The Issues Worth $9 Billion In Ad Spending
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I think it's around election season. I get really burpy. I'm like nervous. It's also your birthday season. So I don't know. Confounders right there. I just got a be real notification. Should I be real on the podcast? Yeah, totally. Do it. We were just talking about this yesterday. Oh, it took it real quick. So you guys are like fully blinking, but that's, that's real. That's being real. Cool.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. There are just days until Election Day and the race for the Senate is still on a knife's edge and Republicans have a clear advantage in the House. Our final pre-election model talk episode will come out on Monday, but today we're going to focus on some aspects of the election that get beyond the numbers.

First, what can we actually expect from Election Day? When will the polls close and where can we expect some early indicators of how the night is going?

Next, what are the issues that have been driving this election in the battleground states and districts? And what are both parties' closing arguments? We're going to try to answer that by looking at the types of campaign ads that the two parties are pouring the most money into. That means get ready to hear some political ads. I hope you're not sick of them yet. And lastly, after two years of casting doubt or straight up denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election,

Where are candidates who haven't acknowledged Biden's win liable to win themselves? And what could that pretend for future elections? Here with me to discuss is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. Also here with us is tech and politics reporter Kaylee Rogers. Welcome, Kaylee. Hi. All right. We've got a lot to cover, so let's dive right in and let's begin with Election Day, which we are all

Very much anticipating here at 538. Nathaniel, can you give us an overview of when the polls will close on Tuesday, particularly as it pertains to the races that we're watching?

Yeah, so, you know, the first polls close at 6 p.m. in parts of Indiana and Kentucky, 6 p.m. Eastern. But, you know, the real action won't start happening until 7, 8, 9, 10. 11, 12, 1, 2, 3. Yes, well, exactly. The counting will continue for a while. Wednesday, Thursday. Which I'm sure we'll talk about.

But so the polls in Georgia close at 7. Obviously, a key Senate race there. We've got Arizona, which closes at 9 p.m. Eastern, but no results are going to come out until 10 p.m. Eastern. That's a state law that says they have to wait an hour. So Nevada actually has a rule that even after polls close, every voter has to vote before any votes get released. So we probably won't see any results in Nevada until like midnight or 1 a.m. So be ready for that. Pennsylvania closes at 8 p.m.

I think a big question here is, is this going to be like 2020, which took days to count all the votes, of course, and Biden didn't get declared the winner until Saturday. I don't think it's going to be like that. At our live show, I predicted Thursday would be the day we would know the Senate. I think I'm ready to come back and say Wednesday is going to be that day. I'm quite confident that we won't know who won the Senate when we go to bed on

on Tuesday night, if only because of Nevada and because I assume most people will go to split before 1 a.m. But like a state like Arizona, Arizona does take several days to count its votes. If that's close, we could be waiting on that. There's Georgia, of course, which could go to a runoff. But in states like Pennsylvania and like Wisconsin, kind of secondary states like that, I think we will know the results sometime on Wednesday.

So when it comes to actually reading the tea leaves early on in the evening, I know we're going to start looking at exit poll data, which there are lots of caveats around. But what we're really looking for is sort of early districts, states, precincts where there are full results that we can then compare to what a good night for Republicans would look like or a good night for Democrats. Where are some of those early indicators that we're going to be looking at?

So I think Virginia is a good one. Virginia counts its votes relatively fast and it closes its polls early at 7 p.m. Eastern. And there are three-ish competitive House districts there. And they're actually kind of of different levels of competitiveness. So J. Miles Coleman at the Sabados Crystal Ball.

has a good bit or meme going on Twitter, which is basically like, if Republicans flip Virginia's second district, okay, like that was expected, like consistent with what they're going to do. If they flip Virginia's seventh district, which is a little tougher for them, all right, you know, maybe we're looking at quite a good night for Republicans here. And if they flip Virginia's 10th district, which is in the DC suburbs and has really zoomed leftward recently, then we're in red wave territory. So I think those three districts will give a kind of a good calibration.

All right. We love a meme that can help us get through election night. Kayleigh, you are keeping your eyes on the mechanics of the voting and counting process. Is there anything in particular that you're watching closely as pertains to voting itself?

One thing that people may or may not be aware of is that there's been this huge wave of Republicans and conservative voters signing up to be poll watchers, election workers to be involved in the voting process and the vote counting process afterwards. A lot of this is motivated and organized by groups that believe the 2020 election was illegitimate, which is...

