Is Trump Losing His Electoral College Advantage?
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We've got a lot to cover. A lot to cover. I think the early voting segment might be shorter than we imagined. I have a sneaking suspicion Mary and I are going to be in agreement on this.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and in some ways, the election is already upon us. Last Friday, early in-person voting began in Virginia, and Minnesota and South Dakota began accepting absentee ballots in person as well. As more states begin voting, we're going to get data about who is casting ballots, and some might use that as an indicator of who will win the election.

But is that a good or bad use of poll data? We're glad you asked. We're going to get into it. Also, with six weeks left on the clock, we've been getting fire-hosed with new polling. And

And frankly, some conflicting polling as well. Last week, a New York Times Santa College poll showed the race tied nationally and at the same time showed Harris leading by four points in Pennsylvania. This weekend, Harris got one of her best recent national polls, a five point lead, according to NBC. And then Monday morning, the New York Times showed Trump up by between three and five points across the Sun Belt.

Dizzy yet? Don't worry, we will make it make sense. And yes, we are also going to talk about what Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson's alleged nasty online behavior means for the race in North Carolina.

And if that wasn't enough, we are also launching our Senate polling averages this week. If Trump wins, Republicans only need to flip one Senate seat to control the chamber. If Harris wins, Republicans would need to flip two. We'll look at the state of those races. And here with me to do it all is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Welcome to the podcast, Jeffrey. Good morning, Galen. Also here with us is senior researcher Mary Radcliffe. Welcome to the podcast, Mary. Hey, Galen. Good to be here.

So glad to have both of you. We have so much to cover today. So let's begin with our good or bad use of poll data. In 2020, according to research from MIT, 69% of voters cast their ballot before Election Day. Of course, the pandemic made that election unique, but voting early or by mail has remained popular. In the 2022 midterms, 50% of voters cast their ballot before Election Day. And

And this is a pretty big change from just a couple of decades ago. According to the Center for Election Innovation and Research, in 2000, 40% of voters had access to early voting, either in person or by mail. Today, 97% of voters have at least one option to vote before Election Day.

And this means that we're going to get a lot more data about who is voting before we ever get to November 5th. And those numbers are just about starting to get cited as an indication of who's liable to win. But, dear colleagues, is that a good or bad use of poll data? Jeffrey, why don't you kick us off? Early voting data as a temptation is an interesting case study in board journalists. Yeah.

In the sense of we're looking for anything to tell us... Read them to filth, Jeffrey. We're looking for anything that will tell us something about the election. And data! We do love data. I mean, yeah, we love data. No, no, I love data. There's nothing better than a spreadsheet with way too many tabs, as anyone who works with me here at FiveThirtyEight knows. However, the predictive value of early voting data is...

at best, like minimal and at worst, extremely misleading, especially in a world where we have polling, the amount of certainty that you're going to get out of early voting data versus polling, like it's even less certainty. And I say this for a few reasons.

One is that, yes, we can see in states that have party registration like what percentage are Democrats, what percentage are Republicans, what percentage are independents, and that's helpful. But the problem is that we – that doesn't mean that we know how many people are going to actually show up on election day.

And especially in a universe where, yes, we did just have the 2022 midterms. And I think there's reason to think that more people will vote by mail than, say, in 2016 or vote early. But after 2020, with such record high turnout in particular, and part of that being that there was record use of vote by mail and early voting because people were trying to be safe during COVID, right?

We're sort of shifting back to a more typical electoral environment, at least in terms of how people can go cast their ballots. Now, granted, there's like more opportunity to vote by mail because states have expanded all that and early voting. But I think it's just like they're moving targets here. We don't have benchmarks. We don't know what will mean exactly what. And I just think it's a fool's errand to use this data to predict election results.

OK, so bad use of bad data. OK, I use data. Yeah. Mary. Yeah, I tend to agree. The thing I keep coming back to is that if you look over time, access to early vote has been changing a lot.

