What Will The Politics of 2025 Look Like?
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Have you guys heard of grounded sheets? - No. - No. It's where you plug your sheet into, you know, like, the three-pronged outlet, and it's supposed to mimic being on the ground. And the whole idea is that, like, we as humans don't spend enough time connected to the ground... - No, these grounded people are crazy. - ...shedding excess electrons. See, that's how people get electrocuted. I have never done it. I have a family member. We all have that family member, Galen. We all have that family member.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyPolitics Podcast and welcome to 2025. I am still Galen Druk. Different people have different rituals to ring in the new year. Some make resolutions. I myself start the new year with the ceremonial recycling of last year's wall calendar and hanging up a new one. It feels like a fresh start. I don't know that my 2024 wall calendar is entirely appropriate for air, but let's just call it cute cats wearing Speedos.

This year, I'm going in a new direction. It's cute cats wearing funny hats. New year, new me. No, I'm just kidding. I still don't have my 2025 wall calendar, but if you have any suggestions, please write it. All that aside, whether you plot your year with a cat calendar or an app on your phone, the turning over of a new year is a great time to look ahead to the coming 365 days. So today on the show, we're going to mark our

our calendars. What are the events and questions that will shape 2025? What are our esteemed panelists watching for? We're going to do that in three parts. We're going to start in Washington, where presumably most of the action will be over the next few months. What will Trump's first day back look like? What will his second first 100 days look like? Then we'll talk about public opinion. We'll get a baseline of where the public is now on some key issues and where they might go if history is any indication.

And last, even though 2025 is an off year, there are still, dear listeners,

elections and some significant ones at that. So we'll conclude by looking at those and breaking down the most anticipated ones. Here with me to do all of that is senior researcher Mary Radcliffe. Welcome to the podcast, Mary, and happy new year. Good morning, Galen. Happy new year. Also here with us is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Welcome. Happy new year, Nathaniel. Happy new year, Galen. I'm glad to be with you for, what is this, our eighth year together? Is this really our eighth year together? Let's see.

18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. Yeah, eight years. I like that you counted that out instead of just doing subtraction. Also here with us is Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Washington Bureau Chief Tia Mitchell. Welcome back to the podcast and Happy New Year, Tia. Happy New Year. Thanks for having me back.

Okay, so happy new year to all of our dear listeners. It's wonderful to be starting off another year with you. We're going to get our pencils out and mark up the calendar for the year ahead. And I'll just say, although we're already into the new year a little bit, the first major date is in a couple weeks. And of course, I'm referring to January 20th, 2025, which is

Trump's second inauguration and his second day one. His second term will begin at noon on Monday, January 20th, which is also MLK Day this year. It will begin with an inaugural address on the west steps of the Capitol. The White House has confirmed that Joe Biden will attend with his wife,

Jill. And that will kick off the start of the second Trump administration. Trump has made a lot of promises on the campaign trail about what day one will entail. So, Tia, I know you are based in Washington. This is your bread and butter. What should we expect just in the first 24 hours of the new administration? I think what's most likely is that

some type of executive order dealing with immigration at the southern border. He'll also likely, in those first 24 hours,

may not take official action, but at least broadly outline what he would like Congress to do as far as the reconciliation bill with tax cuts, cuts to federal spending. I think he'll push for that pretty quickly. But the immigration executive order is what I expect to come out first.

Yeah, I mean, he has planned to sign at least 25 orders on the first day. So I think the southern border will be only a piece of that. He's also made suggestions about, you know, how he might cut environmental regulations, do some things regarding domestic energy production, tariffs, pardons. I mean, that's all a lot. And if we think back to 2017,

A lot of the stuff that he tried to do unilaterally in the first 100 days was stymied. So I guess, should we expect this go-round to be different? I think that what we should expect is the things he can do by executive order, or at least the things he'll attempt to do by executive order, he'll do it, and then that'll become something for the courts to figure out if he went too far, and that'll take months, if not years, quite frankly.

Again, there are things that he wants Congress to do that he's going to push for. And then that becomes a question of how far is Congress going to let him go? There will be Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, but the House Republican majority really is different.

so thin, it's almost a non-existent majority because they're going to have some vacancies. They're going to have some folks who are leaving in transition. So we saw just with the government shutdown threat in December that there are Republicans, conservative Republicans, who are not just going to go along to get along. And some of it is because they want to hold true to these fiscal hawk

ideals. Some is because they are more moderate and are from swing districts. So it's going to be really hard for the House to have a coalition because we know Democrats aren't going to help carry out Trump's agenda. So what can they actually do in Congress that meets what Trump is demanding? Trump, as we saw with the government shutdown threat, makes 11th hour demands that aren't easy to accommodate.

