Does The Monarchy Rely On Public Approval?
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I know, Nate, you have to get to London so that you can mourn the Queen, who I know was really important to you personally. Yes. How does it feel to have lost such a dear friend? You can ask me on the segment.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. The death of Queen Elizabeth II has been a news event with little comparison. There's been wall-to-wall coverage across the globe, and the news has led all major papers in the U.S. Domestic sports teams have honored her, corporations tweeted out their condolences, and even local politicians have released statements.

Today, we're going to try to pin down why this is such a significant story. Is it a political story, a cultural or celebrity story? We're also going to ask why fewer candidates are debating their opponents in competitive elections this year. The thinking laid out in a recent Politico report is that while you can't win an election in a debate, you can lose one.

Is that true? And does this say something broader about our politics? And we're also going to check in on the continuing debate within the Republican Party over how many restrictions to put on abortion. There's currently disagreement in states like South Carolina, Nebraska, and West Virginia over how far to go. And Republicans in competitive races this fall have started to shift their positions.

Here with me to discuss our editor-in-chief, Nate Silver. Hey, Nate. How's it going? Hey, everybody. Also here with us is politics editor, Sarah Frost. And hey, Sarah, how are you? Good, good. Hey, y'all. And senior writer, Amelia Thompson-DeBow. Hey, Amelia. How's it going? Hello. I'm doing well. Thank you.

Glad to hear. So I hope everyone is ready to talk about a topic that we don't usually cover here on the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, but it's simply been such a big story that I thought it was basically worth asking why.

So, of course, as you all know, Queen Elizabeth II passed away last Thursday after 70 years as the head of state of the United Kingdom. I know that her full title is actually a bit longer than that, but Chad, my editor, asked that I keep this podcast under two hours, so please bear with me.

To be honest, I don't really know the answer to this question. I think it's probably a bunch of different things. But let's start with you, Sarah. Why, in your estimation, is the Queen's passing such a significant global story?

I think it's rather simple. She offered Britain stability in what was a time of change. Sarah Lyle at the New York Times had this really great piece where she unpacked the Queen's symbolism, noting that, you know, it was so much continuity, this immutable figure in what has been a constantly changing world. Remember, she lived through the Suez Crisis, the Cold War, labor unrest and inflation in the 70s.

The beginning of the Internet, the fall of the World Trade Center, Brexit, COVID, 15 prime ministers, if you count Liz Truss, who she met with this past week. It's just she, you know, the sun set on the British Empire, yet Elizabeth was in charge. And I think that gave Britons and parts of the rest of the world a sense of security in what has been, you know, a very jam-packed century. Yeah.

I should say, I understand why it is such a big story in Britain. I guess, I don't know, maybe I don't entirely understand the significance for... I mean, in America, I mean, she's hugely popular, right? Her approval rating was 68%, an approval or favorability rating, I should say. Of course, people aren't asked whether or not they approve of the job she's doing. You know, higher than any

president or most politicians could ever hope for, only slightly lower than her favorability rating in the UK, which was 75%. Amelia, what do you make of why this was such a significant global story, not just a significant British story? Well, I think the first thing to remember is that

when Elizabeth came onto the throne almost 70 years ago, she was ruling still over a global empire. One of the things that she presided over was the sort of final crumbling of the British Empire and nations like Kenya and Ghana becoming independent. So

I think a lot of people around the world still have recently severed ties with the British Empire, and some of that happened under Elizabeth. So in a sense, I think it's a global phenomenon because her monarchy, her reign, was itself a global phenomenon.

Americans were not ruled by the queen, and yet she's very popular here. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fantasy of the monarchy and what that represents for people. I have long had a pet theory that Americans...

secretly want a monarchy, that they like the idea of having political leaders who are not political, who are sort of supposed to serve in a kind of ceremonial figurehead role, and that people can really sort of feel like they have a relationship with

A lot of people felt that way about the queen and feel that way about certain members of the British royal family, which is frankly pretty weird because the British royals live a life that is so...

divorced from one that pretty much everyone else in the world lives. And yet, I think, especially in Britain, a lot of people felt like they had this personal connection to the queen. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fantasy, as Sarah was saying, of continuity during a time of change, but also the idea that you can have leaders who will be above the fray of politics, who can see the

15 prime ministers come and go. And I think that's powerful for people.

So is it almost like, you know, in the United States with our presidential system, we oftentimes try to turn that executive position into some sort of a celebrity or maybe we don't even try to. But by default, you know, like I think you could in many ways say that Obama was a celebrity style president. I think that you could say that Trump obviously was a celebrity before he ever became president, but was also a celebrity style president. Same with Reagan. Right.

same with Bill Clinton to a certain extent, that we kind of combine the two. Whereas in the UK, they trash their prime ministers like no one's business, but they do have this celebrity figure in the queen. And so they kind of separate the two. We have them as one and maybe we would like to have them separate. That's an interesting theory, Amelia. I appreciate that. All right, Nate, what do you make of this? Is this a political news story, a celebrity news story? Why is this such a big deal? Uh...

Because the people who watch TV news are super old and prone toward nostalgia. And, you know, an expected celebrity or political death is just really easy for TV producers, right? You have your packages, you can be sentimental, you get to go to London or the UK and have some nice crumpets and stuff like that. I mean, I'm sure there's some degree of

demand for it, right? But like, I would rather have watched more news coverage this week about the situation in Ukraine, for example. So you think it reflects more the predisposition of the people creating news than the actual demand amongst the public? I think the demand's probably a little bit over-served. I'm not one of those royalty gays, you know? Some of the gays are...

