A Snowball's Chance and a Path Through Heck
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Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. This week, I have one guest, the inestimable Dave Wasserman, who will give us the overview of the races for Congress, both House and Senate. But first, my feature rant. This week, I'll be ranting about why Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley still have a snowball's chance in heck of winning and what their paths to victories are slim as they might be. Let's dive in.

Well, it's the middle of December and things should be getting hot as the temperature cools down because we're less than five weeks away from the Iowa caucus. The first time that real people cast real votes for our real contest. But is it a real contest? Certainly all the polls are telling us it's not. All the polls are telling us that Donald Trump basically is waltzing his way to a coronation.

that he'll sweep the field in Iowa, he'll triumph in New Hampshire, he'll deal a death blow to Nikki Haley in South Carolina, and he may not even have serious competition by Super Tuesday. At least that's what one interpretation of the poll says, and that's the narrative that the Trump campaign is promoting.

Let's start with the recognition that right now there's no evidence to dispute that. Donald Trump remains ahead in national polls and all the early state polls. Momentum on behalf of Nikki Haley has not yet brought her anywhere close to being within distance of the leader. And Ron DeSantis has stopped declining, but he has not started rising. So if you look at the data, you would have to say, OK,

Lots of noise, but ultimately signifying nothing because Donald Trump remains the favorite. So why are these candidates still doing it? Well, they're still doing it because there is some sort

theoretical path for both DeSantis and Haley. And that's what I'm going to lay out for you so that you can start to look and see whether or not these benchmarks get hit as we approach the Iowa caucus and then beyond. The first thing is that the two paths are completely different, and that's because they're really appealing to different segments of the Republican electorate. Ron DeSantis's theory was that he was a Trump who can win.

So you have heard him sound more Trumpy in his attitude, more Trumpy in policy, things like focusing on social issues more, and also talking about COVID, which is not something that Nikki Haley talks about at all, and being decidedly less supportive of Ukraine. Now, the failure thus far has been twofold for Ron DeSantis. First,

A lot of the Trumpists still think that Trump can win. The Trump who can win wins the argument when it looks like Trump is going to lose. But when Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in virtually every national poll and his standing is increasing, it's a little hard to say, hey, guess what? Don't stick with orange man because orange man is going to lose and the country is going to go to heck. Well,

Well, for me, when they look and say, hey, he was our champion and he was wrong. And now it looks like people are coming around to our cause. Well, you don't give the people a whole lot of reason to switch. The other thing is that DeSantis, by focusing on the group that admittedly is the key group for the constituency, people would be happy if Trump were the nominee, but might be persuaded to look elsewhere, is that he says nothing to the Republicans who don't want Donald Trump.

And there are two types of those Republicans, the people, maybe 15 percent of the party who really don't like Trump but are still Republicans. And then maybe another 15 percent who were fine with Trump as president but don't want him again for a host of reasons.

So if you're not talking to them, you're not picking up support among them. If you're not persuading the Trump supporters who theoretically are willing to look elsewhere, you're not picking up from them. And that's why Ron DeSantis is basically stuck at 20 percent in the polls. He's not moving to his Trump left. He's not moving to his old guard right.

Enter Haley. Haley's argument is essentially, I'm the conservative coalition builder who can win, which means that she's been stoking on themes that appeal to old guard conservatives and moderates alike. Moderates tend to like the fact that when she talks about social issues, she talks in non-conservative, angry language. They also like the fact that she's not harping on populist themes. Conservatives who are traditional like the emphasis on

tax cuts, on cutting spending. They like the emphasis on a neo-Bush foreign policy. And so she's sending a clear message to those people. And the failure of Mike Pence and Tim Scott's campaign essentially means that she has won the mini primary for that

And that group is not a majority, but it's somewhere between 20 and 35 percent of the Republican Party. Almost all of her momentum is explained by this growth, that she has won that many primary. And those people are coming home to the candidate, the only candidate in the field who's really asking for their vote. Of course, the failure is that what all the polls show, if it's a one on one race, is that candidates,

between 60 and 66 percent of the Republican voters don't want that candidate. That if 30 to 35 percent do,

The flip side is a supermajority don't. And every poll shows that half of DeSantis' supporters would prefer Trump to Haley and that none of Trump's supporters right now would be persuaded to peel off. So that means that Haley's path is to basically finish second and set herself up to be the old guard candidate if Trump loses in 2028. But there are paths for both of them. And here's what they are.