There's not something you can compare to that's gonna be reliable. So I was thinking about, okay, if we wanted to predict anything, we wanna predict my home state of Pennsylvania, right? Of course. So here's the thing, Pennsylvania has no excuse absentee mail ballots and you can drop those off in person as well. So not quite easy in person, but close.

We also had that in 2020 during the pandemic. But that was the first election that Pennsylvania had no excuse absentee mail ballot. And we obviously should not compare to the election during a pandemic. So there's never been an election like this, a presidential election in Pennsylvania under the current voting regime.

And I think the other thing is that the pandemic, while we really shouldn't compare to it, I think it may have changed some people's voting behavior forever. And it may not have changed other people's voting behavior. So

Some people maybe voted by mail for the first time in 2020 and thought, this was great and I love this. And some people maybe voted by mail for the first time in 2020 and thought, man, I can't wait until I can go back and vote in person. I want that sticker, whatever. And I don't think we have any good indication of where we are in terms of how people are thinking about voting.

It may be that in the future we can use this data more efficiently now that, as you mentioned, Galen, so much of the country has access to early vote data. Maybe the trend starts now where we can actually analyze this. And that brings up two things. One is that as far as trends that we understand,

We understand Democrats to be more inclined to vote early and by mail, which is why I think, Jeffrey, you were saying this data could be misleading, because if Democrats are racking up a significant lead in the early vote data, then

That doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to lead on election night or in the final results. It just means that Republicans and Democrats may be voting differently. And so especially if you're not looking at the data with that in mind, you could get a pretty misleading picture.

I will say there are some states that have been doing this for a long time, either because they have universal vote by mail or that early voting has been a longtime practice. One of those states that I'm thinking of is, of course, and this is actually more Western states frequently. One of those states I'm thinking of is Nevada, where oftentimes, you know, journalists that we even like respect.

We'll look at the early vote data and try to glean something from it because we have years of benchmarks to use. So I understand that both of you say this is a bad use of polling data. Are there in a sea of bad uses of polling data? Are there any good uses?

You are right that Nevada is one where it's worth keeping an eye on. But I still am hesitant to go by those numbers and say, oh, someone's going to win. I mean, think about the 2022 Senate race in Nevada. It was decided by, what, eight-tenths of a percentage point. The margins here are too fine to say, like, oh...

you know, Democrats have a one point lead in the party identification of those who have voted early at this point. That must mean that they're going to win or something. It's just it's just the margins are just too fine in these states. And we can see that from the polling data. Right. We can see that it's like a super close race in a place like Nevada. And that, I think, is is sort of helpful enough. Well, instead of trying to sort of

potentially cherry pick data that's going to be sound good for your side if you're someone on Twitter or someone writing about this who's a Republican or a Democrat. I think there's a lot of wishful thinking that can come out of this early data as well. And I think that's another dangerous part of it is that you can kind of, you know, it's like looking at a Rorschach test, right? And be like, hey, inkblot.

That looks good from my side. That looks good from my side. And so that's the other reason I'm very skeptical. Look, I remember North Carolina in 2016. Democrats are like, oh, we're going to win North Carolina. Look at all the early voting data. And then, of course, like turnout was high and a lot of Republicans voted for Trump on Election Day and he won North Carolina.

So I'm pretty skeptical. Yeah, I would agree. There's a handful of experts in particular states that do excellent work writing these things up with all the necessary caveats. And I think that's wonderful and they should continue to do it. But if you offered me a detailed data rich analysis of early vote or 10 high quality polls with full crosstabs, I'm taking the polls.

All right, respect. That makes sense to me. Speaking of cherry picking data, as you said, Jeffrey, we're going to talk about the state of the race and all of these polls that have been coming out. But first, a break. Today's podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Kids are always learning and growing, but as adults, sometimes we can lose that curiosity. What's something you'd like to learn? Gardening, a new language, or maybe how to finally beat your best friend at bowling?