Into royalty. I'm not asking. Yeah. We could start a podcast where I do just ask you about how you feel about everything on a personal level, but that's actually not what this podcast is for. I'm more curious from a setting Nate's own personal preferences aside, why the world is the way that it is. It has to be more than just all the TV producers out there are royalty gays. But is that your theory?

I think it's nostalgia, right? This isn't a very important event as far as the world going forward, right? It's nostalgia for a world that is simpler and more orderly. She obviously had a very dignified career as well, and it's just kind of remarkable as a fact of longevity that she's been in office for so long. But yeah, it's basically a celebrity story slash hankering for a simpler time.

I think there's also, though, the added complexity of kind of like an inferiority complex that the U.S. has to Great Britain. Like, you know, we did break away in 1776. But ever since then, particularly when this country was kind of first in its early years, it was Great Britain that was the arbiter of culture and taste. They gave us the Beatles. They gave us great literature.

And I think the U.S. has a bit of a chip on its shoulder and therefore a fascination with watching its former monarch family and how it ebbs and flows over the years. Wow.

I disagree, but go ahead, Amelia. Yeah, I don't know if I agree with that either. But I think the other thing that's really important here and the reason that this can sort of be spun as such a big news story, regardless of whether that is what Nate or others would prefer, is that it's not just about the end of an era. Right.

it's also about this question of what does Britain's monarchy look like going forward? And there is now a new king, Charles III, and he is not the most popular figure. And so I think there's also some inherent drama and tension and lots of articles that aren't just about the queen's life and why she was so remarkable, but also about whether Charles will be able to live up to the standard that she set. And again,

All of this is just a great story. I mean, I don't know if it's more complicated than that. The queen's life was a great story. She ascended to the throne as a very young woman right after World War II. Her father hadn't wanted to be king. She didn't want to be queen. But she took on this burden and what is, frankly, I think a pretty crappy job. I would not want to be queen. It sounds very boring and tiring.

And she did it. And she had this great commitment to the idea of the monarchy and the idea that this was a position handed to her by God that kept her working until the day before she died, basically. And I think that just really appeals to people for many, many reasons.

It's kind of a fairy tale. It's like, how close do you get to a fairy tale in modern times? I think it appeals to, you know, a sense of virtue and tradition. Self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, yeah. And so now, and now the sun is coming in. The sort of, you know, waspy virtues of America yore.

what about the American dream and you can be whatever you want? Well, they even encapsulated that in the commoners who joined their ranks. Right. Kate Middleton. Were those,

Kate Middleton was living the American dream, Sarah. Yeah. What about Meghan Markle? I mean, I think it's a more complicated... I understand the fairytale aspect of this, but I don't know. It's an antiquated tradition that has survived on to today. But fairytales have tension, and Charles has kind of been the villain. And so I think that's part of the reason. It's not like this is just this story that's had no drama. The British royal family is constantly embroiled in drama, and I think that's part of the appeal. Yeah.

And that sets me up for a public opinion question, which is, as I mentioned, the Queen's favorability rating in the UK is 75%. In the United States, 68%. Maybe take that as some sort of significance of her global soft power, given that the United States is obviously not a part of her realm, was not a part of her realm. On the other hand, King Charles III's favorability rating in the UK is in the 40s. In the US, it's in the low 30s.

It feels weird to even cite those numbers because on one hand, who cares? Because you would think a monarchy is somewhat detached from the sort of like daily public opinion whims of any nation or of the globe or whatever. But does monarchy also ultimately depend on public opinion? No. I think it does.

It certainly didn't matter when Britain was an empire. It survived the Sex Pistols. I mean, so what? Charles is unpopular. I don't think anything's changing anytime soon. Hate to break it to y'all. I mean, way to assume we're Republicans. I don't know.

Oh, no, though, because one of the big questions going forward is what's going to happen to all of these countries where the queen is the ceremonial figurehead. I mentioned that a lot of countries broke away from Great Britain during Elizabeth's reign. That continued until as recently as last year. Barbados became an independent republic and the queen was no longer the head of government. You know, there's a lot of talk in Australia about whether they really need to have the

Queen on their money, the same in Canada. And I do think public opinion matters for that. I looked up a poll conducted in Canada earlier this year, and it found that 58% of Canadians said that it was the right move for countries to sever ties with the British monarchy. At the same time, a very similar majority was supportive of Canada remaining a constitutional monarchy as long as the Queen was alive.

But the share who wanted Canada to continue as a constitutional monarchy under Charles dropped to 34%. Ooh, interesting. So, William's a lot more popular, though. I really think if it came to that, you could see Charles abdicate before they would abolish the monarchy. Oh, I don't think Charles would ever abdicate. But then it does mean that public opinion matters. It means that ultimately the public gets to choose their monarch, if that would be the case. I'm pro-Charles, by the way.

