Why Tuesday Is The Highest Stakes Election Day Of 2023
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You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com. How was everyone's weekend? Mine was a little boisterous.

It's a long story, but my bachelor party before getting married got canceled because of COVID. And it turned out I got a surprise makeup bachelor party. So Jeffrey's still hungover this morning. I'm fine this morning. Don't ask me about Sunday or Saturday. But my pitch is much more of a base today than it normally is.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. We've got a busy week ahead of us, folks. Former President Donald Trump is expected to appear in court in New York City on Tuesday after being indicted last week. That's likely when we're going to learn the actual charges against him.

But presidential indictments aside, this week was already going to be a big week for elections watchers. Voters are headed to the polls on Tuesday, with the most closely watched contests being the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Chicago mayoral races. The race in Wisconsin is largely considered the most consequential of 2023. It's a statewide election in a purple state, with the overall orientation of the court and issues like abortion and gerrymandering hanging in the balance.

The Chicago mayoral race will be another test of whether urban politics are shifting to the right, with a clear choice between a teachers' union-backed progressive and police union-backed centrist. And in case you missed it, over the weekend, the pool of 2024 presidential contenders got a little bit bigger. Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is running for the Republican nomination with a pitch that it's time for conservatives to move past Trump.

We've got a lot to cover, so let's get to it. Here with me, our senior reporter, Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Hey, Amelia. How's it going? Good. How are you? Doing pretty well. Slow Monday, but we've got lots to cover nonetheless. Also here with us is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. And also with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Scali. Hey, Jeffrey. Hey, Galen.

So let's begin with Trump's indictment. Since it became public last week, pollsters have been out in the field trying to gauge how Americans are reacting. Nathaniel, kick us off. What have we learned?

Well, we haven't learned a whole lot. We've had a couple of polls that have come out since the indictment, and they largely confirm what the polls kind of before the indictment that asked, like, you know, what would you think said. So, for example, ABC News and Ipsos came out with a poll. They found that generally speaking, Americans are in favor of the indictment, although a fair number disagree.

aren't sure. So the exact numbers are 45% think that Trump should have been charged with a crime in this case, whereas 32% think he shouldn't have, and 23% said they don't know. That said, a plurality of Americans do think that the charges against Trump are politically motivated. That's 47%. And that is kind of a, I'm not sure it's quite a paradox, but it's a little bit of a, you know, internal, you know, push and pull that Americans are feeling that was also reflected in some polls from before the indictment.

Yeah, so I think there is some thought that Trump could be gaining, at least in the sense of Republican presidential primary polls against his likely challenger, Ron DeSantis.

There's at least one survey out from YouGovYahoo News that showed Trump having gained over DeSantis compared to where he was before. I do think, as always, it's important to sort of keep the larger trends in mind with this, which is that Trump had already been improving in his position vis-a-vis Trump.

DeSantis and – whether you're talking about head-to-head against DeSantis or you're talking about larger field, including like DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, likely are already in the race, major contenders. Trump has been doing this, an upward trajectory in the polls over the last couple months. So –

you know, for me, that makes it harder to know how much the indictment's actually playing into that or if it's just kind of a continuation of the trends. And obviously, it's going to take seeing some further polling to know that or to get a better idea about that. I think that

I think the interesting thing in some of these polls anyway is just that there's a fair amount of uncertainty. And so I think there is room for some of these opinions to potentially change when we do actually get the charges. So one question in a CNN SSRS poll that was also conducted after the news of the indictment broke said,

found that Americans are pretty split on whether the decision to indict Trump strengthens U.S. democracy. 31% agreed with that. An identical share say it weakens democracy, and roughly a quarter say it has no effect on democracy, and 15% are unsure. So it'll be interesting to see if those numbers shift as the process continues and we actually learn what the charges are and we sort of see Trump starting to respond differently.

Another question in that poll that I thought was interesting was, you know, you can ask about whether people approve of the indictment or you can ask about what they actually think about the underlying behavior. And in the poll, it was also pretty split on that. 37% of Americans thought that Trump's payments to Daniels were illegal. 33% said they were unethical, but not

illegal. Only 10% said they weren't wrong at all. And 20% don't know. Um, so that is another interesting question that I think is telegraphing quite a bit of uncertainty and also just this general sense that, um, America, there isn't a consensus yet about how serious the charges are. And of course we actually don't know what they are. So that's completely a completely fair thing for people to be uncertain about. Um,

But that's something where I think there is some potential for opinion to move once we learn what the charges actually are and the wheels of the legal process start moving. Yeah, I think that's an important point. We're going to learn what the charges are soon enough, and we will be back on this podcast shortly.

shortly after we find that out. So I really don't want to spend too much time on this today because we're in that weird in-between point where, yes, Trump has been indicted, but we don't yet know. We're going to know soon enough. It seems like public opinion outside of the Republican primary polling that you mentioned from Yahoo News has been pretty stable. Honestly, that did kind of surprise me the degree

to which Trump's support in the Republican primary, you know, potential Republican primary ticked up. It was up to 57% of folks supporting Trump over DeSantis. DeSantis down to 31%. And that's after they had been like roughly even in the mid 40s for months. So I think we do want to keep watching that.