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When we checked in last week about the effects from the debate, Mary, you said, as always, that you want to wait two weeks after a big event before you can really judge the impact. So now that two weeks have gone by, Harris leads Trump on our polling average by 2.6 points. That is two tenths of a percentage point more than the day of the debate. And

The battleground states are still extremely close, ranging from a two-point lead for Harris in Wisconsin to a one-and-a-half-point lead for Trump in Georgia. Now, there's quite a bit of variation underneath those numbers, and we're going to get into that in a second. But just for starters, how would you describe the state of the race today, Mary?

Well, I think I feel good about that recommendation to wait two weeks because after the first week after the debate, I don't think we saw any real change in the numbers. Having had another week go by, I think we can say that the debate seems to have moderately improved Harris's chances in winning the election. You see a moderate improvement in the national polling top line, but I think you see even more improvement in some of the key swing states.

Now, of course, there could be some muddled reasons for that, right? So we see some improvement, for example, in Pennsylvania. But also, I can tell you as a Pennsylvania resident, the ads are wall to wall in Pennsylvania. So there's a lot of different factors that could be affecting the race in some of those key swing states. I would characterize now that the debate had a moderate impact, not a huge one, maybe a couple of points around the edges in Harris's favor.

The New York Times and Santa College released its first slate of post-debate polling late last week, and it showed some surprising results. Trump and Harris were tied among likely voters nationally at 47%, but Harris led by four points in Pennsylvania, 50 to 46%. These results run contrary to both our polling average and the Times', which has shown Harris doing better nationally than in Pennsylvania, the likeliest tipping point state.

Of course, weird polling results are nothing out of the ordinary. We expect them. We should expect them. That's part of a healthy polling environment. But Nate Cohn at The Times also pointed out that he's seen this trend amongst other high-quality pollsters, and he suggested that if these results are accurate, Trump might be seeing a significant reduction in his electoral college advantage compared to 2016 or 2020.

How are you processing this somewhat conflicting result? Do you think the Electoral College advantage for Republicans has shrunk? If it has shrunk, I don't I can't tell you by how much just given the margins we're talking about, you know, if we wind up in another situation where Republicans have like a three point advantage in the Electoral College, and that is to say the state that decides the election.

How much more to the left or right of the national popular vote is it? In the last two elections, it's been basically three to four points in the Republicans' favor. That could definitely be smaller this time around. In fact, I mean, you know, we can't even rule out that somehow Democrats will end up with an advantage once we count all the votes left.

You know, 2012 and 2008, Barack Obama had a slight electoral college advantage. The decisive state was slightly to the left of the country as a whole. This advantage has bounced around over time. There's not like a consistent edge that one party has had.

But I think given what we saw with Trump in 2016 and 2020 and the fact that he is once again on the ballot in 2024, that the sort of the Trump era elections have still had this Republican edge. And at the end of the day, the polling, if you're comparing even like Harris's best swing state of sort of the seven key ones, Wisconsin, right? She's up by about two there, but she's up by a little more than two nationally. So, yeah.

Wisconsin is still a hair to the right, which suggests to me that the tipping point state in the end will probably end up somewhere to the right of the national popular vote. How much? Is it a point? Is it two points? Is it three? That'll be really important for who wins the election potentially. But I think the broader story that we can sort of expect it more likely than not that it will be still Republican-leaning, the Electoral College as a whole, is still there.

I do think there is some evidence that the gap is probably narrowing, at least in the polling as we have it now. I think part of that is that the Democratic coalition has been pretty inefficiently distributed across the states.

One of the main reasons for that is the Democratic coalition has been historically relying very heavily on non-white voters. What's interesting that we've seen in the polling this year, and I looked at polls just since the debates of the last two weeks. If you look at national polls and you look at how Harris is doing in the crosstabs with different demographic groups, I just took a straight average of all the national polls over the last two weeks and compared that to the 2020 exit polls.

