Warnock Has The Edge In A Close Race
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I mean, I have to root for my country. You don't have to. No, you don't. Like, it's more interesting. Why wouldn't you, though? It's strange hipsterism to just be like, no, I'm not going to root for America. It's like, come on, people. Like, honestly, get over yourselves. I 100% agree with this. I disagree with that. I think that people, like, root for laundry way too much and they should root for players. You mean people should vote for the candidate, not the party? Exactly, Galen. Nathaniel, I disagree. I have a more parliamentary view of politics.

This is like the most fun cocktail I've ever been to. I'd love to be stuck in a bar. That's very kind of you, Brittany.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. It is Election Day once again, folks. Tuesday's Senate runoff in Georgia will be the last stop on our 2022 midterm journey. And while control of the Senate is not at stake this time, there are still plenty of reasons these results will matter. For one, it'll determine Georgia's representation in Washington.

It will also be another test of how a candidate handpicked by former President Trump, Herschel Walker, performs in a general election. And the outcome will help determine the political future of a popular Democratic incumbent in Raphael Warnock. Plus, on a nuts and bolts level, if Democrats do have an outright majority in the Senate instead of a 50-50 split, they will have advantages in committee appointments that could speed up Senate confirmations.

So today, we're going to look at how things are playing out in Georgia, or as I like to call it, America's voting-est state. Later in the show, we're also going to dig into the debate currently roiling the Democratic Party. No, it is not progressives versus the establishment. It's one state's Democratic Party versus another. And the question is, which states should vote first in the 2024 presidential primary?

And if Democrats do actually want to supplant Iowa and New Hampshire in the lineup, who has the power to enact the new scheme? We will get to that. But first, here with me to kick things off are two Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters who you've heard from before on this podcast, Tia Mitchell and Greg Blustein. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Hey. Hey.

Hey, thanks so much for being available. I know that this is probably one of the busiest days of the year for you two. So I'm totally honored that you made some time for us here at FiveThirtyEight. We'll get right to it. According to the FiveThirtyEight polling average in Georgia, Warnock has a two point lead over Walker. So there have been eight polls of the race since the runoff. One showed a tie, one showed Walker with a one point lead, and the other six showed Warnock leading.

Does what you're seeing on the ground, Tia, support the idea that Warnock is leading this race? There are a lot of things that I would say I've seen on the ground that support the notion that Warnock is leading. He's raised more money. He's campaigning more robustly. He's campaigning in a way that indicates he's trying to broaden his coalition. The polling you mentioned is

That being said, it's like it's still so close. I can say there are things that I wouldn't be surprised if Herschel Walker wins because there are things that I've seen that indicates his base is just as fired up.

Greg, how are you viewing this question? Yeah, look, I think Senator Warnock has an early lead because Republicans tend to think Senator Warnock has an early lead. I get texts from Republicans all the time saying it would take a miracle for Hershel Walker to win at this point, and then texts from others saying, hey, he still has a solid path to victory. What we know is that early voting numbers tend to favor the Democrat. We don't know exactly what those early voting numbers results are from those, of course, but just using the analytics,

A disproportionately high number of African-Americans voted. That's the cornerstone of the Democratic Party here in Georgia. And more voters and Democratic strongholds have voted than Republican strongholds by far. So, you know, most Republicans feel like Senator Warnock is at least in the 52 percent hovering around that area right now. But you can't count Herschel Walker out.

because, A, a lot of those early voters also tend to be older, 50-plus, and the few polls that we've seen showed that Hershel Walker is on edge with those older voters. But I think more importantly, Republicans tend to dominate on Election Day voting. Hershel Walker beat Senator Warnock on Election Day of the midterm by double digits, and Republicans need that sort of huge turnout on Tuesday to win. So there is a path, but right now things are tilting in Senator Warnock's favor.

Right. As you said, we can't guess at what the results are going to be based on the early vote as much as folks like to talk about the early vote. But one thing that the early vote can help us determine is whether or not this will be a high turnout election in general. What we've seen in the past in Georgia pre the 2021 runoff is that there's a significant drop off in turnout and there's a differential drop off, which is to say that usually Republicans are

have been better at turning out in these kinds of runoffs than Democrats. Can we look at the early vote at this point and say, at the very least, we think this is going to be a high turnout election for Democrats? I feel like that's a hard question to answer because this runoff is different because of Senate Bill 202, the condensed runoff window. So, for example, early voting set

one day records three different times during the five days of statewide early voting. But part of that is because there were fewer early voting days compared to how runoffs have been conducted in Georgia for the past, you know, several years. And so overall, early voting was down a little bit.