DeSantis, everything is Iowa, Iowa, Iowa, Iowa. And that's because this is the early state where the conservative base and the Trumpist base is the largest segment of the electorate.

What he needs to do, essentially, is peel off 20% of Trump's vote and add it to his own. Right now, he's trailing Trump in the most recent seltzered Des Moines Register NBC News poll, 51 to, I think it was 19. You take 20% of Trump's vote, that brings him down. 20% of 51 is about 10 or 11, that brings Trump down to 40. Add that to DeSantis' vote, that brings him up to 30. And suddenly, what you're looking at is...

is 40 to 30 to 20, with 10% going to the others, a few to Ramaswamy, a few to Christie. And there's always going to be somebody who votes for Doug Burgum or votes for Asa Hutchinson or votes for Ryan Binkley. It's just the fate of all SoRan candidates. They get enough people that they think somebody likes them, but then you get to election day and find out that it's a very small audience.

He also has to hope that his organization means that the polls are not representing his actual voting strength. What pollsters try and do is estimate the...

electorate, but they can't be precise. And if the organization that is supposedly so legendary to winning Iowa, in which no one doubts that he has a strong organization in Iowa, means his voters are likelier to show up, then 20% of the polls may actually be 24% on caucus day, you know, which is to say it's not enough to win, but it's enough to make a difference. So you get both of those things. And the DeSantis ideal, again, would be 40-30-20-10.

Trump wins, but he doesn't win by the runaway margin. And there's clearly more than a narrow majority of non-Trump voters.

That then means that he can go on and he will not do well in New Hampshire because as the candidate looking at the Trumpy conservative Republican base, a state that is historically moderate and that allows registered independents to vote is not a good state for him. So he will get trounced in New Hampshire. But then you go to the Nevada caucuses and this is a place where he's going to be helped by Haley's decision.

The Nevada party did not want to have a voter primary. They wanted a smaller, more activist audience. And so but they could not convince the Democratic legislature to stop the primary. So there is going to be a primary on February 6th, the Tuesday, and there will be a caucus on February 8th.

They passed rules that you can be on one or both one or the other, but not both. Nikki Haley decides to put her name in for the primary. Ron DeSantis is putting his name in for the caucus, which means that you can't cast a vote for Nikki Haley in the caucus.

So what do you do if you're a Haley supporter? Well, you either don't show up at the caucus or you go up and cast a vote for somebody else. And most people who are going to vote for Haley are not going to vote for Trump. That could mean, again, a surprise, not necessarily a victory. That would be a stunning outcome in a caucus. But if Donald Trump wins,

only beats DeSantis in a low turnout caucus that everyone believes is tilted in his favor, if he beats him by only 20 points instead of 40 points, that's news. Because then what you can argue is that you're going to have a primary and that in a larger electorate, you can win.

Then you go to South Carolina. He doesn't have to win, but he has to knock Haley out. This is her home state. She was governor of South Carolina. She was a state representative here. If she can't win there, she can't win anywhere.

So a repeat of 2016 would work for DeSantis, which is to say a Trump victory. But him running roughly even with Haley in his home state, in her home state, that if Trump got 40 percent of the vote and she got 25 percent and DeSantis got 25 percent and then 10 percent just float, you know, they do what they always do, which is cast their votes for for nobody candidates. Right.

That would be a win for DeSantis because he could turn to you can't win your home state. I've shown that I can hold Trump close. If you get out of the race, I can beat Donald Trump. That is his optimal scenario. And then she drops because if she can't win there, it's going to be really hard for her to argue that she can then go on to Super Tuesday.

