General Concerns with Harry Enten
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Welcome to the post-Super Tuesday edition of Beyond the Polls. This week, I explore where we go from here with CNN's Harry Anton, rant about what the primaries tell us about today's Republican Party, and explore a new ad of the week. Let's dive in.

So now we know what we've known for a long time. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. We also know that Donald Trump has been very popular among Republicans for a long time. But we now know something a little more about the preferences and demographics of today's Republican Party. If he disappeared tomorrow, Trumpism wouldn't disappear. What do we know? And what would every Republican who's looking to be his replacement need to know

If that eventuality happened. First thing we need to know is that today's Republican Party may not be more conservative. It's been a 70-30 conservative to moderate or 75-25 party for a long time. But it is more stridently conservative.

Trump is the first candidate since Ronald Reagan to win the nomination by building out from the ideological base and moving into the middle. That is to say he got his highest score from people who say they are very conservative while also winning people who always back the winner, the people who say they are somewhat conservative.

From 1996 through 2012, the classic nomination coalition was the somewhat conservatives and the moderates or liberals, defeating the choice of the very conservatives. The only exception to that was 2000 with George W. Bush, but even he was strongest in the middle. He was not the favorite, overwhelming favorite, of very conservatives. They were just split between alternative candidates.

They only came behind him after the New Hampshire primary when his challengers to his right dropped out, and the very conservative, especially the religious or the libertarian voter, who may have preferred Gary Bowers or Steve Forbes, had to look, who do we prefer?

George W. Bush or that moderate John McCain. Then George W. Bush racked up big scores among the ideological base, but he did not build out from the base. He built out from the middle. Donald Trump

the first candidate in the modern era to build out from the base and win the nomination. Now, of course, it's not even that he won the nomination narrowly. He just swept all before him. And that gets to a second point, which is that the somewhat conservative voter, the largest ideological group in the Republican Party, has changed. They used to be predictably

That these were the people who preferred stability over revolution. These are the people who preferred Mitch McConnell to Ted Cruz. These are the people who liked experience to novelty. No more. These are the people who are not...

angry in the way the base is, but they're very much riled up. These are also people who no longer are interested in the sort of traditional issues that they're interested in. They used to be the sort of people who would prefer

holding budget increases steady over budget cuts. They would be the people who liked business subsidies as opposed to ideological crusades against things like the export-import bank or farm subsidies.

They're not interested in that stuff anymore. They're basically interested in the same stuff that the very conservatives are interested in. They just hold those views somewhat less passionately. So Donald Trump found it very easy to build out from the base. It was no longer a case where there was some sort of barrier or resistance from the base to the movement. They were rather like the base, only just slightly less so. Third thing that we now know.

We've been talking since 2016 about the educational divide among whites that Donald Trump brought a lot of former Democrats who did not have a four-year college degree into the Republican Party while driving a lot of former Republicans with a four-year college degree out of the Republican Party. That has defined the electoral map and the party coalitions for the last four elections.

This primary cycle confirms that the class war exists within the Republican Party. Donald Trump leaned up with voters who did not have a college degree, winning them even when Nikki Haley was running strongly by massive margins.

He lost in some states or did worst in other states among voters who did have a college degree. And you can basically say that there were three groups of educationally divided voters in the Republican Party. If you didn't have a four-year degree, you're overwhelmingly Trumpist. Didn't matter what your ideology was. You might be a little less Trumpist if you're moderate without a four-year college degree, but you're Trumpist.

He was competitive with the voters who had only a college degree. Sometimes he lost them a little bit. Sometimes he won them a little bit. But if you have a four-year college degree but nothing more, you are very open but much less so to Trumpism than your non-college degree brethren.

But if you had more than a college degree, if you had a master's degree, if you had a law degree, if you had an MBA, if you had a PhD, throw out whatever other post-secondary degree that you could have or graduate degree that you can have, he loses them. So that's where you get the oddity of the final map, that you take a look at where did Nikki Haley win on Super Tuesday? She won counties in college towns.

Well, Republicans don't win in college towns, but the Republicans who are in college towns disproportionately have higher degrees. She won in very high-income suburbs, the sorts of places where doctors and lawyers and business executives live. In other words, the sort of places where people who make six figures and have a graduate degree live. She didn't win almost anywhere. And that just shows you what a Republican who wants to become president looks like.