How can they do that within the structure of Congress? Yeah, I want to get into what will become of reconciliation and the debt ceiling and all of that in a second. But I'm curious, Nathaniel and Mary, your thoughts on those first 100 days as pertains to what Trump can do unilaterally.

I think this is gonna be a really important piece of Trump's presidency generally is the expansion of executive power. We've seen the presidency becoming more and more powerful over the years, obviously.

But I think in terms of executive orders, I think I'm going to be watching really closely those executive orders on the first day and the first week of Trump's administration. It's possible if he kind of does what he says he's going to do and issues 25 executive orders on day one, that would be a record. And you've really seen that spike recently. So, for instance, in his first week, George W. Bush issued zero executive orders. Barack Obama issued five. Trump in his first term issued only four. Biden...

issue 22 in his first week. And obviously, if Trump does 25 in his first week this time, that would beat that out. There are a lot of these questions about what he can do on things like immigration. Tariffs is a big one. If he imposes these really steep tariffs on countries like China that he has been threatening to do, that obviously would have a really big economic impact. And if he does that unilaterally, I would imagine there would be court challenges, but it could be really impactful right off the bat.

But that is also an area where presidents have a lot of authority, you know, in terms of levying tariffs. I think the law is a bit more settled, whereas things like, you know, he wants to try to revoke birthright citizenship also on day one.

the law is pretty clear in that it's constitutionally protected. So I think there will be a range of things that he will do. You know, can he declare a national emergency on the migrant crisis? That also seems relatively well within the power of the president. I do expect that would be challenged in courts nonetheless. But I think there's going to be a range of things that he does from clearly the president has the authority to do this to the president be

basically certainly does not have the authority to do this. But from a messaging, political, whatever standpoint, he made the promise he's going to carry it through. And then he's going to challenge Democrats to have to put themselves in the position of wanting to defend whatever the opposite is. So, right, if he tries to, you know, undo taxes on tips unilaterally in the first week and then puts Democrats in the position of being like, no, we want to tax tips. He then gets to say, I wanted to, you know, end taxes on tips, something that is

obviously going to have to go through Congress, but Democrats wouldn't let me do it. I think there's going to be gradations of both real policy changes in the first week and political plays. Yeah. And if you look at Biden's first day executive orders in 2021, he signed 17 executive orders on the first day and a significant number of them were just reversing executive orders that Trump had signed into law in his first term.

So I think there's probably going to be a lot of that, just like taking things back to the executive orders that Trump had in place during his term. Those are things related to environmental regulations and issues where the president does have some authority. So I think there's just going to be a lot of snapping back and forth and just reversing some of the changes that we've seen in the past four years. And for some of these changes,

The conflict won't necessarily be on is Trump right or wrong. There are members of both parties who are concerned that Trump and, quite frankly, Presidents Obama and Biden as well are taking too much power away from Congress. I think that's real conflict there that is going to come to a head during this next Trump presidency.

presidency where we're going to see members of Congress from both parties saying, hey, we've got to start standing up and saying that's not your role. That's our role. So let us do it.

Tia, I think you made a good transition for us into the relationship between Trump and Congress. And that is a big question, right? Republicans have super slim majorities in the Senate, a little bit less so, but nonetheless, they don't have that much room for error. Did we learn anything from that conversation?

you know, shutdown fight at the end or middle of December about Republicans' interest in sort of playing a supportive role to incoming President Trump versus being their own sort of independent branch?

When the whole thing with funding the federal government came up and Trump demanded that the debt limit increase be coupled with it, I knew that there were lots of Republicans who are dead set opposed to raising the debt limit because they think it just gives the country more leeway to spend more.

Most of them stuck to that principle and directly defied President Trump when it mattered. And I thought that was so interesting that they had to make a choice. Were they going to be loyal to Trump knowing that?

what could come with it if they're deemed disloyal, knowing that they could all of a sudden become a big target of Elon Musk in the conservative social media and podcast sphere that exists. And so they took great political risk, but they made the calculation that kind of sticking to their guns on being fiscal conservatives was more important. And that doesn't mean they're going to challenge Trump often. I don't think that at all. But I think that's

That could pose issues for Trump. Again, he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. That requires a lifting of the debt ceiling because that's going to increase the national debt even more than what is currently calculated. Things like entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. There are Republicans who say it's time to look at cutting those or figuring out ways to make those less expensive.

