The Political Stakes Of Trump's First Trial
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Activists not representing the median voter? I've never heard that before. I know. I'm here to blow your mind, Galen. Elite-driven polarization.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and as we press record on this episode, the first ever criminal trial of a former president is getting underway just a few miles away from where I sit. The case, as you likely know, revolves around hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels to try to conceal damaging information during the 2016 election.

This week, the focus is on jury selection, a unique challenge in its own right. And later this week, we're going to dig into how the demographic divisions that we see in the electorate also play a big role in choosing a jury. But today, we're going to take stock of where public opinion stands at the start of this process. We're also going to look at how the debate over abortion is playing out since Arizona's Supreme Court upheld a ban from 1864 that bars all

all abortions except for those necessary to save the life of the mother. At the beginning of last week, former President Trump said that the issue should be left to the states. But by the end of the week, he said the Arizona law went too far and will be, quote, straightened out.

And today is the deadline for filing first quarter fundraising numbers in federal election campaigns. A lot has been made of President Biden's cash advantage over Trump. But is this a good or bad use of data? Here with me to discuss it all is politics reporter Kayleigh Rogers. Welcome to the podcast, Kayleigh. Hey, Galen. Also here with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeffrey. Good morning, Galen.

And also joining us is former FiveThirtyEighter Amelia Thompson-DeVoe, who is now the news editor for polling at the Associated Press. Welcome back to the podcast, Amelia. Thanks, Galen. I am so thrilled to be here with all of you. I missed you. We've missed you. And truly, what a day to be joining the podcast and what a lineup that we have for you to weigh in on today. There's so much happening. So many polls to talk about. So many polls. So many polls.

And with that, let's begin with Trump's trial. So the Manhattan case is the first of Trump's four criminal cases to go to trial. And it's also the one that voters view as the least serious of the bunch. So 64% of Americans say the hush money case is either very or somewhat serious, according to an Ipsos Reuters poll out last week. Meanwhile, about 70% or more say the classified documents case, the Georgia election interference case, the

and the case related to January 6th are serious. Still, we are in uncharted territory here. Trump is the first ex-president to be on criminal trial, and maybe more importantly, or just as important, he's currently running for president. Some polls have suggested that a conviction could be damaging to his campaign, and either way, the focus of the campaign will now be on Trump's actions regarding Stormy Daniels and the 2016 election for the coming weeks.

So, Amelia, why don't you kick us off? What should we make of the polls that suggest that this case is not viewed quite as seriously as some of the other ones? And do you think we will actually see any of the other cases go to trial for that matter?

Well, the other cases seem to be kind of stuck in various stages of legal limbo. So none of them may end up going to trial before the election, which is not that surprising given our legal system. It is quite slow. It actually would be more surprising if multiple cases made it to trial before the election. It does seem from the polling that we have that this is the case that Americans are

take less seriously or are less likely to view as perhaps crucial

criminal behavior versus unethical behavior. There are a lot of different ways to ask about whether people think that a crime was committed or something illegal happened or how serious these cases were. So you mentioned the phrasing about the case being serious. There's another Politico Ipsos poll that just came out that was asking if people think Trump is guilty of the alleged crimes in those cases.

The number was fairly similar to the others, which was interesting. APNORC did a poll last August that asked whether people think Trump did something illegal, whether he did something unethical but not illegal, or whether he did nothing wrong. And they found about one-third of Americans thought his behavior in the Hashmoney case was illegal, and about four in ten thought it was unethical but not illegal. And I think that's really the distinction with this one, because—

because it's about this whole scandal involving a payoff to Stormy Daniels. It feels more like it's potentially a private matter. And, you know, obviously prosecutors will be making the case that Trump committed crimes here by falsifying business documents. But I think in the eyes of the public, it has the potential to appear like less of a big deal than something like interfering in the 2020 election.

Because this is going to trial before the election, we're actually going to have an answer, and the possible outcomes are a guilty verdict, an acquittal, or a mistrial.

How much of a difference do either of those conclusions make to the electorate and the outcome of the election ultimately? And yes, I am asking you guys to look into a crystal ball and tell me exactly how this is going to impact the November election. But at least what's the framework for thinking about how voters will react to this?

