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Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. I'm in the U.S. Virgin Islands where I'll be covering this week's GOP caucus and getting in a little sun-soaked R&R on the side. Kyle Kondik is my guest this week where we'll dissect the battle for the house. Let's dive in.

Well, the Nevada primary was supposed to be a nothing burger. And in many senses, it was a nothing burger. But in another sense, it's the nothing burger that helps define the future of the race. On the Democratic side, you might recall that after New Hampshire, I thought that maybe Biden was showing some weakness. Only 64% wrote his name and it's not terrible, but it's not great.

But what was going to happen later on? Would we see that this was a function of the write-in versus the name on the ballot, or maybe a function of New Hampshireites not liking the fact that the DNC had demoted the state in the primary order and hence dissed it?

Or was it more of a sign that Democrats who were wanting to vote in the primary, even though they knew Biden was going to be the nominee, wanted to show some dissatisfaction before falling in line? Well, now we know after South Carolina and after Nevada, it is definitely.

that this was a New Hampshire specific thing, not a Democratic specific thing. Biden annihilated his opponents in South Carolina with over 96 percent, and he got about 89 percent in Tuesday's Nevada primary. Now, Democrats and Republicans who run for reelection always have some

shrinkage of the vote if somebody is running against them, no matter how non-serious they are. But the fact is, 89 and 96 was pretty good, even for a popular incumbent, much less somebody like Joe Biden, who is sitting in record low territory among the broader electorate for job approval. I think we can say without a shadow of a doubt,

that Joe Biden not only has no problem with nomination, but that the nomination process is not going to show any significant weakness among the partisan Democrats. Now, query whether or not there will be people because there is still an active race on the Republican side who won't vote on the Democratic side because they want to vote for Nikki Haley to stop Donald Trump. That's certainly something that likely is happening in South Carolina.

In the 2020 very active Democratic primary, over 530,000 people voted. Only about 130,000 people voted in Saturday's primary. So that's over 400,000 people who voted in the Democratic primary four years ago, who under South Carolina's laws could theoretically vote in the Republican primary on February 24th.

But that's just picking at the edges. The fact is Joe Biden looks now set to have a typical incumbent position

renomination glide path, which is to say no serious dissatisfaction, no serious challenge. And that's a good thing for him. It means he can save his time. It means he can save his money. And it means he can focus even more directly on Trump than he already is. So what about the Republican primary? Well, the Republican primary in Nevada was one of these weird things because, well, the Nevada Republican Party did a weird thing.

The Democrats passed a law that made Nevada a primary state rather than what it had been for many years, a caucus state. But Republicans didn't want that. So the law mandated that a primary be held, but it couldn't mandate that the Republican Party use that primary to allocate delegates because that's an internal matter. The Republican Party of Nevada said, no, we're going to use a caucus state.

And they are going to have a caucus on Thursday, February 8th that will award the delegates. And then they did something even weirder. They said, candidates, you have to choose. You can either be on the ballot for the primary or the caucus, but not both. Haley chose to be on the primary ballot, along with people who at the time were in the race, Mike Pence and Tim Scott. Everybody else who was serious chose to be on the caucus ballot.

and compete with Trump for the delegates. Well, of course, now we know the only two serious candidates, I'm sorry, Ryan Binkley, are Haley and Trump. And Haley had a clear road. There was nobody else who was actively campaigning on the ballot.

However, Nevada law has this weird provision that in any campaign, there is a line that says none of these candidates. Now, it doesn't actually take effect if none of these candidates won. It would not mean that the person who lost to them wouldn't take the seat. It's a weird line that allows you to show that you don't like the person, but that you don't.

don't actually use that vote to keep them out of office. But it still appeared on the ballot. And what happened was Haley lost by over a two-to-one margin to none of these candidates. This is a massive rebuke. It is a massive rebuke because everybody in Nevada should have known this was a beauty contest. It didn't matter. They went and voted in the primary anyway. And because they were Trumpists,

They voted for none of these candidates because their man wasn't on the ballot. So you take a look at this and you say, this is in line with what we've been seeing in Republican primary polls all the way back to last summer. That if Haley is matched against Trump to one on one in a traditional Republican primary electorate, she loses two to one.