Oh, God. The ultimate contrarian take. Let's hear your defense of Charles. No, you wait that long. I mean, he deserves it, man. He waited that long. That's crazy. He did wait a long time. He did. The man went through a lot. I thought you were going to have some sort of like anti-kink shaming argument for why he should be more popular. Is he that unpopular? I didn't realize that. He is really unpopular. I mean, he's just everything the queen built her up

reputation on, being above the fray, being apolitical, is not the case with Charles. He's had so much of his dirty laundry aired in the British tabloids. He's a pretty political figure. He's taken stances on political issues. It's easy to see why people could have very differing views between the Queen and King Charles III now. Yeah, he's not a fairy tale. He's keeping it real. Yeah.

But people want the fairy tale. Nate, fairy tales pull well. Okay. I also, can I also just say, I'm shocked that he chose to be Charles III because he's coming in amid all of this swirling concern about whether the monarchy will still exist.

And one of the two other Charles's was overthrown and beheaded. It just seems like not the right tone you want to strike when you're coming in. He could have picked a different name. He's got a lot of middle names. I'm just saying. What would the other names have been?

I think his middle names are Philip and Arthur. His grandfather's name was Albert. King Arthur. King Arthur, exactly. I rest my case. That would have been like a fun curveball. And enough people probably would not have known that he was King Arthur that in polling questions when people were like, do you approve or do you have a favorable opinion of King Arthur? People would be like, yeah, of course. Like King Arthur was great. I didn't realize King Arthur was in the table. He can pick whatever name he wants.

He could use like Elon Musk's baby name. Like C-3PO or whatever? King C-3PO, yeah. YOLO, Charles, come on. Okay, with that, let's move on and talk about debates.

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This year, it appears that Senate candidates in battleground states are more reluctant to participate in debates with their competitors than in the past. According to a recent Politico report, in 2020, there were more than a dozen televised face-offs between Republican and Democratic Senate candidates, and several were already occurring in mid-September. They go on to say, Politico contacted Senate campaigns in 10 of this year's battleground states, though debates featuring both nominees failed.

have only been finalized in Arizona and Colorado. Campaign representatives in Washington, Wisconsin, and Florida said they were still working out details with organizers and would have more details to share soon. So as things stand right now, there are only two Senate debates actually scheduled, and there's been plenty of candidates saying that they're open to debates, but basically only on their terms. So outside of those two, there are a lot of stalemates. Why is this happening, Nate?

One question is why debates occur in the first place. Because to some extent, they're a zero-sum game. Whichever candidate wins the debate or is perceived to win increases his or her chances of winning the election in a two-way race or any number of candidates, right? Only one candidate can win the election. Is that true? That actually, when you win the debate, you improve your chances of winning the election? Sure. Okay. So let's accept that that's true. Keep going.

Probably not as big as like the media would hype it to be, but like it, you know, it can't hurt. Right. So, and I guess the answer is that if you chicken out of a debate, uh,

then you're seen as someone who, A, is a loser because you're afraid to debate. B, your opponent can run campaign ads or press coverage about that. But if the penalty for skipping a debate drops to near zero, then at equilibrium, you're not going to have your main debates because one candidate is the inferior debater, right? So you have like a lot of kabuki about making excuses to have debates or not. But yeah, I mean, I don't know that candidates are necessarily being correct about

in this assessment. But, you know, the alternative is to like, or answer is to like, behave punitively toward candidates who duck out of debates, right? To have really negative press coverage, to really try to kind of enforce this norm. It kind of seems like

The media isn't interested in doing that necessarily. It's kind of the story that receives only a modest amount of attention. Wait, so you're saying the calculation that candidates are making is if there's any chance that I'm going to lose this debate, it's not worth it because there isn't a penalty for not debating. Now, if there's any chance, of course, there's a chance. Right. But if the expected value of the debate is negative, right, you lose 70 percent of the time and win 30 percent of the time, then you probably shouldn't.

So you're saying it's generally weaker candidates who are doing this, not candidates across the board? It's weaker debaters. I don't know if there's much of a correlation between debating skill and being a good senator or governor. I don't know.

I'm not sure that this explains it entirely. Julia Azari wrote about this earlier this year for FiveThirtyEight. And granted, it was in the context of presidential debates, but the RNC saying it would prohibit candidates from participating. RNC can't actually do that. It's up to individual campaigns. But I think what Julia wrote at the time does speak

to like what is happening now. And that is the Republican Party increasingly willing to reject established institutions and democratic practices like a debate. Now you can argue that they don't actually shift things that much. That's particularly true in a presidential debate. We have looked though at presidential primary debates and they have a lot of effect as Nate's talking about and can be seen as a loss. But I think the fact that like what you said, Galen, only two debates have been confirmed at this point, that is unusual.

And I think speaks to just this overall, you know, hyper partisan politics we're living in where it's people don't want to give an inch on this ground. And now, to be clear, some Democrats like Fetterman in Pennsylvania have been reluctant to debate. It's not just Republicans, but I think largely when you look at some of the trends here, it has been more Republican candidates not wanting to operate in good faith with with Democrats. Right.

And I mean, I think to a certain extent, to Nate's point, Republicans can kind of spin a reluctance to debate in a way that can be positive for them because debates are often hosted by members of the media. Republicans have been arguing that they're biased, that they're setups, that they want debates who are moderated by people who don't have it out for them. And so...

You know, I think for them, refusing to debate might actually be the politically beneficial strategy because it's not like they were really going to convince a lot of people. There's a lot of evidence suggesting that debates are not the thing that really tip people from one candidate to the other.

