Does Gen Z Really Care More About That Viral TikTok Than Politics?
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So who is more famous to you, Lindsay Lohan or Rene Rapp? I would say in this moment, Rene Rapp matters more to me than Lindsay Lohan. Canceled. Canceled. I'm sorry. We were going to have you join this conversation, but you actually have to leave now.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and welcome to the general election. The presidential primaries have been over in effect, I know, maybe since January, but now they are truly over. Last week, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley suspended her campaign for the Republican nomination, making Donald Trump formally the presumptive nominee. And on the Democratic side, Dean Phillips suspended his long-shot campaign and endorsed Joe Biden. So

So the 2024 election will be a rematch of 2020. And as the general election begins in earnest, we're going to try to lay down some numerical markers with a game of guess what Americans think. What percentage of Americans think the country is on the right track? Hint, not that many. Or how many Americans think their preferred candidate will win the election?

But before we get to that, we have a good or bad use of polling example that gets at another hot topic of the 2024 election. The youth vote. How much is Gen Z paying attention to the issues that the campaign is being waged over?

Here with me to discuss is Director of Data Analytics, Elliot Morris. Welcome to the podcast, Elliot. Hey, Galen. Thanks for having me on to represent the Zillennial. All right, whatever that means. Also joining us is Senior Editor, Tia Yang. Welcome to the podcast, Tia. Thanks, Galen. Even though you're erasing me and Elliot's identity. Since Elliot considers himself to be a Zillennial or introduced himself by generation, how would you like to introduce yourself?

I would like to join that camp, but clearly you're going to kick both of us off. But when we're speaking technically, though, I mean, I got to have one other millennial on this call with me or like, what am I doing? I'm just going to feel old and sad. If I have to choose, I would choose the millennial camp.

Okay, good to know. Also here with us, joining us for the first time ever, is Cooper Burton, researcher and copy editor at FiveThirtyEight. And for today's purposes, Gen Z correspondent. Welcome, Cooper. Thank you. I'm happy to represent my age cohort. Thank you so much for doing so. A lot of pressure here. Okay, so Cooper, since this is your first time on the podcast and you're representing an entire generation, just to kick things off here, what are some of the things that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've done that you've

How would you describe a Gen Z individual? Like what makes you unique from the rest of the population? I feel like a defining trait is like whether you use Snapchat as like a primary tool

app for communication. Most people my age use Snapchat as a main texting app. But then I feel like if you go even a couple years older than me, it's solely iMessage or real texting. So that's something that I actually struggle with. I hate Snapchat. So it's a struggle to get my friends to not text me on Snapchat. Yeah, I thought Snapchat died my senior year of high school. I thought, yeah, Snapchat was popular...

briefly when I was in high school. Wow, it's got some real staying power. Your age is showing. I'm sorry to say that. It's still just as strong as ever. Yeah, my understanding of Snapchat was it was for like Anthony Weiner style purposes, not for just texting each other. No. I didn't know you could even text on Snapchat. Yeah, it was Snap and Chat. So you chat.

I think most people just snap. Yeah, I don't know. I thought people were snapping. I don't think we're totally wrong to be operating under the assumption that it died. Because its stock price, I just checked it as an all-time low. I remember this. Well, I don't know what to tell you. It's still...

quite alive and well among the Gen Z population. That's probably why, because you all aren't on it. So it's like something that we have to ourselves. Fighting workers. Cooper, just so we can weigh down some lines here, this is data journalism. Just to be clear, I'm not trying to violate HR protocol. What year were you born? I was born in 2000. I was born at the end of 2000. Okay. All right. Sounds good. And

Everyone else who has identified as a Zillennial, can you please explain why, what you think that means, or what year that's associated with? Tia. Tia said she's a Zillennial. I'll let her go first. Oh, thanks, Elliot. Elliot coined the term, and now he's making me define it. No, I was born in 1995. I don't know what years. I would say some defining characteristics would be...

I graduated college before COVID happened and I had a job before everything went remote, which I think is one of the most recent things that has distinguished things. Yeah, that's the same. I was born in 1996, which is the cutoff year if you use the year-based generations, which lots of people don't like, including some sociologists, whatever. We can talk about that. I think the way Tia puts it is a good one. I had a real job in person before the pandemic happened and

And I don't use Snapchat. But at the same time, I consider myself a little too online and a little too young to be a millennial. So there you go.