I mean, I think that polling gives us a good indication in that the average voter doesn't find it as serious as some of the other ones. And a lot of Americans have kind of made up their mind on this issue. And Trump, you know, a lot of his supporters, he still denies any wrongdoing. And so his supporters...

follow along and agree with that. And people who don't like Trump are just going to shake their head and roll their eyes no matter which way that the trial goes. So it's hard to imagine it. To me, all these criminal trials, the cumulative effect is bigger than any single trial could be. That said, you know, things can come out during a trial. It's going to get a lot of media attention and that could start to sway people and start to move the needle a little bit as we get closer to an election.

I take sort of the view that the trial is unlikely to move most of the public's views, but we also live in an era of highly, highly competitive elections. So really the question is, does it move a small part of the electorate?

And if it does move a small part of the electorate, then it's meaningful even if that's a very thin slice of the electorate because that thin slice is going to decide the election. So it's important in that sense. But there's no reason to think that this is going to dramatically alter Americans' views of Donald Trump because at this point, Americans are very familiar with Donald Trump and most people have made up their minds about him one way or the other.

So, at least in the context of thinking about the 2024 election, to me, it's just whether it's enough to make a handful of voters say, I just can't vote for this guy, even if I'm not happy with the status quo under Biden. I just can't do it.

Or, I mean, what if he's not convicted? You know, that's the other thing that I've been thinking about. Trump is making this case that, you know, this is Biden is pushing these criminal cases against him, which, like, obviously this one is the state of New York. Biden doesn't have anything to do with it. But.

He's been saying this is politically motivated, and it's true that in this case, the prosecutor is actually a Democratic elected official who is bringing this case. And so I think the stakes are pretty high on the other side, too. If Trump is not convicted, that potentially does bolster the argument he's making that

all of these cases against him are just politically motivated. And if none of the other cases go to trial before the election, then there isn't an opportunity for the lawyers bringing those cases, the prosecutors bringing those cases, to say, no, no, this is different, this is why it's different, and to sort of make those distinctions clear. So I think it's actually as potentially significant if he's not convicted as if he is convicted. Do you think there's a distinction between

a potential mistrial and a full acquittal in voters' eyes? I would say a mistrial is probably just status quo in a way, right? Whereas if he's actually acquitted, then he'll just really feed into the argument he's been making. I mean, if he's acquitted, that's in every ad he runs, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what he wants. He wants to say a jury in New York—

which is hostile to me, found that this democratically elected prosecutor, the charges that he was bringing did not rise to the legal standard to convict me. He'd say it exactly like that. I was going to say, it's disgusting.

I'm available to script ads. Actually, I'm not. But you know what I mean? Like, that's the soundbite he wants. Even Democratic jurors in New York didn't think I was guilty. Yeah. It's all fake news. It's a political hit job. They found me innocent, which is not a thing. But we'll totally say that.

To the point that you were making, though, even if he is found guilty, so the Ipsos Politico poll that we mentioned earlier looks specifically at independents. So if we're going to accept that Republicans and Democrats feel a certain way about Trump and are probably going to keep feeling that way regardless of what happens, for independents, 36% say they would be less likely to support Trump.

if he were found guilty, 44% say a conviction would make no difference. So if you think about, like, independents usually lean a certain way, that's a 13-point lead for that it would make no difference. Even amongst the voters who are not highly partisan, it seems like they feel a certain way for the most part already. And you have to imagine that a lot of the people who say they would be less likely to vote for Trump are already not planning on voting for Trump.

To Kayleigh's point earlier about it's maybe the totality that matters, there's another issue here, which is that this changes the coverage of the campaign for the next four to maybe even eight weeks, which is it goes from inflation just ticked up a bit higher than expected. There's been, of course, plenty of coverage about Biden's age, but it's also been a lot of coverage about his age.

There's been dissent within the Democratic Party over Biden's positioning towards Israel. So now there's going to be wall-to-wall coverage of a completely different issue that has nothing to do, well, very little to do with Biden and is all about Trump. So I wonder if maybe that is almost the bigger impact. I don't want to say it's bigger than finding a guilty verdict or an acquittal, but how much does that shape this election?

