Does It Matter If King Charles Is Popular?
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do you think if trump gets re-elected we're gonna finally get greenland we're gonna buy green we better run on that he should run on that i feel like that would really juice up his campaign when was the last time a country sold a piece of territory because like it used to happen obviously we know from history yeah in the 1800s a lot but wait 2017 2017

Saudi Arabia bought something from Egypt. Oh. Hmm. Turin Island and Santa Fe Island. Oh, I'm looking at it right now. Oh, yeah. $22 million. Wikipedia, of course, has a... Oil and development aid. It looks like the US did buy some islands from Denmark in 1917. So there's precedent. There is precedent. ♪

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. King Charles III was crowned over the weekend, which led to a lot of polls being released comparing his popularity to his late mother's and his son William's. Long story short, the numbers are not great.

Don't worry, we are not going to moonlight as Royal Watchers today, though. Instead, I have more of a philosophical question that also applies to polling of other unelected roles, which is if the whole point of the monarchy is that it doesn't derive its power from the people, why poll public opinion? And on the topic of polls, there was an ABC News Washington Post poll out this weekend that got a lot of attention. It shows both Trump and DeSantis leading Biden in a very early 2024 matchup. So what should we make of that poll?

We're also going to talk about the 2024 Senate races that are taking shape. Republican challengers to vulnerable Democratic incumbents are announcing their bids and some of the names you will recognize from the 2022 midterms. So is there reason to believe that candidates

who lost in 2022 might do better this time around. And lastly, the census released new data that gives the clearest picture yet of who voted in those 2022 midterms. We've got a lot to discuss. So here with me to do it is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeff.

Hey, Galen. Also here with us is senior reporter Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Hey, Amelia. Hey, Galen. And senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Good morning, Galen. How early did you wake up to watch the coronation, be honest? Oh, 5.30? No, I'm kidding. I only...

really saw it play out through the savagery that took place on Twitter over the weekend. Twitter was not really into the coronation. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but people were not being very nice. Oh, no. Clearly, Galen, you're not on royal Twitter. What were people saying?

I don't know. It's just like kind of salty people who aren't into the idea of a monarchy, you know, which I guess is like a fair position to hold. But I will say my Twitter timeline was not balanced evenly between enthusiastic royalists and it's mostly Americans, I think, who just are like, this is dumb or whatever.

You need to follow more royalists, Galen. I do. I do. This is clearly the answer. This is exposing a weakness in your Twitter following. I know. I know. In the run-up to Charles's coronation, as I mentioned, a lot of polls were conducted and they showed him significantly less popular than other members of the royal family and

namely his son Prince William and daughter-in-law Princess Catherine. On top of that, polls also show that while a majority of Brits support the existence of the monarchy, support has declined some, and a majority of younger Brits don't support it. The National Center for Social Research found that just 29% say the retention of the monarchy is very important, the lowest proportion on record.

So seeing all of this polling come across my transom late last week got me thinking, like, what is the point of conducting public opinion polling if the monarchy isn't a democratic institution? Like here on the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we always talk about how public opinion matters because we live in a democracy. And the whole point of living in a democracy is what the people want should have some influence on what we get out of our political system.

But is polling a monarchy, in other words, a good or bad use of polling? Nathaniel? I think it's a good use of polling. I mean, first of all, like, it's interesting, right? I appreciate it when we get polls of, like, figures in America who are just, like, public figures and not politicians. I think that's interesting. And it provides data to make informed decisions and or just, like, you know, informed decisions.

commentary, I guess, about who Americans admire and maybe who would be a good spokesperson for, you know, I don't know, a Neutrogena commercial or something like that. Maybe they want King Charles to be a spokesperson. No, I think they want Prince William to be a Neutrogena. There you go. Or Prince Harry. I think he's pretty popular in the U.S. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they can get Prince Harry to do their U.S. campaign, Prince William to do their U.K. campaign.