Makes people a little nervous. I mean, it's great to have people involved in elections and doing their civic duty and having more poll watchers is not a bad thing on its face. But if these individuals are signing up with kind of a predisposition to expect votes,

fraud where there is none, it could lead to some disruption. So I think I'm going to be on high alert to see if there's any evidence of that. That said, I don't know that it's a given. You know, I did, I sat in on a poll watcher training session with a group that it believes the 2020 election was stolen, but the actual training that they gave to these potential poll watchers was perfectly legitimate. They were talking about the actual processes.

that happen, what they can and cannot do, what they can observe and what to do if they do think they see something, which is not to interfere or get in anybody's face, but to like call their hotline or something. All perfectly legitimate and like what poll watchers are there to do. So I don't know if the fears are totally founded, but that's something they're going to be watching for. And I know that between that and a number of new election laws that changed kind of over the last year or two,

A lot of people, this is going to be the first major election that they're voting in where they might be encountering some of these rule changes. A number of states passed voter restriction laws after 2020. And so this may increase wait times. It may make it harder for some people to vote. So that's something else I'm going to be watching for reports of.

Kayla, can you just kind of explain for readers who might just be plugging in what a poll watcher is and how they're different from a poll worker? Right. So poll workers actually, you know, are working at the polls. They're the people that are helping you sign in, get your ballot, are there to facilitate the election process.

voting process, whereas a poll watcher is typically a partisan individual. They can work for a campaign or a party, and they're there to observe. And it's a bipartisan effort. You have poll watchers from all political backgrounds to observe and make sure that everything is going fairly. It's long been a part of our voting process.

It can be tricky if people aren't properly trained or don't know what they're looking for and think they're seeing something fishy that isn't actually fishy. So in 2020, you know, in Michigan, there were reports, you know, hundreds of people signed affidavits saying that they saw fish.

evidence of fraud while they were poll watching. And a lot of those were nothing. When you actually look into what they saw, it seemed really scary to them, but wasn't actually a thing. So I'll give you a really quick example, which is in some precincts, if someone comes in and they can't find your birth date right away to keep things moving, they would put in a placeholder birth date, which is like 1-1-1900 or something. Obviously, nobody voting is born on January 1st, 1900, and they use that placeholder. So it's really obvious when they're going back through which ones they need to verify.

But some poll watchers saw them doing that and were like, they're faking birthdays. They're having dead people vote. You know, they're using some dead person's identity that was born in 1900 and putting their birthday down and using them to vote, which is, you know, they just didn't understand that that was a process that was happening. It looked fishy to them.

And so they raised alarm bells, but it wasn't actually anything in the end. And so that can be disruptive if those individuals are getting in the way of the counting process or the voting process when they see stuff like that and they don't understand.

The voting process is one aspect of all of this. And then there's also the counting process. And over the past couple of years, you've documented as these sort of longtime nonpartisan election officials positions have become politicized. So are there concerns about how that might intersect with the vote counting process? Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I've seen a lot of reports about election workers kind of of all levels leaving because of threats and harassment that they faced after 2020, which is a legitimate thing that has happened and they're being replaced. And in some cases, the people that are interested in those jobs are unemployed.

people who believe the 2020 election was stolen or conspiracy theorists. But I don't know how widespread it is. And I think it's really hard to quantify that. A lot of these major positions, like the local election officials, are either not elected at all. They're people that are hired, that are

typically already within government, have experience in these roles. And the ones that are elected, a lot of them are not for election right now or recently. So I looked at Nevada in a story recently because that is a space where local election officials are elected and they have elections this year. Most of them stayed on. Most of them are the same county clerks that they've had for years.

They're bureaucrats. They do their job. They do a lot of stuff other than running elections, but that's part of their job. And it's not like there's this huge wave of election deniers taking over these offices. There are a couple examples in Nevada where that is the case. The new county clerks are among people who were part of the Stop the Steal movement, who believed the 2020 election was stolen, and now they are in charge of those elections there. So it is something to keep an eye out for. I'm not sure how widespread it is, and I'm hesitant to make it seem like a bigger issue than maybe it is.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, this whole issue of trusting the legitimacy of elections, it can be an issue on both the left and the right. And if certain aspects of how elections are changing or run or whatever are overhyped by the left, it can decrease Democrats' trust in the process as well as Republicans' trust in the process has clearly been eroded since the 2020 election.

So we're going to be talking to the two of you throughout the evening on Election Day, and we'll keep tabs on what we're talking about here. I should just say in advance, we're going to be live blogging really early. I think we're starting a live blog at like 10 a.m. on Election Day. We've got a lot of great content, stories that folks at FiveThirty have been working on for a long time. We're going to be recording

videos throughout the evening, posting them on the live blog and YouTube. We're going to record a podcast at the end of the evening, whenever that is, even if it's just to say, y'all, we don't know yet. So get ready. We got a lot headed your way. But let's talk a little bit about the issues. And we're going to use some campaign ads to help us with that.

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This midterm election is on track to set a record of $9 billion spent on political advertisements. I will say that again, $9 billion.