Well, I think there's a good reason to think that if you have mostly negative coverage of Donald Trump leading the news cycle for a few weeks, that his national poll numbers and even state-level poll numbers will probably suffer a little bit as a result. In the 2016 campaign, there was sort of an interesting pattern. I think it's debatable about just how significant it was.

But nonetheless, as someone, Trump or Clinton, got more attention than the other candidate, their polling numbers tended to do worse. And in the meantime, the other candidates' polling numbers, who was getting less attention, tended to do better. So as a Trump scandal of some kind would dominate the headlines, Clinton would tend to – her lead would tend to grow in the polls more.

And as Clinton dominated the headlines because maybe it's something about her emails or what have you, Trump would tend to shrink the margin he trailed Clinton by. This pattern showed up continuously throughout the 2016 cycle. I would say at the end of the day, people are mostly thinking about Biden not having done a great job as president. We could see that in his approval numbers.

If the news is mostly focused on Trump and a hush money trial and any other negative revelations that come out during it or what have you, that could definitely cause Trump's numbers to worsen. Now, the real question at the end of the day is what's the long-term impact of that or is it just kind of a blip?

And that may depend on what the actual outcome of the trial is. Yeah, I think that's a good comparison because as we discussed on the podcast, 2016 was this other time when both the candidates were so deeply unpopular. And when you have a campaign where neither candidate is very well-liked, like no news is kind of good news, you get to sort of fly under the radar for a bit while we all focus on everything that everyone doesn't like about the other candidate.

I was also just thinking about Nate Cohn was writing in The Times about this nostalgia impact that happens with presidents after they leave office and then their approval rating kind of ticks up. People sort of remember all the good stuff and forget all the bad. When you have these trials and we're sort of like imbued with the chaos that is Trump and reminded that that was the day to day when he was in office, that might bring some of that memory back to people, refresh their memories and hurt his likability a little bit there too. Yeah.

I mean, the timing, I just think, as both of you were saying, is tricky here because we're still, you know, six months out from the election. Most people are not really thinking about who they're going to vote for. They have feelings about Trump and Biden, but, you know, it's not like they have a super crystallized idea of what they're going to do in November. If the trial were happening in September into October, then, yeah, I think that's

the unfolding events of the trial could have a big impact. I'm less inclined to think that it will, even if the trial itself, the events of the trial itself, will affect the way people approach the election or even how the election proceeds, unless there's some kind of big bombshell that no one is expecting.

Just because we're so far out and because the power of the outcome is going to be so great on either side. So setting the possibility of a mistrial aside, you know, the idea of being able to say that

Trump is running and he has been convicted of a felony, like, do you want to elect a felon to the White House? Or Trump has been acquitted and he is not guilty of these charges and this is all political persecution. I think that framing and the timing is just likely to have more of an impact on people. And I just...

like we have no idea how this is going to affect how people vote because we're asking people to take a hypothetical event, which is Trump getting

convicted of this crime and then asking people to think about their hypothetical future behavior if that happens. And that just seems like a lot to ask of people. I feel like, you know, we can pretty safely say like it takes a lot to change people's minds about politics these days, but I would probably take those poll numbers generally with a grain of salt.

So, sadly, the message is we are just going to have to wait and see. You don't have those crystal balls that I referred to earlier. I'm so glad that we had a wait and see segment right at the top. So on brand. We were the worst. It might be the conclusion of the next segment, too. This is 538. But let's move on and talk about what happens next in the debate over abortion, particularly in Arizona.

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Last Tuesday, Arizona's Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law that bans all abortions except those, quote, necessary to save the life of the mother. Reporting suggests the Arizona Statehouse will reconvene this Wednesday in an attempt to repeal the law and leave a 15-week ban in place in the state. Last week, the legislature gaveled out of session without addressing the Supreme Court ruling, and it's an open question whether Republicans will be on board to repeal the law this week.