Okay, so as the solid millennial of the pack, I was born in 1990, which is peak millennial from a data perspective. The New York Times just wrote a whole article on this. The most millennials were born in the year 1990 as an echo of the baby boomer generation. And also, millennials are the largest generation in America right now. So actually, I think this means, you can fact check me if you like,

There are more 33-year-olds slash people born in 1990 alive today in the United States than people of any other age. Right? So that seems right. I can't fact check you. I don't have the ACS tables in front of me. Okay, so here representing the most important age cohort in the United States is me. Here representing peak millennial, the peak millennial. I mean, look, I am peak millennial. I graduated from college the year that Girls came out.

And I also freelanced and interned and couldn't find a job in the horrible job market while trying to live in New York City and being some sort of weird stereotype of hanging out in Brooklyn and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I get it. I get it. I get it. I'll take responsibility for all the bad choices we made. And I would like to personally thank Gen Z while we're here for getting rid of skinny jeans. We all thought they were comfortable while they lasted. Turns out they were not. And it took

wide-leg genes for us to truly understand that. So thank you, Cooper, and the rest of your generation for freeing us from the elastane or whatever the hell that was called. You are so welcome, Galen. Round of applause. Thanks. Okay, so let's get to the actual podcast for today.

Our good or bad use of polling example comes from Morning Consult. They recently released a poll of roughly 2,000 registered voters asking them a series of questions about their awareness of recent current events.

While the list was primarily composed of events related to politics, asking if voters had seen, read, or heard a lot about things like the Alabama Supreme Court's recent IVF ruling, Mitch McConnell's retirement, a potential Gaza ceasefire, one of the events stood out. The question asked if voters had seen, read, or heard a lot about, quote, a woman's 50-part series on TikTok titled, Who the F*** Did I Marry? Here's a taste.

Hi and welcome. We all know why you're here. You're here for part of the new series that I'm calling "The F*ck Did I Marry?" I'm going to create this playlist series and I'm going to tell the story of how I met, dated, married, and divorced a real pathological liar.

Teresa Johnson, also known as ResaTisa on TikTok, went viral a few weeks ago for her series detailing a whirlwind romance with her now ex-husband. And since posting her story time series, that amounts to over seven hours in total, she has received over 400 million views on the app. So here's what Morning Consult found.

20% of Gen Z voters had seen, read, or heard a lot about Reese's series compared to 9% of voters overall. By comparison, when they asked these folks if they had seen, read, or heard a lot about the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling that frozen embryos are legally children, 14% of Gen Z voters said they had compared to 27% of voters overall.

This, as you can imagine, resulted in the headline for this article, quote, more Gen Z voters have heard a lot about that 50 part TikTok series than the Alabama IVF ruling. So here's the question. And Cooper, we're going to start with you. Good or bad use of polling?

I think it's a fine use of polling. If I had to pick one or the other, I would say good. We see pollsters ask about familiarity with recent events all the time. That's not a crazy or a new thing. Comparing age crosstabs, I think, is valid and fine as long as you do it in a conscientious way that doesn't afford too much confidence to tiny sample sizes. But this is a poll of 2,000 people, so that means you could have a pretty respectable crosstab of

Gen Z voters. And I think it's fine to make this sort of analysis. I wouldn't call it like the Bible or anything, but I think it's useful to see how different age groups are thinking about the political moment, or I guess not thinking about the political moment. Morning Council, it's a good pollster. So I don't think that they would be like drawing these conclusions based off of like a 50 person sample size or anything crazy like that. All right, Tia.

I think this is a bad characterization of polling. I think like Cooper, I don't see any problem with the poll itself, but I think that

If we look at the lists, I didn't count how many, but there's a bunch of news items. And the 50-part TikTok series is very different than the rest of those in that it's not like a hard news item. It's a viral video or a piece of media entertainment. There weren't any similar things. Like if they'd asked, like, I don't know, did you hear about like Taylor Swift being at the Super Bowl or like other things that I would say like older people would also consider to be like cultural events.

the question phrasing was like, have you heard or read a lot about a thing which lends itself to small talk items or things that might come up when you're talking with your friends? And I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that people are more likely to talk about like, oh, I saw this viral video then like, oh, like let's talk about the Alabama IVF ruling, um, when they just like enter a small talk conversation. So I just think that focusing on the difference between how Gen Z perceived or heard of, uh,

big news item versus a piece of viral media is kind of a strange comparison. Are you saying here that you feel like Gen Z was specifically baited here because the only cultural reference point is one that perhaps only Gen Z would have heard of? Yes. Okay. They were framed. We're victims. Yeah, I had a similar reaction. I looked up the percent of people who say they pay a lot of attention to news and I

You know, there's an expected age gradient. Obviously, older people pay more attention to news. According to Gallup, 51% of them say they pay very close attention to news. And that's 1 in 10 or less than 1 in 10, depending on the survey, for people between the ages of 18 and 29, which actually contains a lot of millennials as well, so it's probably even lower for Gen Z age.

