklyn when he was running against Maloney before? So an important distinction. He did the best in Brooklyn and Queens, but not most of his vote came from there. Okay, got it. Because it was still a relatively small part of the district. But yes, Brooklyn and Queens, you know, they've got the hipsters, the yuppies and the hipsters. They voted for Patel, but he still, I think, came...

He still got like roughly 40% of the vote in Manhattan in 2020 or something like that. He did decently. But anyway, yeah. So I think you split up the East side between those two candidates, give the West side largely to Nadler, you get pretty similar results. In addition, the New York Times endorsed Nadler, Chuck Schumer endorsed Nadler. And I think, you know, to the extent that there were some swing voters in this race, that probably nudged them toward Nadler and explains why even in a two-way race to your points there, it looks like Nadler would have won.

Yeah. And if listeners are wondering why we're like talking about New York Times endorsements, because endorsements don't matter, they really do seem to matter in New York at the local level. Jacob Rubashkin had a great post on that on the live blog saying that, yes, at the presidential level, lest we forget the split policy.

Was it Klobuchar and Warren in 2020? Yes, that the Times was like, oh, we can't pick. We'll pick two very different candidates. That did not work for them. But however, they still are very much kingmakers for local New York politics.

And Sarah, speaking of New York Times endorsements, the New York Times endorse C also won in the 10th district. The results there are Dan Goldman, who I mentioned was a former federal prosecutor and lead counsel on Trump's impeachment inquiry, has 26% of the vote.

You only knew an assembly member in New York State has 24 percent of the vote. And Mondaire Jones, an incumbent congressman who sort of got booted out of his old district and was running in this new district, having recently moved to Brooklyn, has 18 percent of the vote. Of course, it's already been called Goldman one again. I think maybe we saw a little bit more ideological difference in this race, but there was still I mean, like.

Two leading women in the race came out and said reproductive rights are on the line. You need to vote for a woman. I mean, I guess there were class based arguments. I don't know if that's about identity saying, you know, Goldman's buying the seat for himself. Like, let's not let the elite take the seat. There were arguments about race as well. To the extent that there were ideological disagreements, where did they fall?

Real quick, fun fact. Does anyone know Dan Goldman's middle name? I do. Is it Levi or Strauss? No, it's better. No, it's better. Tell us, Nathaniel. His name is Daniel Sachs Goldman. Daniel Sachs. Yeah, so now you understand the buying the race complaints.

Maybe the Levi Strauss heirs have invested a lot of money or are related to Goldman Sachs. This is a tangent, but I looked into this. I could not find evidence that he was related to them. The people who founded Goldman Sachs, it was a guy named Goldman and then his business partner, Sachs, and then their sons married their daughters.

So like the bloodlines did cross. So like there are people with Goldman Sachs names out there and presumably Daniel Goldman is one of them. But I could not find the actual evidence or lineage or anybody referring to it. But I thought it was interesting. That is interesting. I have to think Goldman isn't that rare of a name. OK, back to what we can take away from the conflict in this race. What can we take away from it?

I think we take away a couple of things. One is that money can still matter in politics. Goldman self-funded to the tune of, I think, $3 million. And given how close the race was, he only beat New by two points, I think. Any number of factors could have put him over the edge. I think probably without the self-funding, that wouldn't have happened. Also, the New York Times endorsement, as Sarah was talking about before in the 12th district, Goldman got that.

You have to imagine that there were several kind of limousine liberals in the district who paid attention to that, who hadn't made up their mind before. And then the third thing I think is the split in the progressive vote, right? Mondaire Jones, who is this rising star, represented a district just north of New York City, progressive young guy tied for first black openly gay member of Congress.

But he got squeezed in redistricting and had to move down here and really didn't have a base. If you look at a map of the results by precinct, he barely carried any precincts, whereas kind of each of the other candidates had their little pockets of support throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. Between Jones and New, who was the other kind of progressive candidate in the race, she's particularly a kind of outspoken progressive in Albany. You know, their votes combined certainly surpassed Goldman. So you have to think that...

I've seen the argument that Mondo Jones's vote wouldn't have just gone for new necessarily. I think people see Dan Goldman as like the MSNBC vote in that a lot of his arguments are about democracy and maybe sort of higher brow concerns than housing affordability, which was, you know, one of Newsweek arguments or things like that.