And, you know, if they can use this as a way to fire up their base and say, I'm sticking it to the liberal media by refusing to debate, that's something that could help them. And let me say that, like, this is not entirely, I mean, I totally agree. And I think that all of our theories are more compatible than not, right? There is an asymmetry here. I don't think these concerns are...

entirely crazy on the part of Republicans either, because look, I've always thought that the way that debates work with the presidential debates, right, where we have a debate and then you have with this very captive audience still on, you have a panel come on and do

theater criticism of the debate, right? There's very little attempt to actually diagnose any policies that the candidates discuss. It's kind of hopelessly subjective, right? Even understanding that subjectivity and objectivity are complicated terms in journalism. So I think debates are often a place where media bias can be quite profound.

The only thing I'd push back on that is like, I think that's been true for a while, right? And I think, you know, some Democratic presidential candidates have also criticized unfair treatment in terms of debates, John Kerry being a prominent example of that. I do think, though, to the point both Amelia and Nate are making that,

increasingly in this atmosphere, Republicans are able to make a convincing argument that they are victims of unfair treatment in these kind of high profile events. But I do think it is different than what we have seen previously. There's also another question here, I think, of

candidates sort of starting to claim that they're not even really speaking the same language. The race in particular that I'm thinking of is the gubernatorial race in Arizona, where Katie Hobbs has said she won't debate Carrie Lake because it's just giving her more of a platform for her like shtick. And of course, Carrie Lake's position on the 2020 election is that it was rigged. That basically was her entire primary campaign.

Katie Hobbs, of course, is the Secretary of State in Arizona, so has a very different position on that, has defended the results. And so have we gotten to the point where, in some regards,

The two parties are speaking such different languages that a debate almost doesn't make sense. I mean, I'm trying, I'm thinking about that first debate between Trump and Biden in 2020. And there was a lot going on in that, you know, Trump is a much more enthusiastic debater. Biden was significantly slower. There were multiple dynamics going on, but like they're really, they don't necessarily really agree on the same set of facts and they're not debating kind of how to address the

policy issues from different viewpoints. They just actually disagree what the actual problems are or even the facts of the problems. I mean, there's something to that, I think. Although, I don't know. I think this, I generally think this platforming stuff is kind of bulls**t. Same way. I think debates were, well, I think

The three debates with Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the two with – because one got canceled, right? Trump and Biden in 2020 gave voters lots of information about their respective candidates and how they think and what they believe in, right? I think those are pretty informative. I mean the other thing I should mention earlier is that if you have a case where you are in the lead in a race, then you have reason to be more risk-averse. We have Katie Hobbs I think favored in the Arizona race by –

a solid margin. So it could be an excuse as well. Because like, ultimately, if you are confident in your position, even if you think that your opponent is a liar or misguided or spreading false information, you can still just say that on a debate stage, presumably. If you're going to, if you're going to win anyway, then why gamble, right? I have no doubt that if Katie Hobbs was down five points, she'd say, I need to expose, right, this, uh, this opponent's crazy conspiracy theories, right? And that a debate stage would be a good opportunity to

to do that. You can actually have enough time to, depending on how it's moderated, to nail someone down, right? And so, yeah, I mean, it's all like, no one should ever like take at face value the excuses campaigns give for not debating. I do agree with the comment before that like it's, Republicans have more

built-in excuses involving distrust of the media. But Democrats are building up their own excuses, too, along the lines that Galen was just saying. You know, I think it makes... It would probably make a lot of sense to Democratic voters to say, look, I don't want to give this person airtime for their beliefs, even if, potentially in a different position, they might want to get out and try to expose the beliefs. So...

I don't know. It's tough because the studies that I've looked at suggest that they don't do a lot to persuade people, especially in the U.S., where there are really just two candidates. And I do think general election debates are potentially different from primary debates in that regard. Sarah, you were talking about how during the Democratic primary there were far too many debates, but they did expose the range of differences between the candidates.

Once you get to the general election, people just have two choices or maybe three choices, but they really are much more locked into their pre-existing beliefs about the parties. And, you know, so I don't know how much utility they have. I mean, I think you can argue that...

It's a democratic virtue to have the candidates out there and talking to each other about their stances. On the other hand, I do think it's just a sad symptom of where we are in terms of polarization and candidates' willingness to, you know, as you were saying, Galen, kind of even be in the same space as each other and talk about the same issues. It feels a little depressing to me.

Yeah. I mean, so one of the quotes in this Politico report on candidates declining to debate or setting up situations in which it seems unlikely that they will debate, i.e., you know, one candidate saying, OK, I'll debate on these dates under these circumstances and the other candidate saying, cool, I'll debate on these dates under these circumstances, setting up a stalemate where like both seem like they're down to debate, but neither actually is setting up a situation where they will ultimately debate. Yeah.

So one of the quotes is from a North Carolina Republican strategist saying, the narrative going into most debates by the operatives advising clients is, quote, you're not going to win the election on a debate, but you sure can lose one. That a little bit goes against this wisdom that general election debates have little effect on public opinion. Can we interrogate that a little bit more? Like, is that a true assertion that like you can't win an election in a debate, but you can lose one? No, I think it's pretty incoherent.