I feel like they're baited. Yeah. And if you picked any other culturally relevant story, it would have outweighed the news just by the fact that these people don't pay a lot of attention to news. But I'll say my first reaction, and this is how I know I'm not Gen Z, was who the F is Risa Tisa? And what is this 50 part TikTok series? I don't know if y'all remember early in the Trump administration, there were people putting like 100 length tweets

threads out there about mainly about Russia and their, you know, alleged role in the 2016 election. And this reminds me a lot of that. 50 TikToks? Are you kidding? This is why we don't like millennials. That's what millennials were doing. To be clear, I had no... I had never heard of this. I had no idea. But, um...

Jayla, our intern, who is a Gen Zer, who is currently on spring break, if that's any further evidence of her generational cohort, explained to me what this was. Then I thought, seven hours of TikToks? Like, you've got to be kidding me. Later at the gym, I opened part one, and I made it through two hours of Risa Tisa's 50-part series. It's good, isn't it? Kalem, were you at the gym for two hours? Yeah.

I mean, like an hour and a half, I don't know. And then I was like making dinner. Wow, getting swole, Galen. And continue to listen to it. I mean, I do a lot of cardio, Elliot, which explains the lack of swoleness. You look huge to me in a good way. I'm scared. When Galen walks into this podcast studio, I'm like... He looks huge to me, Elliot Morris, going on my website. Don't make that the cold open. Oh, God.

Okay, so I will say Risa gets into the weeds a little too much on some of the specific surrounding houses and cars that she doesn't end up buying before she ultimately gets to, like, the level of deception and fraud that her ex-husband perpetrated. Cooper, had you heard of this beforehand? I had heard of it. I hadn't seen it. Jinzy? Would you say you had heard a lot about it?

Yeah, I would. But then in prep for this, I watched, I probably watched like four hours of the seven and a half yesterday. So Cooper is like some of the 5% of Gen Z that both pays very close attention to the news and also watched the 50 part series. But I didn't finish it. So don't spoil it for me because I'm like really invested in it. So...

Okay, I think we've just generally set the scene, which is that it's a woman who describes fraud and deception, who ends up trying to buy a lot of different houses and cars over the course of this series. So back to the question at hand, I think it is a...

fair use of polling, or at least a somewhat interesting use of polling to try to gauge how much different segments of the electorate are paying attention to the news, particularly if we think these are the issues that the campaign might be waged over in part. But I think the sort of shame framing of

Well, it's Gen Z who's paying attention to some frivolous TikTok. First of all, this woman experienced a very important life event, and there's a lot to learn about personal finance and marriage and all kinds of different things from this TikTok series. But also, the idea that Gen Z would be paying more attention to a TikTok than an IVF person

in Alabama makes a lot of sense to me. Most Gen Zers don't live in Alabama. Most people between the age of 18 and 29 are not considering in vitro fertilization. So while it's like very important to people who pay attention to politics, we already know that the majority of Americans don't pay attention to politics and generally find it distasteful. And so the fact that younger people who wouldn't

like necessarily even be affected by this, aren't paying attention to it and instead are paying attention to what is ultimately entertainment seems only natural.

Right. What percentage of other generations would have said the same thing or something similar and had another sort of rage-baity morning console write-up of their lack of attentiveness to news, right? If you ask the average millennial white man in the South, if they paid more attention to the latest NASCAR race than this, just to pick another gross overgeneralization, I know, you probably would have found similar results. I mean, it seems a little unsurprising to me.

I also think that the narrative of like, oh, Gen Z cares more about TikTok than reproductive rights or whatever, like that was kind of the subtext of the article, I think. And I think that's just like simple and reductive. I mean, we've seen that to not be true in 2022. Like abortion was a huge issue for young people, especially in states like Michigan, where it was directly on the ballot. And young people we've seen have been like hugely engaged in this kind of like social activism that's come after Roe v. Wade.

Like we were saying earlier, this is the share of people who said that they've heard a lot about the issue. And I think that Gen Z is much more likely to like seen a headline about the Alabama ruling, maybe on Twitter or their Instagram explore page, but like not clicked into it. If you don't live in Alabama, I would be interested in seeing the share of

Gen Z who said they had heard some of the Alabama ruling because I feel like that would probably be higher than maybe some other generations. I actually think that also this is going to run a little bit against what you just said, Cooper.