And then he gets the one-on-one he's been craving. And then there's a primary in Michigan. He can win that if it's a one-on-one. The D.C. caucus. D.C. was one of Trump's worst.

places in 2016, because guess what? The Beltway Republicans still don't want Donald Trump. If he can't win D.C., he can't win. So he wins there. Idaho is then the next caucus. That's got a lot of Mormons. Mormons have been traditionally resistant to Donald Trump, and given a conservative alternative, he could very well win Idaho.

or hold it 50-50. Missouri holds caucuses. Again, he doesn't have to win, but he has to hold it close because that keeps the narrative going into Super Tuesday that the vote matters. And then he has to do well on Super Tuesday. He doesn't have to knock Trump out. This is going to be the equivalent of World War I, of trench warfare, not the equivalent of World War II with the blitzkrieg, with Trump playing the part of France, the country that everyone thought was stronger than it was, but collapses at first pressure.

This is going to be much more of an attritional battle. But this is the path for DeSantis.

Do I think it's likely? No. Do I think it's possible? Yes. And that's what I'll be looking for when I see DeSantis' campaign over the next five weeks. So why does Haley's path? Haley's path runs for New Hampshire. She has to have a strong third place in Iowa. But what that means is basically replicating the Marco Rubio vote. If she gets 20 to 25 percent in Iowa and wins the areas dominated by college-educated voters,

then she, as long as DeSantis hasn't knocked out Trump, you know, if it's 50 by Trump and Haley finishes second at 25 and DeSantis stays at 20, then DeSantis has no chance. And Haley can turn and say, look, you put all of your money in, you put all of your time here, you did the full grass, so you never, you dropped, you dropped, you dropped until I beat you. It's time for you to drop. It's time for you to drop out. Well, that's a very strong argument. And DeSantis would actually be foolish.

to continue if he finished third in Iowa. So then she gets the one-on-one she craves, although in New Hampshire, it won't be a one-on-one because Chris Christie has the identical strategy. Chris Christie won't succeed because he alienates Republicans and only appeals to non-Republicans. But there's enough non-Republicans who vote for a primary in New Hampshire for him to at least hold until then. So her play is

get a one-on-one among Republicans with Christie off to the side and finish a strong second in New Hampshire. 45-35, 15 for Christie and five to the rest. If DeSantis is in, you know, maybe drop that to 40 for Trump, 30-35 for Haley, 15 for Christie. And then Christie drops out. Christie's pretty much all but said he'll drop out after New Hampshire. If

If he doesn't emerge, that's what he did in 2016 as he tried places bets on New Hampshire did OK there, but not well enough to continue. Unlike John Kasich, who turned a miracle second place finish, which was a wipeout compared to Trump into the belief that the people were clamoring for more John Kasich. Narcissism can reign supreme in the minds of these people.

Then she goes to South Carolina and with DeSantis out of the race, with Christie out of the race, with an appeal to independents who can vote in South Carolina, there's no party registration. She wins her home state.

And so then one way or another, either DeSantis has dropped after Iowa or DeSantis drops after that. And then it becomes Haley. And then what Haley does is he she basically follows the DeSantis. She wins in Michigan where, again, there's no party registration. People who are independents or even Democrats can vote.

She wins in D.C. because she's the candidate of the D.C. establishment, and the D.C. establishment lives in, guess what, D.C. She appeals to Mormons as the last standing anti-Trump candidate. Maybe not wins Idaho, but keeps it close. Missouri is also a state that has no partisan registration. The caucuses are open to everybody. You have to say you're a Republican, but if there's a Haley groundswell, there's Haley enthusiasm, there's people who say,

I don't want a Trump-Biden rematch, and the only alternative I have is Nikki Haley. Who knows? Again, do I think this is probable? No. Do I think it is possible? Yes. These are the things that I'm going to be looking for as we get into the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, and these are the signs that you need to be looking for. When Nikki Haley makes a big deal out of Governor Chris Sununu's endorsement, that's her

her trying to build the New Hampshire base and send the signal to independents that I'm the type of Republican who builds coalitions. When Ron DeSantis trumps Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the evangelical group, the family leader, and Kim Reynolds in Iowa, he's doubling down on that state and saying, I'm the conservative fighter who can win. I'm the conservative fighter who can serve two terms. I'm 30 years younger than Donald Trump and so forth and so forth. They're both

as we look in the next four weeks, likely to double down on these strategies and how they slightly supplement them and augment them with things to try and reach a slightly broader base, will largely determine whether or not we have anything to talk about on the Republican side after the New Hampshire primary, or whether or not this puppy is going to go to bed really early and that we're going to have the longest general election campaign in history.