She's lost some ground with both Black and Hispanic voters, but she's improved on how Biden performed in 2020 among white voters, particularly white college-educated voters. So we're seeing some shifts in the underlying demographics that kind of explain what

you described in that New York Times survey, Galen, that if Harris is doing a little bit better than Biden did among white voters and a little worse among non-white voters, overall, that might keep the national race tied, but it's going to possibly improve her performance in states like Pennsylvania, which is whiter on average than the country. Now, what's going to happen, that might narrow the margins in states like California or New York, you know, some of our southern states where we have larger non-white populations. But

Ultimately, shifting the Democratic coalition to include more white voters is probably going to be more efficient for Democrats in the mathematical sense and decrease that gap between the Electoral College and the popular vote.

Well, and in fact, to that point, exactly. The New York Times put out more polling this morning, Monday morning in the Sunbelt states showing Harris trailing Trump by between three and five points. I think it was three points in North Carolina and five points in Arizona. And I'll just say this isn't new polling from the New York Times. But if you look

at the head-to-head polling between Harris and Trump in a state like New York. Biden won New York by about 20 points in 2020. And that's been slimmed down to, you know, still in the double digits, but somewhere in the teens as opposed to that high. So we have seen some slippage. That also mirrors a little bit of what we saw in the 2022 midterms, where

The trends were all over the place. It was like we had a blue wave in some states and a red wave in others, New York being one of the more red wave states where the statewide gubernatorial race was actually quite close for such a blue state, whereas in places like Pennsylvania, there was something of a blue wave.

But at the same time, there's also just the possibility that this is polling error, and it's polling error amongst a population where we've seen pretty big errors over the past decade or so. So overall, how should we be processing this information?

You've got, what, seven swing states, if we're not including Florida, that are going to decide this election. That's been true since after the 2022 midterms. Like, when we looked at maps, like, oh, what's probably going to decide this election? It was, you know, the same seven states that were key last time around. So, I don't know. I'm sort of the mindset, like, you're going to see the Harris campaign all over Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, because if they win those three...

They probably win the election. Well, assuming also that Nebraska doesn't change how it counts its electoral votes. It seems pretty unlikely that they're going to change that rule. Under those conditions, you would probably expect the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District in Nebraska to go Democratic and thus give Harris 270 in that particular scenario without accounting for the other key kind of Sunbelt swing states.

Whereas like for the Trump campaign, it's like Pennsylvania and North Carolina, probably as well as like Georgia and Arizona. But I just think particularly the kind of North Carolina is a state that if it were to flip would be a massive boon to Harris's chances. And whereas for Trump winning, Pennsylvania is probably the ballgame. And so thinking about what are the most critical states that hasn't changed. So we could be seeing something of a realignment.

But even if that is the case, it's not like we're going to see the candidates really change up their strategies. And Jeff, you said North Carolina. So I think it's time for us to get to what was some major news last week. On Thursday, CNN released an article alleging that North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson had made dozens of inflammatory and sexual comments on

on a pornography website's message board. They link the account to his name through a shared username and email address.

There's some really wild stuff on there that CNN really didn't even get into at all. But folks who spent any time on Twitter over the past couple of days might have seen it. What has been reported in the more mainstream press is that he called himself a black Nazi, saying that he would bring slavery back. And there's a lot of other just like freaky stuff in this alleged message board writing.

Robinson denied that the comments were his and declined to drop out of the race before a crucial deadline to withdraw. These aren't Mark Robinson's first controversial statements by any means. In fact, you know, there's been some pretty off the rail stuff. So North Carolina is one of the closest states in the country, according to our polling averages. I think it might be the closest state in the country, according to our averages. How could this gubernatorial race impact the

the top of the ticket between Harris and Trump. I'm a bit skeptical that it would have an impact at the top of the ticket. When you're talking about a presidential race, people generally don't go to the polls thinking, oh, I got to go vote for my governor.

That's not the motivating factor that gets people into the voting booth. Generally, people are going to vote for president. There may be some things that might be beneficial for turnout, you know, certain kinds of ballot referenda or what have you. But I think in general, the thing that motivates turnout in a presidential election is the presidential election.

That being said, I feel pretty confident predicting that Mark Robinson is not going to be the governor of North Carolina. So I think we can expect some impact there.