Nathaniel, what kind of ads are the parties and activist groups and political action committees spending all that money on? We reached out to Ad Impact, which is a data firm that tracks broadcast television advertising. And so they sent us back some really useful numbers with basically how much money Democrats and Republicans have spent advertising.

on TV ads of a certain issue. And this is from the beginning of September to October 20th. So it's a couple weeks old at this point, but I think the cake is basically baked.

so for democrats by far the biggest issue has been abortion they spent 184 million dollars on that the second biggest issue has been crime 77 million dollars and the third biggest issue has been quote unquote character which has been 59 million dollars worth of spending for republicans it has been taxation which is 123 million dollars and i think a lot of that is tied in

with inflation and the economy and stuff like that. Inflation was a separate category. That was $71 million worth of spending. But also number two for Republicans was also crime at $83 million. And we'll talk about kind of the back and forth between the two parties on that issue. And then the third was Joe Biden, right? Right. Yes. Joe Biden himself is a category. And of course, this is, you know, I'm sure people have seen these ads, right? Often using 538's own Biden score, which says how often members of Congress vote with

president, you'll see an ad that says like Abigail Spanberger has voted with Joe Biden 96% of the time or something like that. That's usually the context in which they're using that. Obviously, Biden is not a popular president. And they're trying to tie these Democrats who may have stronger personal brands to this unpopular president. Well, and this happened in 2018, too. These campaigns love our Trump and Biden scores. Because I guess in an era of

national politicians, it's always just easy to use the shorthand of like, okay, don't think about this person as an individual. Think about this person as a proxy for Trump or Biden. And we'll hear that as we go through some of these ads. But as you mentioned, abortion is the number one issue Democrats are advertising on. And we have an example of what one of those ads sounds like released by Governor Kathy Hochul that's targeting her Republican opponent, Representative Lee Zeldin.

According to our forecast, Hochul is clearly favored to win the governorship with a 96% chance, although there have been some tighter polls out recently that have gotten people talking about the competitiveness of this race. But let's give this ad a listen.

I'm not easily shaken, but I'm terrified Lee Zeldin could become governor. He's supported abortion bans so cruel they include no exceptions for rape or incest. And he'd criminalize abortion, which could put doctors like me in jail. Lee Zeldin is dangerous and too extreme for New York.

So abortion is the number one issue that Democrats are spending money on this cycle. When you look at voters' priorities in the actual polls, issue polling, abortion isn't at the top. That's more like inflation and the economy. So what are Democrats trying to do here in making abortion the number one thing that they're spending money on, Kayleigh? I think there's sort of two things happening. One is some of these strategies were probably planned beforehand.

Back in the summer when abortion was close to the top, it was very top of mind in the spring and early summer right after the Dobbs decision. And the second thing is they're trying to make it an issue, you know, trying to remind voters of this because they do so much better. You know, voters tend to

trust Democrats more on abortion. So they're trying to bring up and make it front of mind. Once again, don't forget about abortion. Don't forget about this monumental decision that was made. This is still an issue and it matters in this election. Nathaniel, you have watched, I think at this point, I don't know, dozens, hundreds of campaign ads this cycle. How does this compare to the messages that we see in other states?

This ad is textbook for Democratic ads on abortion. They love to tie their Republican opponent to specifically abortion bans without exceptions because those poll really, really badly. Something like three quarters of Americans oppose that. And so basically it's like a cookie cutter thing. You can watch these ads and it's like, Zach Nunn supports an abortion ban with no exceptions. Glee Zeldin supports an abortion ban with no exceptions. Like,

just on down the line. Another thing that they like to do is get what you saw in this ad is to get like doctors or people who would be personally affected, women or doctors, or in this case, it was a female doctor to be kind of the spokesperson for that message. And then a third thing that you see often in these ads, which wasn't the case here, was actually playing a clip of

of something the Republican candidate has said about abortion, often during their primary when they were trying to take the more conservative position. And I think that is a particularly powerful thing. It's like, there it is in black and white, this person saying they want to ban abortion without exceptions or whatever. Well, that brings up a question here, which is, is this ad accurate?

I mean, the governor of New York himself can't criminalize abortion. And from everything I understand that Lee Zeldin has said, he doesn't intend to try to change New York abortion law. Yeah, I mean, that's accurate. New York is not about to ban abortions. That's not really a real risk. But provoking that fear, raising that specter can be really powerful. And I mean, all political ads...

from both parties do this to some extent. They raise the specter, they stretch things a little bit, they pat around the edges to make a candidate seem a lot scarier and more extreme than they are.

Well, yeah. I mean, fear gets you to watch partisan media. It gets you to vote. It gets you to do all kinds of things that satisfaction and joy might not get you to do. Yeah, it's a very motivating emotion. And it also is such a primal emotion that it kind of overrides some of those more logical conduits in your brain. When you feel afraid, you're not thinking as clearly as when you feel calm. And that's to advantage if you're spinning the truth a little bit.

Okay, let's switch over to the Republican side. So as you mentioned, Republican candidates and organizations are number one targeting the issue of taxation over $122 million, according to the ad impact data. Relatedly, inflation ranked the sort of fourth issue Republicans are spending the most advertising money on at $70 million. Okay.