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Well, joining me this week, we're going to have our first guest talking about Congress. Yes, there are things that are going to be voted on besides the presidency of the United States, and the person who knows more about them than anyone else in the country is our guest today, Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Dave, welcome to Beyond the Polls. Thank you. I know that was a mouthful of an introduction, so nice job getting it all down perfectly.

Well, you know, that's what happens when you practice with marbles in your mouth saying rubber baby buggy bumpers 55 times.

So Cook Political Report is one of the earliest, one of the biggest names in the political analyst business. You guys were cool before all this was cool. But you have a perch in part because you pioneered kind of the rating system that is now de rigueur for any serious sort of analyst. Could you explain how Cook Political and you personally approach this?

establishing your ratings for Congress, for governor's races, and even for the electoral college? That's a great question, Henry. And it all goes back to Charlie Cook, who founded the report in 1984. But he...

was trying to come up with a way to convey to interested groups and subscribers where races stood in relation to one another. Which were the races that were going to decide control of Congress and how competitive were they from an objective standpoint? And obviously there's a lot of science and art that goes into it.

I try and blend the qualitative and the quantitative in my approach, as you do quite well, I'd say, Henry. And let's be honest, I think there's been a shift towards the quantitative side in the last 10 years. Everyone's got their algorithm. Everyone's got their model of how each and every race is going to turn out. And yet...

I kind of reject a one-size-fits-all approach to forecasting congressional elections because there are unique, unquantifiable factors at play in each district.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates? And we try and meet with as many candidates as we can. It used to be that when I first started in 2007, we were a revolving door of Republicans and Democrats making their case to us in person of how they were going to win their primaries and their general elections. Nowadays, a lot of those interviews go through the party committees for efficiency's sake. I think that has to do with

decline in the importance of raising PAC dollars in DC relative to self-funding and big fundraisers back home or outside super PACs and groups. But we probably still meet with between 80 and 100 candidates for Congress a year at various gatherings. And from that, we can get some perspective that

might not be published on the internet to the average junkie. And so, you know, we're all kind of graded on a curve as political analysts, but I would like to think that that extra step of talking with the candidates, media strategists, pollsters, allows us to be a little bit ahead or at least call a few races more correctly than others. I have to say, I

I'm not in the business in the way that you are, so I don't have candidates streaming into my office to get the coveted Henry Olsen toss-up or leaning party gain thumbs-up. But when I was in Nevada last year, I did convince the Washington Post to let me run around and interview all the Republicans challenging there, and there was a

clear quality difference. Now, I didn't print that necessarily because I'm not going to say blah, blah, blah is X and blah, blah, blah is Y. But it didn't surprise me who got winnowed out and who got winnowed in and how based on the candidate's

ability to think on their feet, their understanding of their challenge, the way in which they navigated the questions. And I can, after experiencing it, I could see why it has been such a stock and trade for people like you, Charlie, Amy, and your colleagues. That's right. And, you know, I can think back on some meetings that, you know, changed our thinking of a race or some demographic trends that were

that were important to understanding what was going on. You know, I remember the census data about

the diversification of the Inland Empire of Riverside County convinced me to move Mary Bono Mack's race to toss up in 2012. And a Democrat, Raul Ruiz, ended up winning that district, even though that had been historically a Republican seat. And so if you're only paying attention to

to the gossip in DC or on the ground and you're not looking at spreadsheets, you're missing half the picture. But if you were to put those vice versa, you'd also be missing half the picture. So it is a question of how do you calibrate and weigh each of these factors that can influence a race.