Well, yeah, I guess even before this reporting came out, he was trailing by about nine points in the statewide polling at the same time that we're seeing a nearly even race in the polls for president in North Carolina. I guess are we saying here that we should just expect a lot of split ticket voting in North Carolina this year?

We get split ticket voting in North Carolina all the time. The past two presidential elections saw North Carolina vote for the Republican as president and the Democrat for governor.

I mean, but we're talking maybe to the tune of double digit split ticket voting here. Honestly, I think Robinson's probably going to get like 45 percent and lose by like eight. Oh, interesting. He's got an R by his name. Most Republicans are still going to vote for him. But the important thing for the context of this race is that he appeared to be trailing and you're going to have.

Maybe some affluent, highly educated, but otherwise Republican voters who are like, dude, I can't vote for that guy. And the Charlotte exurbs decide to split their tickets in this one race. And that's how you get Robinson down to like 45 percent. Look, when Roy Cooper won reelection –

in 2020, granted against not a scandal-ridden opponent, he was a popular incumbent who won with 51.5% of the vote and the Republican got 47%. So I'm just saying...

Things are very polarized, very divided. And yes, the split ticket voters were crucial for electing Cooper in 2016 narrowly and him winning reelection in 2020 and Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, winning reelection for AG and in his first 2016 win as the attorney general in North Carolina. Like clearly some people split their tickets for the Democrats in the state level races, but voted Trump in the presidential. But I think

At the end of the day, partisanship will rule the day for most voters. And so people predicting Stein winning 60% or something should definitely take a step back.

And I guess what Democrats are thinking could happen or hoping would happen is what somebody looks at the situation and says, I'm disgusted. I'm just not going to turn out to vote because probably it doesn't make sense that somebody who's planning on voting for Trump looks at Robinson's behavior, alleged behavior, and says, well, now I'm going to vote for him.

Harris. I mean, when Democrats suggest that this could help them in the state, what are they even expecting might happen? Depressed turnout? Yeah, I would guess that they're thinking it will be depressed turnout, but I just don't buy that in general. Mary, you don't buy reverse coattails? No. No. Okay, just for listeners, reverse coattails is the idea that down ballot races can affect what happens at the top of the ticket. And I don't want to rule it out like 100%.

But we know that the top of the ticket race usually drives turnout the most, drives who's showing up, can lead – and since a lot of people don't vote split ticket anymore, it can really affect down ballot races potentially, especially for like other federal offices when you're thinking about president, things for like Senate, Senate.

House, you know, we have in 2016 and 2020, we had one split outcome in Senate elections. It's safe. So we're holding Senate races at the same time as President Collins, Susan Collins, 2020. Otherwise, otherwise, all the states voted the same way for president and Senate.

And we have very few House seats in presidential elections that are carried by one presidential candidate, but one by the other party. 16 in the last one. Just knowing that would lead me to believe that the governor's race will have a pretty like a minimal effect on what's going on in North Carolina, because it's so close that

You know, it's going to be one of those races where you could potentially, if it is as close as it looks on Election Day, could point to a bunch of different things mattering. But reverse coattails, I would not put much stock in. If you look at the evidence for this, the evidence that typically cited is not about down ballot races for like candidates.

for offices, but about ballot measures. There is some evidence that certain kinds of ballot measures can motivate turnout, particularly like the social issues ballot measures. You know, in the 2000s, there's some evidence among ballot measures to ban same-sex marriage. There's some evidence from the last couple of years about ballot measures to protect abortion access. Those kinds of things can motivate turnout because I think you're looking at a different

kind of issue. But when you think about the offices on the race, I think it's pretty clear that we don't see an impact on turnout from down-ballot offices. All right. Well, you guys keep setting me up for the next segment perfectly. Speaking of split-ticket voting between president and Senate, FiveThirtyEight is launching its Senate polling averages this week, which we're going to talk about after the break.

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The presidential race undoubtedly gets top billing, but after all, in America, we do have three branches of government and control of Congress is also in play this fall. So today we're going to look at one piece of the contest for Congress, which is the race for the Senate. And we're going to do that using 538's newly released Senate polling averages.