Anyway, but yeah, so I think it's a good use of polling for that reason, but also for, I think, more serious reasons, which are that obviously, like, the UK may not have a monarchy forever. And, you know, there is, I think, still a while away from being abolished if that ever happens. But anyway.

the conversations are in the air and obviously polling is the only way we're going to know if that ever reaches kind of majority support and um and then if that were to happen then you may would maybe see some momentum behind that movement and i think it is worthwhile to know if that is going to happen anytime soon which maybe brings us to a more complicated question which is

In lots of societies, there are parts of government that are designed to be not accountable to the people. I mean, a monarchy is an extreme example, but here in the United States, we have a Supreme Court. Obviously, in other countries, they have other systems of government. For example, in China, where the government is...

fully not responsive to the or at least fully not accountable to the public. But we still get, for example, here we pull the Supreme Court in academic research papers. A lot of the research suggests that public opinion does still matter in China and that the central government is responsive to public opinion, which I guess just kind of makes me think, does public opinion matter in all forms of government, period, like even if they aren't democracies? Well, I think

I think public opinion has kind of always mattered to the British monarchy, at least thinking about, you know, going back to 1066 or whenever we count this particular iteration. I don't know. This is, I'm going to hit the limits of my knowledge real quick. But, you know, I mean, even as far back as the 13th century, there was this like group of rebel barons that rebelled.

rose up and forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, which was, you know, one of these first kind of

attempts to create a set of rights. And that happened because he was an unpopular and weak king. And he didn't want to sign it, but he had to in order to keep a, you know, a bigger rebellion from fomenting and possibly taking over the crown. And then of course, if Charles the third on the throne right now, but Charles the first was quite famously deposed and beheaded. And

and the monarchy was abolished for a period of time in England or in Britain and then brought back. And then a couple decades after that, after the Glorious Revolution, they created a structure where they actually, like the monarchy, the British monarchy is quite limited in some ways. It's answerable to Parliament. Parliament has a lot of control over various aspects of the monarchy.

And so I think, you know, I don't see a world where there's a big anti-monarchist sentiment rising in Great Britain to overthrow the monarchy, but they have a lot of privileges

that Parliament could, in theory, take away, and they could have their power and privilege reduced significantly. And I think in particular, one thing we've seen is unhappiness in Britain over how expensive the royal family is, and how much of their sort of lifestyle and upkeep historically taxpayers have footed the bill for. I mean, this the coronation,

It's going to cost, I think, something like 100 million pounds. And there was some polling showing that a majority of people in Britain didn't think the government should be footing the bill for that. Now, it was still the country still divided about that.

But I think that is maybe the more important question for what's happening with the monarchy. And in some ways, that's similar to the Supreme Court too. Like, we're not going to get rid of the US Supreme Court. But the theory that a lot of scholars have put forward for why the Supreme Court does in some instances appear to be responsive to public opinion is that Congress has control over aspects of the way the Supreme Court does its job and how broad its jurisdiction is. And that Congress...

will signal its displeasure to the Supreme Court by introducing bills that would curb the Supreme Court's power in some way. And so the theory of that is that, you know, Congress makes noises about reducing the Supreme Court's power and the Supreme Court backs off. So, you know, I think we could see something similar with the royal family, but

Where if they don't have good public opinion, there's unhappiness about how much money they're spending, whatever, then they respond because they could, in theory, be checked by Parliament. Jeff, how are you processing all of this?

I mean, I think it's a good use of polling just to sort of echo sentiments that have been shared here. I think it's also important to remember that a lot of this is dependent on who the king or queen is. So obviously Elizabeth had been queen for just over 70 years and she

That's a long, long time for people to become familiar with somebody who's just sort of there, right? So now we're in a period of change. And Charles has a somewhat checkered past. His relationship with Diana and other views of him, he's not the same sort of beloved figure. Whether or not that changes in the next few years remains to be seen. But we do know that polling suggests that

that William, his heir, is very popular. So in a situation where William comes into the monarchy in the next few years, you know, if Charles passes or abdicates, I mean, who knows what sort of situations could arise. I mean, you could imagine like a health-based abdication even. That's not an unheard of thing in monarchies. I'm not saying like some scandal or something. You know, that could actually strengthen the monarchy's position in terms of public polling. So...

So, you know, I think that's another thing that we have to keep in mind. So ultimately, it's good to pull non-democracies is the conclusion that we're coming to and things that are theoretically unaccountable to public opinion.

It is perhaps less a good use of polling to poll people in the US about what they think about the British royal family. I will concede that point. I think definitely a good use of polling to poll the people who are actually being ruled by the British royal family. Americans like to think that their opinion matters, but it does not really matter. Sorry, guys.

