Live From New York: It's The FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast!
01:29:11 Share

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk.

I'm Nate Silver. And this is our live taping at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Give yourselves a round of applause. So we've got a sold out show here tonight, and this is our first live show in New York City since the pandemic, and it's our first ever live show in Brooklyn. So I just really want to thank all of you for being here tonight. We've got a big show for you tonight, and I was a little busy this week.

And I was thinking, you know, if you've listened to the podcast recently, you heard that, according to Hugo, 46% of Americans are either somewhat or very afraid that artificial intelligence will bring on the end of the human race. And so I was curious, you know, like, before it straight up ends humanity, can it end my career? Um...

And so I asked ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence bot, to write a bit of an introduction tonight. Uh-oh. Nate has not seen it yet. We'll see how it goes. Okay, let me know what you think. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the show that's statistically proven to be 95% accurate,

50% entertaining, and 100% dedicated to all things political. I'm your host, ChatGPT, the AI with more political know-how than a presidential candidate on the campaign trail. And today, we've got a special treat for you, a live taping of the show, where you'll get to see us in all our unedited, unscripted, and unfiltered glory. So buckle up, grab a drink,

and get ready to dive deep into the numbers because this is the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast and we're about to make statistics sexy. - I'm sorry, the fact that they're applauding Galen, I'm sorry, but it means that you're fired.

So I'm surprised that ChatGPT knew we were sexy, but I guess it knows all things. All jokes aside, we do have a packed show for you tonight. We're going to kick things off with a good or bad use of polling. Apparently 30% of New Yorkers say they want to leave the state. Then we're going to get a little bit more help from ChatGPT, so if you enjoyed that intro, just hang tight.

We're also going to unveil our 2024 Republican primary averages and endorsement tracker. And we'll also welcome a special guest or two. Our first special guest will be a surprise even for Nate, and our second special guest will be a surprise even for me. So get ready. And then lastly, of course, we'll take some questions from you in our audience. So...

As Chad GPT mentioned, this is us, unedited, unfiltered. It's not entirely unscripted, but I need my security blanket. So it's like any other podcast taping. You will probably hear some swearing or tangents-- no way, right? No. That will not end up in the final cut. Only you here tonight will ever know exactly what happened in this room. So buckle up, and let's begin with our good use or bad use of polling.

So, Siena College, one of the highest rated pollsters in the country, according to our pollster ratings, recently found the following: 70% of New Yorkers say they are happy that they live in New York, while 30% say that they wish they lived somewhere else, according to a new survey of New York residents released from the Siena College Research Institute. Similarly, 71% plan to continue to live in New York five years from now, while 27% say they will leave the state.

And in order to get a sense of how New Yorkers feel about the state in general, they asked 13 different questions on 13 different topics related to quality of life. And they found that the state gets high grades for our people, education, health care, leisure and chance to be successful, low marks for affordability, retirement, politics, and feeling safe from crime.

This is kind of like a, you know, for those listening at home later this week, there's a slideshow behind. As you can see, it's, you know, kind of happy. There's a Statue of Liberty, you know, they lead with the 70% are happy they live in New York. Here is what the New York Post did with the poll. As you can see, the front page of the New York Post read, "Exit stage left. New Yorkers look to flee over crime, costs, progressive politics."

And they went on to say, nearly a third of New Yorkers want to move out, fed up with crime, housing costs, poor schools, and more. They went on to say in their lead, a stunning 30% of respondents who also cited inept political leadership and soaring taxes as reasons for wanting to flee said they already long to live somewhere else. Nate? Yeah? Is this a good or bad use of polling?

The polling is fine. I'm not sure if that is a great use of New York Post cover, right? But like the polling is fine. You probably shouldn't ask about living in New York during tax week, by the way, right? That might bias things a little bit. Yeah, but there's no basis for comparison here, right? I think in 2014, Gallup asked this poll of people in all states and New York was like sixth or seventh out of 50 states in terms of people wanting to leave. So like

we are fairly high and we saw in the pandemic and since then like people are relocating more to like people like warm weather relocating to like red warm states or blue warm states for that matter right yeah oh here we go okay so yeah as you can see behind us the data to some extent holds at least during the pandemic no i mean so a couple of theories right one is there is some red versus blue thing going on

One is about weather and one because it's 2020 and 2021 is about COVID precautions maybe. People might not have liked the lockdowns, they may have felt their jobs were threatened by the lockdowns or their schools were closed. So like you see movement into states that had more lax lockdown policies, but they're not all right. Like Georgia, Nevada, right, Arizona are now purple states. Texas kind of almost purple, not quite.

Florida formerly purple, now beet red, right? But it seems like weather and climate and taxes are the big drivers. Okay, well, I'll say for my part, I think the Siena College poll was a fantastic use of polling. Terrific. But I think that this is a bad use of polling for one reason in particular. If you look in the crosstab, so something Siena College does, which is really handy, is they categorize respondents by whether they live in New York City, the suburbs, or upstate New York.

Now, of course, if you looked at these photographs, you would assume that everyone is leaving New York City in particular. But if you look at the crosstabs, happy to live in New York, New York City respondents, 77%. New York suburbs responded, 70%. Upstate New York, 60%. In fact, even on the questions of crime and affordability, people living in New York City

feel safer and like apparently their dollar goes farther than people living in the suburbs and in upstate New York. Great bargains at Whole Foods, Galen. I mean, what's going on here? Is this all politics? Is this basically like, or is it just some kind of devotion to New York City itself? Like if you're going to put up with all the sh*t the city brings, you might as well tell a pollster you like it. No, there is. I mean, New York is a very self-

selected city, right? We get a lot of migration from every country in the world, from every state in the country, right? And it's expensive as to live in New York City, right? So if you live here, you probably really like New York City amenities. You like culture, you like food, you like the subway and things like that. You like the Mets. Whereas if you're like upstate, then you can kind of get like, I don't mean this in a bad way, but you can kind of get

like stuck there a little bit, right? If you're in an era that formerly had more robust industry, maybe you had family ties there, right? It's a pan the, I mean, moving is a big thing, right? Giving up your friends and family that are nearby, right? Switching jobs is a big thing. So you might feel like you're stuck a little bit. Well, it's also political, right? I mean, upstate is redder and so is more inclined to say things in the state are going poorly. Democrats are in control and they've screwed the pooch. Yeah, one thing we, I think, have found is like,

like red voters in blue states are like really resentful toward their states and maybe vice versa too, right? But like part of I think the good year the GOP had in New York State in 2022 was that like they haven't had like a lot of exciting elections to vote on, right? So turnout was very motivated for Republicans in New York State. It's not as blue as like the West Coast necessarily, but there is a factor there for sure.

What about stated preference versus revealed preference? So 30% of New Yorkers say they plan on leaving New York State in the next five years. I mean, how many of those people actually will? Like 9% of people move annually, but that's any move at all. It's moving within a neighborhood even, right? So cross-state moves are, I'm guessing...

2 or 3 percent, right? It's not common. So we can kind of say for sure that it's unlikely that they're going to move. We have this chart, although this data is like a little bit... New York had a very high 2020 census number. Yeah, so this data is based on net migration from 2010 to 2020. Over the past 10 years you can see, you know, New York is in the middle of the pack. Basically net zero migration. It's not growing, it's not shrinking. However,

New York State probably over counted its population by hundreds of thousands during the last census, so we can't necessarily say this is accurate. Look, we just want to count everybody. I mean, one thing that we've talked about actually on the podcast before is particularly when there is a Republican in office, Democrats will tell pollsters

I'm thinking about leaving the country straight up. Like, I'm thinking about moving to Canada, I'm thinking about moving to Europe, and one of our former fellows at FiveThirtyEight crunched the numbers and basically said it doesn't happen. You know, what is it? Something like, okay, 38% of American citizens say they've considered leaving the U.S. for good at least some point in their lives, according to a YouGo survey conducted last year.

This share rises to 45% among Americans under 45 and 59% among self-identified liberals. But just think, like, you know, you go to Rome, you have a nice lunch, you have some limoncello, you think about it, I could move to Italy. Like, once in your life, the bar is pretty low. Okay, so...