It's the kind of quote that sounds good if you're giving it a quote to a political reporter, but doesn't actually make any sense. Why doesn't it make sense? Because if it's a zero-sum game, then by definition, you can win or lose a debate. It's equal. You know what I mean? Right. I guess in a multi-candidate debate, like a primary debate, I mean, I think that's almost the reverse, if anything, right? I mean, these candidates clearly are trying, if you have 16 people on stage, then you're trying to get noticed. You're trying to build up some type of momentum. I remember back to 2008,

And 12, where Romney won the GOP primary, but you had lots of surges at different times for other candidates, and the debates were an important part of that, and it makes you kind of risk-taking, actually, in debates. So, yeah, I mean, maybe it's a little asymmetric in the sense that, like, yes, a major gaffe will –

stick with you more than some stirring response to something, I guess, that people like clap at on YouTube or whatever. But yeah, I mean, you can still win a debate by having your opponent up. Maybe you can like induce ups from your opponent, right? That's kind of what Chris Christie, our ABC News colleague, did to Marco Rubio when he repeated himself several times, right? So, you know, I think probably both Clinton and Biden in their debates against Trump were –

interested in finding ways to make Trump look bad and induce behavior out of him that voters would find undesirable. So yeah, I don't think that really makes sense.

For both in 2016 and then in 2020, similar trajectory. Of course, though, this was again in the primaries, but Carly Fiorina, who, you know, caught on quickly in 2016, former Hewlett Packard CEO, her performance at the debate didn't win her the nomination, but Cruz selected her as his VP pick. And similar story for Kamala Harris, who is now Biden's vice president. So it's just like, I do think...

these debates, you can win them. And you can win them, even if, you know, it doesn't ultimately result in you winning the office you're even running for necessarily, they can be good stepping stones as well. Interesting. So maybe in primary debates, people are also just trying to build the email lists, make their ultimate, the ultimate book that they write a little bit, give them a bigger advance, get that Cabot nomination, you know, Buttigieg, yeah, etc. Interesting. So

Amelia, you started talking about this a little bit here, but I think some common advice in, you know, relationships like actual human romantic relationships or even friendships is that one of the most important things you can do is learn how to fight with each other.

Right. In that you have open communication and you figure out like you have differences and you talk them out. Whereas if both people in the relationship just keep everything inside and don't talk about it, you can build narratives that spin completely out of control. So there's my there's my human analogy for the day.

Is that what's happening here between the two parties? Does this say something broader about our politics in that there's so much bad will and there's so much narrative building that is almost independent from how the two parties interact with each other that we're in this space where like mom and dad of America are like ready to explode and can't even talk to each other on a debate stage?

I mean, symbolically, that's kind of how it feels to me. I don't know, again, if it really makes a difference in a practical sense whether Carrie Lake and Katie Hobbs debate each other. But the fact that Katie Hobbs is basically saying, my opponent lives in such a different reality that I can't be on a stage with her because we simply aren't, as you were saying, Gail, and talking about the same set of facts, right?

That's a pretty disturbing place for American politics to be, I think. And again, debates feel more like a symptom of this problem. We can see it in a lot of different areas of politics. I mean, the notion that people are like making some Cartesian calculation of picking the best candidate based on analyzing 15 different policy preferences, right, and seeing who they're closest to. I mean, that's, I'm not saying it really is wrong.

engaging in that but like um please don't say i'm engaging because i'm absolutely not i guess i i mean clearly it's like literally true that like there are more news sources than there ever were before there probably is less overlap between things that are agreed upon facts right so i mean all that part is true right i i don't know if that's like as germane to like debates i

the way people make their election decisions and debates, you know, it's always about like, I mean, the notion that like debates are for well-known candidates, right? I mean, this is a little different though. Maybe for a Senate candidate, you actually are learning something. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, and so, I mean, I,

I would be interested now to go and look and see if the candidates who are refusing to debate are consistently in the lead, because that would support your theory, Nate, that this is, you know, kind of like the excuse du jour for not participating in a debate, which really only has downside, you know, and I think if you see that kind of pattern, then I'm more inclined to

buy that argument. But it does feel like the fact that this is an excuse that people will accept, that it is no longer really an attack you can, a successful attack you can make, or at least candidates are making the calculation that, you know, the upside of skipping the debate is greater than the negative one. That feels significant to me, regardless of whether they are correct about that.

I think we could be headed to towards this, you know, back to what Galen was saying about mom and dad can't even talk to each other. If it does become this narrative of like my opponent doesn't even share the same set of facts, therefore I don't need to even acknowledge them, engage with them. I could see that maybe becoming the new norm for which we think about debates. And ultimately, I don't think that's any better in terms of where we are with debates, because the whole point is,

is that the voters, the listeners should be able to reach those conclusions themselves and be given the opportunity to see that debate. All right. Well, two so far on the books. We will see how many ultimately end up taking place. But let's move on and talk about the debate within the GOP over what kind of abortion restrictions to put in place.

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South Carolina Republicans are in a disagreement over what new abortion laws to pass in the state. Debate was held up in the House when an outright abortion ban was introduced with no exceptions for incest or rape. That was followed by a Senate deadlock. Debate is also stalled in West Virginia, and in Nebraska, the governor said he wouldn't call a special session because Republicans weren't on the same page about which week of pregnancy to ban abortion.