Trump has repeatedly said they're off limits because he knows they're politically unpopular things to touch. And so there is going to be this battle. And I think it's going to come to a head pretty quickly this year as these conversations get underway.

Nathaniel, how do you see these fights playing out? You know, we had 30-some Republicans, I think, who did what Tia said and voted against raising the debt ceiling despite Donald Trump's requests. So the folks were more focused on fiscal conservatism than on, say, just adhering to Trump's

whims or orthodox, whatever, whatever Trump orthodoxy is, I don't know, maybe that's an octymoron. But how do you see it playing out?

For me, the guiding principle here is when Trump decides to make a big deal out of something, he is able to put kind of a stop in the works, right? That's what happened on, I think it was Wednesday before Christmas, when Elon Musk and Donald Trump all said this CR is unacceptable and basically killed it. And then they had to start from scratch, basically, and they ended up going with the slimmed down version.

Trump kind of, on the second version, when they passed it without getting rid of the debt ceiling, he kind of was just kind of like sat back and kind of

pouted a little bit. He was just kind of like, hmm, I don't love this, but I'm not going to like get involved and like really like muck it up. And I think that that is the key, basically. And I think that, yeah, obviously, a lot of Republicans are worried about primary challenges. And I think I think it's especially difficult when you have a smaller number of Republicans who are defying Trump, if they all decide to together just be like, you know what,

We're going to collectively decide we're ignoring this guy because he's making an unreasonable demand. It's a lot easier. There's strength in numbers. But if somebody or a handful of somebody get kind of left out in the cold on something,

on something that Trump cares about and kind of makes the public stink about, I think that's the danger zone. And I think that's why senators are going to be a little bit more vulnerable in that way, because it's much more about specific senators in that case, right? You get a lot of attention on individual people like Susan Collins, like Tom Tillis of North Carolina, in a way that really isn't true in the House. The House is much more of a collective organism.

I'd like to also just note, like, when we look at this spending fight that happened in December, something I thought was really interesting is that the first...

Prominent person to really be pushing out opposition to the spending bill was not Donald Trump. It was Elon Musk. Trump did not pick that up until after Musk had already been posting about it. So what I'm really interested to see is what happens when Elon Musk does that, gets out ahead of something, and Trump actually says, no, I disagree. I'm really curious what the dynamics will look like there because...

And there's a lot of Republicans, I mean, thinking about the voting faithful that really listen to what Musk has to say. And when Trump and Musk are in conflict, I think that'll be an interesting moment because it will happen at some point. Well, I think the Republican voting faithful listens to Trump first and foremost, and they listen to Musk because Trump has elevated Musk. I do think, yeah, to your point, Mary, like basically during Trump's first term, virtually every prominent member of his administration, he ended up

breaking with eventually. So I'm sure that that'll happen with Elon Musk, obviously not technically a part of the administration, but part of kind of his kitchen cabinet. So I'm sure that'll happen with Musk. I'm sure that'll happen with Ramaswamy and other folks who are officially part of government. And so, yeah, I think it could be ugly when those breakups happen.

One of the risks for Elon Musk is right now he, in this alliance with Trump and, you know, wanting to cut the size of federal government and the Doge Commission and all that stuff, is in line with the populist Trump message. But I think there are members of Congress, mostly Democrats, but quite frankly, I'm sure there are some Republicans who aren't saying it publicly, but

But there is concern that Elon Musk is using his closeness with Trump to serve his own personal interests, his own financial interests. And that is not a populist message that this billionaire is making himself more billions by manipulating Trump in our government system. And if that becomes somewhat of a rallying cry for Democrats, if there are Republicans who start expressing the same concerns that

then I think that could accelerate his split with Donald Trump. And the public doesn't really like Musk in this position anyways. I mean, if we had a poll in December from Quinnipiac, by 12 points, voters disapproved of Musk's

playing a prominent role in the Trump administration. Other polls have it a little closer, but generally voters disapprove of him in this role to begin with. Yeah, and I mean, we're going to have two strains of debate, I think, in the first 100 days or so, which is part of this is going to be immigration, culture war stuff, which I think will probably

principally be enacted by executive order. And it will, you know, like the Muslim ban from the first 100 days of Trump's first term can cause a lot of draw a lot of attention, media attention, a lot of drama, disagreement, discord.