The 1876 law is currently on hold while a lower court hears challenges. Both Trump and Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, Kerry Lake, have come out against the Supreme Court ruling. One way or another, though, it's refocused attention on an issue that has proved challenging for Republicans for the past two years. So, Amelia, what should we expect from the Arizona legislature today?

this week if you'd like to, you know, pull that crystal ball back out or just give us a little bit of context. Wow. Really? You think I get my crystal ball out for just anything, Galen? Come on.

No, I mean, I you know, we obviously don't know what the Arizona legislature is going to do. But I would say that just because national Republicans like Trump are coming out and saying one thing or even state level Republicans who are running for national office like Carrie Lake.

I wouldn't necessarily expect Republican legislators in that state to follow suit because this is something that we've seen over the past decade. People have been getting elected to legislatures on the Republican side who are extremely hardline on abortion. I mean, that's how we got a lot of these bans that went into effect immediately after Roe was overturned. I think it's entirely possible that even if

Republicans running for national office or at the national level are saying, no, no, no, this is not good, state-level Republicans are not necessarily going to feel like they have to follow that. And they may feel like the right thing to do is to keep the ban on the books. Yeah. How should we make sense of how Republicans are positioning themselves on this issue, particularly as regards to Arizona?

It's bad. It's bad for Trump. It's bad for Kerry. Like, that's why they're taking the positions that they're taking. They need Arizona. They're trying to win that state. And this is not a popular position. And the Republicans are the ones that are pushing it through. So that's going to get all tied to the Republicans running in that state. It sort of forced them into a corner, as you mentioned off the top, Galen, that Trump had to

tack away from his position of let's just leave it up to the states. That's what the Supreme Court decided. That's what I'm for, to actually sort of criticizing and saying that this one went too far. And Carrie Lake has this ad that she's put out for this message, I guess video message about her position that's

very pro-choice sounding and coming against this decision. And they've sort of been forced to make that stand because of this fight happening at the state level. It's terrible timing for them. Yeah. To that point, Kayleigh, let's actually roll the ad that you mentioned where comments over the weekend were like, wait, is Carrie Lake pro-choice now? Give it a listen. I chose life, but I'm not every woman.

I want to make sure that every woman who finds herself pregnant has more choices so that she can make that choice that I made. I'll never forget the first time I got pregnant, taking that pregnancy test, looking down and I was excited.

But I'll be honest, I was afraid as well. I was nervous. I was anxious. It's natural for women to be nervous and anxious when they're pregnant. I never would ever assume that any woman had the same exact feelings I had or situation I had.

So I have some numbers that might be helpful context for why Carrie Lake may have done something like this. I took a look at AP VoteCast, which is the very large survey that happens before elections that is run by AP.

In 2020, more than six in 10 Arizona voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and more than seven in 10 said the Supreme Court should leave Roe versus Wade as it is. Obviously, the Supreme Court did not leave Roe versus Wade as it is, so then we come to 2022.

When 61% of Arizona voters in the 2022 midterms said abortion should be legal in all or most cases—again, so not really a change there—only 6% said it should be illegal in all cases.

Two-thirds of midterm voters in Arizona said the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe was an important factor for their vote. And about six in ten Arizona voters in that election said they would favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide. So this is not ambiguous, and especially because we're talking about a full ban.

Arizona had a 15-week ban before, which is a policy where public opinion is less clear. But it is very clear from these numbers that the vast majority of Arizona voters want abortion to be legal in at least some circumstances in their state. Yeah, and the tough thing for Republicans in a state like Arizona is that those numbers that Amelia just cited did not come directly

in a super democratic friendly environment. 2022 was not 2018. And while Democrats won all the statewide offices in Arizona, for the most part, in 2022, they did so very narrowly. And they did so by winning over independents and a handful of Republicans while holding all Democrats. And I think the situation with abortion was a big part of why that happened. It didn't help also that

someone like Kerry Lake or Blake Masters in the Senate race came off as a particularly extreme brand of Republican.

turnout that helped Republicans in some places in 2022, where you had more Republicans showing up because they were unhappy with the Democratic president. The 2024 electoral environment should probably be somewhat more even in terms of Democrats and Republicans showing up. So it makes sense to me that they're doing this. Going back to this law, they're pushing the issue back front and center. As Amelia mentioned, a full ban is just such a different case for

people's opinions, especially because it's, I get the sense, and Amelia, you know more about the polling on this than I do, so you can correct me if I'm wrong. I get the sense that it's hard for people if they're not very familiar with abortion or pregnancy to know what a 15-week ban means. How far along are you? What does an embryo look like at that stage? A lot of people don't know that stuff, but a full-out ban, that's pretty clear. Everyone knows what that means.