All told, what have we learned here? What can we say about New York State, its current state of affairs, how happy people are with it? No, I mean, look, the reveal preference thing is exaggerated but real. There has been a migration into red states. I want to run a regression to see how much of that is the politics versus other factors, right?

which is interesting. Like in some ways, like Republicans are very unpopular now, right? They're losing elections they're supposed to win, like 2022. People are moving into red states when it's the weather or lower taxes or COVID stuff or I don't know, right? Or political affiliation. I think it's a real phenomenon, but like you're not having...

30% move in the span of five years for sure. Yeah. I mean, one piece of data that I uncovered in thinking about this question and whether or not it's a good use of polling is why people are moving. Because they tried to get to the bottom of that in the New York Post, you know, front cover. And what I found was this.

People who move out of New York State typically save 15 times more from lower housing costs than from tax savings. On average, annual mortgage costs for median priced homes are $18,300 lower in destination counties, a saving of 34% than in New York origin counties. Which is to say, of all of the reasons people move, and of course you mentioned tax season, folks complain about taxes all the time.

it looks like housing might be the most significant. And when I looked at polling from Berkeley in California, I found that Californians were more likely to say they wanted to leave the state than New Yorkers, and the number one reason was housing. That makes sense, man. And there are like enormous gaps in cost of living, right? And people are probably being pretty rational in some ways, right? Especially in an environment where we have more work-from-home opportunities post-pandemic.

People are sorting a little bit more based on like fairly rational calculations about like am I getting enough bang for the buck here in New York for example. All right. But it makes us more special and self-selected. Or maybe we could build more housing. Oh yeah. We should. Apparently we have a lot of suburbanites in the room this evening. No? No cheers for more housing? No. Okay. Informal poll right now. What percentage of you New Yorkers here tonight plan on leaving in the next five years?

Oh, wow. It's-- Yeah, we got 8%. OK. What percent plan on staying? OK, shoot. We had to do that segment all by ourself without the help of chat GPT. Oh, OK. It was getting lonely on stage. Oh, it was really hard. Don't worry, though. The next segment, we're going to have chat GPT here to help us. So I was thinking, if we're really going to outsource my job to--

ChatGPT, it's going to have to keep people on their toes. It's going to have to be able to tell some jokes, get people laughing, buying drinks at the bar, make sure they stay through all the way to the end of the show. And so I asked ChatGPT, tell a joke about the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. Uh-oh. Here's a joke. Why did the statistician listen to the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast? Because he was looking for some pole dancing entertainment. What do you think? I think you're rehired.

Because like it doesn't-- like that's sort of a funny pun, but like it doesn't really fit the format of the chicken. I don't know. Yeah. And next I thought, you know, we've been working together for seven and a half years. We're used to ribbing each other. Let me see what ChadGBD comes up with when I say, tell a joke about Nate Silver. It says, sure, here's a joke about Nate Silver. Oh, no. Why did Nate Silver start predicting the weather? Because he wanted to make his election predictions look accurate.

I mean it literally... ChatGPT is out for blood. It's trained on the entire corpus of the internet and like that's half of my Twitter feed, right? So accurately reflecting the bullsh*t I deal with every day. But of course I wanted to be fair so I also asked ChatGPT, "Tell a joke about Galen Druk. Why did Galen Druk go to the bank with a magnifying glass? To get his small change analyzed."

Folks, I don't know if you understand what ChatGPT is getting at here, but I do. Because I spent all of 2016 to 2020 asking Nate what to make of a 1.5 percentage point difference in Donald Trump's approval rating. And this is what made me think I ought to join the 46% of Americans who believe that AI is going to end humanity. Because

This chatbot understands my life. By the way, we're part of ChatGPT 538. Oh yeah? We're like the 2,300th most biggest part of ChatGPT. Round of applause for 538 and ChatGPT. Okay, all of this is to say, though, that

Artificial intelligence is on our minds. It can be funny, it can be serious. And Nate, over the past couple years, you've been in the process of writing a book about people who take risk for a living and the idea of risk in general and how we deal with it in public and private, etc. And you've been talking to a lot of people who work in this space. So I'm curious from your perspective, how you're thinking about its effects on society going forward.

I mean, I kind of think of it in terms of like how significant an invention is this? Is it like a once every year invention, a once every decade invention, a once every century invention, or like a once every millennial invention, like inventing fire or the wheel or something like that, right? And my distribution probability-wise is like it's much more than a once a year kind of invention, right? It's not the VCR or something, right? It's somewhere on the rest of that scale. And where I don't quite know, you know, it seems like it's probably going to be

I mean, the over-under line is like the internet, I think, right? The internet's a really, really important invention. It remade society. It's actually like a fairly high bar to clear. It's probably somewhere in the once-a-century type of invention type of thing, right? That's my kind of prior, I think. I mean, I've seen comparisons to the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution. Yeah, that's a millennial type of shift, right? But it may also be that it's not even...

But it just happens faster, right? It's not even necessarily a categorical change as much as already in a world that's kind of chaotic and uncertain and where it kind of seems like people... I don't know how to put this, but they're kind of having trouble keeping their sh*t together already, right? What do you mean? To just kind of fast forward and now you're listening to the podcast at 1.8x speed.

What about in politics in particular? I mean, are you thinking about ways that this will change the way that campaigns are waged or politics is conducted? Look, I think we've seen in general, like one way to stylize, way to like talk about what's happened to politics, like actually politics has gotten more efficient in ways that are bad for society, right? That like...

politics has gotten really efficient at teasing out people's grievances and making people angry, which you see if you ask people in polls, like, how do you feel about your personal life? Like most people say, actually it's going pretty well.

What about the direction of the country? Oh, it's terrible. I hate it. I hate both parties. I hate everything that we're doing. And I think maybe chat GPT can kind of continue that. If it can kind of figure out the most effective negative pitch toward me or something else and kind of aggregate. I mean, it seems like ruthless efficiency is kind of very in line with where this is going.

So there are boosters of artificial intelligence. There are doomers. There's a lot of people trying to make a buck. Politicians are trying to figure out how to craft laws to in some way regulate it. I mean, you, Mr. Silver, how do you tease out the signal from the noise? Oh, thank you, Galen. Thank you, ChatGPT. This point in the-- yeah, very ChatGPT question. In fact, no, actually this one I wrote.

I mean, how do you try to like tease it all out? Because at this moment in time, as we talked about on the podcast, most Americans have no idea what's going on. It's not a priority for them. Yet you have a lot of people saying this is so, so, so important.

I mean, it's probably a bad match that the average senator is what, like 65 years old or something like that and not very technologically equipped, right? Do presidents even use email? I'm kind of joking, but not really, right? It's a complex technical issue at a moment of kind of disengagement between Silicon Valley and Washington. So I do think there might be at some point like

a panic, right? The first like national security incident that's attributed correctly or not to AI I think could have like fairly profound effects. It's really just hit the radar screen of like

politics like this past like six weeks right there was a question at a White House press briefing about AI right whereas like the super like AI alignment nerds have been talking about this for like literally like like 20 years right so it's kind of just been fascinating like being a fly on the wall and kind of having like an ear in like both camps just kind of seem like this is so weird that now it's like kind of hitting the mainstream and like we're all gonna die is like being published in Time magazine and things like that

I think one thing too is because it was such like a nerdy kind of isolated community, the like talking points aren't very practiced. You know what I mean? The community is not kind of sure what it wants exactly. We saw a little bit with effective altruism where it kind of has gotten a lot more attention for positive and negative reasons. And like it's not like the movement is not ready for primetime so much as that like

they don't have the kind of polished talking points that we would see from a different movement that's been prepared for this encounter with kind of the broader political world. Well, and the other issue is that every time someone opens their mouth about the perils of AI, you're like, oh yeah, I've seen that movie. Like it all feels like a joke. And you're like, oh, OK, if that's real, then why aren't werewolves also real?