Here is one example of that. It's an ad from the Senate Leadership Fund PAC that is targeting Sherry Beasley, the Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina, for her support of the Inflation Reduction Act. It also focuses on taxes on the IRS. The Republican Representative Ted Budd in that state has an 81% chance of winning the race, according to our forecast. Let's give it a listen.

Liberal politician Sherry Beasley is coming for you and your wallet with higher taxes on almost everyone, even families making under $75,000. And Beasley's going to knock on your door with an army of new IRS agents. Beasley backs the liberal scheme to spend billions auditing the middle class, sending the IRS beast to the top.

to collect her taxes on working families. Politician Sherry Beasley costs us too much. Senate Leadership Fund is responsible for the content of this advertising. Okay, so this makes me think back for a moment to 2010. And if we were recording this podcast ahead of the 2010 midterms, every ad we played on the Republican side would be about the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, the different provisions, we'd be talking about death panels, whatever it may be.

Thinking about the parallels this cycle, it's maybe the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan. I guess there's the bipartisan infrastructure plan, although I don't think we're probably hearing a ton of attack ads on that. So how does this cycle compare? Like, are we hearing a lot about specific legislation? Is it just broader? This is what is up with the economy kind of stuff?

Yeah, I think it's pretty broad. I think of this as fairly interconnected, right? I've seen a lot of ads that have tied the American Rescue Plan, which was the bill that was passed last year, the coronavirus stimulus bill, to the higher inflation hand in hand. This IRS agent's claim is a very popular boogeyman in Republican ads.

Well, and it pulls the worst, right, of the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, right? That was something that Republicans jumped on immediately, like even before these were making their way to ads, elected Republicans were framing this as kind of like the images that we see in that ad, if you care to watch it, that's like tactical, like...

Army type agents busting down someone's door. And that's sort of how they frame this. That's not actually what it is. It's mostly it's like funding for just like normal IRS people so that they don't have boxes of your taxes lining their cafeteria, as we saw in that Washington Post story. But that's sort of how they framed it. And it seems to be a really visceral, effective twist.

Well, once again, the fear factor, right? Like the army of agents in that ad, as you mentioned, if you see it literally looks like an army. I mean, nobody thinks anyone should have their door bust down for not paying their taxes or, you know, messing up on their tax return, which is not what would happen, but it sounds awful. So it's effective. I'm curious here. The number one issue that voters are focused on is the economy and inflation. Right.

Why focus on taxes the most? Republicans have spent the most money on taxes specifically.

Yeah, that's an interesting question. You know, if I were making Republican ads, I probably would focus more on inflation. It could be because taxes or something like if you're already feeling pinched by inflation, then like having higher taxes to pay is an extra burden. And that's something that's a little more concrete, right? I mean, like this has never stopped political ad makers and spin masters before. But inflation is not something that Joe Biden and Democrats can really super control. But whether they pass new taxes is so like maybe that's what they're trying to get

And we have seen a fair amount of focus on inflation, too. True. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess maybe it's like taxes are concrete, whereas explaining your plan for dealing with inflation might look like we got to cut government spending and borrow less. And while inflation is unpopular, that message might be also unpopular. I mean, depending on how you frame government spending. But you don't have to do that. All you have to do is say...

wow, gas is sure expensive. Biden, go for me. Like you don't have to go much further than that. Yeah. And I've seen several ads that do that. And frankly, if I were running a Republican campaign, that's probably all I would do.

All right. So the issue with the second most ad spending by both Republicans and Democrats is crime, as we mentioned. So while Republicans are coming after Democrats for being soft on crime, Democrats are trying to defend their records on public safety and promise in large part that they don't support defunding the police. So here is one example from the Senate race in Pennsylvania, where it's essentially a 50-50 proposition between Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Oz has come after Fetterman in particular for how many pardons he oversaw during his time as lieutenant governor. The National Republican Senatorial Committee highlighted that in this ad.

John Fetterman is on television saying he's tough on crime. But listen to what he said just a few months ago. We've conferred more pardons in Pennsylvania than any administration in history. Fetterman says he wants to pardon as many criminals as he can and supports releasing one in every three prisoners in Pennsylvania onto the street. He even wants to reduce jail time for murderers. John Fetterman, too dangerous for Pennsylvania.

And Fetterman responded by publishing an ad where a Pennsylvania county sheriff says why he supports those pardons. So let's give that a listen as well. I'm a county sheriff, veteran, and Pennsylvanian. I'm sick of Oz talking about John Fetterman and crime. Here's the truth. John gave a second chance to those who deserved it. Nonviolent offenders, marijuana users. He voted with law enforcement experts nearly 90% of the time.

He reunited families and protected our freedom. And he saved taxpayer money. John Fetterman has the courage to do what's right. Dr. Oz doesn't know a thing about crime. He only knows how to help himself. This is John Fetterman, and I approve this message.