But again, that's because early voting was limited. So there really are no apples and apples to compare it to. I will say that anecdotally, and Greg, of course, let me know what you think. But I think anecdotally, voters are really engaged in this runoff. It's not like, you know, there's a lot of drop off in interest. But the question I think that's going to really affect turnout on Tuesday is,

is number one, the Walker factor. If Republicans are going to brave what could be rainy conditions to show up for a candidate, some of them don't really believe in. Interesting. So the weather is taking center stage here as well. Yeah, it's soggy in Atlanta on Monday. It's soggy in Atlanta. It's expected to be soggy in most parts of Georgia on Tuesday. And Tia's exactly right. When you look at this early voting, you have to look—

It is huge numbers last week, but you also have to know that it's through this funnel, right? There's this shortened window. And so, yes, those numbers are high, but it's still squeezing one week of early voting into a process that used to be three weeks as recently as last year's epic runoffs. At the same time, I think that the Republican effort to restrict Saturday voting about 10 days ago

completely backfired and ended up turbocharging democratic turnout. We saw that the weekend before the mandatory early voting period. We've seen this become a staple of Senator Warnock's closing message, which is in his argument that Republicans have tried to block voters from casting their ballots for whoever it might be. And we've even heard it from Governor Kemp and other Republicans sort of flabbergasted at why the state GOP and national Republicans tried to restrict

that weekend voting, giving Democrats that sort of talking point in this homestretch. And as you mentioned early, there's other dynamics that are working against Hershel Walker beyond his gaffes and stumbles.

And that includes the fact that Senate control is no longer on the line. And if you ask a lot of voters on the ground, like Tia and I have been talking to back in the midterm, even the skeptical Republican voters who were squeamish about Hershel Walker, many of them said, hey, we're still going to vote for him because we don't want Democrats to control the Senate. Well, now Hershel Walker is deprived of that really crucial argument to make. He can still say it's for a 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate, but he can no longer say, hey, this is for

Lindsey Graham taking over this or that committee like they were making that argument earlier this cycle. Yeah, I mean, so this is an interesting election because we already have one example of what it looks like when Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker go up against each other. I'm curious, one, what we learned from that election, what we learned about the makeup of the Georgia electorate maybe compared to 2020. It seems like Republicans gained some ground, although obviously still lagging in the Senate race.

They clearly gained some ground in some of the other statewide races compared to Joe Biden's win in 2020. But also, have the candidates taken any lessons from that election and applied them to how they're campaigning now? Which is to say, like, I think one of the big national lessons was maybe abortion mattered quite a bit. Maybe democracy issues matter quite a bit. That inflation is still a prime issue, but people are holding two ideas in their mind at once. So what are you seeing on the ground with regards to that?

One of the big lessons we learned is that split ticket dynamic in Georgia is very real. Now, we were talking about that since the summer because the polls started showing a split ticket between Governor Brian Kemp and

voters backing Kemp were also backing Senator Raphael Warnock, which is not something that happens in Georgia in many states often, which is a split at the top of the ticket. But we were seeing this very defined trend happening in the polls. And even some senior Republicans were saying, hey, this is not likely to last. Even some Democrats were worried because, you know, as the November vote nears, people tend to go home, go back to their party's basis. Well, that didn't happen. 200,000 fewer voters backed Hershel Walker than Brian Kemp.

And so when you look at this runoff phase and lessons learned and different strategies, Senator Warnock is still making a sustained appeal to those split ticket voters. He has the resources to do so, right? He's raised $52 million plus in about a three week span. He's broken all sorts of midterm records here in Georgia and nationally. So he can afford to go after the base and after those swing voters as well. And one of the biggest reasons

events he held for them was a Dave Matthews band concert a few days ago that our colleague Patricia Murphy joked there was not a babysitter in Dunwoody in the suburbs of Atlanta around because there's so many middle-aged white voters who fit in that sort of swing voter category. But he also could have Barack Obama come in and energize the base just a few days later. As for Hershel Walker...

I haven't really detected much of a change in his message at all. I've gone to lots of his events. His message is pretty much the same. He threw in a line saying how Governor Kemp needs an ally in Washington. But aside from that, it still appealed to the MAGA base. He's talking about gendered pronouns and transgender issues.

and a lot of the same issues. And that's not for a lack of trying from his team. I've talked to many people on his campaign who said they want him to pivot and have a more expansive message and try to win back those Kemp-Warnock voters. But his message is still the same, so he's leaving it to Governor Brian Kemp and other surrogates to try to appeal to those middle-of-the-road voters because Herschel Walker hasn't been doing that himself. And Galen, you mentioned like

the themes of like the economy and abortion and crime. And what we saw in the midterms, you know, ahead of the general election was like, yes, economy, inflation, the prices of gas and groceries was like top of mind for voters from both political parties. But,

But abortion was still a really motivating factor, particularly for those who wanted protection for abortion access. And we know that's something that has helped Warnock with independent voters, for example. Crime is also a big concern in Georgia, particularly for those who live in and near metro Atlanta. But it's not always...

gun control that can also apply to those who want more gun rights because they feel like access to guns can help deter crime. So we did see those play out. And even if they weren't number one, they still were a factor in races, of course, across the nation. But I do think particularly on abortion, where, you know, we had Herschel Walker, who

initially indicate that he opposed abortion with no exceptions, but then it comes out that two women said he paid for their abortions. And so that perception of hypocrisy did not help him particularly again with those moderate and swing voters.

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Are we hearing like Warnock, for example, really double down on abortion or does it still look more or less like his November campaign? I'd say more or less like his November campaign. He's always tried to do this kind of two-step where he's appealing to the party's base. He's saying, hey, you know, I supported expanding voting rights. I oppose abortion restrictions. You know, I voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, all these key principles.