Would you say, with respect to the quantitative, that you put more emphasis on poll data, more emphasis on baseline demographics or national trends, or kind of weight them equally? Well, clearly, the biggest factors that predict what's going to happen in a congressional race are

What happened in the last race in the district? What were the margins both at the presidential level and the congressional level? Is it an open seat? Is there a popular or unpopular incumbent running? Does one side have a competitive primary? Is one side raising a lot more money than the other or has the personal ability to fund the race? These are

important questions as are the biographies of the candidates. So I think it's context dependent and race dependent. There are some situations where one factor, for example, if you've got David Trone with $13 million running in Maryland's 6th district,

you know, that's going to be a huge factor in what happens in that race. But then you have, I think in 2022, what we saw was that even the statewide top of the ticket can be highly influential in congressional races. And so

Democrats fared rather poorly in New York State and in Florida and in California. And even in Oregon, they underperformed. But they performed really well in Michigan at the congressional level because Gretchen Whitmer was doing well. Likewise in Pennsylvania and to some degree in Ohio. So, you know, I'm always trying to learn...

new lessons from what happens in each election. And I think recently there's been a kind of a resurgence in the importance of candidate quality, particularly in midterms, particularly in the Trump era. And yet in 2024, we could be looking at a much more nationalized election if the president's approval ratings remain this low. I mean, that's one of the things that...

flummoxed me in 2022 is that the clear trend from, say, 2006 to 2020 had been increasing nationalization, less matter. The candidates mattered less, both at the senatorial and the House level. The

growing symmetry between top of the ticket at a federal level race and bottom of the ticket races. And then 2022, you saw a resurgence of the old rules that, you know, you had regional breaks, you had candidates who just didn't connect, you had candidates who did connect, and it was kind of like

This game, it's not quite like Calvin Ball where they make it up as it goes along, but it's definitely not like cricket with rigid enforceable rules by referees with nice hand gloves. It's definitely something that is an art, not a mathematical, quantitative physical science.

That's right. And look, there are races where we're going to get wrong every cycle. And well, hopefully not the same race is wrong cycle after cycle, but there are always going to be surprises. And that's what keeps this profession interesting. If everything went according to

each of our predictions, then it wouldn't really be any fun, would it, Henry? No, it wouldn't be fun at all. Although when you and I are on the right end of the out-of-the-bell-curve consensus, it feels great, and when we're on the wrong end, it kind of feels bad. But it is the game, kind of like sports predicting. Everyone really does know what they're talking about, but you have to play the games, and things happen, and people overperform or underperform, and politics is exactly the same way.

That's right. And I wouldn't have guessed that Lauren Boebert could come within 546 votes of losing. And meanwhile, you could have George Santos, who even Republicans at the highest levels told me back in August of 2022, they wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot pole, would win by eight points. Those two results seem irreconcilable. And yet,

That happened in 2022. So there are bound to be a few races that break in 2024, and they may not break in the direction we think.

Yeah, and they will likely, many of them will break late. And one of the things that you and other analysts do is there's a lot of movement in your particular race ratings in the last five weeks, particularly on the House. The Senate is a little more stagnant because there's more heavy campaigning throughout the summertime and a little better sense data-wise of where the individuals stand. But there's a lot of races that move up or down from...

certainly from Labor Day, but even from October 1st until Election Day. Right. Right. It's true. So where do you see the House right now? Does either party have an edge? And what is your overview with respect to how many seats are in play and how many seats seem to be leaning too safe for one party or another?

Well, we have seen a bit of movement towards Republicans in the past month. It used to be that when you added up the seats in our solid, likely, and lean D and solid, likely, and lean R, they were roughly even with about 25 toss-ups. Now, because you've had Republicans gerrymander North Carolina, and you've also seen several Democratic retirements that make seats

more vulnerable. Dan Kildee in Michigan, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia.