There's no path for a Republican to put together the Romney coalition of 2012. That coalition doesn't exist anymore.

Fourth, what excites the voters who are the super majority of the Republican Party? Right now, it's culture. It's not economics. Now, that's not to say they don't share traditionally Republican economic views. They're not going to say, I want to raise my taxes. They're happy to take a tax cut. They are perfectly happy to support private industry in most settings.

But what they are not is driven by those issues, which is why you saw nobody try to compete by issuing a tax cut plan. In 2016, the candidates were issuing detailed tax cut plans like they were apples coming off of a tree during harvest time. Nobody had a detailed tax cut plan. Why?

because Republican voters don't care anymore about detailed tax cuts plans. What you do have is people who care about immigration. You care about people who are concerned about the attacks, as they would argue, on religious liberty. They're concerned about things like transgender. They're concerned about things that are cultural, not economic. And you can see that in a poll question that was asked in both 2016 and 2020. In 2016, Republican voters were asked questions

What is your preference with regard to undocumented aliens within the United States? Offer them a path for legal status or deport them to their home country. Back in 2016, almost every state said, give them a legal status. Only two states favored deportation, Alabama and Mississippi.

In this cycle, every state, Republican voters said deport them, often by very large numbers. Now, some of that is because of the influence of Trump. Some of that is because of the changes as formerly moderate Republicans have left the voting environment of the Republican Party. And some of it is just that attitudes have changed because of the last four years on the border. But

This excites voters, not the old issues. And Haley tried to turn back the clock of time in the last week. She'd go on her stage and talk about balanced budget and fiscal discipline and say, isn't it about time we had an accountant and point to herself because she has an accountant degree from Clemson in the White House?

Nobody cares. I shouldn't say nobody, but most people don't care. They've not worked up about it. And so, again, the sort of thing that would have been Republican boilerplate in 2008 is an afterthought in 2024.

And then the final factor is anger and fear that Trump cleaned up with people who were when they asked, how do you feel about the future of the United States? Are you enthusiastic? Are you dissatisfied? Are you satisfied or are you angry? About half, 40 percent to half of Republican voters said they were angry and Trump cleaned up with those people.

He basically broke even among people who said they were only dissatisfied, and he lost the people who were actually optimistic about the future. That was Haley's only big demographic group, win among this group. And so what do you have? You have people who are afraid of the future. They are fearful.

of what's going to happen to America, which is why you hear in MAGA world a lot, we have to win this election to take our country back or to save our country. You know, Haley tried to get into that. She too would talk about the, we have a country to save is the way she would phrase it. But that anger, that depth of anger and that depth of fear is something that animates today's Republican majority.

And then remember that all of these forces are multiplied in the safe areas, the safe states, the safe seats that elect most Republican members of legislatures and members of the Senate. That the places that Haley won have Republican voters, but very few of them send Republican members.

All of these forces are exacerbated in the places where Republicans who only have to worry about their primary campaigns and don't have to worry about a general election have to campaign. So what does this mean? It means that for the foreseeable future, the Republican Party is not, as they would say, your grandfather's Republican Party. We are at the end of the long McConnell-Bush supply-side era of dominance.

We do not yet know whether this new populist conservatism can become a majority agenda-setting party. It wasn't that during the Trump years. Perhaps Donald Trump and winning both houses of Congress with more MAGA-infused ideas can make it that, but that's in part what the 2024 election is about. But whether win or lose,

The MAGA-infused, sociodemographically lower-scaled, more angry, less optimistic party is the one that his successors, if he were to lose, are going to have to navigate. And that's going to shape the future of the Republican Party for years to come.

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It's over. The long national nightmare is not over. That may be only beginning, but the primary season is effectively over after last night. And here to break it all down and explain why we are where we are and what we need to look at to see where we're going is Harry Anton, whom I've heard might be called God Emperor of Doom, but who officially is the election analyst at CNN. Harry, welcome back to Beyond the Polls.

My pleasure to be back. And let me just say, whatever you have to do to build up my ego, I welcome it. Any title, the bigger the better.