Biden proposals. But at the same time, he doesn't, or he only rarely mentions the B word, Biden, on the campaign trail. He's mindful that Joe Biden's approval ratings in Georgia continue to hover around 40%. And so what he wants to do is give liberals a reason to vote for him, but also give middle-of-the-road Georgians safe harbor.

So he's not going to be out there speaking about Joe Biden much or liberal policies that we might have heard Stacey Abrams talk about in the midterm. I mean, she was talking about reparations, for instance, which is, of course, very polarizing for many Georgians. So he's not talking about those issues. Instead, he's talking more about working with

Republicans like Ted Cruz, Tommy Tuberville, Marco Rubio even. Yeah, he had an ad out that was all about his work with Tommy Tuberville in the Senate, right? Yeah, and you can see at the rallies, and I know Tia's seen the same thing, you can see when he brings up working with Ted Cruz, for instance, you can see jaws drop.

I mean, you know, we've heard this speech 20 times, but these voters haven't. You can see Josh, why is he talking about working with Ted Cruz? But he uses an example as, and he's talking about not a huge, you know, controversial policy. He's talking about a highway construction project that may never come to fruition.

But it's something they co-sponsored. And he's saying, hey, look, this is an example of how I can work across party lines. And it kind of gives those middle-of-the-road swing voters permission. Hey, OK, he's not out there talking about these hot-button issues that they might be hearing about in conservative media. Instead, he's talking about working with the likes of Ted Cruz. So it's a really interesting strategy and one, frankly, he's been doing for months.

But it's gotten him this far and he wants to continue to do what it can, what it takes to not alienate those middle of the road voters. Right. And that's kind of like a contrast because on Herschel Walker's side, we do see his stump speech, including a lot of rhetoric that is kind of alienating. Every stump speech he brings up, you know, we shouldn't have men competing in girls sports and like,

That's not a top of mind issue for probably most voters. You know, the whole issue of transgender girls in sports, there are, you know, relatively very few. So when he brings that up, people who are Democrats, people who think that transgender men and women or the LGBTQ community in general are being unfairly targeted, that's a turnoff, you know? And we see a lot in Herschel Walker's stump speech that's like,

red meat for conservatives, but it doesn't really give moderate or swing voters much to latch on to. He just doesn't, like Greg said earlier, he hasn't broadened his message.

Right. And the challenge here being that it's not just a question of whether folks will vote for Warnock or Walker. It's also a question of whether folks will turn out at all. And so, you know, if people potentially had a reason to turn out in November to vote for Kemp and also might have ticked the box for Walker as well, those voters may just stay home. Or, you know, obviously there were the 200,000 who voted for Warnock. They may show up again and in fact vote for Warnock.

But I think at least part of what folks are watching in this election is the political future of somebody who appears to be very much a rising star within the Democratic Party. Friend of the site, David Rabashkin, calculated that Raphael Warnock has raised $301 million in campaign contributions in the three years he's been a politician. Again, unbelievable.

$300 million. Like that's a crazy amount of money and basically unheard of outside of presidential campaigns. It probably helps that he's essentially run four times in those three years. What is going on here? Like how is Raphael Warnock able to raise so much money?

So I think some of it is a byproduct of, number one, when he first became a candidate, he had the backing of the party apparatus as the chosen candidate. And it was, remember, this was a special election, so there was no primary, so to speak. It was all the candidates from all the parties running together. And then the top two, which we knew it would likely be one Democrat and one Republican, would then go to a runoff. So I think

Initially, it was about coalescing around Warnock as that chosen Democratic candidate in that special election. But also, I think that the money shows what was at stake with that race, particularly when it came to the runoffs and particularly now for this midterm cycle where he's going for a full six year term. You know, there are bigger implications for Democrats beyond just we like

Raphael Warnock and want him to win. In 2020 and 2021, it was Democrats trying to flip control of the Senate. And then the runoffs, it came down to these Georgia seats to flip control of the Senate. And then now it was about protecting this incumbent to keep Democrats in control in the Senate. So I think

Don't get me wrong. He's been a very effective candidate. He has really impressed people both as a candidate and during the two years as a Senate. You know, he's made some really effective floor speeches, for example. So I think Democrats like having him around. But I also think Raphael Warnock has benefited from such high stakes as he's running every time. Sort of.

a vessel for hopes and dreams of like national Democrats. So you'll have Democratic contributors giving him money from every state in the country. Yeah, his most lucrative state is California. There you go, yeah. And think about it. In 2021, almost a billion dollars was spent on Georgia's elections. And we're talking Senate and presidential, but that's an insane amount of money being spent in the last election cycle. And of course, we're setting midterm records. Senator Warnock's like fundraising campaign

trajectory has been fascinating for me to watch because in early 2020, yes, he was the party favorite for this open U.S. Senate seat in the special election, but the money wasn't pouring in. I mean, I would go to events with him where the small town mayor would get a longer line of selfie line than Senator Warren, the future Senator Warnock would. And it really took

this moment against then Senator Kelly Loeffler, where she was the owner of the WNBA franchise here in Atlanta called the Atlanta Dream. And she'd come out against Black Lives Matter, the movement, and the WNBA promoting that logo, the Black Lives Matter mantra. And so she wrote a big letter and made a big stink about it and helped energize her supporters,

But he also used it to help energize his supporters, really make a name for himself. And the first big fundraising moment for Senator Warnock was when WNBA players essentially endorsed him and opposed their own team's boss by wearing Vote Warnock shirts, stark black shirts with white lettering that said Vote Warnock on national TV. And after that, his fundraising started to skyrocket.