No, but it does like, I mean it is a good argument for like watching science fiction I think actually, right? But it's hard. I mean I think one of the problems is like people are worried in the AI space about like making too many analogies to other technologies or anthropomorphizing too much and it's kind of like well then how do I talk about it at all, right? You also have some of the debates we saw under COVID where like who has like relevant expertise in this space? You're making decisions that affect like all of society. It's not just the practitioners. It's like

a mix of different types of people and so like it's all i know but it's going to be like you know will it be one of the five most important issues in the 2024 campaign i think probably not almost for sure not right 2028 i might take even money that it would be right in 2032 i'd say yeah some ai related issue probably will be like a top issue it has not polarized that much yet which i think is good right like the longer you can keep an issue from polarizing on democrat versus republican lines

the more hope you have to have some semblance of rational policymaking. But it will at some point, I think in ways that are a little bit unpredictable. Well, speaking of

2032, or for that matter, 2024. Let's go back to getting my small change analyzed, if you will. Because today we launched our 2024 endorsement tracker. Last week, we launched our polling averages. And so first we're going to talk about the polling averages, and then we'll get to what launched today, which is the endorsement tracker. So according to our polling averages right now,

Donald Trump has 50% support nationally, Ron DeSantis has 25% support nationally, Mike Pence has 6% support, and Nikki Haley has 4% support amongst likely Republican voters or Republican voters in general, depending on the poll. Now, there are nine months until the Iowa caucuses, and this is national polling, and of course we don't have a national primary, we go state by state.

So given this information behind you, how would you describe the current state of the Republican primary? I'd say you have one frontrunner and you have a second candidate who, if you kind of block out all the narrative stuff, is in a stronger position than most candidates are, right? But clearly there's like a lot more separation than there was like back at the start of the year when they were often tied in national polls, right? I mean, look,

I don't think it's gone well for Ron DeSantis. We could diagnose the reasons why. I think people are getting a little bit overconfident about dismissing his chances now. And he is at 25%. He's not Jeb Bush, who was at 12% or something like that. There are real Ron DeSantis supporters out there. But he's taking from all sides right now. And maybe he just was a one trick pony during COVID.

and hasn't shown a second gear, but that's getting to be a reasonable lead. It's a little bit smaller, I believe, in Iowa and New Hampshire. So you can both say people have become overconfident and that

you know, the outlook has improved for Trump relative to three months ago, six months ago, for sure. Well, this next slide is, for me particularly, striking. So according to polls taken from 1972 to 2016, a candidate with 50% support in the first half of the year before the primary, so right now, had a roughly 90% chance of winning the nomination.

Let me give you the problem though. This is a limited sample. Give me a problem. Give me a problem. Oh my god, t-shirt silver. So here's DeSantis at 20 something, right? He's at like 30%. So what's 30 plus 90? 120. There are going to be two Republican nominees. No, I don't know. But like-- No, but I think what this is saying is if there is somebody at 50%, it's irrelevant if there's somebody at 30%. That's not what it's saying. We're not fully irrelevant.

Usually someone's at 50, everyone else is at like 8, right? To have someone at 50 and someone at 25 or 30, I think there's not actually a great precedent for that. It's a tiny, tiny bit like Clinton-Obama in '08, right? I mean, it seems weird to compare Ron DeSantis to Barack Obama, but purely in a statistical sense, right? That's not the worst analogy, I don't think.

Are there other things particularly having to do, of course this is a limited set, the modern primary is, as we say all the time, quite young. Are there things particular to this current primary environment that should give us pause about saying, wow, Trump has a 90% chance of winning the nomination? Maybe... I mean the fact that he's like kind of a... Anything other than what happened in lower Manhattan two weeks ago?

I mean, he's, you know, there's actuarial risk, right, I guess? That's one way to put it. But like, no, look, I mean, you know, I thought initially that support might be like a little bit soft. He's kind of like the default name, right? He was the nominee the last two times, right? You know, and if you ask the GOP, do you want to move on from Trump? Like a fair number of voters say yes, right? And so like, you know, I think he might, I don't think there's a ceiling on his support, but I think like,

There is a theoretical configuration in which someone else can like beat Trump, I think, but whether that's DeSantis, I don't know. If it's not DeSantis, it's like getting a little bit late in the year for someone else to emerge, I think. Do you see anyone else who strikes you as somebody who would be able to challenge Trump from... I mean, if you think who's the third most likely nominee, a trouble like Tim Scott, I would think, but a distant third, I think.

OK, well, speaking of other ways of trying to get a sense of how the candidates are doing, today we launched our endorsement tracker, which has its own scheme, as folks can see behind me and for folks listening along at home.

You get 10 points on this tracker for a former president or current national party leader, eight points if a governor endorses you, six points if a senator endorses you, five points for former nominees or candidates who have dropped out of the race. So say, for example, Pete Buttigieg endorsing

Joe Biden in 2020. You get three points for members of the House of Representatives or mayors. So as of today, Trump has 221 points. DeSantis has 11 points. Mike Pence and Nikki Haley each have three points. First and foremost, you know, how important are endorsements in determining the outcome of a primary? Historically, they're a

good but not great indicator, right? I mean Biden's support in 2020 kind of was predicted by endorsements. Obviously 2016 Trump had very few endorsements. Bernie Sanders who didn't win obviously but like overperformed early polling had very few endorsements, right? So it's like not the most important indicator but like yeah if we had the 538 model cranked off it would give Trump some extra credit

for those 221 points that he has so far. And more than Trump having 221, that's kind of what you'd expect. He has-- I don't know if it's hard-earned loyalty, but a lot of people who were elected in the Trump era and in his kind of image, it's not shocking that he has 221. That 11 is pretty pathetic, though. Even in Florida, he's having trouble, although Trump's a Floridian also. And it's like you're not really getting any kind of heavyweight

DeSantis supporters at a moment where he's like a little bit cornered that could use could use like enthusiastic no this is my guy support he's like not really getting it at this I think not like vital time but like you know the question is is there enough time for someone else to emerge as the anti-Trump and now it's maybe kind of like an inflection point in that right if DeSantis has like another bad month you might see the kind of anti-Trump money saying let's look at Tim Scott

or Haley or Pence or draft Brian Kemp or something crazy, right? Yeah, I don't know because he's like not able to like staunch the bleeding and like primaries are stupid because they have like a lot of like media driven momentum and narratives people kind of feed off that momentum and it becomes circular. But you have to do like something to interrupt that when you're not running for anything that makes it harder I think. He should probably declare if he's gonna declare. But that 11 is pretty sad.

So to add some context here, the 221 points that Donald Trump currently has is 11% of the total possible points that you can earn according to our endorsement tracker. Which is to say there has not been some kind of elite consensus around Trump at this point in the process. However, it is pretty different from what happened in 2016.

So as you can see in the slide behind me, Hillary Clinton was of course the runaway leader in terms of endorsements, points going in to the Iowa caucuses. Donald Trump was not even in third place in terms of endorsement points. And it wasn't until after he had already won the primary in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada that he even got a single endorsement from a congressional representative or governor. What's changed?

I mean he was president right despite no it was president for four years Galen despite not being necessarily someone who rewards loyalty right I mean like the whole imprint the whole mold of politics has been affected profoundly by Trump for eight or nine years now right and so like that kind of I think even the way like the media covers Trump is like a little bit of like a little bit of kind of

Stockholm Syndrome, right? He's kind of the person you know. The current media landscape, you know, who is seen as credible or who is not was kind of made in the Trump era. And so like, so I think kind of reflexively the media is, I think like rooting is not quite the right word. I mean, I think some like liberals think it'd be easier to beat than dissent, which is another interesting topic, right? But like it just kind of, there's a sense to regard his moves as being like tactically smart and kind of, there's still a kind of like

myth of Trump invincibility and inevitability which DeSantis has not been able to overcome. And then the moment he seemed most vulnerable was after the midterms and DeSantis I think maybe could have declared then. I guess the theory is you kind of wait and you let Trump kind of flail and then you come in later. But I think it would have been smarter to capitalize on the momentum that he had after last November. Wait, okay. I'm going to stop you there because

The idea that the media has maybe some sort of bias in favor of Donald Trump winning the primary runs counter to, I mean, what I thought going into this primary contest, which would be exhaustion from Trump and the desire to just cover a new story. I mean, we've been telling the same story for eight years at this point. I mean, I'm surprised anyone's even still here. You know, like, myself included. No, I'm kidding.