So, Amelia, I know you have been covering this pretty intensely since the Dobbs decision came down and even before then. What are the contours of the debate within the GOP today over what abortion laws to enact post Dobbs?

It's been fascinating to watch how the legislative debate over abortion has changed in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs. We did an analysis where we looked at all of the pre-Dobbs abortion bans before 20 weeks of pregnancy, and we picked the

that benchmark because those bans would not have gone into effect under Dobbs. Some 20-week bans did. There's a debate about when fetal viability is that is no longer relevant. But in those pre-20-week bans, there were almost no exceptions for rape and incest. And when there were exceptions, they were usually partial, so only up to a certain point in pregnancy or requiring the victim to file a police report.

looking at other exceptions, I really found just a mishmash. Some of them would accept things like ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage explicitly. Some of them had explicit exceptions for contraception. But these were clearly not laws that were being passed with a lot of thought to what

the problems could be when they were implemented on the ground. And that makes sense because these laws were basically in two categories. They were either bans that were in clear violation of Roe versus Wade that were being passed in order to spark a Supreme Court challenge. That was the hope with many of them. Or they were what is known as trigger bans, which is that they were designed to ban abortion

immediately or soon after the Supreme Court overturning Roe. And so there was sort of a hypothetical air to all of it. And I think that made them more extreme and kind of insulated Republicans from having to think about the political consequences.

Now, anything Republicans do will go into effect. And so we're seeing debates, and this does vary by state, we can talk more about this, but we're seeing debates both over what exceptions should be included in abortion bans, and also how far abortion bans should go, whether legislature should be banning abortion completely, whether it should be a six-week ban, whether it should be a 12-week ban.

So essentially, we used to be dealing with a lot of message bills. You know, like we see this even in the House all the time where one party controls the House, but not the Senate. And so they'll pass a whole bunch of things that they know will never actually become law in order to say, like, we're doing what you sent us here to do, but don't have to actually think about public opinion and political backlash.

Now they do. Does it seem like as far as we can tell, there is one view within the Republican Party that it seems to be winning? Is it a certain number of weeks or a certain set of exceptions that people can get behind?

I mean, Sarah and Nate, you should jump in, but honestly, it just seems like a mess to me. We have a bunch of candidates in the midterms who had expressed very extreme views on abortion who are now walking them back considerably like Blake Masters in Arizona and really walking them back much further than what we're seeing on the floor of the Senate and the House in states like South Carolina, where they're

There is a debate about how far to go, but the debate is mostly about a relatively small number of cases. Rape and incest exceptions, I think this is important to note, are very symbolically important and they are very emotional and people feel very strongly about them, but they only affect a very tiny sliver of people who get abortions. So in some ways, what the Republicans are fighting over is

is essentially still symbolic, although it's very important politically because these rape and incest exceptions have come to kind of represent callousness about women's lives and, you know, a failure to think about how the bans affect people in really terrible situations. And that has been bad politically for some Republicans. But then you also have the dynamic that over the past 10 years,

The anti-abortion movement has been getting more extreme. There are more people in positions of power and in state legislatures who really feel that abortion is a moral evil and it needs to be banned.

And those people are now looking at their colleagues in the Republican Party who are trying to introduce exceptions or who are saying, you know, we should wait. Maybe we should just ban abortion at six weeks. Let's see how this plays out. And they're saying, you're not really pro-life.

because you voted for these bills when they were just messaging bills and you, you know, sort of got the support of pro-life voters and now you're betraying them. So there's a really incredible amount of variation, I think, and not a lot of consensus. Yeah.

So it seems like there are two camps almost. There's the ideological camp, which is we strongly feel that this is morally wrong. And regardless of political backlash or public opinion, it's important enough that we enact this versus people who are saying, let's consider the electoral implications. Let's think about how the public is reacting.

And I want to be fair to the people who are sort of advocating for exceptions. They're not all making electoral arguments. I talked to a number of South Carolina lawmakers over the past few weeks, and I talked to some Republicans who are extremely conservative on abortion and wanted exceptions. And we're saying, look, I can't ignore the messy reality of people

What it is like to, for example, carry a fetus with a lethal fetal abnormality where you know the baby is going to die. And what are you what are you really inflicting on that woman? Or what does it mean to tell a rape victim that she has to carry this pregnancy? I think for them, it's.

It is still a moral issue. It's not like they're looking at the polls and saying, gee whiz, rape and incest exceptions are unpopular. I mean, you know, that's in the background of everything right now. So it's hard to ignore. But I do think that there's a there's a sense in which the rubber is kind of hitting the road and people didn't have to think about these complicating factors and what it means to balance what whims

women want versus pro-life concerns. And it turns out that's just really messy when you're trying to legislate on the ground. I mean, it's pretty rare that parties face a trade-off that is this explicit about achieving policy goals or moral goals, I guess, and facing electoral consequences, right? You know, because of the Kansas vote, because of all the polls, uh,

because of the changes in voter registration, right? I mean, it's pretty clear that pursuing policies that are very restrictive on abortion, most people do favor some restrictions, we should say that, right? But these very restrictive policies are very unpopular and are salient to the public and may result in maybe not you if you're in a safe seat, but will result in Republicans winning fewer elections than they otherwise would. And usually parties...

delude themselves into thinking, oh, we'll do this policy and it will be popular. It will help our base and actually swing voters will like it when it's actually implemented, which is usually BS. But here I don't even see that BS and it's kind of the first time in a while I remember not seeing that BS. I mean I remember BS from Democrats about

Oh, Obamacare will pass and it'll help us in 2010. I remember like Bill Clinton saying that right now. You're wrong. You're wrong, Bill. It may have helped Democrats eventually. Obamacare has become fairly popular, but not in 2010. It didn't help Democrats one bit. But yeah. And then you kind of get to the fact that we use this like notion of the quote unquote Republican Party as a construct, but it consists of individual decision makers that have different incentives and goals. And so it's a big it's a big, nasty fight.