All right. Well, OK, let's move on to another poll where public opinion in America does actually matter. Over the weekend, an ABC News Washington Post poll got a lot of attention. And so I want to talk about it. The poll showed Biden at his lowest approval so far. That was at 36 percent. It also polled a very early head to head between Biden and Trump.

DeSantis and Trump. And among people who were definite on who they'd vote for, Trump led by four points and DeSantis was tied with Biden. If you also include people who said they probably knew who they would vote for, then Trump extends his lead over Biden by seven points and DeSantis' lead over Biden is five points. So I should say here, the evergreen advice on the FiveThirtyEightPolitics podcast is that you put a new poll in the average.

But beyond that, is there other context we should know about this poll as it gets so much attention? Well, I think it is worth remembering that it is an outlier of sorts. As you were saying, Galen, we tend to recommend people throw things into an average. So in that poll, Biden's approval rating was, I think, 36%. Yeah. And if you look at

polls taken over a similar time span that are currently in 538 average and

That one is the lowest for Biden. And the high was 45% from a, I think it was an Economist YouGov poll. So what I'm saying is, to your point, you throw it into an average to get a fix on things because polls are snapshots in time. We know there's a margin of error. Different pollsters have different methodologies. And this is, to be clear, not at all taking away from the findings in ABC News Washington Post poll. It's just that...

It's all about context and understanding what the polls as a whole are suggesting is going on. In fact, it's important to publish outliers because you have a stronger average on the whole when people are unabashed about publishing their findings either on the higher end or the lower end or whatever. You know, we've been through many election cycles recently where outlier polls seemed to, you know, have have insight that the averages didn't. Yeah.

Yeah. And to your point, you know, outliers can also be the first sign of a new trend. So, you know, is it possible that Biden's approval rating could tick down?

in the coming months, and maybe this would be an early indication of that. We don't know. But I just, to your point, it is important that this result and results like it are published. We don't want people to say, oh, this seems a little away from where the average is. We shouldn't publish this. That's like horrible. Please don't do that. Please publish your results. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, even good pollsters run into, you know, a sample that is too liberal or too conservative from time to time. And ABC News, Washington Post is a very good pollster. They have an A rating from us. I think that, yeah, the fact that that approval number being so low, it represented a dip significantly.

decline in the ABC News, Washington Post trend, which is a decline that other pollsters have not measured, I think does suggest to me that it was just too conservative a sample. And obviously, you know, kind of explains why you saw that result of, I think, Trump leading by seven points, was it, in the head-to-head? And then kind of on the flip side of the coin, the YouGov Economist poll that you mentioned, you know, that had Biden leading by

by five points among adults and three points among registered voters. So... That's an outlier in the other direction. Exactly, right. And so, like, this is why we take averages. The other thing I will say is that, like...

The utility of head-to-head polls at this point in the cycle is marginal at best. We don't recommend looking at polls of the general election until basically after the primaries are over, after the dust has settled. We know the nominees, the kind of...

members of each party who are kind of coming home to their nominee after a potentially bruising primary fight. And yeah, like it's not something that like Biden should be losing a lot of sleep over just as, you know, Trump shouldn't lose sleep over a poll right now that had Biden up by five points. Like ultimately, I think.

It's going to be a very close presidential election. Like we haven't had a, you know, kind of blowout of that magnitude, seven points since Barack Obama in 2008. I think probably those days are over, at least in the short term because of polarization. So yeah, you know, I just, I think it is just an outlier poll and we can move on.

I think the poll did have some questions that signaled some potential challenges for Biden going forward that are unrelated to the horse race aspect of this. So one of the findings that was interesting is that even though Trump and Biden are both

quite old, Trump is 76 and Biden is 80, the respondents were much more likely to say that Biden is too old for another term as opposed to Trump. And that gap was really big. It was more than 20 percentage points between the people who said that Biden was too old for another term and the people who said that Trump was too old, although a significant number of people said that both Trump and Biden were too old. So, you know, worth bearing that in mind.

But I think, you know, that's not a new dynamic. We saw in 2020 Trump trying to portray Biden, who again is really not that much older than he is, as too old and infirm and losing his memory and, you know, losing his grasp on reality.

So I think that's a signal that, you know, maybe those some of those attacks stuck. Maybe the fact that Biden has been in the public eye for the past few years in a way that Trump hasn't has made his age more salient in people's eyes. Anyway, you know, obviously not something that we're going to look at and say, oh, like Biden is like,

really looks like he's going to lose in a year and a half because of this poll. But I think it signals a potential challenge for Biden going forward. Respondents were also substantially more likely to say that Trump did a better job handling the economy when he was president than Biden has done so far.