No exception unless the mother's life is in danger. They can conceive of that and they have an opinion on that. And for the most part, it's not positive. So that's not only is it putting it front and center, but it's this very stark, unpopular hard line in a state where they really can't afford to be having this debate.

Can I ask about the other part of the electorate for a second, though? According to Wall Street Journal's polling in March in Arizona, which this was before the Arizona Supreme Court decision, there was, however, about a third of Arizonans who said that abortion should be illegal except in limited cases such as rape, incest, or when the woman's life is endangered.

And then 9% said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. So very unpopular, illegal in all circumstances. But there is about a third of Arizonans who say that,

Generally, they don't want abortion to be legal. Is Carrie Lake endangering herself with that part of the electorate? Like, does this do anything to suppress and Donald Trump for that matter as well? We have heard some feedback from the more conservative, more religious parts of the party that they're disappointed in the path that Trump has taken. And now they're disappointed in the path that Carrie Lake has taken.

Do they stand to suppress turnout with the decisions that they've made? I see it very unlikely. At the end of the day, Donald Trump put three Supreme Court justices on the U.S. Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade. So he is not going to suffer and Lake, as another Republican, at least when it comes to Republican turnout,

I can't imagine that it's going to have any real meaningful effect. Disappointed doesn't mean you don't show up to vote and vote Republican. Because voting, you're not going to vote Democratic. I was going to say, there's no one else for them to vote for. And I don't think it's enough of a deviation from their expectations to make them not want to vote at all. Well, and they also may have an affirmative reason to come out and vote, even if they're not thrilled about Lake and Trump on this, because it seems...

likely that there will be one of these ballot measures proposing enshrining abortion in Arizona state constitution on the ballot in November. It seems like there are enough signatures. They've gathered enough signatures to qualify. Obviously, there still could be legal challenges. It's not a done deal yet. But we've seen what happens when measures like this are on the ballot

people want to come out and vote on this and they come out on both sides. And so I think people who are anti-abortion are going to want to have their say on that. And I agree that I think it's less likely that they would come out to vote on that ballot measure and then not

not vote for Carrie Lake or Donald Trump while they are there. Yeah, I think this all has caused something of a debate, round two, over how much the issue of abortion will shape the 2024 election. We talked about this plenty as regards to the 2022 midterm. So there will be the referendum in Florida and now likely in Arizona and potentially in other states as well, potentially Nevada, another, maybe it's gone blue a bunch, but swing state.

Then you also have the question of, well, what percentage of voters say that abortion is a leading issue for them? Are those people who, you know, were likely to turn out anyway? Will people turn out and vote to make abortion legal on the referendum, but then also cast a ballot for Trump or Carrie Lake or somebody else? How should we think about this shaping the 2024 election with the backdrop of there are many other issues that Americans are concerned about as well?

Well, if Arizona is a state that is roughly 50/50, but 60 or so percent think that abortion should be legal in all or most cases,

and there's an abortion referendum, my guess is there's going to be some segment of Trump's voters who will vote yes on that amendment, but vote for Trump. You know, this is an issue that splits the GOP more than Democrats, maybe at this point, just the way things have developed with the abortion landscape being reopened as a thing to fight over. At this point, Republicans have essentially shifted the conversation from, okay,

Abortion is legal and we're going to contest that too. Abortion is now up in the air and it really is going to depend state to state at this point where things stand. And some Republicans might even want a national ban of some kind or 15 weeks or what have you. I'm not 100 percent sure how much the referenda are going to matter to like the 2024 presidential result necessarily because you will have people who are willing to vote for Trump.

who also vote to legalize abortion or to set some sort of legal abortion standard in a place like Arizona. And there's a lot of debate about this, for instance, with like the gay marriage ban referenda in the 2004 presidential election and just how much those mattered to, say, George W. Bush winning in places like Ohio narrowly. I think there's like an automatic assumption that it's going to help Democrats a bunch that these referenda are on the ballot.