One of the values of this poll is to remind people that while we pay a lot of attention to young voters because the rest of the country is like, ooh, what are they doing? How are they going to be different? What's new about these people? In what new way are they going to ruin the country? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We pay a lot of attention to them and so we focus on their politics. But the fact of the matter is like,

They've received a ton of attention for their views on the war in Gaza. But according to this poll, only 12% of Gen Z said they had heard or read a lot about Hamas's rejection of a short-term ceasefire, for example. And so I think actually the politics of Gen Z in general are probably overblown.

18 to 29-year-olds are a group that is the least likely of all the age cohorts to show up to actually vote in November. They don't pay attention to news, and those two things are probably related. And so I think maybe, sorry, Cooper, in general, we're actually paying too much attention to these voters as opposed to

too little attention or taking their seriousness about abortion and IVF too little. Not to be a polemicist here, but... Well, a millennial would say that to a Gen Z or Gaylord. I mean... Actually, you're getting too much attention. I hear what you're saying. I think sometimes there is a little bit too much attention paid to, like, what random activists say on Twitter, for example. But to push back against that a little bit, I mean, I think that young people have been...

very tuned into politics, but it's just in a very different way than a lot of the generations before them. We've seen a lot of more activism-based political engagement rather than just like purely showing up to the ballot box, especially in like in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter movement, that was young activists were a very important part of that. And just

political movements in general. And also our colleague Monica Potts wrote an article a couple months ago about how young voters are motivated more by issues rather than like candidates in a way that older generations are not. I think that young people are

engaged in a different way politically than we've seen in the past. And also, most people aren't single-issue voters. So this idea that if young people don't care about this IVF ruling or they don't care about abortion as much as they did in the past, it means that they're not going to show up and they're not going to vote or whatever. And I just don't think that's true. I think a lot of people care a lot about abortion and IVF, but it's not the only reason they're voting.

I think there's a lot of other factors that are going to be at play too. And election day is like not tomorrow anyway for everyone. Just a good point. I think the issues versus candidates thing is...

a good point because the millennial generation had the 2008 election, which was a whole different situation where the candidate himself, Barack Obama, was a celebrity and was a sort of cultural moment for millennials in the way that maybe like Bill Clinton was a cultural moment for the boomers or Gen X or whatever. When it comes to actual voting, I think this is notable, right? So in 2022,

28% of youth ages 18 to 24 cast a ballot. So voter turnout ultimately low and significantly lower than other parts of the electorate, just to be clear. However, it's maybe not fair to compare the votes

voting habits of Gen Z to the current voting habits of past generations or still living but older generations. And so if you compare them to how millennials or Gen Xers voted when they were at a similar age, 23% of millennials voted in 2006. And this is also, you know, 2006 is still a reaction to the

the Iraq war and all of that, 24% of Gen Xers voted in 1990. So if you actually do a more apples to apples comparison, Gen Zers are somewhat engaged. The war where? Iraq? Sorry, to Gen Z. Don't know what you're talking about.

This is going to be too millennial for anybody, but the 30 Rock reference where Jenna Maroney, they're like, she claims to be 27, and then as a test of how old she is, she just pretends not to know what any of the questions mean. Insert that reference here. Okay, so all told, what have we learned from this poll about young people in 2024? Yeah.

I think very little. I would say, like... That's the... You know, that crosses generational boundaries into just the 538 view. It does not shift my Bayesian priors about the generation at all. No,

No, I think one of the main reasons this poll would be buzzy, as we've discussed, is that part of Democrat strategy is based on the fact that abortion is an issue where young voters are disproportionately aligned with Democrats' positions. And the whole narrative is how big is the young voter turnout going to be? And will that help Biden and Democrats in November?

But I think like to the first point of that, which we've discussed, like young people's views on abortion are already pretty solid. And I don't think that the IVF ruling and their thoughts on it are necessarily going to change what they feel about it.

Like Galen mentioned earlier, younger people aren't necessarily thinking about IVF right now. I think that Democrats sort of have this opportunity to potentially use this unpopular opinion to gain more votes or drive turnout, but that's not necessarily among Gen Z voters who already have strong opinions about abortion and already consider it an important issue. I think that the

The IVF decision might be like Democrats should think about it as an opportunity to swing potentially like moderate voters and people like millennials who are in the age group that are thinking about IVF that might like know people who have gone through IVF.