Well, you know, as a Dune aficionado, and of course I did see Dune 2 over the weekend, a god emperor who rules the known galaxy for about 135,000 years, I can get bigger than that, Harry, but I'd have to disincorporate you and make you into some sort of ethereal being. If you need to do that, I welcome it, but...

I will take the 135,000 years and welcome that as well. So, using your spice-induced prescience, going back in time, how did we get here? Why is it that Joe Biden, who you ask people in polls, you ask Democrats in polls, and they say he's too old. Even Democrats say he's too old. Half of them in a poll I saw recently said,

said they don't think he should be the nominee, but yet he just dispatched these people with huge numbers that you would typically see of a person who's actually the favorite for re-election. Starting with the Democrats, why did he cruise so easily?

You know, I'm reminded of an old song from Billy Preston, nothing from nothing leaves nothing, right? He had no opponents, no real opponents anyway. I mean, I guess Dean Phillips, who is obviously a sitting congressman, but who had ever heard of Dean Phillips before this cycle, at least among the quote-unquote normies, and he got his campaign started very late. So Joe Biden had the full backing of the Democratic establishment, those who study politics, those

and look at the differences between the Democratic and Republican Party, can see, you know, we had that old theory, the party decides, the idea that the infrastructure within the party, the party leaders could really rally around one candidate. It still seems to work on the Democratic side. We saw that in 2020 with Joe Biden. We saw it in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. And the party decided very early on that Joe Biden was going to be the nominee, and therefore it was going to be nearly impossible to beat him,

And yes, while it is true, those poll stats that you cite, you know, saying that roughly split down the middle between a generic and Joe Biden, a lot of Democrats said they would prefer another Democrat to be the nominee consistently when you actually put up named opponents against him. Joe Biden was running away with it. And more than that, even...

Even if a lot of Democrats in the theoretical wanted to replace Joe Biden, keep in mind, his approval rating is still hovering around 80 percent, depending on the poll. He's still a pretty popular guy among Democrats. It was always going to be very difficult to defeat him.

But then, I guess that's why he didn't get a serious contender, is everyone could look and say, "My gosh, this guy might be the return of the walking dead in the general election, but our party still seems to like him. I'm not going to risk my political future, even if it's good for the party,

to go against the wishes of the party. And by that, by the party, I mean the voters, not the establishment that was clearly lined up behind Biden. Yeah, I think, you know, we are talking about two different things that I might have conflated them a little bit. The party was clearly behind Biden. I think there's some questions depending on which poll question you look at, whether the voters were, the Democratic voters were. But at the end of the day, you know, if you go back through time and you essentially match up, you know, the incumbents approval rating within their own part of the intra-party approval rating, a

against, you know, whether or not there's a serious challenger. Biden was above the line of which we usually see serious challengers emerge. He was safely into the 80 spot. You really have to be in the low 70s and really into the mid 60s. If we're talking about Jimmy Carter in 80 or Gerald Ford in 76, where you would really

really see a true intra-party challenger emerge. Joe Biden was safely above that. So I was never all that much of the belief that Joe Biden would receive a serious primary challenger. I was honestly a little bit surprised he even got Dean Phillips to be frank with you. But at the end of the day, unless Jason Palmer of American Samoa victory fame is somehow able to build on that victory,

I don't believe that Joe Biden will have anywhere near any bit of problems securing the majority of Democratic delegates and therefore securing the Democratic nomination. So you don't believe there's a groundswell of support coming for our girl Mary Ann, who of course has now reentered the race, saying that her voice is needed now more than ever? No, I do not believe that the mystic powers that be will allow Marianne Williamson to rise like a Phoenix reborn from the ashes.

Man, yeah, you need to put you on a poetry slam. Can we have a sophologist poetry slam sometime and be our leader? Let's turn to the Republicans, who we actually thought would have a race. And we had, when all was said and done, I think between DeSantis and Americans for Prosperity and Nikki Haley and various other campaigns, we may have had $200 to $250 million spent against Donald J. Trump.

It doesn't seem to have done a whit of good. Why? Why do you think that he is so utterly impervious to the campaigning that was done against him? You know, I think that this is going to be something where...