TLDR, the averages show a quite close contest in case you aren't tired of hearing that already. Right now, Democrats control the Senate 51 to 49. That's counting the four independents who caucus with them. Republicans need to flip two

two seats or one seat and the White House. Control of the Senate will probably come down to three states, Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. Democrats control a seat in each, but all three of those states went for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and all appear very likely to go his way again this year.

Republicans are almost certain to win West Virginia, where Democrat turned independent Joe Manchin recently retired. That would bring the Senate to 50-50. But beyond that, things are pretty close. In Montana, the average has Republican Tim Sheehy ahead by 2.3 points ahead of the Democratic incumbent John Tester. In Ohio, Democratic incumbent Sharon Brown has a roughly three and a half point advantage ahead.

over Republican Bernie Moreno. In other words, those are all within the margin of error. There's a lot to discuss in these averages, including Democrats' chances of winning in Texas. Yes, Texas. But Jeffrey, let's start with West Virginia. Do Democrats have any chance of retaining their seat there?

No, they have absolutely no chance. All right, moving on to Montana and Ohio. Easy enough. Yeah, Jim Justice, who's the Republican nominee, is like the popular incumbent governor and he's running for Senate. Joe Manchin would probably have been an underdog to win reelection in this cycle. He won by, I think, what, three points in 2018 in a friendly environment. West Virginia was still a red-leaning state, but it was a blue wave environment nationally.

And Manchin barely held on. And I think he would have almost certainly been an underdog for reelection had he been running. But he's basically the only person with a D by their name. I guess he might have had an I by his name if he'd run in this case, who could have conceivably won reelection. And so the fact that he retired basically made maybe a likely Republican pickup to a solid, safe candidate.

certain Republican pickup. And so there you go, that's one seat down for Republicans, and it's 50-50. And that might be enough if they win the presidency. And then, you know, we can talk about the other races, but they got a lot of opportunities to pick up one more to get outright majority. Yeah. So in 2020, Donald Trump won Montana by 16 points and Ohio by eight points. I think the expectation is that Trump will win both of those states again. But

Democrats seem to be running better than Biden did there in 2020 and might need a lot of split ticket voting to get to an actual win there when it comes to the Senate. How high of a hurdle is that? Like,

We understand that split ticket voting has decreased, but in some cases we still see quite a bit of it. We still saw quite a bit of it in 2022, for example, in the midterms with when Republicans ran poor quality candidates in states like New Hampshire or Pennsylvania or Arizona or whatnot. I mean, just how big of a hurdle are we talking about for Democrats to keep Montana and Ohio Senate seats?

I mean, I think Montana in particular is going to be super difficult. Jon Tester, the Democratic incumbent, look, he's won three terms. He's going for a fourth here. I don't want to rule him out winning reelection again. But essentially what's going on here is that when he won in 2012, so let's backtrack. Tester won reelection 2018 narrowly, favorable environment. But he did win in 2012. This is one time running at the same time as the presidential race.

And he won by roughly four, a little less than four percentage points, but with less than 50 percent because there was a libertarian who got a not insignificant chunk of the vote. In that race – so he won by roughly four. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, won Montana by about 14. So if you're just kind of just doing some simple math there, you're talking about like an 18-point difference in margin between the Senate and presidential race.

But in 2020, Trump won by 16 points in Montana, which means it is possible that Tester needs even a larger gap if Trump were to win by about that amount again. Tester, his average margin of victory in 2006, 12 and 18 is less than three percentage points. So like he could pull it off. He trailed slightly in the polls in 2012 by like a half point, a point in polling averages and pulled it out.

But it does speak to like the great challenge for him. And, you know, Sherrod Brown in Ohio has is pulling better. He's leading, but he also is going to need a fair number of split ticket voters and states that Trump's going to win easily. So that are pretty easily at the very least. So that's you know, it's it's very easy to come up with a Republican majority and it's challenging for Democrats to keep theirs.