And maybe are a little bit more moderate on the issue of abortion, where like IVF is sort of a bridge too far. And I think we even saw that in the State of the Union, where Biden specifically called out this decision. He mentioned it in the context of Roe v. Wade, like trying to tie those two together. He didn't specifically say the word abortion, because I think a smarter strategy potentially for Democrats is to tie this to Roe.

Roe v. Wade without like tying it directly to abortion rights for like moderate voters, not Gen Z voters who already have opinions.

Unless we characterize Gen Z voters as one big group of Democrats, which they aren't, and we're going to talk about that in our next segment, Guess What Americans Think. But if you actually look at this, more Gen Z voters have heard a lot about the murder of Lakin Riley than they have about the IVF ruling or the no ceasefire in Gaza.

16% of Gen Zers said they had heard or read a lot about the arrest of a Venezuelan migrant accused of killing a student at the University of Georgia. So they are also paying attention to issues that Republicans have been talking a lot about. With that, we are going to move on to guess what Americans think. And we're going to say goodbye to our Gen Z correspondent, Cooper. Cooper, thank you so much for joining today. Thank you for having me. This was fun.

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And now it's time for one of our favorite games. We're going to test your knowledge of what Americans think about several key metrics as we head into the general election. But more importantly than your knowledge, we'll see if they match with overall perceptions and try to add some context to the numbers involved.

eight months out from November. Also joining us now is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Welcome. It is so good to have another solid millennial on the podcast now. We got the numbers again. Hey, Galen. Yes. Oh, my God. We're outnumbered, Tia. We're evenly numbered, Elliot.

Yeah, but millennials count for more. We're like one and a half each. So we outnumber you. That's how this works. I can't argue with the waiting. Okay. So as folks probably remember, the way that we play this game is I'm going to cite a polling question. You're going to have to guess what the answer was. Whoever's closest gets a point. But more importantly, win, lose, draw. We're all going to learn a little something about our perceptions of the country in comparison to what the raw data actually suggests. So.

First question, dovetailing off of our last segment. According to the recent New York Times-Santa College polling, what percentage of 18 to 29-year-olds supports Donald Trump in the 2024 election? Cross-tab diving. Three, two, one, reveal. I went 42%. I got 39%. I said 30%. Jeff gets it. Congratulations to the millennial. It was 41%. Congratulations.

That was a close one. It was real close. It was real close. That compares with 53% for Biden. So in this poll, Biden only leading by 12 points amongst a group that he won, according to exit polls, by 24 points in 2020. Yeah, but like there's a population of people who say they're not going to vote or they're undecided. So you have to allocate them. But yes, right. Yes, there's a shift.

I also think it's worth remembering that the group of 18 to 29-year-olds who will be voting in 2024 is not the same group of 18 to 29-year-olds who voted in 2020 because time has passed.

And a group of the 18 to 29 are now in the 30 to 44 category, for instance. Oh, interesting. So you are not a fan of age-based comparisons, but of cohort-based? No, I think it's just always important to remember that. Do both. Yeah, and ideally what's fun is even trying to figure out how those different groups have moved over time as they have aged. But that is, of course, more complicated to do. Well, Jeff...

Let me ask the follow-up question then. Do you think that younger voters are more right-leaning than their immediate predecessors? That is possible. We've seen historically that when one party is in the White House for a certain period, that

voters who are entering, especially if it's an unpopular president, for instance, that voters who entered the electorate or become sort of politically active during that time might go more toward the other party. So for instance, like Obama era millennials are people who like, sorry, I should say George W. Bush era millennials who were really coming into the electorate around the time of Obama's election are like super turbocharged democratic voters.

And somewhat more Democrat – Pew did a really interesting study on this a few years ago where they kind of broke out by different birth year, how much lean different groups had. And like people who kind of came into the electorate in like Obama's second term were like Democratic-leaning Democrats.