5, 10, 15, if I'm fortunate enough years to live on, I'll go from this point forward and asking myself, is it possible that anyone could have defeated Donald Trump in any universe in which we re-ran the primary cycle over and over and over again? And the honest answer to that question, for me anyway, is I'm not sure. If you go back forever,

14 months to go in time. If you look at where Ron DeSantis was polling against Donald Trump, this is in the beginning of 2023, after the 2022 midterms, after Donald Trump had gotten in, but before DeSantis had gotten in, there were a lot of polls that suggested that Ron DeSantis could, in fact, mount a serious primary challenge to Donald Trump. I

I think the question is, was it something that Ron DeSantis did or was it something that the events that unfolded ultimately made those polls to essentially be showcasing a universe that was really just a fool's errand?

And I think you could go either way. I think you could say that Ron DeSantis got in the race, simply put, too late, was not able to capitalize on the idea that Donald Trump was a quote unquote loser coming out of the 2022 midterms. And by the time DeSantis got in, Trump had regained his footing and there was no way of beating him. That's a possibility, in which case you could say, you know what, maybe Trump might have been defeated in the right universe if the right candidate come along and came along in the right circumstances and executed the right campaign.

Or you could enter another universe in which you say Donald Trump was never really beatable. Those polls really were not showing you anything real there. And furthermore, and this is the key nugget, after he got indicted by Alvin Bragg, the New York County district attorney, this race was cooked because Trump was going to rally the troops to his side and saying, aha,

Those mainstream Democrats, those left wing Democrats, they were always out to get me. You have to rally to my side if you want to defeat the wokes. And that may be the case, too, because what you see in the Republican primary polling is that once those indictments start to happen, although we were seeing Trump going up in the polling beforehand, it really just sort of took on a much more elevated curve.

So I think you can answer either one, but at the end of the day, Donald Trump has always been popular among Republicans, and he still is today, and is certainly more popular right now than he was, say, 14, 15 months ago after the Republicans suffered that disappointing midterm, although they did take back the House. Yeah. Well, the other thing is that I believe, and you're the polling expert,

But I believe that he's even more popular among the broader public than he was a year or two years ago. He's still upside down. More people have an unfavorable view of him than a favorable view. But I believe he's even more popular broadly. It's not just a Republican, though.

It's not. You know, it oftentimes reminds me you think back to an old spouse and you go, man, those times we had together was so great. And, you know, memories sort of you drop the negative memories, the positive ones jump to the fourth. It's human nature. Right. And then all of a sudden you might start thinking about a little more. You go, wait a minute. What what the heck am I talking about? I think the question is going to be as we head towards the general election is,

Is the public that had previously been some small slice of the electorate, although, you know what, it's a significant slice, that had previously had an unfavorable view of Donald Trump and now has shifted towards favorable. Do those views shift back? But you are correct, Henry. It is absolutely the case that there is a small but significant portion of the electorate that once upon a time viewed Trump negatively that now views him much more positively.

So I'm going to throw three numbers out at you and you and I think you'll immediately know where I'm going with this. 18, 3 and 20. These are the shares of double disapprovers. 18 is the double disapprovers between Clinton and Trump. 3 is the share of double disapprovers in Biden and Trump. And 20 is where the polling average goes between 17 and 23, depending on your poll of people who don't like Biden versus Trump.

What does that mean for the election?

First off, I want to know, as soon as you said 18, I knew exactly where you were going. I knew that number right off the bat. I know it so well. Look, I think it means a number of things. One, in theory, it could mean there is some room for an independent or third party candidate to do better than normal. I think that sort of explains where RFK is in the polls to some degree. In some polls, at least earlier this year, he was getting the highest share for any independent or third party candidate at this point in the election. So I think it's a good thing.

since Ross Perot in 1992, polling-wise, not results-wise. So that's a potential possibility, though we've seen some of those numbers come back to earth a little bit. Two, it suggests that that's a group we should obviously pay a lot of attention to, right? Because that's a group that can ultimately be determinative. It was in 2016 when you mentioned that 18% of the electorate that had an unfavorable view of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

The other thing that I will note, though, the other thing that I will note is that at this particular point,

In a number of polls, Biden is actually winning that group and yet is trailing Donald Trump. And why is that important? Because if there are more voters who hold a favorable view of Donald Trump than Joe Biden, the only real pathway for Joe Biden to win is to win those quote unquote double haters by a substantial margin. At this particular point, he's not doing that.