She knows this. She's trying to cut that margin. But this is why in New Hampshire she relied on independents and crossover votes. It's what she's trying to do in South Carolina. It's what she's trying to do on Super Tuesday. She knows she can't win the Republican nomination if she relies on Republican votes. But the flip side is there can't possibly be in a reasonable universe enough Republican candidates.

leaning independents or moderate independents or Democratic-leaning independents who don't vote in Republican primaries who will show up for Haley to overcome a 2-to-1 margin. A 60-40 margin? Maybe. 55-45 margin? Quite possibly. 2-to-1? Greater than 2-to-1? Put this puppy to bed.

This is a terrible sign for Nikki Haley's campaign, in part because what we see from South Carolina is also that she's near that two to one defeat margin. The Washington Post Monmouth poll had her down 58 to 32, just below two to one. Another poll that came out Wednesday morning had her losing by more than two to one average through together. It's not much different.

than what happened when Nikki Haley faced none of these candidates, a.k.a. Donald Trump, on the Nevada ballots. She's got about two and a half weeks to turn that around partially in South Carolina. Because it's her home state, maybe she can. But this is yet another shot across the bow that Republicans have moved on from the pre-Trump era. Two-thirds of the party want some form of Trumpism.

Nikki Haley is running as the non-Trump Republican. And while she may have broad support in the general electorate, many polls, although not all, show her running significantly better against Biden than Donald Trump. It is not the way to the nomination. Haley is running an excellent campaign given the limitations, but the limitations increasingly look...

much too heavy for her to overcome. So that's why Nevada's primaries, even though they didn't change anything, by ratifying clear trends, they strongly suggest that if not by Super Tuesday, soon after Super Tuesday, we're going to know who the two nominees are unless something unprecedented happens.

Ch-ch.

And live the Chumba life.

Well, we're in a bit of a lull here during primary season where you don't have many active races on the Republican and the Democrat side. And that reminds us that there are many more races in the presidency. And here to talk with us about the battle for control of the House of Representatives is Kyle Kondik. Kyle is the managing editor of Saboteur's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Kyle, welcome back to Beyond the Polls. Hey, Henry, good to be with you.

Well, you know, traditionally you look at a race and you say it's all about Smith versus Jones and you focus on the personalities. And certainly personalities aren't unimportant, as we saw in 2022 when some extreme leftist candidates went down to defeat and more extreme MAGA candidates went down to defeat. But you find that maybe they're not as important as they used to be. Tell us about that.

Yeah, so one dynamic in a House election has just been how correlated the results have gotten with the presidential. And so Gary Jacobson, the longtime congressional scholar, I think at the University of San Diego, he does this, you know, looks at the district level results for president for House. And he found there was a .987 correlation between the 2020 presidential district level results and the House results.

And of course that's on a negative one to one scale. So 0.987 is pretty darn high. Um, and you're also in a period where there are districts that, you know, we'll vote Republican for president, democratic for house or vice versa. But the number of those kinds of districts are dwindling. So in 20, uh, six, 2020, there were only 16 districts that had split results. Um,

seven Democrats won Trump seats, nine Republicans won Biden seats. Currently, it's 18 Republicans in Biden seats, only five Democrats in Trump seats. You know, maybe we'll get to the point where all

all 435 districts will vote the same way for president and house. I kind of hope it doesn't get that way because it wouldn't be very interesting. But that's certainly been the trajectory. And that total of 16 in 2020, it's the lowest total at least since World War II. And if you go back and look at

from like 100 years ago or more. You don't have like complete district level results for everything. But that era was also similar in that you had very little crossover. But even if you go like more recently to like 1976, for instance, the Ford Carter race, which of course was a close presidential election,

something like 30% of the districts had split results in that year. And, you know, it was very common in that era, which, you know, that was sort of one blip Democratic presidential victory, you know, between Nixon in 68 and Clinton's victory in 1992. But, you know, that was a period where the Republicans were consistently winning the presidency and Democrats pretty consistently were winning both chambers of Congress, but particularly the House.