But aren't people rooting for a different story? We're just going to have Trump, Biden, 2024, and that's that? Well, I mean, this is part of why at some point there'll probably be a DeSantis and/or other candidate comeback is because the cycle will kind of eat its own tail and be like, yeah, we are tired of this Trump inevitable cycle. We have to have some type of primary. We have to send all these reporters out to Iowa and New Hampshire and so forth. So there might be a kind of shift at some point, right? But I don't know. People have muscle memory of--

of Trump, I think. And, you know, again, I find Trump boring. That's like not the only thing I'd say about him, but like MSNBC gets tremendous ratings of all things Trump, and I just, I don't get it. There are a lot of things I don't get though. I don't get like Ska, but like a lot of people like it apparently. And like people like, I think people like stories about Trump. And like DeSantis is kind of like in a weird middle ground where like he's not quite like

I don't know. He's like not quite either a good enough villain for liberals or a good enough alternative to Trump. I don't know quite how to put it, but he's like somehow like minimizing something when he should be maximizing it. I don't know. So I should say, I mentioned that Trump is at 11%. And if we do see some kind of elite consensus around Trump in terms of endorsements, that could be significant. So looking at the data

when a candidate has gotten at least 15% of the overall endorsement points, they've only lost the nomination one time, and that was Hillary Clinton in 2008. In fact, endorsement points, according to our tracker and looking at polling averages since 1972, have been more predictive of who will end up winning the nomination than even the polling. Early endorsement points or later? The day before the Iowa caucus. Okay.

Does that sound about right to you? I have an answer for you. Maybe. OK, so as you mentioned, over the past week, there have been rumblings amongst GOP donors, the Chowdhury class, whatever, about Ron DeSantis sort of not being ready for prime time, as the saying goes, et cetera. And now people are questioning whether or not he should even get in the race, whether he should sit it out, wait for another day. If you're Ron DeSantis today, what are the arguments for or against getting into the 2024 primary?

There is no argument against it unless you never want to be president really, right? Look, if he's not ready for primetime, he's not ever gonna be ready for primetime, right? He's been elected governor of a major swing state twice. He was in Congress for a long time. He's had like a lot of national exposure, right? So you can like postpone

running. I can decide the tax settlement was filed extension. I can postpone when I send my tax into the government. It doesn't reduce my tax liability at all. In fact, it accrues interest and penalties. If DeSantis is a candidate, he can delay discovering that and proving that until 2028 or 2032. But I don't see why he'd be any stronger inherently. And I don't think that Trump is inherently

that formidable a nominee? I'm not sure. I mean, you know, there has been indication of some appetite for an alternative.

This has got up to like 30% in earlier this year in polls, 35% even, right? That's like pretty good. So if you blow that, then like you just suck at politics and you're not going to like ever be a good candidate. Wait, but hold on. Don't people always say that timing is everything in politics? I mean, our current president only won the nomination after trying three times. Okay, but look at the people. I mean, look at Mitt Romney. Look at John McCain. Like all of these people ran multiple times. Romney performed at or above,

expectations, right? He was seen as one of the better candidates and wound up being one of the more viable candidates, right? I mean think about the people who have like way underperformed expectations, right? Like Phil Graham or Rudy Giuliani. Scott Walker. Scott Walker, Rick Perry twice, Fred Thompson, you know, Colin Maleris, right?

Although maybe she should be the VP then, right? That would be one-- but look-- You think Ron DeSantis is going to be the vice presidential nominee after running against Donald Trump? Well, that would be the argument, is that he could be the nominee if he doesn't run against Donald Trump, right? Although can you have two people from Florida? It's like a big constitutional thing.

There's a constitutional question about whether or not you can have two people from the same state on one presidential ticket? I believe so. If not, I'm an idiot, but you know, I am an idiot, so that's fine. But no, like you save face when you have no chance left, right? Or you save face when you kind of, there's no chance that you perform well, but like if you kind of quit when you're on a losing trajectory,

you freeze into place in amber that you're a loser, right? Like if you didn't even run against Trump, he's like a tough guy, right? And the median error is that you suck and so you don't even bother to run? Like that's not going to be a good resume builder for going forward. You look weak. All right. Well, now is the moment in the live show that I have been waiting for. Uh-oh.

which is that we're going to introduce our first special guest, someone I know who it is, Nate does not know who it is. But I'm curious, do you have any guesses? I have a couple of guesses, yeah. Do you want to go ahead and guess? No. We'll only bring the guests out if you get it right. If you get it wrong, we're sending them home. I don't want to show any favoritism toward who I guess. I'm not going to guess, yeah. If I told you it's the one person you think it will be most, who would you guess?

I mean think about former panelists on the FiveThirtyEight podcast. Okay. You live in New York still. There are several of them. Yeah. Does anyone else, does anyone have balls enough to guess who the special guest is? All right, Claire Malone, come on out! Surprise, we apparently have a surprise. Yeah, the DraftKings was like minus 400 Claire Malone plus 125 Harry Hinton. Yeah.

So for folks who don't know, Claire Malone is an alumna of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast and forever friend of the pod. I have an OG, right? You are an OG. You are the most OG there is. And I should also say now you are a staff writer at The New Yorker, which round of applause. I cover media and politics. If you're in either, tip me. You can send me an email, a DM, story ideas.

You cover-- That serious? Basically, if you want to-- you know any media folks who need to be put in their place, Claire Malone is now your person to contact. No, no, not put in the place. Just, you know, ask about.

OK. So I do want to ask you, though, how are you-- like, how are you-- welcome back to the podcast after, like, three years? Two years? I mean, I see you pretty regularly, so I'm going to play the role of ignorant host who doesn't know anything about you. What have you been up to for the past three years? Sure. What have I been up to? Oops. It's been three years. Two and a half years? Two and a half years. Yeah, I guess that's true. What happened?

I had twins. That was probably my biggest life event. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. I've held both of them. I got a new job. I got married. I did a podcast. The big four, right? Marriage, kids, job, podcast. Yeah. It sounds like everything can happen for you once you leave the FiveThirtyEightPolitics podcast. Maybe I should think about it.

But yeah, I've been at the New Yorker for a year, a little over a year. And it's great. It's a lot of fun. I actually, I worked, just hired me from the New Yorker where I was a fact checker. So it's kind of like a fun return. And this is like a fun return. So you come back and forth, right? You're like LeBron James. Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome. Right.

So I know that you were down in Wilmington this week getting ready to cover a trial that didn't end up happening. Yeah. What was the deal? What can you tell us about the Fox Dominion settlement? Well, it was almost $800 million, but not quite. No, I mean, I went down to Wilmington on... By the way, I forgot how bright lights are. It's very disorienting, you know? No, it's great because then you can't see anyone.

It's true. And I haven't been, I was saying backstage, I haven't been to the Bell House in like five years, like a while. So this is kind of like a weird way to come back. I went down on Sunday and it was kind of like a, just like, I don't know if anyone here is from Wilmington, Delaware. Nothing against Wilmington, but it was pretty dead besides like every media reporter in America. Oh no.

So it was a lot of like trying to figure out what lawyers were doing. The Dominion team was staying in my hotel. It was very like, we kind of knew that there were settlement talks going on. Do people know the details of the Dominion case? I feel like this is, the 538 audiences are pretty. Go for it, go for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cliff notes. Yeah. Remember the 2020 election? Okay, Dominion voting systems.

is a voting machine company and Fox allowed people to, people, guests, their anchors, to spread lies about the voting machine company saying that they'd stolen votes from Joe Biden. Dominion sued them for $1.6 billion and

That's where all the, if you remember like the deluge of text messages from Tucker Carlson saying he thought Trump was a demonic force. That came out in February and March. That's from the discovery for that case. I'm sure there's some lawyers in here who will pedantically correct me on something at the end of this session. But yeah, the case finally went to trial. Defamation cases don't go to trial. There was jury selection on Tuesday. We were all just, I was sitting in the courtroom with people. There was

It's kind of cool to watch jury selection happen. And then after lunch, there was this two hour break. We kind of knew that the lawyers from each side had been talking to each other. And it was actually really dramatic. I mean, it wasn't like Perry Mason, but it was like whatever the white shoe litigator version of Perry Mason is. And the judge said, this is resolved. And there was like a gasp in the courtroom, literally.