And that is why he is trailing. Will that change as the campaign goes along? We'll just have to wait and see. All we can say for now is we're at a point in American elections where more folks are displeased with the two major party candidates than I can ever recall. That even includes 2016, where there were slightly less of these quote unquote double haters.

So aside from the double haters, what are the, let's say, three things that you're looking at the evolution or the impact of? You know, Donald Rumsfeld always said there were known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Of course, we can't know the unknown unknowns in advance. What are the known unknowns in this race? We know there'll be a factor, but we don't know how they will play out. God, I love that quote. It's a great quote.

Look, I think number one, I'm interested in turnout. And what do I mean by that? I tend to be a guy who believes that persuasion is more important than turnout differential in elections, especially big national elections. Local ones are obviously different than that. But that being said, I am interested to see what the turnout is. And the reason why is because if the turnout is smaller than a lot of people perhaps would think it would be based upon 2020, which obviously had record turnout for the modern era,

Who does that benefit? There has been some polling data that actually indicates it could benefit Joe Biden, who on average has tended to do better among, quote unquote, likely voters. Those people that pollsters believe will actually turn out a vote as opposed to the broader registered voter universe. If that's the case, maybe some of these registered voter polls are underestimating Joe Biden. So that's one thing.

Two, I think I'm interested in and this could be two and three, but it could just be just two. Some of the groups that Joe Biden has been struggling with that traditionally speaking might be better Democratic groups. Who are those might include? Well, that might include voters under the age of 35 or voters under the age of 30 who really don't seem to like Joe Biden all that much. But do they, in fact?

come home when they recognize the choice in front of them is Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. That kind of leads to point number three, which is, are these polls...

That show, Joe Biden, or let's reverse this, Donald Trump doing historically well among black voters and Hispanic voters for Republican nominee in the modern era. Are those actually right? Because at this particular point, the reason why Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden, at least in the national polls, is not because he's outperforming with white voters or even outperforming with white voters without a college degree. It is because he is doing historically

well for a Republican candidate amongst black voters and Hispanic voters. If that happens, we could have a complete redrawing of the electorate as opposed to what someone like myself would normally expect given recent history. If it is wrong, well then we get very interesting very quickly and maybe the election we think is going to take place isn't in fact going to take place. Now, do you think that, certainly we've been seeing this march in

exact lockstep because obviously black voters start from a much higher base of Democratic support than Latino voters, but we've tended to see these groups move in the same direction over the last 18 months in the polls away from Biden and towards either Trump or undecided. Do you think that will continue in the sense that

Because there are different ideologies to Democratic support because of their different backgrounds, that could it be theoretically possible that black voters might come back, but Latino voters wouldn't to the same degree? Or do you think that the lockstep, the bidirection, they're moving in the same direction in roughly the same direction.

at roughly the same time suggests that something that crosses the ethnicity or historical experience boundary is more important in this cycle? I mean, it could be either way. You know, one thing I will note is if you jump from state to state and you look at black support for Joe Biden in 2020,

If you showed me a percentage, I might be able to guess in terms of the vote share that went for Biden, which state it was or which region of the country it was. But it'd be awfully difficult. Black support for Democrats has historically been

fairly uniform across gender lines, across education lines, across age lines. Now that may be changing a little bit with younger black males in particular being less likely to support a Democrat nominee in this particular case, Joe Biden. But if you take into account that historic fact,

It is possible that black voters move in one direction almost uniformly. Compare that with Hispanic voters, where if you tell me that, you know, this is how Hispanic voters, Cubans feel in southeast Florida, that could be vastly different than Mexican-Americans in California.

That is something, or Mexican Americans in Chicago, in the earmuffs, right? So I think there's some real questions in my mind whether or not it's easier to sort of get a uniform swing with black voters than it is among Hispanic voters. And that's something I'm going to keep an eye out on. Although, you know, we talk about takeaways from the primary and sort of the split that we're talking about. Last night, for example, if you were to look in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, what you saw was

Donald Trump doing very, very, very well in majority Hispanic counties or plurality Hispanic counties or counties with high percentage of Hispanics and Joe Biden not really doing all that well in South Texas. That to me is a very interesting nugget. Certainly, I think it portends to trouble for Biden in the fall given what we saw in 2020, but the ultimate question is does what happened in the Rio Grande stay in the Rio Grande and that

is a question I don't have the answer to. Yeah, you actually anticipate my next question is that, and I looked at, you know, you go to El Paso, which is massively Hispanic, and Joe Biden does great in El Paso. You get down to anywhere in the core Rio Grande area from the Gulf of Mexico, you know, up the main section of the Rio Grande. He does terribly. You know, he gets under 50% in Zapata and Starr counties. That's just awful for a president running for re-election against, you know, no names.