And that the Mondaire Jones vote could have actually gone maybe evenly. There is a sort of like MSNBC liberal who was voting for Mondaire Jones who might have voted for Dan Goldman. I don't know. Yeah, but I think to Nathaniel's point, it's just like both New and Jones. Yeah, maybe not all of Jones votes go to New, but...

knew only lost to Goldman by like two points. She doesn't need much of Jones's votes or Rivera, you know, to be really challenging to Goldman. So I think that, you know, again, whatever this field seems to be split, whether it's like multiple progressives running, multiple establishment challengers running, multiple like Trump, you know, challengers running, it kind of splits the vote and hurts all candidates, maybe not equally, but hurts them and doesn't

have the desired outcome of taking out the top candidate. So maybe if there had been one strong progressive in this race, that person wins.

I think it could be different. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, like we've talked about how Goldman has a lot of money. He also has an impressive background in the sense that he was the lead Democratic counsel in the first impeachment trial against Trump. I mean, he does have an impressive resume, so I don't mean to say he wouldn't have been formidable. But yeah, I think one progressive challenger could have perhaps given a different outcome to this race. Okay. At the risk of being accused of being too New York centric, let us move on.

I mean, we would never be accused of that. No, us? I really have to hammer home the point that we are based in New York because I meet people all the time who think that FiveThirtyEight is based in Washington, D.C. Galen is based in New York. And we would... Two-thirds of this podcast is based in Washington, D.C. Well, that's true. But our office is in New York.

Our bosses are in New York. Everything is still in New York. I mean, I'm going to go to the office later today and it's going to be in where? New York. Anyway, people think all the time that FiveThirtyEight is based in D.C. and it is not. Except, yes, Nathaniel and Sarah, you are both in D.C., which is a new development. Yeah, the politics crew, you know, more in D.C., but yes.

But Navanya, you used to be in Boston and Sarah, you used to be in New York. But thanks, pandemic. This is true. This is true. Okay. Moving on, let's talk about Florida, where I think people might be most interested in the general election there and sort of Ron DeSantis' fate and the fate for the Senate election. Those...

Ultimately, the primaries that were not super competitive on the Democratic side, we can talk about them. But first, were there any sort of down ballot primaries that struck you in terms of trends that we can learn from?

So the one that stood out to me was the GOP primary in Florida's 11th district. Ultimately, Representative Daniel Webster, he won, but he did face in that primary a challenge to his right from activist Laura Loomer, who has, you know, a very checkered past of being a proud Islamophobe and just a very controversial figure. And she came within seven points of defeating him.

And, you know, I think this is indicative of a larger trend we've seen and something Nathaniel noted on the live blog about, yes, incumbents have lost the cycle. In particular, you know, it's the cycle following redistricting. But there's also just been a number of close calls, particularly in GOP primaries, thinking, you know, Michael Guest in Mississippi's third district who, you know, that was kind of a sleeper one for us. We hadn't thought that his vote would.

for the January 6th commission was really going to be something that was targeted from a challenger he faced that was forced to run off representative David Valadao in California, you know, narrowly won in the top two primary there, the list goes on. And it's just maybe some of these representatives who held out this year, it's like, you know, check back in 2024, maybe they will be more endangered or get the

boot then, because it certainly seems that there is an appetite, at least in the Republican primary base, for more extreme candidates running to the right.

Yeah, exactly, Sarah. And just to piggyback off that with more numbers. So with Maloney losing and Jones losing in New York, we are now up to what is probably a final number of 14 incumbent members of Congress who lost primaries this cycle. And that is the most since 1992. So it is a lot even for a redistricting year. It's more than 2012. It's more than 2002. And obviously, Jones and

Maloney lost because of redistricting and a lot of others did as well, but a lot of them didn't, their districts didn't change that much. A lot of it was because of, you know, maybe they voted for impeachment and Trump really put a target on their backs.

Maybe, you know, there were just other factors that made them unpopular. I think there definitely does seem to be a somewhat of an anti-incumbent sentiment right now, especially on the Republican side. And to put that in some historical context, Nathaniel, and in redistricting context, 1992 was the first midterms when the sort of new interpretation of the Voting Rights Act was implemented, where if there was racially polarized voting and you could draw a majority minority district, you had to, which really shook up

districts all around the country. And so I guess we're not on par with that. But, you know, that's what we're comparing this cycle to is an environment where the laws of the land were significantly changed in terms of how districts were drawn. Were there any other down ballot primaries that deserve a shout out before we talk about Ron DeSantis?

Yeah, so Florida had a lot of, in particular, Republican primaries. The redistricting process there created a lot of new Republican seats. And so there were just good opportunities for Republicans to jump in. But a couple of races that I would note were in Florida's 1st District, Matt Gaetz, who, of course, faces a pretty serious scandal over...

allegedly paying underage girls for sex. He won his primary easily. He was endorsed by Donald Trump, a serious challenger, really never materialized. So I thought that was notable that that scandal didn't seem to hurt him all that much.