And then there is going to be this other sort of strain of debate, which is going to happen in Congress surrounding reconciliation, what they want to do about entitlements, the debt ceiling, the tax breaks, which are going to expire.

While these are two areas where voters said we trust Trump more than we trust the Democrat Kamala Harris or whatever, there are certainly risks. And so that sort of brings us to our next section, which is public opinion. Once all of this gets underway and the gears start turning, how does the public respond? We're going to talk about that. But first, a break.

Yeah.

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The first 100 days of the incoming Trump administration will end on April 30th. 100 days is, of course, an arbitrary number, but nevertheless, it's been standard to treat it as a milestone where politicians, pundits, and the public begin to grade how the new administration is doing. Trump himself did this in April of 2017, sending out a press release claiming he had, quote, "...accomplished more in his first 100 days than any other president since Franklin Roosevelt."

And it's around that time that we should get a clearer picture of how the public is feeling about Trump Part 2. Obviously, we have no idea what will happen at this moment in time, but we know how Americans feel about it.

today. So Donald Trump will return to office with some of the most positive favorability numbers he has ever had. Since the beginning of December, Trump's average favorability has been fast approaching his average unfavorability. So just before the holidays, the percentage of Americans who had a favorable opinion of Donald Trump was around 47%. Those with an unfavorable rating was around 49%. So net negative

It's worth mentioning that Trump's worst favorability ratings started four years ago, around January 6th, when his favorability, net favorability, dipped as low as net negative 18 points. So something of a testament to how remarkable of a comeback it's been for Trump. And I'm curious, just to start, what is driving those positive numbers for Trump?

Trump. Is this classic honeymoon? Is it something more than that? Where do things begin, Mary?

Well, I think it's partly classic honeymoon. And I think especially in these particularly polarized times, there's always a question about how much of the changes in these numbers can be chalked up to differential response bias. In the wake of the election, I mean, this happens with all kinds of events, but in the wake of the election, if Democrats are feeling pretty down, they're not interested in taking political surveys and telling pollsters how they feel because they're too mad to even do that.

I also think, though, you know, in the post-election period, we've seen less vitriol, less rough edges from Trump. He's not doing rallies. Instead, he's sitting down for interviews with news anchors where he tends to come off a little softer. So that may be part of some of this turnaround.

But the one thing I would note is I wouldn't expect necessarily for this honeymoon to last super long with Trump simply because the public has so much experience with him that folks who are willing to give him a second chance may not be willing to hold on for long.

And another thing that I noticed that I think is worth clocking is that this is a less honeymoony honeymoon than I think we've seen for some other new presidents. So in December, CNN had a poll out looking at approval of the transition. And they had Trump's transition above water by 10 points, 55% approve, 45% disapprove. And you might look at that and think, oh, OK, voters are coming around. But it's

But it's worth noting that's the worst transition approval they've ever recorded except for...

Trump's first term. Every other recently elected president had numbers more like 69 for Barack Obama, as high as in the 80s percent approving of the transition. So 60s to 80s for previous presidents, Trump's at 55. It's not hard to see that honeymoon fading pretty quickly, especially if Trump takes some of these more controversial steps that he's been talking about on the campaign trail. Yeah. So for some context here, Trump

was in his first term the only president in at least 70 years whose approval rating stayed below 50% for the entirety of his first term. After day 60 of Trump's first term, his disapproval rating rose above 50% and stayed there for the remainder of his term. So I will be curious to see how quickly the honeymoon period fades for Biden.

Biden, the honeymoon period lasted a little bit longer. We saw his approval rating start to decline and fall below 50% around August of 2021 when there was the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, increasing COVID numbers.

So as soon as midway through the year, we will have a sense of whether Trump is beating past performance on keeping those numbers elevated. You know, one question I have here is, which is a bigger risk for Trump? Questions and perceptions on the economy or questions and perceptions on immigration?