And I think that's something else where, you know, this is this is so it's it was Americans said this by 54 to 36% saying that Trump did a better job versus Biden. It's a pretty big gap. And if you also just think about the circumstances of their presidencies, we've been dealing with inflation and the fallout from the COVID, the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic for basically all of Biden's presidency.

and the Fed is now having to take these sort of dramatic steps to try to bring inflation down. Biden has had, you know, he inherited a pretty crappy situation, whereas the economy was very good for most of Trump's presidency. And, you know, we did see a recession in the last year of his term, but that was sort of the early pandemic. And it was, I think,

weird enough that people still associate all of that with something that was a byproduct of the pandemic and not something that would blame a president for, where I think people are pretty clearly blaming Biden for some of what we've seen in the past few years. All right, so some important context to think about when seeing that poll in the headlines going forward. Let's move on and talk about the 2024 Senate races that are taking shape.

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The 10 most competitive Senate seats in 2024, according to the Cook Political Report, are West Virginia, Montana, Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas. Only two of those seats are currently held by Republicans, of course, Texas and Florida, and one is held by an independent, which is, of course, Sinema in Arizona.

We haven't really taken full stock of the race for the Senate yet. And, you know, with perhaps good reason, the election is a year and a half away. But if you had to approximate the odds today that Republicans will win a Senate majority in the next election, where would you place them, Nathaniel?

Yeah, it's a good question. I'm curious to see what Jeffrey thinks about this. I would say the Senate overall is either lean or likely Republican. I don't know if I want to... Go any further than that? Yeah. I mean, it is very early, right?

And, you know, probably the responsible thing to do is to have white error bars. So, yeah, I would say one of those two things. Obviously, something that we've talked about before is, you know, Republicans have a very favorable Senate map for them. They like, you know, their incumbents are pretty darn safe. They're, you know, maybe vulnerable in Florida and Texas, as you mentioned. But like, obviously, those are states that are vulnerable.

very difficult for Democrats, especially these days. And they have tons of pickup opportunities, right? Republicans do in terms of Democrats in red states. And so because of that, you know, I think

at least a one seat gain for Republicans is quite likely. And then, you know, you can maybe you can see a situation where maybe, you know, like Republicans only pick up one seat and maybe they lose the, you know, the vice presidency. And so kind of Democrats keep a 50 50 Senate. But like, I think there's like all the different paths that they have gives them, you know, a very clear path to some higher than 50 percent number of odds.

I tend to agree with what Nathaniel was saying there. I mean, it is early, but I think there's just, if you sort of just sort of think about the core opportunities for each party to add to their current, the current seats they hold, Republicans get to target three states that are clearly to the right of the country, particularly West Virginia, which is like way to the right, you know, one of the most Republican states in the country. And then also Montana and Ohio, whereas for Democrats at 51 seats right now,

Florida and Texas are their best bets, but those are definitely reach opportunities for them. Whereas, you know, Republicans might be even money or favored in those other three states we were just talking about. And then on top of that, you've got Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, you know, states that Democrats are defending the seats in. And states that are just truly, truly competitive. Yeah. Will be on the presidential level, will be on the Senate level.

Yeah, so all of this, and I think it's worth adding, in the 2016 presidential election, every single Senate race went the same way as the state did at the presidential level. And in 2020, just one state, Maine, didn't do that. So we know that there are not going to be a ton of split-ticket voters, and so the weight of the Republican performance at the top of the ticket in places like West Virginia and Montana and Ohio...

could make it particularly difficult for Democrats. They're going to need split-ticket voters to hold on to any of those. And while they do exist, and you could basically bet that the Democratic incumbent senators there will probably outperform Biden, at the same time, they have to outperform him by a fair amount. And that might be tough.

Yeah, that's a good point, Jeffrey. Like if you are someone like me who thinks that the presidential race is a toss up, then like basically every situation where the Republican wins a presidential race is a situation where Republicans win the Senate. And then there are plenty of situations also where Republicans win the Senate, even if Biden wins reelection because of the West Virginias and Montanas of the world. So, yeah, maybe it is closely closer to likely are.