I'm not sure that's right, but I think if you're not sure, Democrats are still happier to have them than not.

Funny you should mention that, Jeffrey, because we have a story on that exact topic coming soon from our colleague Nathaniel. So your instincts aren't entirely just based on vibes. It's also based on the data that he's been poking at, which suggests that, yeah, the referenda don't actually have a huge impact on the election itself. Especially in a presidential year, because people, it's the highest turnout election already.

Anyone who is remotely engaged is probably going to show up and vote. To assume that it has an impact, you're making some assumption that there is a voter who wouldn't

have gone to vote for the president but decided to go vote because of borscht. And that's not that they don't exist, but that they would exist in a big enough number to make a difference. And voters who would be most up in arms about this are probably already of a particularly highly engaged type. Exactly. And they were already going to vote. So I'm not saying that these don't matter for maybe boosting turnout a little bit, but I just think it's, especially in a presidential cycle, something that's getting oversold quite a bit.

And to add to that, we have actually example after example of voters going to the polls and even previously, like in Florida, casting a vote for Donald Trump and casting a vote for a progressive issue like raising the minimum wage to $15. So this is something that we know happens. We shouldn't be surprised that people separate a specific issue from a presidential ballot. And to your point about who is most engaged on this issue, so we've seen from KFF,

previously known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, their poll suggests that 12% of voters say abortion is the most important issue to their vote in the 2024 election. I should say that's different from when Gallup asks, what's the most important challenge facing the country? That's more like 3% or 4%. But keep in mind, one is about

broadly the biggest challenge facing the country, and one is about most important for your vote. So 12%, not low, you know, that's a significant number. When you look into the crosstabs and see who is most likely to feel this way, it is women, specifically Democratic women, Black women, and women ages 18 to 49, and then also women who plan to vote for Biden and women in states with abortion bans.

So this is suggestive of a dynamic where there are people who feel very strongly about this. They're also likely to have planned on voting for Biden anyway. We just had a piece recently on the site, a poll quiz on this issue and showing how polling has changed since the Dobbs decision. And it's just night and day, like from...

92 to 2020, between 23 and 39 percent of adults didn't consider abortion a major voting issue at all. They were like, I'm just not even thinking about it. And that completely shifted after the Dobbs decision. And so we've seen it become more of an issue. It's more top of mind. And I think that's what those referenda actually do is bring it back to.

and make it part of the conversation, bring it back to top of mind. People haven't moved on from Dobbs and just accepted that this is the new reality. People are still mad about it, concerned about it, wanting changes in their own state, one way or the other. And that's the reality that we're in. And the more referenda they are, the more times that this has been debated in the state legislatures, the more that this is going to be part of the conversation, which Republicans really don't want.

Yeah. And I think, OK, so we can sort of hold two ideas here at the same time, which is that this isn't probably going to dramatically alter turnout in some way, but it's not a good topic for Republicans. And we see that in the polling. And I think the best way to understand this is to think about it as a persuasion issue. So if you have a group of voters who are not pleased with Biden's performance as president and

but are not comfortable with the Republican position on abortion and are reminded constantly of this fact, they may in the end choose to pick what they view as maybe the lesser of two evils, which is Biden. And I think that's really the million-dollar, the billion-dollar question in this election. Well, we're going to get to those numbers in just a second. Yeah, I know, I know. And so that to me is really the thing. And we saw that in the midterm, in the 2022 midterms. Now, midterms are not a presidential election. So...