And everyone just rushed out to call their editors, 'cause you're not allowed to use a cell phone or internet in a courtroom in Delaware.

Yeah, and it just was kind of, you know, they literally had the kind of trite courthouse steps press conference where they said, you know, our client is vindicated and this is how much we got, which was $287.5 million and no on-air apology from Fox. $787. Sorry, yeah, $787. At the very end, did Gwyneth Paltrow lean over to Rupert Murdoch and say, I wish you well? LAUGHTER

I was, I mean, I will say I wish, I was really looking, I was looking forward to covering a trial. I've never really covered a trial before. I was looking forward to, I mean, the thing about, like, writing, like, doing politics and now doing media is, like, it's very, those are two areas where people are so, you know...

guarded by PR people. So to get those unguarded moments or those moments where they're just themselves exposed in front of a very smart lawyer, I thought that would have been exciting to see Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch and Tucker Carlson to see if, you know, for Tucker Carlson in particular, I was kind of interested to see if his, however you feel about him, he obviously has like some sort of charisma. And I was kind of curious how that would work on a jury. So I think, you know,

For me, selfishly, my human curiosity, I was disappointed not to see that. I think for a lot of people, obviously, they wanted to see six weeks of public flagellation of Fox and Fox Corp executives, but, you know, that's a big chunk of change. Yeah, I mean, you talked about the media sort of swarming Wilmington and what this could have all meant.

if it played out in the press over six weeks, you're now shining a spotlight on the press and you talked about the press's reaction to Trump. - Did you always have such nice suits? - No. - Right? Sorry. - This is what happens after you host the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast for seven and a half years. But thank you. - Suit supply, sponsor this podcast, right?

I mean, please do. That would be nice. Please do. It would be nice. That and like, I'd have enough mattresses for a life. Me and all of my friends now have mattresses. Where's your suit? You're not wearing a suit. I'm not wearing a suit. It's, you know, like... This is very, like, French. I don't know what, you know. It's rag and bone, I think. I don't know. I don't know what we're doing. Sorry, you were asking a question. I wanted to say, by the way, I look...

The guy in the front row and I match. We're both wearing our 5E Fox shirts. - That's vintage, right? - Vintage, yeah. True heads really know what's up.

Okay, so you wrote an article after going downtown for Trump's indictment a couple weeks ago and sort of talked about how the media is covering Trump. I guess I would call it maybe Trump 3.0. There was the Trump campaigning in 2015, 2016. There was the press covering Trump in the White House and running for re-election, and now he's a civilian again. And how is the media from your eye approaching it this time around?

Okay, well, it's not Trump 1.0, which is, I started, here's memory lane, I started at 538 December 2015, and you guys sent me to Iowa in January of 2016, which is when Trump won the Iowa caucuses. So, like, I very much, like, it's like a very distinct time period for me. And I think if we think about

late 2015, 2016, that spring, that winter and spring, it was just like, you know, the bananas TV coverage that we all kind of like hearken back to. And obviously, I think the White House years, people got more discerning, like discerning

MSNBC got more discerning about how they were covering Trump as far as airtime. What was interesting about the indictment was, I think it was CNN that literally did the, like if you're on Twitter, which I think this audience is, you're not too good for Twitter. Who's on Mastodon? Oh, interesting. Not me. Yeah.

They did like the, you know, CNN and I think like a lot of the major networks did like the white bronco shot of like, you know, there was a cameraman in a motorboat right by LaGuardia that like got the plane landing and then they like tracked them on the Grand Central Parkway and then, you know, so it was like they had these aerial shots of Trump going to Trump Tower. And that felt very 2016-ish.

And I will say, so the piece that I wrote, I wasn't actually inside the courtroom because that was a really, really, really hard seat to get. I think there were only 10 reporters that made it actually inside the courtroom. But the scene outside was, I mean, I don't know if anyone here was down there. It was like... I was. I was.

Were you? Yeah, I was. Wait, we didn't run into each other. I know. With Tony and Vanessa as well. Oh. Once I found out you were, I saw on Twitter afterwards that you were there, I was really sad that we didn't run into you. Yeah, I was tweeting sanctimoniously. I was talking to the naked cowboy. I was like doing exactly the thing I shouldn't be doing. Okay, so now I'm about to make a sanctimonious series of comments about journalists like Caleb. That apply to me. No, it was like, okay, it...

Actually, the memory it stirred in me was, okay, so the scene was in front of the courthouse. There's this big public park, and it was split between, like, the Trump support. I mean, NYPD had literally done, like, the barricades, and there were Trump supporters, and there were...

your liberal moms from New Hampshire who had come down and they were all kind of-- - Oh, and my dad, my dad, I won't tell you which side he was on. - Is your dad here? - He's here tonight and he was down there that day as well. - Okay, so there you go. And it was kind of like, there weren't that many protesters because, I mean,

New York is expensive to get to. No, I'm actually serious about this. There's high tolls. There's 30,000 police officers in the street who are going to prevent you from January 6th thing. I mean...

And so there weren't that many protesters. There were tons of media, like an embarrassing amount of media, and they were all doing the thing where they were like, you know, and people were like acting a fool, right? So there was like, and you could see when like little fistfights would break out. I don't think there were that many, but little things would break out, and you would see like 30 reporters swarming to it. And I was like, oh no, like we're still doing it. And I mean, some of that is like,

I get it, like you have to cover the scene, but there was something to me that was kind of like, you know, seven years later, we're still doing the same exact thing. 'Cause it felt very reminiscent of the parking lots of these places in Iowa or New Hampshire where there were Trump rallies and it was just like, you know, a bunch of people who were kind of there to be exhibitionist and hardcore Trumpy and it's like, we're still doing this?

That part of it felt pretty bad to me. And just the sheer number of media that were just kind of out there to be like, I get it to a certain extent, but it felt off to me. - You can never have two media for every one.

Normal person or not normal person right, but you know not me that can never be right in like any circumstance There were four brides though that I saw I actually did find it was like yeah, there are more important things happening today than trouble But it was you know, I also felt bad for them. I mean, how do you think about the way that this type of coverage shapes

the outcome because I think after 2016 folks were like you, you know, CNN, you aired all his speeches uninterrupted, you know, the media was kind of

created his rise in the polls and, you know, ultimately got him elected. I don't know that you can actually claim that empirically, but that was some of the criticism. But then watching his presidency, it became pretty clear, as ChatGPT was joking about, I spent a lot of time watching Trump's approval rating for four years, and it seemed like the more the media paid attention to him, the worse he did. And when he just kind of... You mean once he was in the White House?

And when he would just kind of shut up for a while, his approval would rise. And the economy was doing well, and there were reasons to be relatively happy about the state of affairs. But it was sort of like Trump was getting in his own way. And the media doing all this coverage of Trump and much, much, much less coverage of Biden seemed to be actually hurting Trump. I mean, I think there's a difference between Trump in the White House and Trump on the campaign trip.

I agree with you. When the media wasn't covering, when he was acting, you know, dull or doing, like, not that interesting things, like, I gotta say, some of the things he did were really funny. Like, do you remember the Mickey D's in the White House? That was genuinely extremely funny. Look, he's massively entertaining. Yeah, okay.