And that was what put him on this trajectory. But Tia's right. He also benefited from these high stakes nationally. But he now has this, he comes in, he came into this race with this unbelievable donor list. And all four of those candidates raised a ton of money. Even Kelly Loeffler, basically a billionaire, raised a ton of money in that 2021 runoff. But Senator Warnock now entered this race with that huge Rolodex and he used it to too much advantage right now.

Wrapping up here. So we're talking about a race in which it looks like Warnock has the slight lead, but we wouldn't be surprised if Walker pulled it out. Ultimately, this race is close by any measure, considering that we can expect pulling error to some degree and we can't predict the direction in which there will be error.

But I'm curious on a more macro level, every other statewide Republican won their race this year and the governor's race wasn't ultimately that close. You know, there was a seven point gap basically between Kemp and Walker.

Is Georgia a purple state or a red state in your estimation? Okay, Greg wants me to go first, even though he's like the ex, he wrote the book. Literally wrote the book. Oh yeah, that's right. You were on this podcast to talk about the book about it going purple. Yeah, exactly. But I would say that that's another reason, again, why so much is running on this Senate race because it's,

If Democrats can't win in this environment with such a flawed candidate in Herschel Walker, it shows that really a lot of the successes in 2020 and 2021 had a lot to do with Trump dragging them down. So I think that we'll learn a lot from the outcome of this Senate race. But that even let's say Herschel Walker wins.

It'll help show that like a lot of what happened in 20, in 2021 in Georgia, Trump was a big factor.

But it still shows that Georgia is winnable if Democrats have the right candidate in the right environment. But it'll be tough. It'll be tough. Now, if Warnock is able to win, I think Democrats will be able to say it's less of a fluke and more of a trend. But again, looking at these midterm results, it's not a guarantee. And again, the candidates matter a lot.

I think Tia's exactly right. And I think Georgia's going to continue to be a competitive state. It might be a purple with a deeper shade of purple. It might be, you know, we'll see what happens on Tuesday. But look, there's a reason why Georgia's looked at as an important early voting state and why Joe Biden's trying to move up the schedules, because not just because of its diversity, which is a huge reason why, but also because

Democrats, national Democrats think Georgia is going to be an important battleground state for the next decade. And frankly, Republicans know that too. No one publicly, they might say Georgia's a red state. Privately, every smart Republican I talk to knows that the demographics, the trends, the population dynamics are shifting towards a more and more competitive state. And that, hey, Republicans won in a midterm election cycle here in the November midterm, at least.

with conditions that favored Republicans. But those things could flip back in 2024 or 2026. So we'll see. And I'll mention that our reporter Alex Samuels is on the ground this week trying to answer a little bit more of the questions surrounding whether or not Georgia is a purple state. We're going to talk to her later this week on the podcast, and she'll be writing something for the site. So make sure to check that out. We're also going to be live vlogging, of course, another election night live vlog on Tuesday night as the results come in. So join us

But you mentioned the Democratic primary calendar and Georgia, and that's exactly what we're going to talk about next. So we'll do that. But Tia and Greg, thank you so much for joining me today and good luck on Tuesday night and over the next 36 hours. I know you've got your work cut out for you. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Thanks a lot. The Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee adopted a new presidential primary calendar on Friday. The plan was proposed by the White House and would make South Carolina the first state in the nation to hold a Democratic primary, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on the same day a week later, then Georgia and lastly, Michigan.

That's a pretty big shakeup from the current lineup, which is Iowa, then New Hampshire, then Nevada, then South Carolina. It's also a long way off from becoming reality. The party can say whatever it wants, but state governments generally determine when states actually hold their elections.

Joining us now to talk about how all this could play out are senior elections analysts Jeffrey Skelly and Nathaniel Rakich. Hello, Jeff and Nathaniel. How's it going? Hey, Gail. And also joining us today is ABC News national politics reporter Brittany Shepard. Welcome to the podcast, Brittany. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to chat.

It's a pleasure. I should say that you and I got to know each other in the ABC Green Room while we were covering the midterm elections. It's so great to have you on the podcast. And I should also say that you were actually at the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting. And these things can be sort of odd.

What was this meeting like this time around? Were Democrats feeling themselves after a perhaps better than expected midterm performance?

It's so interesting you say that, Galen. I think I've been to every RBC meeting in the last six months. It's a lot of hotel basements with bad Wi-Fi and very long procedural conversations. But I will say there was some kind of energy in the room. We were in the basement of the Omni Shore Room Hotel here in D.C. decorated for Christmas. There were lots of Christmas trees. People were in the spirit. And folks like Donna Brazile, the former head of the DNC who now sits on the RBC, I always say she likes to bring the committee to church.

every time she was there. And she definitely did that on Friday.