Okay, so those are the baseline odds. And recently, we've seen more and more folks jumping in, putting their hat in the ring for the 2024 Senate races. What are the most recent updates in terms of who's running? So one of the probably one of the biggest developments was the announcement by West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, a Republican, that he is going to seek West Virginia's Senate seat, which is currently held by

Democratic Senator Jim Manchin. Justice is quite popular, and Manchin is defending, you know, far and away the reddest seat that Democrats hold. And so Justice is sort of seen as the, like, ideal recruit to take on Manchin, if Manchin even decides to run again. It's possible Manchin, who has not declared whether he intends to seek re-election yet or not, could decide that he doesn't

can't be bothered because he knows that he might have a very tough race against justice and doesn't want to face defeat. So that I think is the big deal. And maybe the thing to keep an eye on there is going to be just how strong is justice in the Republican primary against Congressman Alex Mooney, who had already declared back at the end of 2022 that he was running. Mooney is definitely going to be trying to sort of outflank justice, uh,

to the right. Um, we've already seen some of his Mooney's early attack ads. Uh, but at the same time, justice is so popular that, you know, it's Mooney's definitely going to be fighting an uphill battle. So, uh, but I know that mansion would prefer to face Mooney, uh, over justice. So, you know, definitely, definitely a race to watch.

Yeah, another big candidate announcement that we got last week was Colin Allred in Texas, a Democratic representative from Dallas. And he jumped into the U.S. Senate race there against Ted Cruz. Of course, as we mentioned, this is one of Democrats' few, you know, only pick-up opportunities. And Allred is, like, he is a credible candidate. He first...

came to Congress by winning a swing seat in the Dallas suburbs in 2018. And then obviously has been reelected twice, although the most recent time was in a much safer district after redistricting. So, you know, he has run tough races before. And he also raised an impressive $2 million in the first, I think, 36 hours, 24 hours after he passed.

he announced his campaign. So, you know, that is maybe a sign that he will be able to approach Beto O'Rourke levels of fundraising against Ted Cruz. Um, and of course, Beto O'Rourke, um, you know, raised a ton of money for that race, uh, in part because Cruz is so, um, nationally, um,

like infamous among Democrats and among the Democratic grassroots. But at the same time, in an article that I have coming out on the website on Tuesday, Allred did not do as well as O'Rourke did within his district. And he also didn't do as well as Biden did in 2020. And so I think that, you know, obviously, in order to beat Cruz, you're going to have to do even better than O'Rourke did in 2018. And, you know, Allred is a strong candidate, might be Democrats strongest, but I think it just really drives home the fact that like,

you know, a Democrat hasn't won Texas since 1994. Like this is, this may be impossible for any Democrat to do. So while it is notable, you know, and I'm sure it will be a closely watched and expensive race, uh, at the end of the day, you know, it's hard to say, I think that the Cruz isn't favorite again in Texas. The, the,

The good news for Democrats, at least at this early stage, is it does seem like some candidates who would probably be weaker for Republicans are starting to get in. So in Nevada, you have Jim Marchant, who is an ally of Donald Trump, announcing that he is going to run against Democrats.

Democrat Jackie Rosen. Marchant is sort of notorious for promoting Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And he also does not have a great electoral track record. He's lost his past two campaigns, including recently in 2022, he ran as Secretary of State and lost. So I think that's probably

good news for Democrats. Um, he is not likely to be the strongest candidate against Rosen. And then there's a question about whether someone like Doug Mastriano, um, will run for Senate in Pennsylvania. We don't know what he's going to do yet, but he's been kind of making some noises about it. Um,

And again, to the extent that Republicans end up nominating weaker candidates in 2024, that could help Democrats in what looks like a pretty bleak map.

But that's not happening everywhere. I mean, Jeff, as you were saying, Jim Justice seems like he would be a very strong candidate. And so, you know, like, I think Democrats kind of have to hope for Republicans to across the board, end up nominating a weak slate of candidates. And there are just so many races, you know, the likelihood that that'll happen everywhere seems fairly remote.

Yeah, we're still at the point of the recruitment process in this election cycle. And so I'm curious, do we expect that there will be a trend similar to 2022 where the more Trump aligned candidates tend to win? Or like, is Jim Marchant going to have a run for his money in Nevada? Well, I think it's pretty likely that Marchant will not have that primary to himself.

You know, for instance, we know that there are at least a couple other candidates who might be looking at the race or more than might, I should say. Probably the most interesting one is Sam Brown, who is a...