And so of course there's going to be a lot of ticket splitting and different results in an era like that. But we're in an era now where again the presidential and the House and also the Senate, the Senate results are just very highly correlated. And so we're in a Tom Davis

Former congressman from Northern Virginia, fairly big wheel on the Republican Party when he was around. He was the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee for a time. Very sharp person on House elections because he was very involved in them. He sometimes talks about how our House elections, our congressional elections are more sort of what he calls parliamentary style and that it's sort of party over person elections.

And I think that's probably the best sort of easy description of it that I think in large part people are voting for party label, but some people do split their tickets and those are the people who could actually decide what happens.

You know, that was the era that I grew up in, the 70s and the 80s. And of course, you had lots of split tickets at that time. And looking back on it with the hindsight of the subsequent 40 years, there was a time when the party coalitions were in movement, that the traditional Northern Union post-Civil War movement

support that if granddad fought in the Grand Army of the Republic, you were a Republican, whether or not you were a liberal or a conservative and vice versa for granddad fighting in the Army of Southern Virginia, that was shifting. And so you had these northern Republican seats that would, you know, by the end of the Reagan administration, be voting for Democrats and places in northern California or the northwest and southern seats or southern Democratic dominated seats.

that would easily vote for Reagan or Bush and return a conservative to moderate Democrat. How much of what we're seeing is of the return to the pre-

1970s model where people voted, there were swing voters, but there weren't split ticket voters. How much it is because we now have such a strong correlation between political beliefs and political parties? Yeah, I mean, that's the story of the second half of the 20th century was sort of the ideological alignment of the parties. There's this great book called, uh,

the polarizers, I'm blanking on the guy's name, he wrote it, it came out a couple years ago, but it sort of was, it was a history of political alignment, but it was also had to do with how political scientists viewed the parties at the time and how the parties were not presenting clear ideological choices of the voters and that the voters should be able to distinguish more ideologically between the two parties. And in a lot of ways, I think we got what they wanted and that we do have,

a lot of more ideological distinction between the parties, although that's always changing too. I mean, you know, the Republicans are more economically populous now than they were 20 years ago, for sure. But, you know, the conservatives are in the Republican Party and the Democrats or the liberals and progressives are in the Democratic Party. And that's much more true now than it was a generation or two ago. And so logically speaking, like it's logical for people not to split their tickets. It's like, I think we sometimes think about, oh, well,

you know, a good citizen or whatever, they'll discern between this party here and that party there. And they'll, you know, they'll evaluate the person as opposed to the party and blah, blah, blah. And like, it's not necessarily logical to do it that way. It's perfectly logical to do it the other way and just say, hey,

I'm a Democrat. I believe in the Democratic platform. I'm voting Democratic down the ticket, period. That's how I get what I want or what I value out of politics. I don't like the other side. Same thing if you're a Republican. And so that's just the era we're in. And I think that also was the era that predominated after the Civil War, as you were talking about, where the electoral maps looked a lot like the Civil War map. You had the solid Democratic South.

You had the Republican North and states that were kind of partially Southern and partially Northern, like Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. New York was also that way. And, you know, New York City was, you know, was pretty anti-Civil War at the time. And so, you know, borders, you know, they were almost like border states or border portions of those states, but those were the swing states.

It's not like that now, but it's the same sort of dynamic where you don't have as much ticket splitting. Like I said, we don't have great records from back in the late 1800s, but I suspect if you looked at it, you'd see the same sort of dynamic we see now, very little ticket splitting. Of course, back then, that was before the

the sort of progressive era reforms about like the ballot and stuff. So like, you know, Tammany Hall might be handing you a ballot to go cast or something. I mean, it's a different kind of era, but the kind of voter behavior is, I think, the same. Yeah, that's something I always have to inform my students about when I'm teaching about that era is,

You know, why is it that Abraham Lincoln didn't get any votes in the South? Why wasn't he on the ballot? And I say, surprise, there was no such thing as a government ballot. And would you want to risk your life in the Deep South handing out ballots for a man that was widely viewed as somebody who wanted to destroy the Southern way of life? Of course, people wouldn't do that. So if you, you know,

Robbie George says, you know, he asks his class sometimes what would they have done in the Civil War. He says, surprise, they were all abolitionists who would have stood up in the South. And it's like, really? Let's look at the history of that. A lot easier said than done. It's a lot easier to judge how people did it than actually have to do it yourself.