And it was clear that they had some wind to their backs. They were less afraid of Republicans, especially those Republicans in states who set election days. And I'm sure we'll get into that. We'll get into the degree of how the DNC doesn't actually set laws, right? So what they say is not Bible. They actually have to get states to set the days of their primaries. But a lot of them just said, screw it. We're just happy to be here. And they were super happy to hear from Biden, who had been pretty silent all up into the

Thursday night, he sent a letter to Democrats as they were in the closed-door dinner right before the meeting saying, here is my grand edict. Screw you, Iowa. We're bringing South Carolina with my friends and Jim Clyburn to the front of the window and scrambling the rest of the window, pissing off New Hampshire and Iowa. I want to say, like, not all Democrats are super happy. New Hampshire Democrats and Iowa Democrats especially feel super slighted. Scott Brennan, the Iowa delegate, said,

said, I want to read something from his statement that he believed the Democrats were creating a quote, self-fulfilling prophecy of electoral failure in creating a Fox News bubble for presidential candidates in which they have no opportunity or responsibility to meet and communicate with voters in red-leaning states.

So clearly not a tacit endorsement of what Democrats have met there to do. But there is a little bit of swag. You know, they think that they can get away with a lot, obviously. And they're hoping and praying that they have state legislatures and state parties on their side to let that happen. Yeah. And this was a pretty bold calendar, as you mentioned. They ultimately, to whatever extent they have power over this, approved Biden's plan, which

What were other folks saying about it beyond, obviously, Iowa and New Hampshire, who are not happy about it at all? Well, generally, it was a near-unanimous voice vote. It was all the A's except for two of the names, New Hampshire and Iowa. Mignon Moore, who's the co-chair of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, saying that this is a window worth fighting for. Donna Brazile giving an impassioned speech, actually moving Jamie Harrison, DNC chair, to

tears, saying that she's not going to abandon a president who is winning for the American people. There was a lot of uniting for a party who is usually under the headline Democrats in disarray. You know, I've never heard that headline before. Right. You know, it's so foreign to Democrats to not be in lockstep with D.C., but no, but really in a more serious way.

You know, Democrats here are trusting the White House, but they wanted to make it clear that they're not doing this window just because Biden said so. Obviously, that'd be a big over-the-table handshake to him. He's the presumptive nominee for now. We know how much cachet a president saying he will or won't run actually runs deep, right? But they wanted to show that they care about diversity, right? This is what is most important to them, they say.

Racial diversity championing all others, but geographic diversity being another large tenet of what it means to be a Democrat now. And they want this window to look and be representative of what Democratic voters look like writ large, you know, which is a mix, right? Which is why South Carolina and now Georgia and Michigan are being added. Okay. I have to say here, though, let's bring in some data, right? Yeah.

Jeff, you've crunched the numbers on how much each state's electorate looks like the Democratic Party, because they've been talking about this for a while. South Carolina is the 46th most representative of the demographic makeup of the Democratic Party. Georgia is the 45th. Iowa, of course, is the 42nd. So also not very representative, as we already knew. New Hampshire is the 34th. So a little bit more representative. You know,

none of the ways there, other than maybe Michigan shaking up the primary, are super representative of the party writ large. So, you know, what's the thinking here? Well, I'm pretty sure that

Moving South Carolina to the front is basically a move to strengthen the voice of black voters. Obviously, Joe Biden won South Carolina, and that shifted the landscape of the 2020 presidential primary significantly. He's close to Jim Clyburn, who's the dean there for Democrats and very powerful within the party. So in a sense, it could be a sign of rewarding South Carolina while also

playing to the fact that the party wants a more diverse early set of states. So why not let South Carolina, which where black voters will make up a majority of primary voters, have a bigger say than having Iowa and New Hampshire having traditionally led off two very white states. So it

It's a combination. It sounds like you might also be saying that part of it is political strategy, i.e. Biden having done well there, his sort of part of the party, if you will. I mean, he's the leader of the party today. So that part of the party is quite large, you could say. But he perhaps wants to strengthen moderate voices, perhaps, you know, if he one day sees Kamala Harris running for

the nomination, South Carolina, then Nevada, seems like of all of those states, potentially the most advantageous to her. So is it fair to say that there's political strategy going on here as well? Well, sure. I mean, I think that the viewpoint is that states like South Carolina, Georgia, Michigan are probably less likely to go for

a very left-leaning white candidate, like say a Bernie Sanders, you know, who carried New Hampshire, of course, or, or Iowa where, you know, who knows really what the result was there in 2020. It was, it had sort of different winners depending on which, which vote you followed and what we got like weeks after the fact anyway. So I do think that there, there's obviously some of that sort of larger strategizing. It also could even be a sign that

Biden is going to run again in 2024. Putting South Carolina in that position is clearly, I would say it's the kind of move that would make it less likely that someone would get in the race against him because it's not a place where they would necessarily find a lot of support. At the same time, of course, we know that, as you said at the outset, that just saying that you want South Carolina to go first does not necessarily mean it's going to happen.

I do want to jump into and add a little bit of context I heard from some DNC members on background. There's a lot of personal politicking happening with this order, too. You know, we can't underscore enough that Jim Clyburn and Joe Biden are close. Without Jim Clyburn, Joe Biden probably won't be president right now. I mean, we can go into a couple of theories why that might not be ironclad, but he owes a lot to Jim Clyburn.