Yeah. I mean, speaking of the map being generally advantageous to Republicans, the other states where there are competitive Senate races this year are Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

All the swing states. All Democratic held. All Democratic held swing states. Yes. The closest states for Democratic pickups are Texas and Florida, which we'll get to in a second. But when we do look at those Senate races in the battleground states that I mentioned, all of the averages, as folks will see when they look on our website, show Democrats leading by between five and seven points. That's Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

But as we just discussed, the actual presidential race there is like between a half a point and a two point race in all of those states. What's going on? Well, for one thing, I will say that the Senate averages in most cases have more undecided voters than the presidential. And that makes me suspicious that especially given recent electoral history and what we've seen in federal races and how they tend to line up

Similarly, if a Democratic presidential candidate gets 51 percent, the Senate candidate might get 52. It's going to be similar. It makes me think that at the end of the day, as we get closer to Election Day, the polls in most of these places will tighten because the race at the end of the day will be tighter in these key, closely fought swing states. That doesn't mean that the Democratic incumbents in places like Pennsylvania –

in Wisconsin aren't going to run slightly ahead of Harris and potentially critically so if Harris were to lose either of those states, but the Democrats could potentially win reelection.

But like, you know, I can't imagine Nevada having like a seven or eight point margin. You know, it just we've seen too many close elections in Nevada. I mean, Catherine Cortez-Mass still won reelection by eight tenths of a percentage point in 2022. And while midterms and presidential elections are not the same, Nevada has just been very close consistently. And I like would be shocked to see like an easy win for anybody in Nevada, for instance. So like I anticipate Nevada.

Things getting tighter as more people sort of become aware. In all these cases, you have challengers who aren't as well known. And so you might have some more Republicans saying they're undecided or Republican-leading independents who say they're undecided. But at the end of the day, they will come home to the party they tend to prefer. All right. Before we wrap things up, let's talk about Texas.

So folks might be old enough to remember when, you know, Beto O'Rourke nearly turned Texas blue with his 2022 gubernatorial race, which he lost by 11 points. Or more seriously, when he nearly turned Texas blue with his 2018 Senate race. We've said that he won that race by negative three. Yeah.

But if folks look at the average today, they will see that Cruz leads Colin Allred, the Democrat, there by just three points on average. That is within the margin of error. Is this the moment that Democrats turn Texas blue? I don't want to say, no, it can't happen. But also, I don't think so. Look, it's very possible that Allred wins.

will run ahead of Harris and that Cruz will run behind Trump. We saw in 2018 that, I mean, look, races for state office versus federal office, like you have to account for some difference there. But Greg Abbott, like won reelection from governor by double digits while Cruz was only narrowly defeating O'Rourke in that 2018 Senate race. And I think that does speak to at least some portion of the Texas electorate that doesn't like Ted Cruz that could be won over by a candidate like Colin Allred.

The problem for Allred, of course, though, is at the end of the day, Trump is very likely to carry Texas. And the margin there could matter a great deal because if Allred does get at least a few split ticket votes in like the Dallas and Houston excerpts or something –

If Texas keeps getting closer for president, maybe there is a chance that Allred can win. I mean, what, Trump won it by like six and a half or something in 2020, something in that range. So if you keep making the presidential race tighter, then maybe Allred has a path with some split ticket votes. But it's still it's still a long shot. This is sort of the opposite of what you see in some of the other states we were discussing, like Pennsylvania or Ohio, where you have a popular incumbent. And so there may be pulling a little like with a

a higher margin than we expect in the end. In Texas, yes, we have an incumbent, but he is unpopular. And so he's maybe pulling a little bit behind where he ultimately will end up. That's my suspicion about what's happening here, because in Pennsylvania or Ohio, you know, folks can say, oh, I like Sherrod Brown. Sure, I'll vote for him. And when you ask Texans, they go, man, I don't like Ted Cruz. I don't know what I'm going to do here. But ultimately, as in the other states, a lot of those partisans will come home.

All right. Well, we're going to leave things there for today. Thank you, Jeff and Mary. Always good to join you, Galen. Thanks for having me, Galen. My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Tretavian. 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 will see you soon. Bye.