You said we should make it clear that restrictions are popular, but just not restrictions that go this far. Is it clear what a popular Republican position on abortion might look like? I don't know if it's a Republican. I mean, it might be kind of like abortion on demand within the first trimester and then exceptions for rape, incest, and mother's life continuously, right? I mean, that's like the—

If you had to like somehow distill down what the median American thinks, that's like roughly the policy that would be maximally popular. And ironically, that is what John Roberts appears to have wanted. He wanted to get rid of the fetal viability standard and uphold Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban, which I think is the closest thing. You know, if I had to say I'm going to identify a policy that's widely popular, a 15-week abortion ban I think is, you know, it's not –

the preference of people on either extreme. But if you're talking about people in the middle, in my conversations with the voters, they tend to feel like that's sort of reasonable and then you have exceptions afterward. And it's late enough in pregnancy that I think a lot of people sort of feel like, okay, that's enough time for a woman to make a decision and that feels fine and I'm going to stop thinking about this now, which is what most people feel about abortion. Yeah.

Yeah, I've wondered, had the court not overturned Roe and they had gone with that decision, which is Emilio saying was something that Roberts had wanted the other conservative justices to join him in, you know, would we be looking at a very different landscape than the one we have now? Because, I mean, I think to your question here, Galen, like.

This isn't really being debated because Democrats don't have to do that. They just need to say, I support a woman's right to choose and then point to the infighting that is happening in the Republican Party. You know, Biden got a lot of backlash from activists for not doing more when Roe was overturned. But arguably, that's been really smart politically because the oxygen then is being taken up by Republicans infighting, going too far, backtracking. And for Democrats, they should stay away from trying to mention what

week they would ban abortion. And there's been a really fascinating dynamic, too, happening in state legislatures, and I'm thinking back to South Carolina specifically, where Democrats were voting against taking exceptions out of the bills. And a lot of Republicans who wanted the exceptions were really upset about it. I mean, you know, was it real concern? Was it ginned up political feeling?

I'm not going to take a stand on that. But they were getting up and saying, look, Democrats, you have an opportunity to join with us and pass a ban that will be more aligned with what you want. And Democrats were essentially taking the risk that if they made sure the bill was as extreme as possible, it would not pass.

which is what ended up happening in South Carolina. So there's some interesting political brinksmanship happening. And I mean, I do understand why Democrats didn't want to vote to take exceptions out of a full abortion ban, because then they're on the record having voted, you know, kind of in favor of that ban. But it is interesting how Democrats really

after having been on the defensive for so long, really have a very simple pitch to make. Yeah. So, I mean, to add a little bit of polling to the conversation about popular abortion policy, you know, according to Gallup polling that polls Americans based on trimester, the only...

trimester during which there is majority support for abortion under any circumstance is the first trimester and it's 60 some percent. And obviously it goes down until it's somewhere around 12% in the third trimester who support abortion under any circumstance, which brings me to the question, we're talking about how Republicans all disagree here and that Democrats disagree.

aren't on the defensive and aren't really talking about the specifics of their policies. But do Democrats have, are Democrats in agreement on this question? My guess would be no, but what does that fight look like if we ever get there? So, I mean, one thing that's been really interesting is in the wake of Dobbs being overturned, there has been a shift towards more Americans saying that they support abortion legal in any circumstance. I

I have to think, though, that some of that is just in reaction to this constitutional right now being taken away. I think if you saw Democrats saying abortion up to the third trimester, abortion up until, you know, the day of birth, like that would probably then have the opposite effect where you would see more Americans move.

in the other direction. But that is an interesting dynamic that I think there is a real contingency of Americans, of Democrats who maybe are more liberal now on where the line on abortion should be drawn. And I don't know how out of step that is with independents or with other Americans on this issue.

I mean, there are some democratic states where they are passing new abortion laws to essentially say that they're shoring up rights in the wake of the Dobbs decision. What kind of laws are they passing and is there any debate over them?

Well, I mean, a lot of this was happening beforehand, too. And I think they kind of fell into two different categories. There were debates over whether to expand people's ability to get an abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy. And I'm thinking about specifically there was a debate over this in New York a few years ago. And that really backfired.

on Democrats, because even though there are a lot of people in the pro-choice movement who feel very strongly about making sure that there are these exceptions for people who are in a horrible situation and contemplating abortion late in pregnancy, it's A, a very small group of people, and B, there are not very many places in the country where you can get a third trimester abortion

And it's very unpopular. So I think this is a bad political tack for a lot of reasons. The ballot amendments that we're seeing proposed now are more along the lines of let's ensconce abortion in our Constitution. And that, I think, is an easier sell in some ways, because one of the pitches that Democrats have been making recently that I do think is a fairly simple one for them to make is that

people liked Roe. Roe is now gone. Let's just reinstitute the structure that we lived in under Roe. And so, you know, insofar as Democrats are making that pitch, I think it's fairly successful. I'm not sure if that's something that the pro-choice movement is going to agree on in a long-term sense, but I haven't seen a ton of infighting about strategy for the next two months.