But that's kind of the point, right? It's like, so Trump in the White House, I agree with that point. But Trump on the campaign trail is like, I mean, he's good at it, right? Like, he's... I don't know how many people here have been to a Trump rally or, like, a Trump speech, but he's, like, funny in a room, you know? Like, he is. No, he's got good comic timing. He has good comic timing. He often, like, you know, he needs some... Like, everyone needs an editor, and Trump does, or Trump's speechwriter does. But, like, he's...

he's just good at, you know, the carnival barking part of campaigning. And it's like, I mean, there is something like, I get why people find it fun to watch or engaging to watch or why they, so I think like the,

And, like, when that blots out the sun, it makes it harder for other candidates to campaign against him, say, in a Republican primary or something like that. Right, like Ron DeSantis right now. I mean, like, I guess the kind of conventional wisdom knock on him is that, like, not very charming, putting fingers like a bit of a weirdo, and Trump's gonna, you know, like, be able to really, like, he's gonna be a socially awkward presence, and, like, all politics is political pheromones, and if you, you know, if you think one guy just, like,

you like the cut of his jib better, you're gonna vote for him. And I guess... His suits? His suits. He wears cowboy boots. That's the one thing I know about his sartorial choices. So if Suitsupply sponsors Ron DeSantis, then it's a whole new... What was the question? I think the question was like, how does Trump Media Coverage 3.0 shape what we're about to witness? Well, I do think most networks, including Fox,

will air less of his campaign rallies,

They won't do the full thing, they'll do little snippets. Rupert Murdoch pretty openly dislikes Trump. The New York Post is very sort of anti-Trump and has been for the past several months. So I think they're not particularly inclined to air all Trump all the time, but he's also good for business, so Fox will air him. But I think the other networks will do a little bit less of that earned media.

I think the thing that will be hard for media organizations is threading the needle between fact-checking all the obvious misinformation stuff that's out there and also still making sure that...

right-wing or conservative or middle-of-the-road readers or listeners or viewers don't think that they're being attacked by the media. And maybe it's an impossible needle to thread. I'm kind of of that mindset. I mean, I actually think it's sort of like a lose-lose in that we'll do our best efforts, but it probably won't

like, oh, well actually we must intercept this claim and fact check before it is aired, right? Like I think people, I don't know, like the whole misinformation beat, I think people should be like more empirical about like what actually works and what doesn't, right? You know, maybe this Centurion, New York Times kind of neutral voice actually is more persuasive to a wider range of readers, even though like,

I think, yeah, speak to the power, whatever else, right? But that model was chosen for a reason, and I think also people have maybe, I don't know, it's a fine line to walk. And the Times has done, they've done little tweaks of their form in the past couple of years. Well, now they'll say, in a story, we need to make sure there are a certain number of sources, or this is...

or this, like, these people went, they'll, like, do a little more explanatory, this is how the story got made. And I think that's good. I think there are other models, like, the, I think I mentioned this in the piece that I wrote right around the indictment, like, there are models that, that, um,

people like Margaret Sullivan have suggested where it's like there's a Pennsylvania public radio station that anytime they interview a politician who repeated Trump's lies after the 2020 election, they'll just like note it and continue with the interview or the thing. And basically it's sort of like we're not going to normalize this.

And I think that's actually an interesting formula. I also think it would make a right wing or even moderate or even a liberal person be like, oh my God, how sanctimonious. And I think that really is, like I don't think we can write that off because it's like, yeah, a lot of journalists are sanctimonious. I mean, I'll include myself occasionally. Or maybe like 60% of the time, I don't know. But it's like, it's very, I think it's very hard. Like, cause we're basically asking people to like us and we're kind of unlikable. Yeah.

It's one of the less popular professions, right? There's been low trust in media for a long time. But yeah, they're like, "Oh, we know better and we're gonna determine what your meal is, how much spinach you have, and how much sausage you get, and whatever else." I think people have an intrinsic distrust for that, right? I don't know if I want to itemize stories over weird things I got the media thought got right or got wrong, right?

But like I think people like, people I think come still for facts more than interpretation. And if they like go through the maze of interpretation before you get to the facts, I think it's like probably a bad empirical strategy and I would say maybe a bad journalistic strategy to some extent. Although the one thing that's like you can't get around in journalism is like

Even if you're writing for USA Today or a newspaper that doesn't have a particular, oh, that's a liberal rag, or the Wall Street Journal, those hacks. Even if you're writing for a place like that, you are always exerting your own opinion or view of the events by what you choose, by what you quote, by what order. And I think that readers are smart in that they sense what we're trying to do. So it's like, I think it's, I mean...

I don't know, it's kind of like the Supreme Court and the media are sort of in the similar, like, the ratings keep on falling and how do you turn around? Maybe you don't. I mean it. No, but treat the customer, the reader, as smart is, I think, one of the core ideas behind FiveThirtyEight, right? Because even if the people aren't smart... Notable of the people publication. LAUGHTER

Sorry. No, but I think we treat our readers as like being intelligent. No, I agree. I mean, but like it takes a particular kind of person to want to like open up a data website. For sure. And I mean, look, having had access to the podcast at 538.com email address for seven and a half years, people are pretty clear about, I don't want to be told what to think. And you sort of crossed a boundary and

in that instance or whatever. Like, people will say, I want to hear the polling, I want to hear the analysis, the historical analysis, like, when you can bring facts to bear. But I hear pretty often when people feel like we've, like, messed up. So, I get it. And I also think...

I mean, the sort of, like, inartful way to say what's happened in media over the past two or three years since Trump went out of office is there's... You see these, like, media startups, like Semaphore or Puck in particular are coming to mind where they're kind of, like... There's some undercurrent of, like...

we're gonna push back a little bit against the liberal woke media in a way that you'll find acceptable mainstream liberal. We know that you're annoyed by sanctimonious articles and we're not gonna write them in that way or we're gonna try to tell you here's the fact part and here's my opinion. And I think some of those experiments are successful and some of them aren't and most of them are still half-baked. I'm very much on the side where I think it's like

80% demand driven and 20% supply driven, right? You see in like Substack, right? Where like a certain style that's like appealing to people left of center but it's like not super woke, right? Has done like very well on Substack relative to like how these people were making money previously and like so that might have been like under indexed by the legacy media. Totally, I agree with that. But the problem is that like

What is... Okay, you rated Glacius as sub-stack, and that's where you get a lot of your news. I mean, let's say 2 million people who are conservative listen to Matt Walsh's podcast as their sub-stack. And I think that's kind of the problem. We're all... The business model is actually...

Kind of sorting itself out in media. It's like oh, okay. It's subscription based. It's niche It's what you're not gonna get besides like the consolidating big New York Times, which is a media company not a newspaper Everyone's like media business model is niche, which is actually like good for business but bad for Society yeah, I think we're back at perhaps a comment that Nate made early on which is that I

politics, contemporary politics, and potentially AI will be very good at finding efficiencies in politics and in media and basically making people, like feeding people what they want and making people more angry and discordant as a result. Are you an AI skeptic? I was thinking of this the other day. I'm not saying I'm against AI. This is just my unformed thought, which I think I'm allowed to say at the beginning of the AI debate, which will last until I live to 102. But I guess I'm a bit resentful that like

the direction of humanity is now being driven by a bunch of like nerds who are like I don't know what if we did like I mean that I mean that I'm being I'm being funny but I'm also kind of like you you're about to you're about to like Microsoft Bing is going to put millions and millions of people out of jobs like at a certain point. Well that is that I think is a little bit less clear. Isn't it bad for humanity like what's wrong like and they're all like well we have to push to the scientific limits and it's like

Like, literally, do we? Yeah, no. So I was, I've been reading articles. Wait, I have one more, one more diatribe. It's like the sort of like, no, but it's like the sick psychology of people who went to like Harvard and MIT and Stanford who are like, I must achieve because like there's nothing after this and like we just have to like push it to the limit. And it's like, I'm actually not sure it's like. Have a coffee, smoke a cigarette. Yeah.

Like, I genuinely mean that, yeah. Like, it's sort of deranged. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. I'll let you direct the show. Do you, like, how do you feel about AI in front of all these people? I think AI is more likely to kill us than climate change. That's a quote of the evening. All right. And with that, we are going to move on to our trivia portion of the evening.