You know, a lot of the states in the early windows, Democrats want those to be competitive states. What is South Carolina? Not a supremely competitive democratic state. Not a competitive state at all. Right, right. And let's think about the order of these states because they matter too. If South Carolina went second, third, fourth, or fifth after new additions of Georgia and Michigan, what do those two states have that Georgia singularly has?

black voters, right? So if those black voters in the Midwest and in the South vote before Jim Clyburn's voters, what does that make South Carolina? A little obsolete in the process. The delegates know this. The White House know this. Smart people who track these sorts of things, they know this. And

While the White House and the delegations will come out and say this on the record, it's certainly part of private conversations. You don't want Jim Clyburn against you. He's a very powerful enemy, the only elder statesman that will be in the next lineup of Dem leadership on Capitol Hill, right? You need these people to help you get your day job done, right? And you don't think about that when they're trying to make these posturings, but that's a little bit a part of it too.

If we think back to 2020 for a moment, I think the title of our podcast, The Night of the Iowa Caucuses, was a show in Iowa. Folks, remember, it was, you know, the vote telling process was a mess. It took days to sort through. As we've mentioned here, there's still some disagreement about who even won the Iowa caucuses.

It's clear that that's not the only reason this is happening, because there had been grumbling about the first two states within the party for a while. But would this be happening without that? Was that like the straw that broke the camel's back? Or was this we were headed towards this moment for the Democratic Party regardless, Nathaniel?

Um, I do kind of think it was the straw that broke the camel's back, because I think it provided an opportunity for Democrats who had been kind of champing at the bit to demote Iowa and New Hampshire. And it just gave them this this excuse, along with, I would say, Iowa's kind of drift toward the right and kind of, you know, I think a big pushback.

part of why Iowa and New Hampshire have gone first is that they're competitive states. And like, if you invest a lot of infrastructure in those states early on in the campaign season, that can benefit you in the general election. But we just had an election where the only statewide

uh, democratic office holder left in Iowa is, um, Rob Sand, the state auditor. It's, you know, become increasingly safe. Everyone needs an auditor. This is true. Rob Sand, friend of election Twitter. No, I'm not. No, I'm saying he did very well. Rob Sand is a, you know, democratic God in Iowa now. Um, but, uh, but you know, I think that a lot of Democrats are wondering why are we still investing so much in, um,

You know, in Iowa, when it's not paying dividends in a general election anymore. So, yeah, I mean, after the the, you know, kind of catastrophe that happened in the reporting of the results in the Iowa caucus, that obviously, you know, cheesed a lot of people off and provided this hook. Did you say cheese just because it's the Midwest?

No, that's Wisconsin dealing. I've never heard that expression before. You should know that. I've never heard that expression before. Really? Yeah. Okay. You're so modest, Nathaniel. I want it to be less profane. I will want

I will want to just to piggyback off that for a second, Nathaniel. In the letter Biden wrote the DNC, he did say that there should be no more caucuses in the primary process. He's saying, I have the quote here, that it's anti-participatory. People have been trying to kill the caucuses for a while now. That's not new. So it kind of is a cluster, a perfect storm of everything kind of going wrong at once where they can finally nail them to the wall and say-

I'm really trying to get by way to be a thing. I'm trying to get it to be a thing. We'll see if it catches on. But let's also remember that Troy Price, one of the men who ran the Iowa Democratic Party during this whole kerfuffle, now is in leadership in the New Hampshire Democrats, who also are in the Democratic Party.

If the DNC delivers on some of the punitive actions that they say they will, like delegate stripping or rescinding of waivers by January 5th, if these states can't prove that they're actually making steps to change their law, they're ker-put. And there's already another primary on the calendar in the same way the New Hampshire primary goes. So if they're killed, then, you know, there's still four in the window.

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I want to get into the chaos that could ensue in terms of trying to actually enact this calendar. But first, the Democratic Party, as they try to supplant Iowa and New Hampshire, has laid out certain criteria that they were looking for. And we at FiveThirty, you specifically, Jeffrey, looked at all of those criteria and sort of determined that if they followed those criteria to a T, what would the calendar actually look like for the Democratic presidential primary? What did you find?

So earlier this year, Democrats talked about shuffling the early state calendar and they talked about wanting to prioritize diversity. So racial, ethnic diversity, union membership, labor unions remain an important part of the Democratic Party.

how competitive the states are in the general election, and then also whether or not they were holding a state-run primary or if it was more of a party-run primary or a caucus. They wanted to prioritize accessibility, so state-run primaries would be the most accessible type of that.

So on the whole, I would say that the way that they've sort of shifted things does to a large extent – or the way they're trying to shift things I should say. To a large extent, it does sort of move more toward what my data sort of showed. Nevada actually led the way in sort of when I scored things across all 50 states and DC.

Using those four criteria, Georgia ranked pretty highly. Michigan ranked pretty highly, you know, top 10. So bringing bringing those two new states in, along with having Nevada already there would would go a long way on that front.