I think it was a Purple Heart recipient and actually finished second in the 2022 Senate primary in Nevada that Adam Laxalt won, and then Laxalt went on to lose to Catherine Cortez Mastro very narrowly in the general election last cycle. Brown raised a lot of money, put himself on the map.

Seems like he's probably positioning himself to run. He would be less of the MAGA type, but at the same time, you also could have Joey Gilbert, who...

performed credibly despite not raising very much money in the 2022 gubernatorial primary primary in uh nevada who is definitely very hardcore maga in his in his outlook um running which you know if in that situation if all three of those guys were running uh you know you'd probably want to be brown because you could have marchant and gilbert maybe splitting uh

that segment of the Republican base. So anyway, like, obviously, there's just a lot more to come before we can really handicap that, I guess. Right, exactly. And I think an important thing to remember is that, you know, Trump has a strong endorsement record, but that's like, he doesn't always endorse the most MAGA candidate, right? He likes to pick a winner. And so, you know, and he often likes to jump in kind of at the last minute, right? There'll be a few candidates, probably who he endorses toward the beginning of the cycle. But like,

you know, there's a, yeah, like Jeffrey said, there's a lot of time, time for this to evolve for, you know, kind of vote splits to emerge just as a result of random happenstance. You know, there are two Trump aligned candidates versus one, you know, not Trump aligned candidate. And, you know, and so I think that, you know, you may very well see a Trump endorsed candidate winning, but does that mean that he's going to pick like Jim Marchant? Like maybe not. Um,

So, yeah, you know, and I think for, you know, like there's also I should say like Sam Brown is not like anti-Trump by any stretch of the imagination. He's actually kind of the exact type of candidate I could see appealing to Trump in a certain way. And so I think like while I think we can assume that candidates with, you know, who aligned with Trump to some extent, right?

will, you know, will generally prevail in, you know, 80%, 90% of Republican primaries. It doesn't necessarily mean they'll be the really hardest core, most unelectable ones.

How are Democrats doing? We mentioned Colin Allred, which seems to be a strong recruit for Democrats in. So, for example, Michigan, Debbie Stabenow is retiring. Aliza Slotkin has announced that she's running. I'm not sure we've got much news in Florida in terms of Democrats recruiting someone there. But are, you know, are Democrats retiring?

generally recruiting strong mainstream candidates in the races where they have an open nomination? Well, that's the thing, right? Is that they have so few opportunities, you know, they've got Colin all red and in Florida, they don't have anybody yet really. Um, so it's still very much up in the air. Um,

I do think one thing that is, you know, this isn't really relevant to the battle for the Senate, but something that is worth mentioning is that in Maryland, you had a high profile retirement Senator Ben Cardin. And that looks like it's going to be an interesting and potentially crowded Democratic primary. And you already have David Trone, who is the wealthy owner of Total Wine and More, who has the potential to spend. What a descriptor, the wealthy owner of Total Wine and More.

That kind of sounds like, I don't know, a title from Schitt's Creek. I'm not sure.

It's a title I wouldn't mind having. But, you know, rich, lots of booze. Rich and you have all the wine you want. Exactly. But yeah, he's already running for that Senate seat. I don't think he'll be alone. Angela also Brooks, who's a county executive from the D.C. area, also looks like she will get in. So that's going to be an interesting race where Democrats will have lots of credible candidates, one of whom will almost certainly make it to the Senate, obviously, because Maryland is a blue state.

Yeah, I mean, sort of to the point that Nathaniel's making, the sort of candidate action you're seeing, either we've seen announcements or the murmurings you've heard about candidates who might run

you know, largely reflect the partisan leans of those states. You know, for Democrats, they don't have anybody in Florida yet, even though they know it's going to be a big, expensive battle. But that's because the Democrats are going to start out as an underdog. So getting someone significant to run is not necessarily easy. Does that person want to, you know, step out and take a chance if they currently hold an office or risk a defeat that could, you know, down the road, maybe there's a better environment for them? You just don't know.

Whereas, you know, in a state like Ohio, for instance, you know, Republicans already have a couple candidates in the race. And we know that there's some others out there who may run as well. And we saw in 2022, a crowded race for an open seat there. So like for on the Republican side, because Republicans know that they have a real chance of knocking off Sherrod Brown, right?