What does that say? It's awful. It says he has a real freaking problem. That's what it says. You know, it's always fun when you see, you know, sometimes if you look at different websites that present, you know, the election results, they will only have, you know, a few of the major nominees, you know, a few of the major candidates, you know, Biden, Phillips, maybe they'll have Williamson, but they won't list people who might be state specific.

And that's what happened in Texas, right? It was really county specific. I think it portends to problems. I think it does speak in large part to, I think, broader problems that Joe Biden may have within the electorate when it comes to the issue of border security, right? These are people who are living right on that border. And

We know from the polling that immigration at this point, you know, if you look back at last month's Gallup poll, more Americans said the top problem facing the U.S. was immigration than any point Gallup has ever measured.

And we know that more Americans and more importantly, more voters trust Donald Trump than Joe Biden on the issue of immigration. Not saying that's the only reason those border towns shifted, but it is, I think, a large part of it. And that to me is another sort of

known, unknown going forward, which is how important is the issue of immigration come November? Is it going to drop off or is it going to stay high? Is border security going to stay high is an important issue. Obviously, Donald Trump is begging for that to happen. And Joe Biden, based upon the polling and perhaps some of those results down by the Texas-Mexican border last night, is begging and praying that it doesn't happen.

That's one of the things that's boggled my mind for the last four months is that the decision by hardline Republicans to link Ukraine aid to basically shutting down or close to shutting down the border struck me as a perfectly politically palatable way for Joe Biden to move to where the polls were saying the middle of American opinion wanted him to be.

And yet we sit here and he's not moving. He's not willing to give enough to Republican hardliners that they're willing to buck the president. And so his signature foreign policy initiative of the last two years, aid for Ukraine, is sitting hostage to a policy demand that the polls say independents and swing voters are screaming for. What's going on?

You know, if I could get inside the mind of Joe Biden, that would be a true Houdini act. And unfortunately, while I match the Harry, the Houdini, I do not have.

You know, I think that Biden would argue that, you know, the Democrats in the Senate, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans had come to some agreement and that House Republicans just wouldn't move on it. I think he would make the argument that he kind of did make that movement towards the middle as much as, you know, the Democratic base. And I'm not saying the liberal base, the Democratic base would allow him to do so.

But this, I think, is going to be another one of the I know I'm almost giving you more questions to be asked than questions to be answered here. But it is sort of as we're looking, you know, at the final six, seven, eight months of this election, trying to figure out where this thing might go. What are the variables that might change if there's some sort of border deal that happens that could change some variables? But I'm not sure.

But I'm just not particularly sure, you know, given where we are in the election cycle, now that Donald Trump is for all intents and purposes, the presumptive Republican nominee, whether there is any deal at all that could be reached without Joe Biden literally saying as the deal is going to be reached.

I will reach this deal with you and then I will drop out of the presidential race. It just does not seem possible to me. It seems with a divided Congress and certainly a United States House of Representatives that has a different party than the presidency, that any real big grand bargains

It's something that we can talk about on podcasts all day long, but it's not something that ultimately be in the cards. Then again, you never know. Sometimes I go up 10th Avenue in Manhattan and there is no traffic. So miracles do sometimes happen. So you're on the road at four in the morning on Sundays?

I'd say I, you know, occasionally I am on the road, maybe not 4 a.m., but certainly in the 5 or 6 a.m. hour. You could be surprised sometimes how little traffic there actually is in New York. You just have to go out when no one else is awake. So let's switch very briefly to Congress. Yeah.

The U.S. Senate. Most observers think that it's going to be a Republican gain, pick up, mainly because the Democrats have so many seats that they are defending in red or purple states.