So if this is the case that 98.7% of the district results are predicted by presidential turnout, or not presidential turnout, presidential result,

What that means is that maybe we should be looking at some of these districts that were Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Or maybe we should be looking at districts where, yeah, Biden won, but based on the demographic switches, like poll after poll after poll, saying a much larger switch among Latinos seems to be in the offering than among whites, who seem to be more fixed in there. Where should we be looking?

on a partisan basis. And then I want to get to the individual races, because of course, individuals still do matter. Otherwise, we wouldn't have things like Matt Cartwright representing the Trumpy Wyoming Valley and Representative Fitzpatrick carrying on the family fiefdom in Bucks County in suburban Philadelphia. But if we were looking just at

the demographic partisan map, what would we be looking at and where would be the sort of places we would want to examine more closely? You know, I was just doing another interview earlier today and someone asked me like, hey, what part of the country should we be looking at? And I was like, if you could just slice off the eastern half of Pennsylvania and

give me the results in suburban Philly and then also in like Matt Cartwright's house district in the, you know, Scranton area, you probably would have a pretty good idea as to what actually happened all across the country in the election because you've got, you've got two, you know, two sides of the realigning coin these days. It's like,

Philly suburbs used to be more Republican leaning. Now it would become, you know, super democratic for the most part. Bucks County sort of exception. It's more of a swing area, but you look at some of the other suburban counties in Philadelphia area, they really trended that way. You'd also find out something about black turnout in the city of Philadelphia. And, you know, what, what size of the margin is there and is it good enough for Biden? And then, you know, the Northern part of that Eastern half of the state,

um, that's more Trumpy, you know, did, you know, Biden recovered a little bit, not to what Obama did in that part of the state, but, but, you know, recovered to some degree, you know, is, does it, does it flip more back toward Trump, um, even more so. And, and that could be really important in deciding Pennsylvania and hence the election in terms of like realignment, you know, there are some districts I'm watching that, um,

That I think you just have to be aware of the possibility of more realignment going on. So in terms of Republican targets, the Cartwright District is a good example you just mentioned. South Texas, Vicente Gonzalez, Texas 34. We just made some rating changes. We actually made that one a little bit more competitive, going from likely Dem to leans Dem. The Republicans were really...

Loaded for bear in that district in 2022. It was Biden by about 15 or so, but that was way down from Clinton in 2016 and past Democratic presidential performance. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat, ended up winning by about eight and a half. But that's one where, like, what if there's another turn of the screw here? Like, what if, you know, what if South Texas moves even more or the Republicans?

that's a seat that then suddenly would be in play. Um, Indiana's first district, sort of a, it's kind of like Chicagoland on the other side of the, um, the Indiana, Illinois border, traditional working class blue, you know, blue collar democratic district, Gary Hammond, Gary and Hammond, you know, Frank Mervan, the democratic incumbent there, um, ended up winning, you know, relatively comfortably in 2022, despite being a big target. Um, but that's another one to watch for. And then like on the, you know, on the Republican side, um,

Yes.

And maybe that allows the Democrats to flip that district and that covers some historically Republican turf. And we've seen in a state like California a lot of historically Republican places moving toward being Democratic for president, but maybe lagging a little bit in terms of voting Democratic for House because there are some – a number of those Biden district Republicans are in Southern California.

I mean, that is California is the one state in the union where I do not look at the Biden's Trump statistic because the races for Congress track much more closely to the Newsom gubernatorial campaign, which is to say, yes, Biden carried five districts that are currently represented by Republicans. But I believe Newsom lost four of them.