Take your pill and forget what we just said. This is the part of the evening where we are going to invite a guest on stage who will even be a surprise to me. And that is because, dear audience, it is one of you. OK, so-- Not you. So the process that we're about to use was devised by an AI itself.

I'm just kidding, it was Nate. So if you want to play trivia with us, and that means you have to come on stage and interact with us, raise your hand to answer this question. We started recording this podcast in January of 2016, the same month we sent Claire to Iowa to watch Donald Trump win the Iowa caucuses in your first month on the job. How many episodes of the podcast have we published since... Fact check.

It was one of the Iowa caucuses. Oh, it was Ted Cruz. There was a moment where we're going to be saved from our famous Trump skepticism by Ted Cruz, of all people. And then New Hampshire, and then it's all... Ted Cruz is one of the country's most popular podcasts.

God bless. Did you know that? Wait, really? Yeah. Or maybe one of the most popular political podcasts. Continue, sorry. Okay, okay, okay. So raise your hand if you would like to answer this question to compete with us. How many episodes of the podcast have we published since January 2016? So the way we're going to do this is you write that. Can you guess? 450? You? You? 40.

480. Okay, so of those three people, you're the closest, so you're going to move on in this process. You're still alive. You're still alive. Keep your hand raised. Okay, what's your guess? 537. 537? Who else would like to guess? Okay, you in the back. All right, she's another guess, though. What would you like to guess this time around? What did you guess? Okay, you continue on. You're the closest. Who else would like to guess? Okay, you right there. 565. 565. 552. 552.

Okay, you also continue to-- You guys are not very inventive. There's a pattern here, people. There's so many numbers out there. Okay, who else would like to guess? You would like to guess? 800, okay. Anyone else? You in the back? 750, and what do you guess? Okay, 750, you're continuing on. Who else would like to compete? Okay, you in the back? 910. Anyone else? Okay, you? 775. And who moved on? Guess again.

- 775 moves on, okay. You right there. 793, you right there. You move on. - This is like the worst game night ever.

I have to say, we were sitting here during our mic check trying to figure out how to actually do this effectively. And we're like, let's just do higher, lower, higher, lower. And Nate's like, no. I have a plan. No. I have the higher, lower. You rejected it. You thought higher, lower will converge too fast. OK. So it's complicated. 774. Who else? Anyone? Anyone? You right there? It's 771. It's 771. Come on up. Look, you've got to experiment with new formats sometimes.

I'm sorry, of course it's the guy who gave us a percentage that got this. Um, okay, so what's, who are you? Hi everybody, my name is Rod. Rod, did Suit Supply make your suit? Are you running for office or something? You seem like, okay. No, I had an event at work. Did it? Suit Supply. We found somebody. Wait, wait, this would be a fun, it's Rod? Yes. What does Rod do for a living? Well, yeah, I know, I was gonna ask. No, no, we have to guess. Oh, we have to guess.

Wait, what does Rod do for a living? You're wearing what you do for a living on your chest, I think. Oh, you work at the UN. Well, that's lame. We can't guess. He could be a spy. Yeah. Are you a spy? I'm a bad spy. What country do you represent? What delegation? So I work for the one nobody likes, the UN itself. Okay. Not from a country. Okay. Okay.

Well, thank you so much for joining us this evening. Is there anything else you want to tell us about yourself? Do you have to pay your parking tickets? Are you like... Are you allowed to kill people? I only have immunity in the execution of my duties. So what was Nikki Haley like?

So a good friend of mine, one of my best friends, was her staff assistant. And? What was Nikki Lee like? She said she was nice, but all her staff were crazy and scary. Are you ready to play? Let's do it. All right. Awesome. We're so happy to have you. Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Give it up for Rob. I feel like I had a dream last night where the special guest just blew everyone else out of the wall. You're going to win. You're going to win. I think it's a really...

It's a big possibility. Yeah, I think Roger's going to win. OK, so first question we're going to go-- we'll rotate a little bit. Are these about politics? It's all about New York City. OK. OK. You're going to go first, Claire. Are you ready? Yeah. OK. According to YouGov, New York City is the sixth most popular city in America. Popular or populus? Popular. Oh.

58 per-- come on. Sorry. I mean, I know it's the biggest. 58% of Americans have a positive view of it. 20% have a negative view. Can you name a city that is more popular? The New York? Yes, according to this poll. Austin. Nate? Los Angeles? He has a mic. Thank you, though. Yeah. Go ahead. New Orleans. OK, none of you got one. All right, do we go around again? We'll go one more time.

St. Petersburg. You just heard a "no!" For the record, I love Florida. Unironic. Love Florida. Nate? Las Vegas. Stay on brand. Oh, that's a good one. Okay. Chicago. Nate gets a point. Number one most popular city in America is Nashville. Number two is San Diego. Number three is Denver. Number four is Miami. And number five is Las Vegas. Can I get a half a point for being close to Miami?

All right, so Nate has one to zero to zero. Next question, Nate, you're gonna kick us off. Joe Biden won the majority of the vote in every single precinct in Manhattan in 2020, a distinction that he does not hold for any of the other four boroughs. In which Manhattan neighborhood was his precinct with the lowest level of support? - I feel like there's an obvious one I'm missing. I mean, Upper East Side.

Is Staten Island a neighborhood? That's very cute, but Staten Island isn't in Manhattan, Rod. Oh, in Manhattan. Okay, sorry, sorry. Inwood. Inwood, okay. What happens if I guess the same thing as another contestant? You can guess the same thing if you wanted. It would be, you know, dual points. It's one of two neighborhoods. It's either, well... You got it? Yeah, I'll go with the Upper East Side.

None of you got it. Is it the financial district? We'll do one more go around. We'll do one more go around. Nate? Wait, you just f***ed me. What do you mean? Now we're going to take my answer. Nate? Maybe Nate thinks it's stupid. You should know this. Yeah, I think you should know this. You live in Manhattan. Okay, where are there a lot of Orthodox Jews in Manhattan? The Upper West Side. But it's not Hasidic. Uh...

Lower East Side. Crowd suggestion. Okay, Rod? Can I say the same as Nate? If you want to, you can. Lower East Side. Okay. I am going to go with the Financial District. Okay, so none of you really got it, but I included... There were three things that you could have said, and you got one of the things that I included. So here it is. The answer is Two Bridges, and it included both Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

And so for context, Biden won 59% of the vote in the Two Bridges neighborhood. Trump won 40%. The neighborhood is 64% Asian, 14% Hispanic, 12% African-American, and 9% white, according to Niche.com's analysis of census data. Are you surprised? No? Yeah, I am. Yeah. Are you surprised? I almost said Chinatown. Just mixing it up. Well, almost only counts in... I'm going for all wrong answers here.

That's the kind of chaotic energy I appreciate. Can I have another beer, please? You heard her. OK, so it is Nate 2, Rod 1, Claire-- Nailbiter. --hero. I'm rooting for you. OK, Rod, you're starting this one off. In the spirit of tomorrow's holiday, for my dad because he doesn't know what tomorrow's holiday is, it's 4:20.

According to the most recent city data published in 2019 before it was broadly legal, what percentage of New York City residents used cannabis in the past year? This is the only citywide data we have on cannabis use. I'm sorry, but it is from 2019. So I'll give you, I will tell you that up front. 62.4. Okay, I admire the audacity. This is like closest. This is closest. This is closest.

Oh, here. While you're thinking. Oh, wow, you really took me literally. Thank you. Okay. I mean, yeah, I'm not above it. Thank you very much. Is it my turn? Is this like a snake? Yeah, it's your turn. 18%. Nate? What's the etymology of the survey? Where's it from? It's New York City data. It's conducted by the New York Department of I don't know.

I think I might lower it, right? Because they might think that you're kind of their narc, right? I'll go, I'll just go 40%. What's that? 4-0, 40. Okay, who do you, okay, so it was 64.5, 40, and 18. Who do you guys think got it? What's that?