All right, let's talk about crime as an issue in general. It hasn't been at the top of the list when talking about voters' priorities in this election, but clearly both parties are taking it very seriously. Second most money spent on it. From my own personal experience, the one time I do watch broadcast TV is when I'm at work and I see nonstop ads on crime. And honestly, coming from both directions, like we come back around in a circle where like Democrats are actually accusing Republicans of defunding the police and Republicans

It's just sort of nonstop. What is the tactical decision-making process here? Why so much money on crime?

Yeah, I mean, I think it ranks fairly high. So in our polling with Ipsos, it ranked either second or third every time. So I think it is fairly salient once you get into the non-economic issues. But this is Republicans' home turf, right? Polls show that voters trust Republicans a lot more than Democrats on crime. This is something I think that they kind of realized in like August, September. Hey, like this is an issue we can really use to our advantage. You saw in the advertising numbers at that point that they had been

running really a ton of ads on inflation. And this was also, of course, the time that gas prices were coming down. Maybe they needed a new issue. And then all of a sudden, they started spending a lot more money on crime and public safety during this time. And what they did was, you know, they tried to tie Democrats to the defund the police movement, even though very few Democrats actually support that. They would play clips like they did in the first ad against Fetterman of the Democrats saying something that couldn't be

construed as soft on crime and basically really try to play into, again, these voter fears. The interesting thing is how Democrats have responded, right? They have also tried to reorient the campaign around an issue like abortion that's better for them, but they've actually decided to tackle this one head on, right? In the ad that you saw, there was a report about a memo that was sent out to Democratic campaigns about how best to rebut

And one of the main ones was get a trusted local law enforcement voice to vouch for you. And so you saw that in the Fetterman ad. You've seen this elsewhere. Wisconsin is actually a Senate race where this has been a big issue. Republicans really started coming in hard against Democrat Mandela Barnes on crime. And then he rebelled.

basically did the playbook where he did direct to camera ad saying, I don't want to defund the police. These are lies. He had a retired police sergeant say, I support Mandela Barnes. He doesn't support defunding the police. He's good for cops. So this has definitely been a playbook, kind of a initial ad and then a response from Democrats trying to rebut it in races across the country. Although

Although, to be clear, that is one race where Republican accusations of the Democratic candidate supporting things like defunding the police or abolishing ICE are accurate. I mean, CNN did an investigation and they found that he had signaled support for removing police funding and abolishing ICE, despite claiming otherwise. This was according to Andrew Kaczynski and MSTEC at CNN. Yeah, but he doesn't support defunding the police, though. The abolish ICE thing, he did say that before.

But he never said defunding the police. Wait.

Wait, so is this article inaccurate? I mean, he certainly said things that are very like liberal on criminal justice. So I think he also had a comment about pardons and stuff like that. But then the clip that they used to claim that he wants to defund the police was he was basically like complaining that whenever people talk about quote reallocating funds was the wording that he used that people freak out about that. And so I think he was more complaining about the commentary about it. But regardless, to my knowledge, he has not

supported defunding the police. He certainly now says he does not support it. Yeah, so this is what this report says. Though Barnes has never outright embraced the defund the police slogan, he has on numerous occasions said he supports redirecting or decreasing police funding even before the slogan gained popularity in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by police.

In one 2020 interview reviewed by CNN, Barnes told a local Wisconsin public radio show that funding should go to social workers and a crisis intervener or a violence interrupter instead of the police. So it sounds like the broad policy he has supported, even if he doesn't support it

Now, I guess, defund the police became just like a really hot button slogan during 2020. To what extent is this actually changing minds? I mean, we know that defunding the police is unpopular, certainly the slogan. And in terms of the actual policy, it depends on how you ask the question. Well, actually, in Wisconsin, I think you never want to say that correlation is causation, but it

It certainly looked like Mandela Barnes took a hit at the same time that these Republican ads focusing on crime were airing. He was leading in the polls. Now he's not. So, you know, in other races, it's maybe hard to say. The Pennsylvania race, I think, was always going to tighten. You know, Republicans have hit John Fetter and obviously, as we saw on his kind of pardons policies.

And that could be having an effect, but it also could just be Republicans coming home to Oz, who has spent the entire campaign being very unpopular. And I think it probably was going to take some time for Republicans to hold their nose and vote for him.

Yeah, I think also it's like part of the reason, in case it's not too obvious to state that crime is salient, is because of fears around certain crime statistics having gone up during the pandemic and shortly after. And people's perception of crime going up tends to be out of sync with the reality of it, that if it goes up a little bit, they think it's gone up a lot and they think it's gone up in their immediate community and that it's...

highest it's ever been or something, which is absolutely not the case. But that perception is driving some of these fears that both parties are now trying to acknowledge and campaign off of.