But they weren't as Democratic-leaning as that group that was sort of like the 08 era Obama people. And so to me, the idea that like people who might be aging into the electorate right now, I don't know, like a 20-year-old, 19-year-old, their first presidential election is going to be 2024. Joe Biden is like an unpopular president. The idea to me that they would not be as Democratic-leaning would make some sense. At the same time, that doesn't actually necessarily mean to me that like we should expect them to be like Republican-leaning because I'm not sure Donald Trump is –

the like load star of like a more racially and ethnically diverse group of people. Young voters in America are going to be the most racially diverse and ethnically diverse group that we've ever seen. So to me, that's like it's kind of complicated. Maybe the reality is that they just really find politics distasteful all the way around. Yeah. If I can add a wrinkle here,

One paper that always comes to my mind when we're studying how more conservative or democratic a group is based on their age is this paper by two political scientists, Yair Gitsa and Andrew Gellman. They find that it's not quite an artifact of who's in power that increases whether or not a generation is more democratic or republican, but whether or not they're popular. So in the past, you get a big bump of Reagan, Gen X, and...

some returns on millennials as well. And then you get this big batch of very democratic first-term Obama millennials like Jeff was talking about. But if it's a function of your popularity, where is Gen Z going to go? Because this is an open question, because both Trump and Joe Biden are atypically unpopular. So these previous theories about where people go might not hold. I think it's an important thing to note that

that they're more apolitical, seemingly, and a little more likely to call themselves independents. So you could have this group be less democratic, not by virtue of them being more Republican, but just less partisan. All right, we have one point for Jeffrey. Moving on, according to a YouGov Economist poll from earlier this month, what percentage of Americans say that things in this country are generally headed in the right direction? All right, three, two, one, reveal.

I got 26%. I went 31%. 39. Oh, you got the good rounding numbers, guys. Nice. And the answer is 23%. Let's go. So that is one for Elliot and also...

Seemingly a negative one for the country. It's also, I think, important context here for people to understand that in aggregate, the right direction, wrong track, that number has barely been north of 50 like a handful of times in the last like 20 years. I remember looking at like Real Clear Politics as average of this...

And I think it was like a couple of times the Obama presidency popped above 50 percent. And I don't know if it hit above 50 percent in Trump's presidency. And the point is that like this is a naturally biased downward question, if you will, in terms of like negative opinion. Nonetheless, quite low, all things considered, even so, 68 percent of Americans say that we are off on the wrong track.

We're below even the like average, which was already low, right? That's my point. Or high for the like unfavorable views of how things are going. All right. So that is one for Jeff, one for Elliot. Moving on, according to the most recent national poll in our database, which is from Emerson College, what percentage of Americans support a third party candidate?

All right. Three, two, one. Reveal. 16%. That's what I said. 10%. Hey. And Tia gets it. Oh. It was 9%, which is lower than the average. For Emerson, they found 6% supporting Kennedy, 2% supporting Cornel West, and 1% supporting Jill Stein. Elliot, are you picking out outliers here? What is this?

For what it's worth, that's probably closer to what the vote's going to end up being in November than I think what we guessed, Jeffrey, and what the polling averages show. But yeah, that is lower than the average. So Tia, what was your thinking? I would have gone higher if the phrasing had been like any third party candidate. I think there are some people like holding out for the, you know, fantastical no labels bid as seen by the number of media pieces we've seen on that.

But I think that like the people who actually are going to say like, yes, I'm supporting Kennedy this coming November is quite low. Yeah. In fact, when you ask a question, for example, from Gallup that said, do you think that the parties are doing such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is needed?

The percentage of Americans who say yes is 63%. We have talked about how that's a complicated question to ask because that 63% of Americans differ wildly in terms of what they would want that third party to represent. But we have a three-way tie. It is one for each. So let's move on.

According to the most recent New York Times Santa College poll, what percentage of registered voters say that Joe Biden's policies have helped them personally? All right. Three, two, one. Reveal. 32. 32. 30.

36. It is 18%. So Tia gets it. Went too far. 18% said that his policies had helped them personally. 43% said they had hurt them personally. 39% said no difference either way. What was Tia's number? 30.

So still an overestimate. All right, let's do a quick comparison, though. What percentage of registered voters said that Donald Trump's policies have helped them personally? All right. Three, two, one. Reveal. 29. I said 30 again. 33.

And Jeff gets it because the answer is 40%. 40% of Americans said that Donald Trump's policies had helped them personally, 25% said hurt them, and 34% said didn't make much of a difference either way. Well, what's interesting is I would assume that Republicans were very solidly saying

that they'd made a difference for like that trump's policies had made a difference for them personally whereas i suspect that most democrats said that they had not made much of a difference and that is probably a court core difference in terms of the response that you're getting on that question when no difference when it comes to biden i should say for democrats

Okay, so in a similar vein, perhaps, to this question, again, from the New York Times-Santa College poll, this one is a fun one, and we're going to do both Biden and Trump again. What percentage of Democrats say they think Joe Biden will win the presidential election? Three, two... Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on. One...