Because those are the two things that voters said were most important to them. Those are the two things that Trump clearly beat Harris on. The way that they approach those two things are going to be very different. Trump, like we said, will do a lot of unilateral things on immigration, probably push Congress to do other things as well. And it could be potentially very visible.

right? Mass deportations, building sort of encampments to help the deportation process. All of this can be sort of seen by the public, who currently a majority of Americans support these kinds of measures. The economy, it's not quite as visible. Whatever kinds of debates that happen in Congress surrounding entitlements, surrounding tax breaks, it's

It's going to be a more party-wide conversation. It's going to start a little more abstract, maybe eventually get more concrete. Tariffs, of course, could be more concrete immediately. And on top of all of that, despite all of the sort of culture war battles that happened in 2017, some of Trump's worst ratings were when the Republican Party was getting ready to repeal the Affordable Care Act the first time around, right before John McCain put the kibosh on it.

On one hand, the immigration stuff is very visible and will get a lot of attention in the press. On the other hand, Americans care more about the economy and seem to have like punished Trump more in his first term on pocketbook issues than on culture war issues. I think there's a clear answer here. And I think that's that there's more danger to him on the economy. People did care about both the economy and immigration in 2024, but they cared more about the economy. And it just affects more people.

Trump's mandate was to do two things specifically with regard to those things. It was one to stem illegal immigration and or kick people out, which I think he will try to do. And I agree that if he tries to do that in a way that is ham handed and it'll maybe swing public opinion against kind of that more harsh immigration stance. But I think that could take time.

But then B, the other thing the other man he had to do was basically bring prices down, which isn't going to happen because we're not going to get deflation. Like inflation may stop. But also if he does the tariffs, then it may skyrocket back up again. So I think that's a much bigger danger for him. Well, also everything about Trump's economic plans minus entitlement cuts is about stimulating the economy. I mean, promising extending tax cuts or even lowering the corporate tax rate is

is about putting more money into the economy, which can,

create inflation potentially, right? I mean, you can make the argument that, you know, playing supply side economics increases efficiency and therefore companies should be able to create more goods and services and that should be able to bring prices down. We will see if that happens. But in the short term, it also means people are more optimistic about the economy, spending more money, maybe hiring more people. And that could cause, especially if at the same time you're decreasing the participants in the labor market, could increase prices.

There's really one area in the economy that I think if any place prices can decrease, it's in the housing market. If we don't see some movement in housing prices, some drop in the cost of being able to afford a place to live, it's hard for me to see people really starting to feel better. I mean, if you look at polling, particularly in swing states,

Housing was like the biggest pain point in the economy. So there is actually maybe a way that the Trump administration could make some moves here, maybe by putting pressure on the Fed to drop interest rates, possible regulatory moves that they could make that could impact building costs, other things like that. The problem is I'm just not sure if the Trump administration is focused on that as an issue as much as they are on policy.

prices of everyday sort of goods, which I don't think they will have as much power to impact. And I think immigration is not going to have as much effect. There are going to be a lot of people who are upset with President Trump if he does mass deportations, if he does separate families, if there are these huge, you know, detention complexes that are housing thousands of people. But I

But those people are going to be those who seek the information, are watching the news, ingesting it. And also, those are the people who are not going to like Trump no matter what he does. Right. Absolutely. I don't know if I agree with this, though. I mean, if you think back to Trump's first term—

He did this family separation and the imagery from that was so striking. And there were people all over this country and airports protesting and huge, huge public opposition. He had to withdraw the policy ultimately. And Galen, you mentioned that people support deportations of undocumented immigrants. And that's true. When you just ask a blanket poll question, do you support or oppose deporting undocumented immigrants back to their home countries? Generally, you see support. But

Anytime you add specifics to that poll question, people are like, no. U.S. military involvement, no.

So Marquette did this in December. They asked if you favor or oppose deporting immigrants who are illegally living in the United States, even if they've lived here for a long time, have jobs, no criminal record. And there's significant opposition when you phrase it like that. Once you start seeing these kinds of images, people don't like it. And I've made the point before, and I still think it's true, that one of the big problems we have on immigration is both parties are

too far away from where the American people actually are, which is a more moderate position than either the Republican or Democratic parties. I think those images could be impactful. They were before. Oh, I think so. I mean, I think they're also aware of this. And...

if you listen to his chosen borders are, you will hear messaging around prioritizing deporting people with a criminal background, trying to expedite maybe, I mean, this is what the Harris campaign wanted to do as well, trying to expedite passing a judgment on whether

the millions of people who came to this country seeking asylum under Biden have a real asylum claim or not. And if they don't, then process that asylum claim and send them back if they don't have a legitimate claim. If we do see workplace raids, if we do see children who have citizenship through birthright being separated from parents who are in the country illegally, things like that, yes. Again, how

How much of that trickles down to the broad electorate that is going to literally know how much gas costs every day of their lives? That's a different question. But I think there's a lot of gradation here. Nathaniel, I'll give you the final word here. You said decisively the economy. Have you been convinced otherwise? No, not really. I just, I think that...