Now Republicans are looking at 209 seats that are at least leaning their way, Democrats 201. And then we have these 25 toss-ups in the middle that are going to decide who gets to 218. So Democrats would need to win around two-thirds of those races to get to 218 seats, which, you know, Democrats managed to win 75% of the toss-ups in 2022. So it's not out of the question that they break heavily towards one side or

or the other. But the reality for Democrats is at the moment they are on a trajectory to be sharing a ballot with an unpopular president. Donald Trump tends to drive out lower propensity voters that won't turn out in midterm elections but will vote a straight Republican ticket. We saw that in 2016 and 2020 when there was

a hidden Trump vote, we know there are going to be at least 20 or 25 million more voters in 2024 than 2022, probably more like 40 million more voters.

And right now, Joe Biden is really struggling with that group, according to the polling data that is available to us. Now, Democrats have received some favorable redistricting news of their own. They will benefit from a new map in Alabama.

Possibly Louisiana or Georgia, those are still pending litigation. And then New York, where the New York Court of Appeals just ruled that

The current map needs to be replaced with a new map that Democrats could freshly gerrymander. So that could be a benefit to Democrats of three additional seats or so. But if the environment in a year from now or 10 months from now looks like it does today, then I think it's going to be very difficult for Democrats to take the majority back. We'd probably still be looking at a narrow Republican edge in the House.

Okay. I, like you, spend too much time on Dave's redistricting app, which for my listeners has no relation to you, Dave Wasserman. It's another Dave. So, of course, last night when I got the news, I immediately dove in and did a quick plan in New York. And it wasn't hard to shift five seats from Dave.

where they were to either strongly Democrat, like with Williams putting Syracuse and Ithaca in the same district, or a couple of points in the case of the Lawler seat or something.

But even that, when I looked at your rate, even if you shifted those from Republican toss-up into the lean Democrat territory, Republicans still have a couple of seat edge going in. And I think that speaks to the sort of advantages, subtle advantages that you're talking about. Are there things that...

And could easily do away with that three, five, seven seat edge, you know, like are there Republicans on the cusp of retirement in swing seats that people in Congress are whispering about that just a couple of those would would maybe make it more of a 50 50 battle?

It's a good question. And right now there are 18 Republicans sitting in districts Biden carried. There are five Democrats sitting in districts that Trump carried in 2020. And so, you know, by those numbers, it would seem that Democrats have an excellent opportunity to take back seats. But there are a couple of caveats. First of all, I don't think we're going to see many retirements among those 18 Republicans because, uh,

most of them are freshmen and a lot of them are fairly new members. So even with the regime change and the speakership, they are unlikely to call it quits after a single term. The second factor is Democrats

may not be able to count on Biden carrying those 18 districts again, or at least with the same margins that he did in 2020. And so in the Central Valley of California, where you have John Duarte in the 13th district, David Valadao in the 22nd district, those are both seats that Biden carried by 12 or 13 points last time around. And yet, what if Biden is only winning those seats by five or six?

That could make it easier for those Republicans to win the crossover support necessary to win reelection. Now, if Democrats are successful at tying many of these members to unpopular people or things, such as an impeachment of President Biden or Democrats

tying them effectively to Speaker Mike Johnson and his very conservative views on abortion and social issues. You know, that could make a difference for those Democratic candidates. But the difficulty is that Johnson is still a relatively anonymous figure to the typical American voter.

Yeah, I mean, he is certainly not Nancy Pelosi or even Kevin McCarthy level name identification. And the sort of person who has been following this and following all the revelations about what law cases he practiced before he ever went into public life is likely to be the highly intense partisan of one sort or another who's not going to be moved by those messages, just reinforce their predispositions to be for or against them.

But things do change over the years and, you know, over the year and ratings, as I mentioned, do shift. Are there typical factors that you're looking for? Like if I see X, that means Y when you're continually reevaluating this.