49. Jeffrey, you guessed 48, didn't you? No, I guessed 38. I said 70. Okay, and Tia gets it. It is 69%, almost exactly. Oh, that's much higher than I thought. Yeah, you know, actually, my answer I should have known from the start was a bad answer because, look, I think the overall in that poll and recent polls has been Biden, like Trump leading on that question and Biden being in like,

the 30s or 40s. And so as a result, Republicans would almost be close to zero, right? And so you would have to figure that Democrats would still be at least somewhat

inclined to say yes about their party's likely nominee, right, as sort of just like a fundamental expectation. So I should have known that it was higher than that. Yeah, shame on you for getting the question wrong, Jeffrey. Yeah, I was dumb. How could you? Tia, you got it right. What was your thinking? Kind of similar to what Jeff laid out. I think that we've seen consistently that Democrats feel good about Biden as a candidate despite the doubts that they might have about

A lot of aspects of him as a potential candidate. They seem pretty confident that he is a good nominee. I think that Biden's team has emphasized, like, we've beaten Trump before and we can do it again. All right. So on the other hand, what percentage of Republicans say they think Donald Trump will win the election? Three, two, one, reveal.

80. 86. 81. It was 77%. Tia, really cleaning up here.

Yeah. So more Republicans than Democrats. But if you were judging based off of the narrative, I don't think you would have come to the conclusion that there's only an eight percentage point difference between Republicans who think Trump will win and Democrats who think Biden will win. No, it seems like a market shift in positive attitudes among Democrats over the last month or so. This is the case or the other polling just gives much different results.

Well, a lot of the other questions have been like, do you think he should run again? Like, would you like him to run again? And people are like, oh, not really. I think he's too old. Oh, totally. And those ones are much lower because people get to sort of imagine someone that could run in his in his stead when that's, you know, General Eric Democrat is like not going to not going to generic. General Eric. I got it. I got you. I got you. I won't quit my day job.

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We have Tia with four, Jeff with two, Elliot with one. Oh, Elliot. We got it. We're going to make this a little easier on you now. Okay. With a multiple choice question. So Democratic polling firm Blueprint asked registered voters about a range of possible actions that Trump might take if he returns to office. For each, voters were given two options. Are they worried or not worried?

Which of the following yielded the highest share of voters responding worried? These are Trump actions while in office. A, Trump would pass a nationwide abortion ban. B, Trump would break the law. C, Trump would institute cruel policies that separate immigrant families. Or D, Trump would erode democracy and try to overturn future elections.

And the question is, which of these are people most worried about? Yes. Three, two, one, reveal. I picked B because it's the broadest category. So it seems like you have to pick it. But no, I think maybe that's wrong. I went A. A? With the abortion ban. You said, what did you say, Tia? I said D. D.

All right. Elliot, racking up more points. It is B, that Trump would break the law. So 57% of Americans said that – or registered voters said that they were worried about Trump breaking the law. 48% said they were worried he would pass a nationwide abortion ban and everything else is in between. 48% was the lower. 57% was the higher. Everything else was in between. Okay.

I don't know if this is going to be easy. I think it might be because people paid a lot of attention to this, but it's going to be one where multiple people can get points. So according to the most recent Times-Siena College polling of battleground states, which include Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where does Trump have the largest lead?

against Biden. In which of the battleground states? Not including Florida? Not including Florida. So the six states that they polled were Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Three, two, one, reveal. Nevada. Nevada.

I picked Arizona. Me too. But I first picked Georgia, and now I'm regretting it. I was going back and forth between Georgia and Arizona. Tia gets it again. It is Nevada. Trump leads by 10 points in Nevada. Tia, had you seen the poll, or was that an educated guess? I mean, like Jeff was saying, I know I saw it at the time. I didn't remember, but I think out of those states. I was between Nevada and Wisconsin, actually.

Okay, so now we're going to ask the reverse question. Out of all of those states, in which state does Trump lead by the least? All right. Three, two, one. Reveal. Georgia. Pennsylvania. Michigan.

Wow. No one got it. Oh, is it Wisconsin? Yes. So according to this polling, Biden leads by two percentage points in Wisconsin. So in order from Trump best to worst, it is

Nevada, Georgia by six points, then Arizona and Michigan both by five points, Pennsylvania by four points, and then Wisconsin, the only one where Biden leads, and it's Biden two points. This isn't surprising given the Times pollings finding so much erosion among non-white voters, especially Black and Latino voters, I guess in hindsight. But yeah, it doesn't exactly jibe with recent election results or...

or the average is all that much. So it's surprising to me. I mean, it does jibe with the idea that Biden is doing better in the upper Midwestern states or the quote unquote Rust Belt than the recently turned competitive states of Arizona and Georgia. It's very revealing that people aren't even picking like Florida, aren't even including Florida in these swing state elections.