Is there a realistic scenario that they can use personal popularity to hold on? You know, they're obviously going to lose West Virginia. Not really any chance of pickup unless Colin Allred does fulfill the Democrats'

recurring dream of winning a statewide race in Texas. But is there a chance that they can run the table on the rest of the races? You know, like Tester winning in Montana and Brown winning in Ohio and Casey holding on in Pennsylvania and Rosen holding on in Nevada and just use personal popularity to pull back demographic and political tides? Or Tammy Baldwin holding on in Wisconsin. Look,

There are so many states that we can name that either Donald Trump won at least once, if not twice. And all Republicans have to do is win the states he won twice by double digits and then all of a sudden pick up the presidents and you don't even have to pick up

presidency. Win the states that Donald Trump won twice by double digits and you got it, right? You mentioned West Virginia where obviously Joe Manchin is stepping aside. Montana, Jon Tester in Montana, another state that Trump won twice by double digits. And there you go, you've got the math, you got it right there. So obviously uphill battle is two words that may be under emphasizing how tough the road will be for Democrats to hold back the Senate.

That being said, look, I think a lot of folks thought the Democrats were in big trouble going into 2022, especially with an unpopular Democratic president on the ballot. Didn't happen. They actually picked up a seat. You know, you go back to 2018 midterm. Yes, it was a Republican president, but they actually held their losses to a minimum.

Is it possible? Sure. Jon Tester is a well-liked guy. I would almost think it's more plausible in my mind, or not more plausible, certainly plausible, that Tester somehow holds on and then Sherrod Brown in Ohio goes down, right? Jon Tester has shown an ability to run well ahead of

the, say, generic Democrat in the state of Montana. Sherrod Brown, I think, in my mind, is a little less well-tested. Ohio has only more recently become more of a red state. You know, when Brown won in 06, or he won in 12. Remember, Barack Obama carried Ohio in 2012. But

But ultimately, at the end of the day, I think it's easier to say that it is more likely the Republicans will pick up the Senate than to know which seats they'll ultimately pick up, because all you need is one weak link in the fence.

And that is all that it takes. It could be that Democrats' personal popularity carries them in Montana, in Ohio, and then it falls apart in Wisconsin. Or maybe it holds in Wisconsin, holds in Ohio, but falls apart in Montana or Nevada. And that's just really where we're at at this particular point. But so overall, look, is it possible? Sure. But outside, really, I think sort of the pipe dream in Texas, it's going to be very, very difficult. But if that happens, and hey,

You never know, as they say with the lotto. It's going to be tough. So, last question. When looking at these Senate races, one of the things I've noticed is, like, Emerson just came out with a poll that had Tester ahead by two points, but only at 44%. They came out with polls in Ohio that had Sherrod Brown ahead by a couple of points, but only at 45%. And historically...

Those would be warning signs because the incumbent senators are the ones who should have the better name ID at this race. If all they can get on a poll is mid 40s, you look at that and say it's going to be really hard to move that up to 50. Is that still a rule that we should be looking at, that if you're looking at incumbent senators and they're getting polls in the mid 40s, that's a warning sign? Or are we just beyond that and it's all about party backing?

I mean, it's a warning sign. I guess the question is how strong of a warning sign is it? Right? I would just say this. Number one, I don't believe in the incumbent rule, at least as normally understood that if the incumbent is below 50%, he's in big trouble. I don't believe in that. I will say, I think it is a little bit more worrisome that you're below 50% as a Democratic senator in a red state.

That to me is potentially more worrisome because if the undecided voters merely just go to where you would expect them to go based upon party ID, you're in bigger trouble. So, no, that's not a great sign if you're the Democrats. But if I were to put it into a regression model, I would pay far more attention to the margin.

than I would be to the actual literal absolute percentage that the incumbent is getting. And then, of course, throwing in fancy words, you know, around being like, OK, then we're going to include what the past presidential vote was and maybe a few other variables and run, you know, a multivariate regression and see where exactly we end up. But.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, being below a dozen fifty worry me, but perhaps it would worry me more if I were John Tester than if I were Tammy Baldwin based upon the past presidential vote and the partisan leanings in that state. Well, this is, of course, the only podcast in the United States of America where you can play a drinking game and your word is multivariate regression.

Well, Harry, aside from going to the planet Arrakis to seek out your divinity and spice, how can my listeners follow your work?