I agree that some of the more dramatic and emotional impacts of immigration will be unpopular, even among swing voters. I agree that

There will be a probably a swing in thermostatic public opinion toward like a more kind of compassionate immigration policy. But I don't think that that will override people's concerns on the economy, because I think that that just affects much more people. And to Tia's point, it is easier for people who aren't affected by immigration to tune that out. People who just aren't following the news. If you don't live on the border and you aren't following the news, you're not going to be noticing a lot of that stuff that's happening in immigration.

with immigration, but you will notice things like your prices going up or down. Next up, we are going to talk about the elections that will take place in the off year of all off years 2025. But first, a break.

Yeah.

You've got the vision. Make it real. Visit Bluehost.com to get started. I want to run through some elections that will shape 2025 before we close. And let's begin with the special elections in the House. In building his cabinet, Trump pulled in House Representatives Elise Stefanik, representing New York's 21st, as well as Michael Waltz, representing Florida's 6th.

Those two seats will hold special elections this year. Florida's 1st District, formerly represented by Matt Gaetz, will also hold a special election. Gaetz, of course, resigned after being nominated for attorney general, but later withdrew from the process and also is not trying to keep his seat in the new Congress. So another vacant seat.

Nathaniel, when do we expect those elections to fill vacancies in the House? Well, we don't know when the New York special election will be because Elise Stefanik hasn't resigned yet, and that has yet to be scheduled. But the Florida special elections, the primaries, which will be the most interesting part, will be on January 28th, and then general elections will be on April 1st.

And are any of these districts competitive enough that it will either be interesting on the general election level or it will be interesting on the primary level? And of course, we all know here at FiveThirtyEight that the most interesting piece of data that comes out of a special election is the margin of change.

The swing, regardless of who wins, because we're in it for the data. Nathaniel, what do these districts look like? They're all solidly Republican seats, so I don't expect any of them to be competitive. Specifically, the two Florida districts, Trump carried by over 30 points this year. So I think those are basically off the table. I agree that it'll be interesting to see the swing toward Democrats. And I do expect there will be a swing toward Democrats because, A, it

It's during a Republican presidency. Democrats tend to do well in midterms and special elections, but then also be Democrats have generally been doing well in special elections recently because they seem to be the party that is more motivated to go out to vote generally because or they're likelier voters because they tend to be college educated, etc.

But yeah, I think the New York one is still TBD. We don't know how that voted in 2024 yet. In 2020, Trump carried the district by about 15 points. And so if you do see some of those swings that you saw in those 2017 special elections that people remember, we had some just bonkers Democratic overperformances by like 20 points or something like that. It's possible that the New York seat could be interesting. I think Republicans

Republicans would still be favored there. But yeah, it'll be much more about kind of measuring Democratic enthusiasm to vote in these elections than any possible flips. Although obviously the Republican margin in the in the House is so narrow that they will have to play very, very carefully.

Let's talk about the two states that are going to be the focus of much of our electoral attention this year, Virginia and New Jersey. Of course, there are gubernatorial races in both, as well as state legislative races. Glenn Youngkin is term limited in Virginia because famously governors can only serve one term at least consecutively, or there's no opportunity for a consecutive term. How...

Nathaniel is the governor's race shaping up so far in Virginia.

So it will almost certainly be a matchup between Democrat and former Representative Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lieutenant Governor Winston Sears. Obviously, Virginia is what I would characterize as a light blue state, and it tends to move against the president's party as well. So I would have to say that Spanberger starts off as favored. But, you know, things happen. It'll be a spirited campaign. But yeah, I think at the end of the day, it'll probably be a Democratic flip.

And how about state legislative? Democrats currently have a narrow majority, and I think it'll be competitive. And we'll see, I guess, based on just the general trend of with a Republican in the White House, Democrats will probably be energized. Maybe you would go for Democrats, but I am not deep enough immersed in the temperature on the ground in Virginia to make that call. Come on, Nathaniel. Where have you been? I know, sorry. Living literally five minutes away from Virginia. Right across the border.