I think that's right. And that's been the case throughout the eras, that even when Republicans were losing them in 2018, they were running well ahead of Trump, and then they were winning them in 2020 and 2022. But that is probably one of the very few examples where you have the 1970s phenomena of

So legacy voting holding on below the presidency, just as you did in the North and the South in the 70s and the 80s. But without a change in the party, eventually that legacy voting is going to fade away.

Yeah. And, you know, New York State is also part of this in that, you know, you look at the, you know, the Biden Republican House districts, there are a number of them in New York, too, that Republicans had a great election in New York. And like the, you know, the gubernatorial race there, which, you know, was was more competitive than expected. You know, Kathy Hochul beat Lee Zeldin by about six points.

And there it's like, yeah, they're a bunch of Biden districts, but they're also districts that Zelda and I either won or came really close to winning. And, you know, there's some sort of dynamic going on too. And, you know, we've got this New York three special election coming up on next week, in fact, and that's a Biden plus eight district. But also the Republicans have been doing quite well in Nassau County and Long Island where that is. And so it's like, what is, you know, what is that going to look like? And, you know, it seems like there's,

That there's maybe there's more a little bit of slack in terms of the down ballot voting in some of these like blue states for whatever reason that, you know, they're Democratic, the presidential level, but maybe they're more open to Republicans down the ballot. And like, that's the that's the lock that Democrats have to pick in this election because they got to win. They don't even win all those seats, but they need to win back Democrats.

a number of them in order to win the House. And again, it's doable in a presidential year, but that's where you're going to be seeing some of this ticket splitting, whereas a lot of other places, you're going to see less of it. So let's move on to the fulcrum. You know, the crystal ball rates all 435 House seats.

I know you're going to be having some changes that come out as we're releasing this. Where do you guys see it right now? How many safe seats for the R's? How many safe seats for the D's? And where, you know, if you were to pick like five toss-ups or five toss-up and leans that if you knew the outcome of those in November, you'd have a good idea who controls the chamber. What would those seats be?

Yeah, so our ratings, and these are updated, like you said, right around the time this is going to post. We've got 191 safe Republican, 174 safe Democratic. If you combine the leans and likely in both sides and add to the safes, you get 212 safe likely lean R, 203 safe likely lean D, 20 toss-ups. If you split the toss-ups directly down the middle,

you would get a 222 to 213 Republican House, which is exactly the House that was elected in 2022. So the ratings kind of reflect what the current balance is. And so the Democrats off the cut a little bit more of the toss-ups. We do have, that does take into account a new Republican gerrymander in North Carolina that's going to net them at least three seats. It also takes into account new districts that

new Democratic districts in Alabama and Louisiana that were forced by the effectively by the Supreme Court's Allen versus Milligan decision that upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and that district drawing process.

New York State may have a new congressional map. The Democrats are hoping they get something better than the current map. The current map is, I think, relatively fair, but fair doesn't have anything to do with it. You know, it's like the North Carolina map was fair, too, I thought. But, you know, Republicans had the power to gerrymander it, so they did. It's just the way it goes with this stuff. So that's a part of this, too. And

So just to clarify, the 212-203 assumes the New York map doesn't change. So if it were to be a predatorymander, you would be moving seats away from R to D, so it would be much closer to being even. Correct, yeah. So we currently have five Republican-held House seats in

in New York in the toss-up column. And so, like, you know, let's say two of them or something get way bluer, you know, those are toss-ups that go into the Democratic column. You know, like Nick LaLotta out on the eastern tip of Long Island, that's a very narrowly won Biden seat that LaLotta should win easily if the district doesn't change.

but if that suddenly goes to biden plus 10 then that's like a toss-up and um under the the initial democratic gerrymander that the courts threw out the state court throughout in 2022

that New York's first district, that Nikola Lota seat, that ended up being like a Biden plus 10 or so seat. So the redistricting could have some impact and maybe bring the ratings more into true parity. But I broadly look at the race for the House as a toss-up. If you want to say the Republicans have a tiny advantage, that's fine. But I broadly look at the House as a toss-up. As for, again, key districts...