I did want to bring up one more question before we go, which is a couple of weeks ago on this podcast, we were talking about the gender gap and whether this debate over abortion was exacerbating the gender gap. And I think, Sarah and Amelia, there was some hesitancy on your part because ultimately this issue is far more partisan based than it is gender based, right? Democratic men are very supportive of abortion. Republican women are very unsupportive of abortion, etc., etc.,

Since then, another Politico report came out looking at the gender gap in some of the competitive races this fall. And I'll just quote some of the data here. A Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday showed that abortion was the single issue most likely to drive respondents to vote this fall above

above inflation. That's, I guess, notable in its own right. And here was the finding. 52% of white suburban women say they would support a Democratic candidate in the election, the poll found, while only 40% said they would vote for the Republican. They want to say, in Arizona, for example, men and women had very similar preferences in the last two Senate races in 2018 and 2020, according to exit polling.

But in Fox's latest 2022 survey, GOP nominee Blake Masters led by eight percentage points amongst men, but was trailing overall because he was getting crushed amongst women by 22 points. So can we sort of like update our priors here about the gender gap at all since our last conversation? First of all, I'd always be careful about like looking at the gender gap in individual races because it's subject to fairly small sample sizes.

But sure. I mean, I think the gender gap is very salient and is increasing and the Dobbs decision will help to increase it further. I think I mentioned the other week. It's also relevant that like the share of college attendees is more and more female. Right. And so as you have voter divides over educational credentials and that will also tend to increase the gender gap. But, yeah, there's no reason to expect the gender gap to get any smaller anytime, anytime soon.

So one thing, I was very shocked that abortion was the top issue in that Wall Street Journal poll. It's not. The economy is. I think what Politico was trying to get at is that for people who selected abortion as a top issue, they are more energized to vote. I don't dispute that. And I think, you know, back to that conversation we were having yesterday,

White women have been, and I should say white suburban women, have been kind of this big voting block that the media pays a lot of attention to in an election. You know, they've been Republican-leading. They shifted towards Democrats in 2018, 2020. I think based on what we would have seen in, you know, the Virginia and New Jersey elections in 2021, you would have expected a more Republican-leaning environment, some of these suburban women going back to the fold in terms of voting Republican again.

I think now, you know, it is a fair criticism to point out that with Roe being overturned, with abortion being on a ballot in a lot of states where there are high numbers of white suburban women, it might be something that, okay, this is too far for me. I don't actually want to vote Republican. I just, I don't know if that's unique to white suburban women versus like suburban voters, period. I think it probably does extend beyond that.

white women. I realized, though, in that Fox poll, someone like Blake Masters, you know, he is doing better among men than women. This issue has energized women more than men. But I wonder, I think this is kind of we're using this more for a proxy for what are what are white suburban voters going to do? And right now, it looks like that's good news for Democrats.

I mean, the other group that I'm interested in is young women and to a lesser extent, young men as well. And I'm working on a story about what's going on with the gender gap with 538 contributor Meredith Conroy. So stay tuned for that.

But one of the things that we're hearing is that, and that we're seeing in the data, is that young women in their 20s are among the most motivated by the issue of abortion, which does make some sense. I mean, they are in their reproductive years and women more and more are delaying when they have children. So the idea that this is very personal for them, that checks out. The question for me is...

do they actually vote? Young voters are just hard to predict. I think I've been more bullish on the idea that Dobbs would be a motivating factor for voters than others. But I just think focusing on women...

as a group rather than saying which women, how motivated, and are there also men who are motivated? Because I think Democratic men are a factor here that will be important for Democrats.

Those are the questions I'd rather be asking. And I think this focus on what are women doing ultimately doesn't tell us that much. And the focus on the gender gap, again, interesting, but just one data point among many. Have you been able to, like, since as Nate said, we don't want to focus on one poll in particular, in that reporting, have you been able to sort of aggregate across polls and get more of a picture of what the gap looks like?

So this will all be in the article, but we are looking at an average of 2022 polls versus 2018 polls, looking at the gender gap there. We're looking at data from Pew comparing 2022 to 2018. And we're looking at our own data from our surveys with Ipsos to see how things have been changing pre and post Dobbs. And it's interesting because

In terms of the gender gap, things are looking fairly similar to 2018. The gender gap is a little bit smaller than it was then. But again, 2018 was a year when gender concerns were a big motivator. That was the year of the Kavanaugh hearings. That was the year when people were really focused on Me Too in general. And it was a year when Democratic women

were really fired up against Trump. So I guess what I'm really interested in is taking a benchmark like 2018 and saying, okay, these are years with very different conditions. How do they compare to each other? And trying to look at it from that perspective. All right. Well, I look forward to reading it, but let's leave things there for today. Thank you, Sarah, Amelia, and Nate. Thank you. Thanks, Galen. Thanks.

My name is Galen Druk. Sophia Leibovitz is in the control room. Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director and Emily Vanesky is our intern. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any question or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a reading or review in the Apple podcast or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon. Bye.