Well, candidate recruitment is a big deal. And right now we don't have a lot of polling individual House races, at least not to the degree that we might in these big ticket Senate races. And so, you know, we're looking at whether...

the parties are getting candidates who fit the districts. And, you know, one district I wrote about this past week is Pennsylvania's 10th district. Now, I think Republicans have much better opportunities of picking up seats in Pennsylvania than Democrats. They're, you know, putting Matt Cartwright in Scranton and Susan Wild in the Lehigh Valley in real danger. Those are seats that, you know, Democrats only held onto in 51-49 races last time. But,

Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry sits in Harrisburg in the 10th district in a district that's been getting a little bit more purple that used to be red, but the Harrisburg area has become a little bit more white-collar suburban and Democrats got a new entrant in that race, a 30-year news anchor in Harrisburg named Janelle Stenson and

She first has to get past the primary against a retired fighter pilot, Top Gun Mike O'Brien. But Scott Perry has a lot of legal debt from investigations in his role in January 6th, or at least in the lead up to January 6th and efforts to overturn

or block certification of the 2020 election. So he may not have as much money as the Democrats ultimately raise against him and spend in a small media market. So we did move that from likely Republican to lean Republican. Perry is still the favorite, but it's worth watching.

So you've got before we move to the Senate, I think you've got 20, 25 seats currently rated as toss ups, some of them held by Democrats, even if they're open now, some of them held by Republicans. Same thing. Some of a couple of them are open because somebody is running for something or straight out retiring.

What characterizes those 20 or 25 is that, you know, what is the House battleground look like demographically or geographically or whatever characteristics that can kind of create a story about where the future of the House is going to run through next year?

Yeah, it's not necessarily one exact type of place, but I think the common thread is they're disproportionately states that had neutral or independent redistricting processes in 2022 because

take a state like Texas or Illinois, for example, where you've had Republicans in Texas, Democrats in Illinois, gerrymander the map to the point where there's nothing competitive left. And so what we do have is kind of a two-tier system in the House where the states that were drawn by commissions or courts have a lot of competitive races, and the states that were drawn by partisan legislatures have far fewer competitive races. And so California, where

You have a commission drawn map. You've got a number of toss-ups. I mentioned a few of them, but I'd throw in Mike Garcia in the 27th district. You've got in Arizona a couple of really key contests, David Schweikert and Wansis Kamani. You've got Tom Kane in New Jersey. You've got Jared Golden in Maine.

These five Democrats in Trump's seats are going to have tough races in 2024. And the only ones that are not in toss-up right now are Mary Peltola in Alaska, who has really potent personal appeal skills.

and won by 10 points over Sarah Palin last time. Republicans just got the Lieutenant Governor of Alaska into that race. And then Marcy Kaptur in Toledo, who's held that seat since 1982 and may end up facing the same deeply flawed Republican opponent again in 2024 that she beat by 14 points last time. So I think those types of districts hold the key to what's going to happen in the House.

So let's move to the Senate. Obviously, many fewer seats up, many fewer states up. What's the overview that you've got for control of the upper house right now? Democrats have to run the table in the Senate to hold on to control. And even so, they would end up with a 50-50 Senate and would need to

uh... we retain the vice presidency to retain technical control of the senate it's much more likely that republicans will find at least one seat besides west virginia which is kind of an automatic flip at this point to tip senate control in their favor they've got a lot of pathways to get there and the most obvious ones are montana ohio and arizona

They're each very unique races. I think Ohio and Montana are situations where Democrats would love contentious Republican primaries to play out for some time. Ohio's got a pretty early primary, so a Republican's field will be sorted out pretty soon. But

Sherrod Brown could benefit from the same dynamic on the abortion issue that we saw in the recent referendum in the state. Arizona is just a mess because we don't know whether Kyrsten Sinema is going to run again. If she does, maybe the unpopularity of both party nominees allows her to look a little bit better by comparison. Maybe she is.

maybe she shouldn't be counted out after all, despite having an approval rating that is hovering in the low 20s. And then you've got the second tier of races that Democrats are defending. Nevada, Wisconsin, the open seat in Michigan, Pennsylvania. These are

From today's vantage point, real problems for Democrats because of Biden's low approval in the state and the potential for real coattails for Republicans down ballot. Once you have a campaign play out and Democrats exert their spending advantage, with the exception of Pennsylvania, where it looks like Dave McCormick, the Republican, will have a major self-funding ability, then