And then in Florida's 13th district, which is one of these new districts that was gerrymandered from being competitive to being fairly reliably Republican, Trump's endorsed candidate, Anna Paulina Luna, who has touted herself as a Republican AOC. She won her primary by maybe a narrower margin than would have been expected considering she had Trump's endorsement, but still a win for him. And because of the seat's redness, she will probably go to Congress in the fall.

Okay, so in the Democratic primary for governor, Charlie Crist defeated Nikki Freed. Charlie Crist, of course, former Republican governor, Nikki Freed, agriculture commissioner in Florida, only Democrat to win statewide since what year, Nathaniel? 2012. It's been 10 years.

Other than Nikki Freed. I think that was the expected outcome. But now that we know what the actual general election matchup is, what can we say about a Crist-DeSantis election? Well, I can tell you what the forecast says. And the 538 election forecast does not give Crist a great shot at winning an 8 in 100 chance.

So DeSantis is clearly favored. I do think, though, yes, Florida is the state that has been a perennial swing state, but at least in recent elections, recent presidential elections, I should say, has inched more towards Republicans. And, you know, to the point where in our post 2020 analysis, we were like, is Florida actually maybe a red state now?

What I think that misses is, you know, DeSantis only won by one point in 2018. Yes, as we were talking about earlier, 2018 was an extremely good environment for Democrats. So maybe that's not actually that indicative of where things could be here in 2022. It's just more so a reminder that, you know, Florida is still a swing state. Yes, it's been more Republican leaning. Yes, you know, looking at both polling and the fundamentals, the forecast thinks DeSantis has a really great shot of winning here.

But, you know, as we were talking about earlier about the environment, you know, maybe that helps Chris a little bit and things inch towards Democrats more. I don't know. Nathaniel, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I would certainly bet on DeSantis winning, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's close. I kind of think of Florida now as like almost like the Republican Minnesota area.

like minnesota is a state that has gone democrat hasn't voted for republican i think since 2006 or something crazy but like there have been a lot of close calls and so i kind of think that florida is is you know you look at kind of the underground demographics and especially kind of republicans having made inroads with cuban americans and other hispanic americans in the miami-dade area

It's hard for Republicans to lose it now, but I think it does remain a very closely divided state. And I think you saw even in the 2010 and 2014 elections, there were close elections, even though those were obviously red wave years. It was a close election, as you said, Sarah, in the 2018 wave year. So I think Florida is just kind of constantly going to be a close election. But yeah, I mean, I would be surprised if DeSantis loses. Yeah, I think when the theory of the case was

big urbanized states with diverse populations will eventually just become democratic. You could have seen the argument, but now that obviously Republicans are improving their lot with the largest and fastest growing... Well, I guess not fastest growing because people of Asian descent are now the fastest growing part of the country, but

sort of largest and most rapidly evolving the electoral landscape of the country, Latino voters. It's harder to see how Democrats really make this pretty hard to see how they pull it out. Because on top of that, DeSantis is popular. You know, his approval rating is above water in the state. He was at, you know, 55% approval rating earlier this year. He's now a little bit above 50%.

I think our forecast, though, gives Val Demings a slightly better chance of unseating Margot Rubio in the Senate race. And by slightly better, I mean, you know, 15 and 100 chance instead of eight and 100. Yes. Are there any reasons to expect the contours of that race to be different? I mean, one thing, you know, we've kind of talked about

more broadly is that in governor's races that there's still ticket splitting when it comes to voting is definitely shrinking, but there is more, you know, we wouldn't have Governor Hogan in Maryland or Governor Baker in Massachusetts if voters didn't sometimes vote outside of their partisan identity. And so I think what you're seeing in Florida and why Val Demings has a better odds there

is part of the national environment with the Senate being something that is actually, you know, overall in our forecast, Democrats are favored to win. So I think you're seeing candidates like Demings kind of boosted from the overall picture. But presumably in Florida, you know, if DeSantis wins at the top of the ticket, you can expect Marco Rubio not to be far behind. But perhaps the margins there differ a little bit.