Um, you know, the Democrats are going to have to hold on to, you know, they've got these five Trump one seats. Um, I think they would, you know, they could probably afford to lose one or two, but they can't lose them all. One that's of interest is Marcy captor in Northwest Ohio, the Toledo area, uh, captor. That's a Trump district, uh, a narrow Trump district. Captor has been around for a really long time. Um,

She got first elected, I think, in 1982. And the Republicans had a pretty horrible candidate there, a guy named J.R. Majewski, in 2022.

two he got blown out um majewski's running again he may be the nominee there's some other stuff going on in that district um that's you know that's one to watch the republicans are hoping that that kind of aligns for them down the road here um you know others to watch you know two that i just changed to toss up from leaning to their respective parties don bacon in omaha nebraska two republican held seat and then also jared golden in

Maine too. Those are two other of these crossover members. And actually those are, you know, congressional district votes that went for, went for the other side in the presidential race, you know, Maine and Nebraska, a portion electoral votes based on congressional district. The only two states that do that. And so those, those candidates both will have to win some crossover support. And like, if I knew that one side, you know, swept those two races, I,

That, I think, would be pretty telling about the direction this is going. You know, I think if Golden loses, the Democrats are going to have a hard time winning the House. I think if Bacon loses, the Republicans are probably going to have a hard time winning the House because both of them have proven to be resilient in somewhat difficult districts in their relatively short time in Congress. Bacon was elected in 16. Golden was elected in 18.

Of course, Biden won the presidential popular vote by 4.4% in 2020. Polls right now tend to show Trump with a narrow lead nationally, although with a number of people undecided, as you might expect, I think very few, if any, show Trump with the majority of the vote. It tends to be he's stuck at his 46, 47, 48, and Biden's below him as opposed to Trump being above that.

But, you know, let's just go with the margin instead of the absolute. What would happen on the House map if instead of Biden plus four, it was basically 50-50? You know, Biden wins by a point or less or Trump wins by a point or less. Would that favor on the margin Republicans narrowly holding the House regardless of who actually wins the national popular vote? It's a good question. I think it would. I mean, if you go through particularly...

if you look at the crystal balls house ratings, there are a number of like marginal Biden one seats that are that, you know, probably would flip to Trump if the popular vote was, you know, three, four, five points more Republican. So like a couple of open seats in Michigan, Alyssa Slotkin's open seat around Lansing, Michigan seven, Slotkin's running for U S Senate. And then in the kind of, kind of Flint area, Dan Kildee's Michigan eight,

uh that is enough those are both marginal biden one seats you know those are districts that probably vote for trump if if that if we're talking about a world where the popular vote is tied uh amelia sykes in ohio 13 and the akron canton area that's another one that was like biden plus three um susan wilde in in uh um

in Eastern Pennsylvania. That's another one that would vote for Trump in this situation. So then you're starting to get a situation where you've got, you know, we think about what the numbers are now. 18 Biden won seats the Republicans hold, five Democrats and Trump won seats. Well, maybe that goes to 15 Democrats and Trump won seats for 20. And then how many of those incumbents actually win or not? So, you know, I would think that if

If that happens, the Republicans probably would hold the House because it would be this sort of rising tide that lifts all boats. So, yeah, when you're talking about Susan Wilde, it just made me think you're talking about eastern Pennsylvania, the microcosm of everything. Her seat is the Lehigh Valley, Allentown, Bethlehem. It was Biden by less than a point. It contains one of the two...

traditional swing bellwether counties eerie in the far northwest corner but Northampton County so I'm just thinking I'm listening to you and I'm thinking everything depends on Susan Wild I mean look I do think this eastern PA thing I mean it's a

It really does have almost everything you'd want to look for. I mean, I guess it's not particularly heavily Latino, although I do think there's certainly Latino pockets in that area. I think like Redding, PA, is a good example of that. And of course, the big city areas are generally fairly diverse anyway. But again, you've got like Tony suburbs and then kind of like more kind of working class white areas. And if you look at...