South Carolina and New Hampshire did not score as well, but at the same time, they are – they do – very accessible. They're state-run primary states. And depending on how you're sort of thinking about diversity, just overall diversity is one thing. But if you're very focused on the role of black voters, then South Carolina obviously would fit the bill on that front. And New Hampshire is a very competitive state in general elections. So –

It would seem that these moves would shift more toward sort of fulfilling what they said at the outset earlier this year. Yeah, Jeffrey, I don't know, though. I think it just underscores the hypocriticalness of them and how much it is truly about politics rather than these objective criteria that they set out, right? If it were truly about these objective criteria, Nevada would clearly be first, right? Yeah.

there's no debating that South Carolina, which they put in the first position is like down in, you know, like the middle of the pack, like lower half, even I think in your, in, in your rankings. And like, while it's true, I've like, I feel like they brought in like, you know, Georgia and Michigan to be kind of like, you know, counterbalances a little bit, but like, you also have to remember like,

Then now there are going to be five early states, which like I don't think Americans have the collective memory to keep five early states in their head. And like what was the fifth early state before? Like it was Super Tuesday. Right. Which is like basically California, which because of its delegate hall was the kind of the biggest hall. Right. And California actually outranks Georgia in your rankings. Right.

Um, so like, I kind of think this is eyewash. Like if they were really interested in these criteria that they set out, they would have put Nevada up ahead by keeping South Carolina in a prominent position by keeping New Hampshire. They showed that they are still kind of bowing to the political pressures in those states, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Like, you know, like the interests of black voters and general election competitiveness and the, the kind of retail politics that New Hampshire provides. I do think, you know, that has value to the democratic party, but like

I don't think they deserve a lot of credit for sticking to the quote unquote plan. Well, I think Democrats also, at least what they've been telling us reporters and meetings over the last several months that they don't want complete chaos. If they get this through, which is something fresh, right? First of all, let's acknowledge that. But

If they are able to get their proposals through, then we're going to be seeing two concurrent primaries because Republicans are not changing their calendar. So Republicans are going to be in Iowa at the state fair while Democrats are at like the fish fry in South Carolina and then pop up to somehow both be in Nevada and New Hampshire at the same day when Republicans are somewhere else. Right.

Right. So like they don't want a complete media frenzy. They still want some kind of national media coverage. And they know they kind of have to run somewhat close to Republicans to make that happen. Doesn't mean that very good excuse. I don't know. Really not on me to judge that. But that's some of their thinking anyway. OK, so let's talk about that. Yes, there are going to be competing calendars. It looks like if Democrats do actually want this plan in place, what has to happen?

State laws have to change, right? Like, especially in New Hampshire, they have a law on the books that say they have to be the first primary. This worked in the last calendar because Iowa was a caucus, even though now they're a mail-in only caucus. So is that really a primary? Semantics, I guess, doesn't even matter because Iowa is out of the loop now. But Governor Sununu says he's not interested in playing ball with Democrats anymore.

Democrats have at least some kind of trifecta in Michigan so that they can get that state law changed, but they also rely on Secretary of State in Georgia. Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who's already in hot water with other Republicans for quote-unquote turning his back on Trump, if that's how you want to look at it, also doesn't have a ton of incentive to put a date on the calendar that benefits Democrats and Joe Biden. So they're running up against a legislative clock

And the DNC has given these states until January 5th, a month from today, to prove to the Rules and Bylaws Committee that they are working to get those laws changed if they aren't able to prove. And it's also like it's it's these are like non tangible like evidence.

This framework is intangible for these states, right? You don't have to prove X, Y, and Z. Just prove it to us. If they aren't able to just prove it to them, the early state waivers are null and void. And they have to run on Super Tuesday or after Super Tuesday, which is kind of a shit show, if I can say shit show. You can certainly say shit show.

Okay, well, it's a show and it's a cluster. And I'm not sure just as a reporter how they're going to make this happen within 30 days, not to mention trying to get the legislatures on their side. Pretty, um...

You would probably know this. Is this the final word from the DNC? If New Hampshire says, no, we're moving it ahead, like, you know, strip our delegates if you want. Is there a world in which the DNC backs down and lets them keep their delegates and says, OK, New Hampshire can go and then South Carolina and Nevada can go together? Or is this it? Sure. Sure.

No, it's not the last we're going to hear from them. The grand old DNC meeting is in February and the entire DNC has to vote on this. I think that they will. But if there's some kerfuffle and something happens, the rules and bylaws committee can meet again. They can meet whenever they want and they can meet virtually if they want to do rules changes.

I think a lot of delegates and committee members would be pissed off if they had to, because it's taken months, if not years, to enact these changes. But they have all the way up until February, the big February meeting, to get those changes written in stone. Yeah. I mean, to sort of the conversation about whether this is going to happen, I mean, there are a lot of moving parts. I think one of the advantages for South Carolina, and Josh Putnam at Front Loading HQ mentioned this, I just want to cite my sources, he's

very astute observer of presidential primary politics, is that South Carolina has a history of having two different primaries for the two different parties. And so for other states where if you're talking about the Democrats and the Republicans having potentially two different calendars, it's a little challenging in a lot of these states because if you have a state-run primary, most states consolidate that. Both parties go on the same day.