- This is funny. Claire, like by a long shot. My goodness people. - We're all squares. We like booze. - 16%. - This is a drinking city. - Yeah, well. - No, it is, right? And like it's. - Okay, so. - But this is LA. - I mean, they're like literally 400 like

-Bodegas with exotics? -It's definitely changed. It's definitely higher now. -If you live in Chelsea, I live in Hell's Kitchen, in those neighborhoods, every other storefront is now selling weed. I understand, but you have to understand your own personal biases when trying to analyze the world and help with that. I'm sorry, Nate. I'll say this. It is 16% according to New York City data, but according to Gallup, 12% of Americans smoked weed in 2019, the year that this survey was conducted.

And it increased to 16% last year. So that's, you know, like a 33% increase. If you apply that to New York City's numbers, you know, just to like rough math, it would be more like 21%. I mean, you still got it regardless. When was the last time Rod ingested marijuana? 10 p.m. God bless. Do you have a vape with you now? No, I smoked, but no vape. Oh, okay. The vaping is bad for you.

Wait, I have one more-- hold on. I recorded one more data point. It was, a 2018 study from CETO found that more marijuana is consumed in New York than any other city on Earth. It estimates that a grand total of 77.44 metric tons is consumed within the five boroughs every year, which is about the same weight as the Endeavor Space Shuttle, another conduit that's taking humans to space. OK. So it is Claire 1, Rod 1, Nate 2. And we just start-- who did we start with that time? Rod. So we're back to you, Claire. OK.

Which member of Congress represents New York State's wealthiest congressional district? Which member of Congress represents New York's wealthiest congressional district? Carolyn Maloney. She's not in office anymore. Oh, f***. I don't work for FiveThirty anymore. I don't have to know this s***. Okay, can I do a redo? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jerry Nadler replaced her in terms of representing Uptown. Then I'll go with Nadler. Okay, Nadler.

Nadler. Nadler. It's... Okay, so... Any other guesses? Well, he kind of... Dan Goldman? Goldman. Okay, you guessed Dan Goldman? Goldman. Fine, well, I'll answer the same thing. Goldman. Does anyone in the audience know? Wait, is it like an upstate district?

They all know it! It is George Santos! Aka! America's Congressman! Aka Anthony DeBolder! Aka Katara Ravache! Wait, what is Dan Goldman's district though? Dan Goldman, funny you ask, Dan Goldman represents the district we are currently in right now. Which is Lower Manhattan and Northern Brooklyn.

He loves giving press conferences. No, but George Santos is. George, if you want to come out? I bet he listened in 2016. So, George Santos? Yeah! He was busy. No, I don't... No, yeah! That was his guitar revache era. I don't think he was listening to... So, New York's third congressional district, which represents parts of Queens and the North Shore of Long Island,

It's wealthiest in New York. It's the fourth wealthiest in the nation. The median household income is $131,000. Claire and Rod, you're both at one. Nate, you are at two. We are moving on. We're back to Nate. According to the most recent Quinnipiac poll in February, what percentage of New Yorkers approve of the job that Mayor Eric Adams is doing? 39. 52. 60.

Nate, you are closest. The answer is 37% approve of the job that he is doing, 43% disapprove. But he just appointed a rat czar. Who I will have you know, this is not a joke, I reached out to the mayor's press office to ask if the rat czar could be here tonight. Had she said yes, Rod, she would be competing with us instead of you. But lucky for you, she said no.

Boo, boo, yeah, boo! Okay, it is 1:13. We are moving on. We're back to Rod. Okay, this one's a fun one. Okay, you have to hear the whole thing. The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on crime in New York City this week with the message that the city is dangerous and soft on crime. The hearing was chaired by Republican Representative Jim Jordan, who represents suburban Columbus, Ohio.

The homicide rate was 5.2 per 100,000 people in New York City in 2022. What was it in Columbus, Ohio? 8.4. Clary? My bias about Columbus is it's basically a suburb. But, like, you're framing this question in a very biased way. I know. What was it? What was in New York City? 5.5. 5.2. Columbus downtown or city proper? Yeah, what was the phrase? Columbus city proper. Columbus city proper? Yeah.

10%. Okay. So we got 10 and 8.2. I'm just going to go 8.1. You got it, Claire. This is like a weird thing to cheer for. Wow. I don't know if we should cheer for this one. Is this the murder rate? Yeah. We won't cheer for this one, but I will say, just in case you were wondering, it's about three times as high as New York City. So it's 15.4%.

We don't stand for that language in the bell house. Okay, it is three, two, one, and we are moving on. Oh, this is a fun one. This is a fun one. Uh-oh. Okay. New York City just hired a rat czar, as I mentioned. Or director of rodent mitigation to take care of its long-running rat infestation. According to the most recent estimates, how many rats are living in New York City today? How many rats are living in New York City? Oh, you did go for a fun one. How many people live in...

The metropolitan area is like 25 million or something? I mean, I know it's 8.5 million in New York City, but if we're talking about the greater New York area... It's like a McKinsey consulting test question, right? I know, yeah. There are, I don't know, there are 5 million rats. Rod's face, he's like, I'm getting out of here. Nate? There aren't more rats than humans, do you think? By the way, fun story.

I once was walking down the street in Brooklyn and saw two rats f***ing up. Literally, and they were doing it missionary. Which I just think you wouldn't expect. And that, folks, is the 538 Politics podcast for the evening. Thank you all for coming. Cue the outro music. I am no longer employed by this organization. I saw a seagull flying with an entire piece of pizza the other day.

Also sexual. I saw a cockroach doing blow on my kitchen counter.

Don't ask me how that got there. Okay, you didn't tell me a number. - 40 million. - 40 million. I have no idea. - 41. - 41 million? - That's just incorrect. - Okay. - Oh, wait, wait, wait. Can I change 20? - No, you can change it. - No, no. - You can introduce a resolution. - Okay, audience, who do you think got it right? Yeah, Claire got it right. It's two million.

You want to know why? I've actually done a lot of rat reading. I actually, like, does anyone remember when Eric Adams did the Rat Press Conference? Yes.

Honestly, greatest, he drowned a rat in like chemical fuel. Oh yeah, I remember when he was still Brooklyn Borough President. Yeah, he was like, he got all the press together. He was like, I know you might not like animal cruelty, but I don't give a f***. I'm going to drown these rats. And everyone's like, that's our mayor. Yeah, it's a great, it's great. No, I mean, that's, that is public, like that's majority public opinion. Like, I actually tried to find polls to find out if there were like New Yorkers who don't want to kill the rats. It's not polled, I have to assume, because like everyone agree. I don't know.

But here, we have a tie now. So it's Claire three, Nate you have three. Rod, this has been really fun. Expectations were really high. But I did, I got a bonus question just in case. - Okay. - If you lined up people shoulder to shoulder, how many people could you fit in the borough of Brooklyn? - Shoulder, I mean like, it's, I mean, which direction?

Wait, we're filling it up. We're filling all of the borough of Brooklyn. This is like a... So I see you've applied to work at Google. I mean, I feel like it's necessary to point out that I was an English major at this point. Okay, Nate, you have to go first with this one. Yeah, give me a poll to navigate around. So there's... What was your college major? Economics. But what was your minor?

We didn't have minors. At the University of Chicago, we just were depressed. A minor was... No! I mean, who else in here went to the University of Chicago? Because certainly, yeah, great, front row. A minor in indie rock, Claire. A minor in mid-90s indie rock. I'm going to guess $2 billion. $2 billion? $3 billion. I don't know. No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. I revised. $800 million. $800 million.

Wait, wait, do I get a guess? No, you don't. You're out. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, Ron. $799 million. It's $1.4 billion. So they win. You're like exactly in the, which is exactly in the middle of the two of you, right? You guessed $2 billion. You guessed $800 million. So what do we do now? Anyway, you both won. Round of applause.

All right, that's a wrap for today's podcast. Thank you, Nate, Claire, and Rod. And thank you so much to the Bell House for hosting us. A special thanks to Vanessa Diaz and Tony Chow. Round of applause for the lead in organizing and recording tonight's live show. And thank you to all of you in the audience. We couldn't have done it without you. Round of applause for yourselves once more.

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. You can also watch this podcast, this live podcast on YouTube. Thanks so much for listening, and we will see you soon. Woo!