Right. Yeah. And remember back in 2020 when we were all focused on the polling average of Texas? You know, it wasn't that it wasn't the biggest whopper of a polling average recently. Iowa and Ohio were pretty, pretty tough. But I don't mean that the polling average was so far off, but more just like ultimately after Beto O'Rourke

won that Senate race by negative 2.6, as we like to say. Folks were like, wow, Texas really getting competitive. It's almost like a midterm isn't a good predictor for presidential, almost. It's not an important thing to keep in mind when we think about the results of the 2022 elections versus what will happen this November. But also, the reality was that Democrats had sort of

kept their gains in a way with suburban voters in Texas and there's like loads of college educated voters in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, whatever who have swung towards Democrats but then the bottom fell out for them in the Rio Grande Valley with Latino voters and so like they

They didn't keep together the coalition that they needed in order to be competitive. Like, they kept only half of Beto's coalition and not him doing well with Latino voters. And people generally forget just how many small towns there are in Texas with, like, 5,000 or 6,000 people and 80% of them are Republicans. That's where I'm from. And people just forget that when they're doing calculations about...

There are a lot of voters in Harris County, but the ones elsewhere outside of Tarrant and Travis really add up.

What percentage of voters say that abortion is the most important issue to their 2024 vote? And this is from the KFF Health Tracking Poll in March of 2024. That is Kaiser Family Foundation. They are no longer known as that. They are known as KFF Health Tracking Poll. Keep in mind that we've talked about the results of a poll similar to this when Gallup asks Americans, what's the most important issue facing the country?

Keep in mind that is a rather different question. What's the most important issue facing the country? What is the issue that is going to most affect my vote in 2024?

Three, two, one, reveal. 15, I'm going 15%. I went 13. I said 18. No, get out of here, guys. How am I gonna ever get a point if you keep going on either side of me? And Jeff gets it. The answer is 12%. Are you kidding me, Jeffrey? Yeah, yeah. Good job. I mean, look, I have a little bit of an advantage in that Holly Fong and I at FiveThirtyEight were...

were sort of charged with doing the series before the midterm election of polling with Ipsos on issues after, I should say, following the Dobbs decision. Eh, 10%-ish, give or take.

would answer abortion as like a top issue. So I figured it was something in that vicinity. And then add in the election, not just an issue you're worried about, but an issue that directly corresponds to like your election, like thought process. Yeah. Well, you heard him, Galen. He said he had an advantage. I'm pretty sure he just said he cheated. Yeah, you have to half the amount of points he got for it. And thank you for that. Yeah. And what's important to keep in mind, we do talk about the Gallup most important issue facing the country polling quite a bit. They,

their abortion is 2%. And that's when folks are forced to, well, I guess in this question, they were also forced to only pick one if you're saying the most important thing affecting your vote. Still 2%. I mean, you can get 2% of people saying almost about anything. Yeah. I mean, it's quite low in Gallup polling. It has been for a while. I think it maxed out at around 6% in the immediate aftermath of Dobbs, but never got higher than that. Okay, folks, we got a fun one to end on. Get ready.

Okay, according to the Times-Stanley College poll, what percent of voters feel happy, excited, or hopeful thinking about the upcoming presidential election? Three, two, one, reveal. 11. 5%. I actually said 32%. I went higher because I think a lot of Republicans are giving more positive responses.

All right, Elliot gets it. The answer is 14%. 14% of Americans feel happy, excited, or hopeful thinking about the upcoming presidential election. My theory was very wrong, it turns out. Jeffrey, you're just an optimist. It's understandable. You're just a happy guy, you know? I am not an optimist. All right, so all told...

Tia, you win with five points. Round of applause for Tia. Tia, acceptance speech, please. I would like to thank luck. I thought you were going to say suck it, losers. That's pretty good.

Jeffrey and Elliot, you were both tied at three. This was fun. We will have to come back to some of this data later on in the cycle as we get closer to November. With that, we are going to end things for today. Thank you, Elliot, Jeff, and Tia. Thanks, Galen. Thank you, Galen. Thanks, Galen.

My name is Galen Droop. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian. And our intern is Jayla Everett. 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'll see you soon.