You know, it's not like it's going to replicate itself in that way exactly. But you had at least some group of people who disapproved of Biden's performance in office. And I was looking at the Arizona exit poll in 2022, and it was like 12 or 13 percent of the people who disapproved of Biden's performance in office voted for the Democratic candidate in their local House race. And that's not a huge number. But if it was like 86-13 Republican voters,

That was different from those who approved of Biden, which was like 97 to 3 or something for Democrats. So –

It's just really about what, how much of that sort of group, and we've talked about like the, like the double haters or whatever. It's like the people who don't like either candidate. Is this the thing that pushes them more toward Biden? And that's the big question. Well, and I think that's also where the Arizona law itself might come back in, depending on what happens, because this isn't just an extreme abortion ban. It's an extreme abortion ban from, um,

the 19th century, and it is genuinely unclear how it will be enforced, who it applies to, what it means. And so, you know, we're in this weird situation where the state attorney general has said, you know, I'm not going to enforce it, even if it goes into effect. But I think it's a very dramatic example of

for people of what an abortion ban looks like because it is so old and because it is so ambiguous. This is going to be an issue that people are thinking about because of the ballot measure, no matter what. But, you know, it does kind of matter if this gets repealed before the election, I think, because if it doesn't, then this, it's really, it's much more in your face in terms of what Arizona voters are living under and responding to. Yeah.

All right. Well, I think that's a good place to leave this conversation. And Amelia, we're going to let you go and move on to the campaign fundraising data that's due today. But thank you so much for joining us, Amelia. We really enjoyed having you back. Thanks so much for having me. It was great to see all of you.

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Today, Monday, is the FEC quarterly filing deadline for presidential candidates. The candidates have to report how much they've raised, and the public gets that information almost immediately. Now, political fundraising has been making headlines

the news recently. At the end of March, President Biden hosted a star-studded New York City fundraiser alongside former Presidents Obama and Clinton, raising more than $26 million for his reelection campaign in one go. And then just over a week later, former President Trump raised a record-setting $50.5 million at a single fundraiser in Palm Beach.

As of the end of March, the Biden campaign plus his associated political committees had $192 million on hand, while the Trump campaign had less than half of that at $93 million. Biden has opened more than 100 campaign offices in battleground states and employs more than 300 people, and recent reporting suggests that the Trump campaign and RNC combined had fewer than five staff members in each of the battleground states.

Additionally, Trump in the past has allocated campaign money to spend on his legal fees, and the costs of that may rack up in the coming months.

So President Biden here has a pretty clear cash advantage, but does it actually matter? And this election cycle in particular is different because it's a competition between basically two incumbent presidents who are extremely well known. So Jeffrey, why don't you kick us off? Is using the FEC numbers or campaign fundraising numbers in general to assess the strength of a campaign a good or bad use of data?

I think in a vacuum, it is perfectly fine to use the FEC numbers. Look, we know that money in politics is important. For instance, if one side is able to consistently outspend the other on things like ads, that actually does matter. There's a good book called The Gamble by political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavrick. Friends of the pod. Yes, yes. They did a very careful analysis of...

how things went in the 2012 election in terms of the impact of really outspending your opponent on ads. Like if you run a ton more ads than your opponent does, how much of an effect is there? Well, there is a significant effect for a day or two, but then it drops off. But if you're able to consistently outspend for weeks, you know, in a row, that could actually matter.

The thing is, I'm old enough to remember the 2016 election. Aren't we all, Jeffrey? And as I recall, Donald Trump did not have a very well-organized and well-run campaign in 2016, and he won the presidency. And I think a key factor in that, or at least something that certainly helped him, was that even though Hillary Clinton's campaign outspent Trump's campaign, like close to two to one, something like that, Trump earned –

$5.9 billion in free media coverage on TV and the internet to Clinton's $2.8 billion. This is according to the firm MediaQuant back then. That was a lot more than the like 700 and something million Clinton spent and the 300 and something or 400 or so million that Trump's campaign spent. And to me, it's sort of a question of, well, we've seen Trump

attract tons of coverage in the past. And there's like a whole other conversation about the media's role in all this that we could have. But I think the point is a disorganized campaign that still attracted a ton of coverage and his message got out with a ton of attention. And now he's even more familiar to people. So the whole focus on the campaign cash situation, it's a bad use of data in the context of this presidential election.