And in Georgia, for instance, Brad Revisenberger doesn't have the – he has the wherewithal to move the date, but he doesn't have the wherewithal to say we're going to have two different dates. That's not something that's within his ability to do on his own in terms of setting dates. And obviously running two different primaries costs more money. And unless – South Carolina has history with this and they've been doing it, but other states may not want to do that. So –

There's just a lot of moving parts, and obviously New Hampshire has this law in the books that makes it, I think, more straightforward for them to push to keep their spot. Iowa technically has a law saying that they have to have caucuses before the first primary, but I think it's worth remembering that in theory, Democrats could hold –

I don't know, delegate election caucuses that don't have any sort of presidential vote attached to them and then go later in the process with an actual binding vote on determining which candidates they actually support. So

But anyway, the point is lots of moving parts. And I am skeptical that these five states will actually lead off in this order in 2024. So it sounds like we're going to come back to this conversation because it's not going to be a straightforward process. Just to close out this conversation, though, how much does this all even matter? Because like, let's remember here that

Joe Biden, the current president, came in fourth and fifth in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020. He did a little better in Nevada, but didn't win a single primary until South Carolina. Now, that is the first time I think that the nominee didn't win one of the first two states since Bill Clinton. So it has happened before, but it doesn't happen frequently. Should we look at Biden's experience and say all of this doesn't ultimately matter so much anyway? Or was Biden more of a fluke?

Well, he was a former vice president, so he has name recognition and he has money in the bank, which is why the order of these states matter. It started in Michigan, which is a big state with expensive media markets. If you're Jill or Joe Blow candidate from, you know, coming from nowhere, you have no name recognition and you don't have a ton of money, then you're not going to be able to make momentum because you just can't afford it. Right. And you might be a superstar in the party. But if there's no infrastructure to navigate that,

in an affordable way through their early state process, then you're tanked by the third or fourth or fifth. For sure. You're bringing up a really good point that we didn't mention here, but that part of the argument for not having large states go first is that it allows for the kind of retail campaigning that Nathaniel, you mentioned, because think about, you know, the Atlanta media market, right? The Las Vegas media market.

it's expensive. You have to be a good fundraiser. And look, there are folks who would argue that in order to be a good fundraiser, you have to have a good campaign infrastructure and you have to have good name recognition, things that would help you win the presidency ultimately anyway. But there are also, you know, there are probably very famous, very successful Democratic presidents who never would have made it through the primary process if they had to compete in big states first. And those people might include Barack Obama and say like Bill Clinton or something like that. So

Well, that's what DNC delegates were arguing, Galen, especially from smaller states who didn't want Michigan in it at all. It's like we wouldn't have had Obama if Michigan was first. I don't know if that's exactly true, but that's certainly been the argument for the past six months. I don't think that's true. No.

Okay, fair enough. Yeah. I think Obama would have probably won Michigan had it been eligible to go first. Because if you look at the vote totals for that primary that didn't count, that Hillary Clinton's name was on the ballot, but Obama's wasn't.

Clinton did not get as much support as you would think if it was just her, for the most part, is the big name. So I think a lot of those arguments are based on presidential primaries from a different time. The presidential primary process starts so early now.

that basically any candidate who's going to be in the race is going to have pretty high name recognition by the time you get to actual voting. I mean, you know, we're doing debates in like late June and July of the year before the primaries. You mean in September? Thanks for reminding us. It's a different animal. Jimmy Carter hanging out in Iowa for a year is just like not the same thing anymore. Jeffrey, you're telling us we're being too quaint. Yeah.

No, no. I'm just saying that I find, I think those arguments may have once had merit, but I think they don't really anymore in the same way. I, yeah. I also think that there is actually value in going somewhere like third, like, like that is distinct from the value of going first, especially for a state like South Carolina, like the media and, and other Democrats are savvy enough to recognize the differences between these states, right? People understood that, um,

A lot of questions were unanswered until South Carolina voted because it was the first state with a sizable black population and black voters are so important to the Democratic Party. And so I think that this is the benefit of having states with diverse populations from each other, not just internally diverse, kind of constitute the quartet or quintet or triplet. Yeah.

Why can't I use English? Um, like, you know, like having those States, having States that are regionally different, right. A Midwestern state, a Northeastern state, a Southern state and a Western state. Like, um, I think that there, that shows that there's value in that. And I don't think that you like, especially a state like South Carolina, it doesn't have to go first to be meaningful. It's good. It's better to go, you know, first or third than to go 35th. But, um,

And then the last point that I would make is that like whether, you know, we're a politics podcast, you know, we're interested in the horse race and who wins the nomination. But it's also worth noting that it is very important to the states who goes first. Right. It's important to Democrats in those states who are building the infrastructure. Exactly. It's important for financial investment in those states. Even the TV stations in those states are going to benefit tremendously. So, yeah, like I think it does matter.

Let me tell you, Nathaniel, I stayed at a Holiday Inn in Des Moines, Iowa during the state fair, and I think it was like 350 bucks a night. So yeah, the money matters too. We're going to leave it there for today. We'll have to all get back together and talk about this again as it continues to come up in the news. But thank you, Brittany, Nathaniel, and Jeff.

Thanks, Gailen. Anytime. Thank you, Gailen. My name is Gailen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and 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 a review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.