I remember, you know, when, you know, obviously it took Pennsylvania a while to like finalize his vote count. But I remember thinking fairly early on that it looked like Biden was in good shape in Pennsylvania because you didn't have some completed counties. And he was consistently running just like a little bit ahead of Clinton. And, you know, and so as the puzzle pieces got fit in, it sort of made sense that he that he that he ended up winning the state.

But again, like if you know, so Biden ran ahead of Clinton's margin in in most places in the state, although some of the Western Appalachian counties, you know, Trump did a little bit better than he did in 2016. And actually, I think technically in the city of Philadelphia, Trump.

did slightly better, which was a kind of a common thing that some of the big urban counties, you know, was the democratic margins weren't quite as big as they were based on, you know, percentage margin. But, you know, again, if, if, if Trump is able to sort of get back to the 2016 level and some of these, you know, this patchwork of small counties, you know,

you know, he only has to make up, you know, like a point and a half or something in Pennsylvania. So it wouldn't take that much. But it's going to be interesting to sort of follow how that works out. And again, you've got two really important Republican House targets in that territory, Wilde and Cartwright, who we've talked about. My last question for you, Kyle, is in the Senate, you can look and you can say the standout

kings and queens. You know, the person who creates split-ticket voting would be Joe Manchin in West Virginia, although now he's stepping down because after

two-stepping for over a decade, even he can't do it, and Susan Collins in Maine. Do you have stars of the person who still in this partisan era exhibits a clear personal support that just stands out and is the thing that most explains why they're able to win in unfavorable ground?

I mean, you know, it's not consistent because she hasn't been around for a while, but, you know, Mary Paltola in Alaska is the sort of example of that kind of person, you know, a small state, um, just like Collins in Maine and Jared Golden in Maine as well. Uh, and, you know, Paltola benefited, I think, from a split Republican party and a new kind of convoluted top four voting system out there. Um, but in terms of people who are more entrenched, um,

David Valdeo in California's Central Valley, who actually lost in 2018, but he came back, but he's been in Congress for most of the last dozen years. He has done a pretty impressive job of running ahead of the presidential, and he very barely lost in 2018, then he stormed back and won despite Biden winning the district by 10-plus points.

And, you know, those Central Valley seats, first of all, each district, of course, is drawn to be

have roughly the same population, specifically within states, but generally comparable across the country. But some districts have higher turnout than others. Some districts have more eligible voters than others. The Central Valley has a lot of people who aren't citizens, who aren't able to vote, and turnout is also just really low. So it's a pretty small universe of actual voters in California 22 and the Central Valley.

But those voters have, you know, have liked Valdeo even though they voted, you know, Democratic for president. Now, you know, it's harder to find these examples. And a lot of these people have retired or been defeated over the years. You have Colin Peterson in western Minnesota is another great example of that kind of person. He finally lost in 2020 after the big Trump realignment in out-state California.

Minnesota, but you go back to the old days, like you were talking about, you coming up in the 70s and 80s, you think about Bill Green, who held the so-called Silk Stocking District in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That was John Lindsay's district before he became mayor and was your prototypical

Rockefeller Republican seat and Green held on to that seat. He won it back in the late 70s for the Republicans, held it until the early 90s. And then, of course, a long slew of Southern Democrats, some of whom held on even until 2014, like John Barrow in Southern Georgia,

You know, Gene Taylor in Mississippi lost, I think, in 2010. So, you know, there were much easier examples back then. But you have some folks. But, you know, one other striking thing is that other than Marcy Kaptur, and Kaptur was in a safe Democratic seat for a long time, so it's not necessarily comparable. But, you know, most of these members in the most vulnerable districts are not people who have been around forever.

You know, and, you know, some of them are on the younger side. And, you know, so they're still sort of building that image. They don't have, like, decades of past experience to draw on. You know, Captor does, but she's more of the exception than the rule. So how can my listeners follow your work?

centeredforpolitics.org backslash crystal ball we do crystal ball newsletter um usually twice a week particularly in big election years like this usually comes out wednesdays and thursdays via email you could sign up uh there or just find our content and our ratings at the site um i'm still active on x slash twitter at k kondik um i haven't quite migrated to a different platform yet but i don't know maybe that's coming in the future but

And, you know, again, reach out to me there or to Chris DeBall if you're curious about any of this stuff. Well, it's great to have your insights, and I hope to have you back again this year on Beyond the Polls. Absolutely. Thank you.