Yeah, this has been kind of a mini trend in the polling so far where Senate Democrats have been running ahead of gubernatorial Democrats in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona. And that's kind of actually the opposite of what I would have expected, given Republicans have nominated some weaker candidates for governor, but that's also been true for Senate. And also, you know, with the Dobbs decision, my guess had been that that would affect state level races more because the

kind of abortion debate is going to the states but i wonder if maybe there's a you know the enthusiasm is focusing more on federal races because like oh we've got to get to 52 seats and abolish filibuster and put this international law i don't know but i wouldn't be surprised if you know that the same pattern that we're seeing in pennsylvania and wisconsin is also trickling down to florida

Sidebar, this would be a good model talk, Galen. Or I'll push Nate on this. I'm pretty sure it's like the Senate races are more correlated, but that's my guess of how things work. Yeah, it'd be good to know. Or that like the Democratic improvement on the generic ballot affects the Senate races more than it affects the government races. That makes sense. I think that's what's happening, but like, I'm not sure. You know, there's a candidate quality question, which is that like,

If you compare Herschel Walker and Brian Kemp. Sure. I mean, in Pennsylvania, there's maybe less of a differential because that's the notable exception, right? Oz is maybe like more normal, but more of a neophyte. I was going to say Oz actually does better in the Senate than Mastriano in the governor's. Oh, OK. That makes sense to me then. So, yeah, maybe candidate quality, Nathaniel. Yeah.

It can make a difference. All right. That's Florida. We're going to end on Oklahoma. If anyone wants to sing the song, now's your opportunity. Nathaniel, Sarah. I feel like Jeff loves to like belt it on the live blog. Wait, how do you sing on the live? No, it's just like he's done a number of posts where it's like, Oklahoma. And then I'll stop there. So I'm not going.

We tricked you into doing it, Sarah. Exactly. Shucks. We have a presumptive new Republican senator in Mark Wayne Mullen. He won the Republican primary runoff. Obviously, we don't think a Democrat is going to win there in the general election.

What can we say about that? Who is he? What kind of ideology or position will the next senator from Oklahoma bring? So Mark Wayne Mullen was a full-blown 2020 election, was stolen from Trump. But it wasn't just him. Shannon, who ended up losing to Mullen, also fell into that camp. There actually wasn't that much ideological difference between them.

And I think, you know, Oklahoma being the red state that it is, Senator Jim Inhofe being conservative, you know, yes, I think we're getting a more conservative replacement. But it's a little unclear to me, like, how much more conservative, if that makes sense, maybe a little bit more Trumpy. I don't know. What are your what are your thoughts on that, Nathaniel?

Yeah, I mean, Inhofe was very conservative. So yeah, I think kind of status quo in Oklahoma. One notable thing about Mullen is that he is a member of the Cherokee Nation. And so he will actually be the first Native American senator since 2005, I believe.

Are there any other primaries we can mention in Oklahoma? So the only other runoff of note, in fact, the only runoff in Oklahoma, aside from the Senate one, was in the second district, which was Mullen's district as he was running for the Senate. That had been a really crowded primary earlier in the year. It had come down to Breach and Frick's

Breachon ultimately won by four points and were less clear on where he stood on the 2020 election, just didn't make comments on it. So could be maybe more of a under the radar Republican on some of the fraudulent 2020 claims. On other stuff, though, he's quite conservative. He was kind of an ally of the Club for Growth, which is kind of like this Tea Party movement. So I think if you're in the Freedom Caucus, you can probably say that you got a new member last night.

All right. Well, we've gone a little longer on this podcast than I expected to. Sarah, I know you have to edit Nathaniel's piece on special elections so everyone can read it. That's right. Any parting words of wisdom before we go off into our days? Maybe 2022 really is an asterisk election. Check out that Nate Silver piece if you haven't already.

Which is like an asterisk election is what, like 2002 and 1998? Sure. As in like, okay, midterms always go against the party in power, except there are two exceptions. And one is after 9-11 and the other is after Clinton's impeachment. And that maybe post Dobbs is also an asterisk election. Yeah.

We got two more months. Well, Nate also went really far back and flagged the election after the Great Depression as well. So there have been a number of asterisk elections. But to your point, right, Galen, like there's not a ton. And should we be thinking of 2022 in this new context that we were talking about earlier with the special elections? And I think the answer is clearly yes. Clearly yes. At this moment in time, and also clearly we have more than two months left and we're

We're going to see what happens post Labor Day. That's true. Anything is possible. Yeah. So stick with us. That's an advertisement for the political media. Anything can happen. Stick with us. I kid. You should just always listen to the 538 Politics podcast because we're so charming. And Sarah can sing Oklahoma. Can she? The first word.

The first word. Yeah, exactly. I'm not good with remembering lyrics. On that note, thank you, Nathaniel and Sarah, so much for playing along today. Thanks, Galen. Thank you, Galen.

My name is Galen Druk. Emily Vanesky is in the control room and is also on audio editing today. Nash Consing is on video editing and Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast 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'll see you soon.