They can find me on Twitter at Forecaster Enten. Forecaster is spelled the exact way you would think it was. Enten, my last name, is E-N-T-E-N. If you're interested in something perhaps a little bit different, you can follow the exact same handle on your Instagram dial. You can see my pieces up here on the website known as CNN.com. And you can also see me on your television screens

On CNN or CNN Max, programs I most frequently appear on are CNN News Central between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., often the 8 a.m. hour, and in the evenings on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 7 and 8, and on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 8 and 9 p.m. I never knew your schedule. Now I've got my TiVo hours all set out.

But, Harry? I make it easy for you. Yeah, hey, that's what I want. You know, a man who's organized, a man playing a canal, Panama. But thank you very much, and I look forward to having you back as this interesting and, for some people, nausea-inducing election year continues to its conclusion. Welcome me back anytime. I appreciate it.

Well, Republicans are excited that they have their star recruit, Eric Hovde, running for the Wisconsin Senate seat that is occupied by incumbent Tammy Baldwin. Wisconsin is perhaps the purplest of purple states, perennially 50-50 in the modern era, and one that is particularly Trump-friendly because of its high concentration of whites without a college degree and low concentration of culturally liberal college-educated voters.

Baldwin's been able to hold this back by winning a number of victories against more conventional Republican challengers. And let's see how she's trying to define Hovde as he gets into the race with an ad that allies in the Democratic supporting super PAC world have just put up on Wisconsin television. Let's listen.

Here's California banker Eric Hovde running for U.S. Senate. But Hovde's lifestyle? Pure California. CEO of a billion-dollar bank. Here's Hovde's over $7 million Laguna Beach mansion. And three years in a row, Eric Hovde was named one of Orange County's most influential residents. Multi-millionaire California banker Eric Hovde. On Wisconsin's side, don't bank on it.

When Senate is responsible for the content of this ad. Well, it's pretty easy to see what they're trying to do here. This is a guy who ran for office in Wisconsin many years ago and then really wasn't seen in Wisconsin for a while. And now he's coming back to the run for the Senate. So what they're trying to do is basically call him a carpetbagger. Carpetbagger being somebody who doesn't live in the area but comes in to run for office in an area and

What I like about this ad is the use of pictures. You can't see this, but constantly what you have is Hovde doing things that Wisconsinites typically don't do. He's wearing a cowboy hat. He's drinking champagne. He's dancing with girls in Viking hats.

And they emphasize with pictures of California where his home and where his business has been. So there aren't any palm trees in Wisconsin or beautiful sunlit vistas onto the Pacific Ocean. They're using pictures to tell a story that's connected with their words. Eric Havdy can't represent you because he isn't one of you.

But then the other thing I like about this ad is the second dimension, which is playing class warfare. He's not just a Californian who's trying to jump into our Midwestern Wisconsin seat. He's also rich. He's a multimillionaire. He's an influential businessman. He's not a white working class voter.

He's not a white working class person. Donald Trump may be rich, but he comes off as somebody who really understands the person who works on the buildings that he finances and puts his name on.

They're trying to get you to think Eric Hovde is not the second coming of Donald Trump. Eric Hovde is the last person that you want to represent you. That double whammy plays into a competition that they are having with Hovde's campaign to define himself.

The Hovde campaign is running ads saying exactly the opposite, stressing different routes, showing him doing typical Wisconsin things. In other words, they know this is his weak point. And if Hovde gets to the line when he's just getting into the race, it'll be much harder for him.

to make the point against Baldwin. Typically in a campaign what you want to do is drive up your positives, you may build a favorable image of yourself and then wheel and attack your opponent to say, "You like me, trust me when I say that you shouldn't like this person."

This ad, which is being apparently supported by a couple million dollars, which goes a long way in the relatively inexpensive Wisconsin markets in Green Bay and Madison and Milwaukee, is designed to prevent Hovde from getting to that point where he has credibility to attack Baldwin. I don't know if it's going to work, but it's playing the right issues. It's doing them in a memorable manner and a visually arresting fashion. And that's why it's this week's end of the week.

That's all for this week. Join me next week as I do a deep dive into Ohio's March 19th congressional and especially its key Republican Senate primary. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the cold. You slept through your alarm, missed the train, and your breakfast sandwich. Ugh, cold. Sounds like you could use some luck.

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