♪♪♪

This week's ad of the week looks like a straight up contrast ad, but there's a twist that means there's more than meets the eye. Let's listen.

Two leading candidates for Senate. Two very different visions for California. Steve Garvey, the leading Republican, is too conservative for California. He voted for Trump twice and supported Republicans for years, including far-right conservatives. Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat, defended democracy against Trump and the insurrectionists. He helped build affordable housing, lower drug costs, and bring good jobs back home.

The choice is clear. I'm Adam Schiff, and I approve this message. Okay, so you've got the ad. It's Democrat Adam Smith, all good things, sweetness light, motherhood and apple pie, Steve Garvey murdered your dog. Obviously, I'm exaggerating, but the point is, in a contrast ad, you try and put your guy in the best light and the other person in the absolute worst. So this is a normal ad on television. Why is it the ad of the week?

Well, because normally you only see contrast ads between Republicans and Democrats in the general election. But this is airing in California now in advance of its March 5th primary. Why would Steve Garvey?

and Adam Schiff be the subjects of an ad when Adam Schiff hasn't become the Democratic nominee yet? Well, it all has to do with California's voting system because California doesn't have partisan primaries. California has a top two primary. What that means is that people all compete for a slot on the ballot without regard to party in the primary and anybody can vote for anybody.

And the top two people, regardless of party, go on. So what Schiff is doing is saying, I would like to face a Republican. I don't want to have to face another Democrat. And the polls are saying that Schiff is in first place and that another Democrat, Orange County Representative Katie Porter, is roughly in a statistical tie with Steve Garvey. If he faces Porter...

Then it's D on D, and the states, 35% or so who will vote for Trump in the general election, don't have a dog in the hunt. Many of them won't vote, but many of them might vote for Porter because guess what? They remember Adam Schiff as the person who tried to impeach Trump. Adam Schiff does not want that. So what you've got is an unusual ad where he's trying to boost Garvey as much as he's trying to boost himself.

And part of the way we can see that is the things he says. Now, a Democrat would hear voted for Trump twice, supported supposedly far right conservatives and say, oh, that's a bad thing. And of course, that is a good contrast for Schiff.

But a Republican will see this ad and say, oh, he's the guy I want. And one way you can tell that this is meant to communicate with Republicans as well as Democrats is things like how they treat Garvey. Usually in a contrast ad, you take unflattering photos in black and white so that the person not only sounds bad, but looks bad. In this, Steve Garvey is in Congress.

Steve Garvey has nice photos. He looks like a presentable guy. In other words, he votes exactly like the candidate that a conservative Republican might want to vote for. Of course, Katie Porter knows this. This has now become a standard tactic of meddling in another party's primary by creating contrast ads that help a

a cash-poor opponent win a primary while also creating a favorable contrast for you for the general election. And she is hopping mad about it. And she's got an ad that's basically saying that Adam Schiff is just another politician who can talk and attack personalities rather than talk about all the issues. And, of course, she's got an ad contrasting Adam Schiff. But the thing is that Steve Garvey doesn't have much money.

Steve Garvey can't afford statewide television. So without Adam Schiff running these ads, you would have Katie Porter running millions of dollars of ads, Adam Schiff running millions of dollars of ads, and poor Steve Garvey wouldn't be able to communicate to Trump voters. So what we're talking about is really one of the most devious things that a candidate can do, and that is boost himself

pick your opponent, and aggravate people within your own parties. This is a very good ad at accomplishing those things. We'll find out in a month if it works. And that's why it's this week's Ad of the Week. That's it for this week's Beyond the Polls. Next week, I'll be back in the continental U.S. of A. I'll be joined by one of America's most innovative pollsters, Douglas Rivers of YouGov. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the polls.

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