Let's turn to New Jersey, which I think, even if we expect it to remain in Democratic hands, is interesting because it was one of the states that swung the most in the past presidential election. So Biden won New Jersey by a nearly 16-point margin in 2020. Harris carried it by less than six points in 2024.

So it's maybe a test of, are the politics of places like New Jersey and New York and whatnot fundamentally shifting? Was this a momentary thing? Will it, of course, these are state-level races, not federal races. Will things look different on the state level or previewing the New York City mayoral race on the city level? Nathaniel, what's your starting point? The election in New Jersey, we don't know who the candidates are going to be. There are contested fields on both sides. So I don't know.

So I think it is very interesting because, yes, normally during these off-off years, you mostly look at the Virginia race because Virginia has historically been a swing state and New Jersey has not. In the 2024 presidential election, both states were decided by six points, which is pretty wild, obviously, for anybody familiar with New Jersey and Virginia, for that matter, politics. But I don't think governor races are the best option.

Like determinant of this right governor races, while they have been getting more and more aligned with presidential partisanship are still apt to kind of go their own way sometimes. And I think case in point in 2021, the New Jersey governor's race ended up surprisingly only being a three point race. And it was fairly competitive.

And I guess you could say maybe that was kind of the beginning of a potential realignment. And, you know, sure, I'm open minded about that. I don't really know which direction New Jersey is going to go in the future on the presidential level. But I do think that we should assume that the New Jersey governor race is competitive until polls show that it isn't because of the last gubernatorial race and the presidential race. But yeah, but I'm not sure that, you know, if a Republican flips it or if a Democrat wins by 15, I don't know.

I don't think I'm going to go ahead making pronouncements about the future partisanship of New Jersey based on that. All right. We're running out of time. So I want to quickly ask what other races we are watching in 2025, New York City mayoral and Wisconsin Supreme Court. Feel free to comment on those or any other races that have caught your eye.

I just want to make a plug. The Atlanta mayor's race is up in 2025. So a big city contest. Now, for the purposes of our discussion, I don't think it's going to be that interesting. Honestly, from a national perspective, I just had to put in the Atlanta plug. But Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens is running for reelection. There was a time.

When he did seem more vulnerable, the whole public safety training center got a lot of criticism known to people outside of Atlanta as Cop City. That's now been built and will be opening soon. Some of the fury has died down, although some people said they'll never forgive him for it. But I think he's done enough in other places now.

that I think he'll be okay. But again, just making my Atlanta plug. We appreciate it. For me, less than specific races, I'm really interested in seeing how turnout might look last off year in 2020, after the 2023 elections. Our colleague Tia Yang and I wrote about how turnout has sort of shifted in these off-year elections.

In particular, since the Trump presidency, we've seen much higher turnout in the suburbs and off-year elections than we used to prior to Trump's first term. So it used to be the case that in off-year elections, you saw big spikes in the percentage of the electorate that came from rural communities. And then it sort of

dropped back during even-year elections. So I'm really curious to see if we see those patterns continue, if suburban voters continue voting at higher rates than they used to in these off-year elections. So that's what I've got my eye on. Yeah, and part of the answer to that question will give us insight into what the

hashtag resistance looks like, right? Now we've got a Republican in the White House. The shoe is on the other foot. I think a lot of people don't expect the resistance, at the very least, to start out anything similar to what there was in 2017. But are Democrats still mad as hell and willing to vote in every special off-off election on the calendar because it is in some ways a referendum on Trump?

Any other important questions that you have heading into 2025 that we won't be able to answer today, but that we will be able to answer a year from now? I mean, I think a big question is where does the Democratic Party go? You know, sometime this year, they're going to pick a new national party chair.

They're really trying to figure out what message they're going to take into 2026. They've got to figure out how they can rebuild a coalition or rebuild some of the voters they lost, I think is probably a better way of saying it. Black men voters, Latino men voters. I think we'll see that unfold throughout the year, that discussion, because they want to come in strong to 2026, where there's an opportunity to retake Congress, both the House and the Senate.

Yes, and indeed only time will tell. But that's it for now. So thank you so much for helping me and all of us start this new year off right. Thank you, Mary, Nathaniel, and Tia. Thanks, Galen. Thank you. Thanks, Galen.

My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet 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.

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