So, and to the point of Maryland having a bunch of Democrats running in a blue state, it wouldn't make sense because they see if I could win the primary, I'll win the general and I might be in that seat for a long time. So that's, you know, that that that's an important thing to keep in mind.

We have actually yet to mention one of the most interesting Senate races this cycle, which is actually going to be in Arizona. Of course, Kyrsten Sinema changed her party registration late last year, so she's now an independent, although tends to... I mean, she kind of avoided the topic of who exactly she's caucusing with, although she seems to caucus more with the Democrats. It's not clear yet whether or not she's running for re-election as an independent, and she's already got challengers on either flank either way. How's that race going?

shaping up. Well, it seems like Democrats have mostly rallied and coalesced around Ruben Gallego, a congressman from the Phoenix area, who's been a big cinema critic, and even more so once she switched to becoming an independent.

Meanwhile, Republicans, you know, that field is still developing. Definitely. You have Mark Lamb, who's like this sheriff from Pinal County, who's gotten a lot of attention. But it is possible that Carrie Lake, the 2022 gubernatorial nominee for the GOP, who has sort of rejected that she lost that election, could run. And she there was like a recent tweet.

There was like a recent tweet and some like news that that she she may be signaling that she's anticipating running for that. So, you know, that could be a pretty wild primary. And I think Democrats are probably welcome Lake's candidacy because if she won the Republican nomination, as she showed in the gubernatorial race in 2022, she was maybe not the strongest. Do we have any sense of whether Sinema is running for reelection?

I think her fundraising... I think she's signaling that she is. Yeah, I think her fundraising would suggest... I mean, she hasn't come out and said it, but yeah, but she's raising money. It seems like she's gearing up. So yeah, I mean, I think that's where she's pointing the attention, at least. Although I have seen various news reports where most people think she's going to try to run, but that there are some people who say, well, actually, she might not. It's, you know, until she tells us that she's running...

We won't know for sure. So, and she will face a very difficult pathway to, to winning reelection. If she does run in a three-way race where, you know, Democrats and Republicans have are, are mostly behind their candidate. Like that's going to be really, really hard. Yeah.

Let's move on to our final segment of the day and talk about some brand new census data. I think this might be the only podcast where I can promo the next segment by saying, next, we're going to talk about some brand new census data and people might actually stick around. So stick around.

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Last week, the census released turnout data from the 2022 midterms, which gave us a more precise insight into who actually turned out to vote last fall. Some of these trends we've been able to get a sense of using other data, but this allows for comparisons across decades of census data.

What the census found was that overall turnout was down compared with the historic high from 2018 of 50%. It was down to 46.5%, although that's still relatively high turnout for a midterm election. Black turnout fell notably 10 percentage points compared with 1.5 percentage points for white voters and about 5%.

percentage points for Hispanic and Asian voters. Youth turnout also dropped off significantly, flying in the face of claims that Democrats owed their better than historically expected performance to motivated young voters. So first of all, we could already see some of these trends, as I mentioned, in voter data reported by individual states last year. And how, though, is this data different? Like, how does the census determine these numbers?

So it's part of the current population survey. They always do this in an election year with their survey following the election. They have an extra part to the survey that asks people about their registration status, whether they voted. And that is how you get the data that does this.

And so this is ultimately still self-reported. Like there could be some biases in the data in terms of people not remembering that they voted. I mean, that sounds ridiculous, but oftentimes we talk about how people don't remember who they voted for. Maybe they just aren't really, they're going through the survey quickly. I don't know, like what biases could exist in this data?

Oh, absolutely. There is a tendency in this sort of data for people to over-report their participation. And a lot of social scientists actually have developed systems for adjusting this data so that it's sort of taking into account that over-report bias. So, you know, knowing that, like the data is useful because you'd sort of expect that bias to exist, you know, sort of

regardless of what year you're talking about. So, you know, I think we can, it's fair to say that, and also comparing with other data sources, that turnout was down somewhat from the 2018 midterm, but was still quite high for a midterm election. And so sort of bringing in that other knowledge and what this data shows, like, you know, it's telling us something meaningful, but we should know that there is a possibility that it is at least somewhat rounded up, you might say. Yeah.