So you mentioned that the issue that Democrats have spent the third most on is character. Let's play one example and then we can talk a little bit about what we mean by a character ad. But this is from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that recounts domestic abuse allegations against Republican Sandy Smith, who only has a 5% chance of winning the House race in North Carolina's first congressional district.

These are the words from North Carolina court documents filed by congressional candidate Sandy Smith's daughter. My mom pushed and shoved me, slapped me. She punched me in the face. Smith's daughter even filed for a domestic violence protection order, claiming her mother violently abused her, sending her to the emergency room. Read it for yourself at SandySmithFacts.org. She's too dangerous for North Carolina. DCCC is responsible for the content of this ad.

I got to tell you, some of these political ads are really hard to listen to. What is a character ad and how does it shape voters' views? I think a character ad is basically an ad that highlights your opponent's scandals. So we at FiveThirtyEight have a definition of a scandal. It's basically an illegal or an allegation of an illegal act or something that is kind of universally understood to be immoral, even if it's not illegal, like adultery.

And so this is obviously an example of these domestic violence allegations. And then I think another really obvious example is in Georgia, where Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate there, is facing a lot of scandals, including domestic violence allegations of his own. And Democrats have aired a lot of ads, including kind of footage of his ex-wife describing what he did to her, basically highlighting that for Georgia voters.

Right. And in a midterm race where Republicans have an advantage, doing a character attack ad, it's almost like they're saying like totally like you should vote for a Republican normally. But this particular Republican is problematic because A, B and C. And it's sort of like trying to get around the preference for a particular party by attacking the specific candidate for whatever reason they can come up with.

And we have seen Republicans struggle with candidate quality throughout this cycle. So maybe that's part of the reason that Democrats are spending so much on character is that Republicans played a role in getting those nominees into place in the first place. And we saw in that New York Times polling that while voters say that they would in those battleground states, that they would like a Republican Senate, they support the Democrat in their state specifically, which would suggest that these kinds of character issues

do matter to voters. I know we sort of sometimes go back and forth about how much campaign advertising actually matters or affects the race. While we're in the thick of this conversation, what are your takes on that?

I mean, it plays a role that it's like anything else with politics, right? Money's not going to be the be all end all. Advertising is not going to be the be all end all. A single scandal might not even be enough to tip the scales. But all of these things kind of combine and are part of the story of what's happening in any particular race. But you can spend a lot of money on ads in a deep red district and be SOL because they're going to vote Republican anyway. There's many factors at play.

And of course, the third thing that Republicans are spending the most money on is Joe Biden. So connecting Democratic candidates to Joe Biden and in fact, other high profile Democratic politicians. So let's take a listen to this ad, which was put out by Andrew Garbarino, the Republican incumbent who's being challenged for the second time by Jackie Gordon.

This is what you get with the Defund the Police Democrats. Joe Biden, Pelosi, Kathy Hochul. Their woke agenda means more violent crime, less resources for law enforcement. And Jackie Gordon's another vote for the Democrats' radical woke agenda. Andrew Garbarino backs the blue. In Washington, Garbarino's a leading voice for our law enforcement.

introducing the Police Act, and fighting for the resources needed to keep Long Islanders safe. I'm Andrew Garbarino, and I approve this message. So once again, focused on crime, but also they're focused on Joe Biden himself.

I think we've gone back and forth throughout this cycle about how much the president's popularity really matters because Democratic candidates seem to be running so significantly ahead of him. You know, his approval rating right now is at 42 percent. But we've seen plenty of battleground Senate states that the Democrats there are running with like a 50 percent approval rating or around there. So in many cases, running almost 10 points ahead of Joe Biden. So there's clearly an attempt to tie Democrats.

Democratic candidates to an unpopular president? Is it effective? Because it seems like voters are distinguishing in their minds. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is the third most common spending from Republicans. So it's not their main strategy here. I think it's sort of low hanging fruit in a way, especially with these more popular candidates like

If nothing else, you can say, hey, they're the Biden party. So let's tie it. Let's put up a picture of Pelosi, who has also been demonized by a lot of people. Put a picture of Biden, stick it next to this candidate and remind you of those links. And again, this is the same thing we saw from the other side in 2018. You may like this Republican, but don't forget.

He's associated with Trump just by bearing of his party. So it's, you know, it's low hanging fruit. You kind of almost have to run these ads in those districts with those particular candidates.

Yeah, exactly. And it's important to remember that these categories aren't mutually exclusive. So I think the Joe Biden stuff, the Nancy Pelosi stuff is often tacked on to ads that also focus on another issue. So in this case, it was crime. You see it a lot with the inflation and taxes stuff. It's, you know, this Democrat and Joe Biden raised taxes or caused inflation. And it really only takes like five seconds to say so-and-so voted with Joe Biden 100% of the time.