You know, maybe Democrats look a little bit better in those contests, but still, they have to be absolutely perfect to retain control. And I don't think that'll happen. I mean, that's one of the things I was going to ask about is the self-funding thing is that you take a look at Steve Daines, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

And he seems to like these self-funder business people that he's got one of them, Tim Sheehy in Montana, who's been up on the air with a lot of television ads. He says Eric Hovda is going to run in Wisconsin, although he has not actually made the declaration. McCormick is coming back for a second bite at the apple in Pennsylvania, even in Wisconsin.

Ohio, you kind of got a question of how much of the Cleveland Guardians family money is Matt Dolan going to put behind his race versus how much of his own money is a business person, Bernie Moreno, going to put into his race? Do self funders?

profile one way or another differently with an electorate historically, or does it just mean the money gets them to the point where they overcome their deficiencies in prior organization or name identification, and then they're just treated like anyone else? The track record of self-funders is really mixed. And, you know, in some

cases, their personal wealth makes it easier to run a populist campaign against them. That's certainly what Sherrod Brown hopes to do if Bernie Marino, a wealthy car dealer, is the Republican nominee in Ohio. Certainly what Bob Casey is planning on doing against Dave McCormick, acknowledges that he spends a lot of time at his residence in Connecticut. And then

Sometimes it works. Montana has actually embraced some really wealthy business people on the Republican side, including Steve Daines and Greg Gianforte. So there is kind of a prototype for a Tim Sheehy candidacy, even if he accumulated a lot of wealth out of state.

So last question. When I take a look at Ohio, the thing that if I were a Democrat that would trouble me is that poll after poll may have Sherrod Brown leading, but they all have him at or below 46%.

And you've got to say this is a guy who's been a multi-term senator. He's been an elected officeholder from before that. Forty five, 46 percent is nearly identical to what Biden got. Not much below what Tim Ryan got against J.D. Vance when they thought they had a better shot because of Vance's weaknesses.

Is this basically a huge yellow warning light at the Democrats that even their best guy can't get close to the 50 percent mark in pre-election polls against candidates who have not yet come close to him in establishing statewide name identification? Yeah, look, it's about where we would expect the race to be. Right. You've got Sherrod Brown,

who's got a pretty decent approval rating for a Democrat in Ohio, but he's still a Democrat in Ohio, a state that has really trended right and towards Trump the last few years. And then, you know, most persuadable voters, I think, still don't have a well-formed opinion of the Republicans in the race. Yes, you have in Frank LaRose, a statewide office holder who has

been a crusader for the pro-life side of these referenda questions the last year or so. And that could damage him in a general election setting. You've got Bernie Marino, who doesn't have a political record, but has plenty of wealth to attack.

And then Matt Dolan, who is also a self-funder but probably can't make it through a Republican primary because of how moderate he is. So it's a fascinating dynamic, and Democrats love that there are

going to be primaries that Republicans have to sort out. And they're going to have to attack each other in some cases and run to the right. And that could ultimately play into Democrats' fall messaging. Well, Dave, aside from subscribing to Cook Political Report, which of course you can do, how would my listeners follow your work?

Well, I am still on X at Redistrict and at Cook Political, you can, cookpolitical.com, you can find all of our articles and analysis.

and also our podcast, The Odd Years. We've been putting out interesting interviews that Amy Walter, our editor-in-chief, has conducted, and we're going to have an editor's roundtable to keep our subscribers abreast of the latest developments in 2024. Well, Dave, thank you for joining me, and I look forward to having you back in 2024 on Beyond the Polls. Great to be with you. Thanks, Henry.

That's it for this week. Next week, we'll hear from Monmouth University's pollster, Patrick Murray, and get an expert rundown of the Granite State's goings-on from Mr. Granite Prof himself, Dante Scala. And I'll give you all my Festivus rant. I've got a lot of grievances with the politicians, and I'll air them out for all to hear. So let's again reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the polls.

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