Yeah, just just to add to what Jeff was saying. I mean, we will have more data coming out, I think, probably over the summer from what are called validated voter surveys, where basically the data from a survey about the election is matched to a voter file to figure out if people actually did vote. So that reduces some of

the bias that Jeff was talking about, where people tend to say that they voted when they didn't actually. But I do think the census data, as Jeff was saying, is especially valuable for looking at trends. And that was one of the big takeaways that people were digging into was how voter turnout among different groups compared between 2022 and 2018 and previous midterm elections.

Yeah, so understanding that, that this, you know, there are caveats that come with basically every data set we'll discuss.

Still, this data tells us, you know, what and oftentimes not why. Do we have a sense of why the drop off from 2018 and in particular, I mean, 2018 was so high that I think everyone sort of expected a drop off. But maybe in particular, why the drop off amongst particular segments of the electorate being first and foremost, black voters, young voters. And also there was a significant drop off amongst conservatives.

college educated voters. So there was less of a drop off amongst voters with, you know, a high school degree, but more so with a postgraduate degree or a college degree, which was also interesting because we expect midterms to be the kinds of elections where those voters are most liable to turn out.

Well, I mean, I think there were signals for a lot of these trends going into the election at the site for really over a year. Alex Samuels was doing some really great coverage about how black voters in particular were not enthused with Biden, were not feeling politically motivated by the Democratic Party.

And what we're seeing in the turnout numbers for the CPS, the census data for Black voters, is that there's a huge decline from 2018. But it's not like we're going down below the levels that we're sort of seeing historically. So it's actually still the turnout is a little bit higher for 2022 than it was in 2014.

And so it could just be that 2018 was an anomalous year for this group. It also could be a worrying sign for Democrats that they're not doing enough to motivate this important part of their base to come out and vote. Um,

And I think there's something similar going on with the youngest voters. I mean, there, the decline was not as substantial, and the turnout share for 18 to 29-year-olds was still quite a bit higher than it was in 2014. So I would

would say, you know, even though it wasn't as high as it was in 2018, the fact that it didn't dip down to where we had seen young voters sort of consistently hitting in previous midterms is, I think, a signal that there was something going on with this midterm that engaged young people more than they would have been in the past. So I don't think it's a sign that like,

the theories about young people being motivated by an issue like abortion, that's completely untrue. Um, it is pointing to the fact that this doesn't seem to have been a year like 2018, where we saw really high, um, levels of turnout with this group, but, um, you know, it's still, still pretty significant. Um, and when kind of a similar trend with, um,

with more educated voters, you know, again, 2018 was a year where we saw just really, really high levels of turnout among these groups. And so we see a decline in 2018,

in 2022, you know, I mean, 2018 was the year when Trump was president. People were really motivated to vote against Trump and Trump is not president this year and he's not on the ballot. And I think that has to explain some of what we're seeing. Um, and in some ways I think Democrats are lucky that these turnout numbers weren't even

lower, I think some of that is attributable to issues like abortion being motivating factors. So I think there are kind of, you know, the declines are there and they're real and they shouldn't be minimized. But I think you also have to look at how far they declined relative to previous years. And it's not as much of a decline as you might expect, given some of the factors in 2022.

Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. The three demographic groups that we just talked about are groups that are highly Democratic voting and 2018 was a big Democratic turnout year. So important to think about that context when we're thinking about the 2022 numbers. You know, I think as we get new data like this,

Because this election is already behind us and so no one cares anymore. I think people are going to want to think more about 2024 and does this data mean anything for the next election? You know, never get off the hamster wheel. Does it?

I would say that it has very little to tell us about the presidential election turnout. Actually, I remember a couple years ago, I tried to do basically like a correlation analysis between like one midterms turnout and then the following presidential, and there was basically no relationship. So, you know, you're talking about an election where the most high-profile office in the country is

In the highest turnout election is the presidential contest. So comparing that to a midterm election, we can expect the electorate to look different. You're going to have more voters who are less engaged showing up to vote. And you're just... I mean, the comparison is having turnout that's in the 40s of the eligible voting population versus 60 or more percent. And so that's like...

That's like 50% more roughly, you know, give or take a little bit. So you just, you're basically guaranteed higher turnout in a presidential election because of the stakes and the high profile nature of that office.

All right. Well, that was easy. Well done, guys. We made it all make sense. Just kidding. Well, you know, there are always some questions remaining, which is why you got to keep listening. But anyway, we're going to leave it there for today. So thank you, Amelia, Nathaniel, and Jeff. Thank you, Galen. Thanks, Galen. Thanks, Galen.

My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and also on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.