All right, so we have been listening to Democratic and Republican ads here, but there's one race in particular this year where I think an independent candidate, even if they have very little chance of winning themselves, shaken up the race quite a bit by just accusing both sides of being extreme. And of course, that is Betsy Johnson in the Oregon gubernatorial race. Let's listen to the ad that she put out.

Tina Kotek and Christine Drazen leading the two extremes driving Oregon apart. Kotek passed a law to protect tent cities, sided with rioters over police, and led the fight to legalize hard drugs like heroin and meth. Christine Drazen wants to make abortion illegal. She's backed by a radical anti-abortion group that wants to ban all abortions. Extreme left Kotek, extreme right Drazen.

Both too extreme for Oregon. Paid for by Run Betsy Run, ID 3591.

So talk to me a little bit about the philosophy behind this act. I mean, I'm not an idiot. It must be that extremes are unpopular, but maybe not unpopular enough for Betsy Johnson to win. What's going on here? Yeah, I mean, she's trying to lean into the third option appeal of her campaign, understandably. If you don't like the extremes of the left or the right, pick me. I'm the other option.

I think it's interesting to see her campaign ads compared to the other two candidates attacking each other. They're not really wasting their time on her campaign.

And the types of attacks they're making are more specific and less trying to cast as extremes and more like this is who this person is, this is how they voted, trying to tie them to the outgoing governor who's very unpopular. Both sides are trying to do that, which is an interesting ploy. So, I mean, this is a solid third party candidate ad. And the fact that she has the money to actually run these, I think, yeah,

Unfortunately for her, kind of only helps the other two campaigns, because if you're looking at this ad and you're already predisposed to lean one way or the other, you're probably only going to focus on the half of the ad with the candidate that you don't like. Yeah, exactly. And to your point, Keelan, like, yes, the extremes are unpopular, but also most people are on one of those extremes or at least associate with them. And so basically this approach is not working for Betsy Johnson, right? She's been decreasing in the polls in our polling average. She's down to 10%. She is...

not going to win. The reality is that most people are Democrats or Republicans and don't find one of those two things objectionable.

Who are political ads working on? Because you said, you know, most people have a party that they agree with more, even if they don't necessarily like that party. So like when you're watching and you see all these ads come across your transom, oftentimes I was sitting watching TV the other day at the office and it was like a Republican ad, a Democratic ad, a Republican ad, a Democratic ad. Are most people just like tuning out

well, maybe tuning out all of them, or are they like going back and forth thinking, oh, okay, but like this person is good on the economy. This person's bad on crime. This person is like Joe Biden. Like how do people process this? Campaigns would love if they were doing that, but no.

I think people are tuning out them for the most part. I think this is a big part of why TV ads often don't work or have minimal effects. It's because if you were just hearing one message over and over again, and it was a good message, then sure, that's one thing. But if you're just hearing this cross chatter, like it's not going to make a huge difference. The way you're describing it makes me think it's sort of mutually assured destruction.

Like both campaigns have to build up their arsenal of campaign ads at an equal rate because if you let the other person have the advantage, then it might actually work. So you both just spend millions and millions and millions of dollars airing these just like nasty – Billions. Billions of dollars airing these just like nasty ads knowing that if you were to stop, the other one would have an advantage. I mean kind of, yeah. I think that's exactly correct, yeah. Oh.

Boy, Cold War. And the other thing is, you know, people complain about these ads and they're like, I hate all the negativity in politics. But have you ever seen like every now and then there's an attempt to do like a positive campaign? Like, I'm not going to attack my opponent. That stuff doesn't work.

But I interrupted you, Nathaniel. What were you saying when I went off on my Cold War mutually assured destruction tangent? Oh, I was just going to say, like, swing voters do exist. And there are probably a small fraction of voters who are persuaded by some of these ads. But the issue in this race specifically for Betsy Johnson is that, like, she's not trying to convince the 5% of voters in the middle who are going to put her over the edge. She needs to get, like...

30, 40 percent of swing voters to come to her middle of the road message. And that is just like there aren't 40 percent of voters in the middle there. Right. And like a lot of campaign strategies, the other potential benefit is firing up the base enough to get them to come out. So they see the ad for the opponent. They're like, oh, God damn it. I really don't want that person to win. I will show up and vote. Right.

Okay, so there is just a sampling of the campaign ads that have been running this cycle for folks who have not had enough yet in their own states and districts. I hope that adds some context to the pitches that the two parties are making in these final months. And at the very least, what the people who work in this stuff professionally think about

matters to voters. Before you two go, I do want to move on to a topic that you've been covering throughout this election in great detail. So let's talk about election deniers on the ballot this fall.

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The two of you have been looking at where Republican candidates fall on the issue of the legitimacy of the 2020 election since the beginning of the primaries. And I think the last time that we checked in of all of the House, Senate, and gubernatorial Republican nominees you've been tracking, 35% outright denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and another 10% or so cast doubts on the results. So that's

45% of Republican nominees this fall don't acknowledge the outcome of the country's last election. Of those candidates, how many do we expect to win their elections?