Well, okay, question. Because we discussed earlier that earned media matters. And oftentimes in primaries in particular, you really, if you can get earned media, it's a huge advantage because it's an attention game. You're just trying to get your name out there. You're just trying to increase your name ID, your recognition, et cetera. But in a campaign where everyone knows who you are and the media coverage might be particularly negative,

Then does money matter in terms of turning around those perceptions? And then, okay, tier B question is sometimes it might seem that what folks perceive to be negative media coverage is not all that negative, right? When folks are covering like, well, Trump said this today about how he's going to deal with immigration.

For a lot of people, they may actually see that as, well, that's a policy issue that I care a lot about. And Trump is saying that he's going to do something about it. And so while in the mainstream press or liberal press, it may have a negative valence, it's not actually negative to the majority of Americans who might be hearing about it.

Did I answer my own question, Jeffrey? I don't know. Yeah, was that a question? I didn't see the question mark at the end of that. No, you did kind of answer it. Getting back to the broad original question here, it was just like, is this a good way of measuring how well the campaigns are doing?

Given what we saw in 2016, I would not point to FEC numbers as like strong evidence that Biden is seriously outpacing Trump in terms of how their campaign is working. Or even those paid staffer numbers. It's April. Let's see where they are in a few months, like June or something or July.

I just would be much more cautious about making a big deal out of this just because there is so much attention paid. Now, to be sure, if you have both candidates getting a lot of negative attention,

It will matter, I think, which one is in the news more at a particular moment, like what happened this week that got Trump more attention, and it's usually negative or tends to be more negative, and maybe his poll numbers suffer. And then a couple weeks later, Biden takes more because something happened that brought that out more, kind of like we saw in 2016. But that doesn't mean that

If Biden ends up with a ton more campaign money, that it's impossible that that won't – like it could matter. I mean if he's able to consistently outspend Trump talking about abortion in Arizona or something, an issue where we just discussed could be important for politics in that state and talking about persuasion and trying to persuade voters that –

Look, you may not be happy about everything that's been happening, but you care about this issue, and Trump is clearly in the wrong on this issue. Running an ad where Trump says, yeah, I appointed the judges that overturned Roe v. Wade and run that from here until November.

That could matter a bit on the margins, and everything's about what matters on the margins. I just think that using those FEC numbers as some sort of litmus test of how well things are going for either side is a bad use of data. Right. Money is so annoying because –

For a lot of reasons. When it comes to elections, especially the presidential election, it's so easy to find examples where it was so clear that money didn't make the difference. Bloomberg's my favorite example, which is like spending an insane amount of money. And I also agree that if you're looking at the FEC numbers and you're like, this is proof that Biden's killing it, like,

It's just not. It's not that one-to-one. However, you can't say money doesn't matter. And as you mentioned, these narrow margins in these battleground states are all that we're really talking about a lot of the time. So if you're outspending and it's shifting the needle a tiny bit, that might be all that you needed to do.

Again, as you mentioned, these are two very well-known, basically two incumbents competing against each other. Everybody knows who they are. Everybody has opinions on them already. You don't need to get name recognition for either one. Also, they both are going to have very well-funded campaigns. This isn't going to be Trump 2016. This is Trump 2024.

He's going to do just fine financially, even with spending money on his trials and everything else. He's been using that to bolster his fundraising. It's been helpful in some ways. So they're just both going to be spending heavily, and I think it's going to be pretty close either way. So that's where looking at one quarterly statement, I don't think it tells you much about where they are. Could maybe give you a bit of a glimpse of where the campaign's going, but

You know, how much they're going to be spending in the next quarter. But you just can't put too much weight in it. I do think that they have value, more value and are more helpful for like Senate and House races. Like that's where that really is more likely to matter.

But in the presidential race, there's going to be an absurd amount of money on both sides. And even if one side has notably more, like, just please don't overstate sort of the impact of it. All right. Well, we're going to leave it there for today's episode. Thank you, Jeffrey and Kayleigh. Thank you, Galen. Thanks.

My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Shortavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. Jesse DiMartino is on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast.538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.