So I've been crunching the numbers on this. I published a story and I'm going to be following it through election night. Most of them, just a simple answer. The latest forecast numbers I pulled were from November 1st, and that had 66% of election deniers in solid R races. So with 95 and 100 or better odds of winning their race.

So, yeah, a good chunk, a solid majority are very likely to win their races. Most of those candidates are coming from House races because there's a lot more of those races and there's a lot more election deniers running in those races. They also tend to have slightly better odds in the House. So closer to 70 percent of election deniers running for House seats are in solid or districts. It's more like a third for governors and the Senate.

So we do expect a lot of folks who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election to win this fall. In many ways, there are already a lot of members of the House who feel that way. And we saw the results of that on January 6th when they cast votes challenging the results of the 2020 election. I think the question in some people's minds is, will Republicans get enough votes to be able to actually change outcomes of elections on a national scale in Congress?

What kind of numbers would that require? And how does that compare to what we're seeing? So in order for that piece of it to really matter, I mean, you'd have to get really far down the road already of a constitutional crisis in terms of having competing electors being sent to Congress and Congress having to decide between that. And in that case, you would need a majority in order to go with one of the fraudulent electors. That is...

not going to happen because even if republicans take a majority in the house or the senate a majority of the republicans might be election deniers but democrats plus the republicans who are not election deniers should remain a majority i think it's virtually guaranteed that that will be the case the real kind of threat for 2024 is on the state level so like governors and secretaries of state who may deny the results of the 2020 or 2024 in the future elections

I know that the two of you have also been tracking those races. Where are their gubernatorial and secretary of state candidates on the ballot who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election with a shot at winning? So there's two governors, Kay Ivey and Brad Little. So that's Alabama and Idaho, who we classify as election deniers who are most likely going to be reelected.

As far as secretaries of state, the race where I think someone who has denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election has the best shot of winning is in Arizona. That's Mark Fincham. He's leading in the polls there. There are a couple other secretary of state races where an election denier is on the ballot in Michigan, for example, but Christina Caron was not doing as well in that race. And I mean, Arizona obviously is a pivotal state when it comes to the stuff they had their election.

audit of the 2020 election that was not totally legitimate, the reexamination of it. It's a crucial state. And so having the chief election official in that state be somebody who was deeply involved in the whole Stop the Steal movement,

It'll be certainly something different. I mean, it's a lot of authority and power to somebody who doesn't believe the last election was legitimate based on inaccurate claims. So what is it going to take for him to believe that in 2024?

Yeah, I'd also throw in Nevada as a race, that Secretary of State's race, that's basically a toss-up where Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee, is an election denier. And actually, the most likely one to win is Chuck Gray in Wyoming, who doesn't face an opponent, so he's basically guaranteed to have the office already. I want to be a little nuanced here, like...

A state like Wyoming obviously is going to vote for Republicans no matter what, and so there isn't a huge risk of election subversion in that state. That said, of course, there are still Democrats in Wyoming whose vote could be in danger of not being counted because secretaries of state do have

the power to kind of interpret election laws in such a way that can really crack down on mail voting, for example. So, you know, it's not like we can be like, oh, election deniers getting elected secretary of state, but it's in a red state, so it doesn't matter. Yeah, we're talking about secretaries of state. I know that if the Electoral Count Reform Act were to pass later this year, there would be a role for governors in terms of certifying one slate of electors to the Electoral College as sort of a way to streamline that process.

The two competitive governor's races that come to mind are Nevada and Arizona. Are those the two that we're focused on in terms of the Republican candidate denying the legitimacy of the last election and casting doubts potentially going forward? As far as competitive races, certainly, yeah.

Nevada's gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo, he has raised questions about the election, but he hasn't. He's not a full-blown election denier. So I think he's a little more of a question mark. Kerry Lake, though, obviously in Arizona, as we've covered extensively on this podcast, is a ardent believer that Trump was the real winner in 2020.

Final question here. When it comes to actually accepting the results of Tuesday's election, what are candidates saying about whether or not they will accept the results of their own election? I can tell you that after the primaries...

Many candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election called into question the results of their own party's primary election. And you might think, oh, well, they lost. Of course, they're going to do that. Even ones who won. Carrie Lake, after she won the Republican primary, said, well, you know, there could have been irregularities. We don't know for sure how legitimate it was, the race that I just won.

happy to accept the nomination, but calling it in a question anyway. So I'm certain we will see instances of candidates crying fraud with or without any evidence, even if they win in some cases.

And of course, if and when that does happen, we will talk about it here. But let's leave things there for now. Thank you, Kaylee and Nathaniel. Thanks. Thanks, Galen. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. Emily Vanesky is our intern and also took the lead on putting together today's rundown of campaign ads. So thank you, Emily. Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director.

You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we'll see you soon.