But as I mentioned, we're going to be back here soon enough. So let's move on to this weekend's other news, which is that former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson got into the Republican primary. Now, I don't think looking at the headlines throughout the weekend, his announcement didn't really seem to break through all of the other news that's happening at the moment. But we do like to focus on elections here at 538. And so we are going to take some dedicated time

He said that he's going to make a more formal announcement at the end of April. So maybe we'll talk more about it then as well. But just at first blush, like what is Asa Hutchinson's pitch to Republican voters? And are they, you know, picking up what he's putting down, Jeffrey?

I think Asa Hutchinson is looking to be like a sort of more traditional Republican conservative in the race. He wants to have the party move forward, sort of past Trump. And perhaps that gets something, it gets back to sort of Hutchinson's background. He's

Been a Republican Party sort of stalwart for a long time. He's from – obviously he's from Arkansas. Arkansas used to be kind of this moderate conservative blue-leaning state, a Democratic-leaning state. So Hutchinson's political career starts out at a time when Democrats are dominant in Arkansas. And he ran statewide a couple times and lost in like the 80s and early 90s. He got elected to Congress, to the U.S. House.

because his brother actually won a U.S. Senate seat in 1996. Hutchinson then later gets appointed to the Bush administration. So he's connected there. He was in the Bush administration as head of the Drug Enforcement Agency. So, you know, that's sort of all the background. And then he gets elected governor in 2014 in Arkansas. So,

you know, he's got this long career. Um, he's I think 71 or 72. And so you can sort of see how he would maybe connect to a, maybe at this point, what seems like sort of a, an older version of what we knew the Republican party to be the pre-Trump Republican party. Uh, and I don't think it's a coincidence at the same time that in the handful of polls that he's been included in, he's either at about zero or 1%. And I think that probably reflects, uh,

how appealing that could be. Obviously, he's not that well-known, so that's going to play a factor in it too. But asking where the path is for someone like Asa Hutchinson is to really, really try hard because I don't think there is one. Okay. So given that, Amelia, what's the point of running at all?

I mean, why do any of these long shot candidates run? They think what they're running on is important, wants to get his name out there. I think he genuinely is alarmed by the idea of Trump continuing to be the Republican Party standard bearer and feels like he is the answer for reasons that are a little bit

more opaque to me. I mean, the other thing about him is that even though he does have this long history in the Republican Party, he broke with his conservative legislature. I mean, the Arkansas legislature recently has gotten very, very conservative. And he had, for example, a high profile veto of a ban on gender affirming care for transgender youth.

back in 2021. That was one of the first of these bans that we're seeing pass in state legislatures across the country this year. The legislature ended up overriding his veto. But it's not just that he's not in favor of Trump and willing to rebuke Trump and refute Trump. There are also situations where he has broken with his party on social issues where there is a

quite a bit of cohesion within the party right now. So I think that is a potential strike against him as well in the Republican primary. The veto is actually very interesting because Arkansas is one of a handful of states where all you need to override a governor's veto is a majority in the legislature. It's not like, you know, two thirds or something or three fifths. It's just a simple majority. And so with the Arkansas, the Republicans overwhelming majorities in the state legislature there,

But Hutchinson knew that he was going to get overridden. Like it was a guarantee, right? But he still vetoed it. So I think it becomes perhaps even more interesting and symbolic in that way because it was, you know, just a foregone conclusion that he was going to be overridden. Yeah. And I think he was – he also signed a very strict –

trigger law that would ban abortion if Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2019. Back then, I think the overturning of Roe v. Wade was feeling a lot more hypothetical to people in state legislatures. And later, he kind of expressed some regret and was saying that maybe he would have thought differently about the bill if he had known that it would actually become law. So, you know,

That is an example of a place where he did do what his more conservative legislature was leading on, but then he kind of tried to walk it back later.

Yeah, I mean, Hutchinson went so far as to say that Trump should withdraw from the Republican primary in announcing his bid for president. Of course, Trump will not be listening to Asa Hutchinson in making decisions about how to campaign going forward. But for folks like Hutchinson, who seem like their priority is for Trump to not win the Republican primary, right?

What is the best move? Like, because he's decided to run for president instead of, say, you know, start working on behalf of the DeSantis campaign. Like, what is the tactic there? Is he just saying, like, this is one other position from which I can lob attacks at Trump and eventually get behind whoever the alternative is? If that is the assessment, is that a good assessment? Nathaniel, what do you think?

There is a distinction between candidates who want to stop Trump and candidates who want to stop Trumpism. And I actually think that Asa Hutchinson doesn't really care about Trump himself. I don't think I'd describe him as anti-Trump. He voted for Trump twice. But he's just more like himself, like a traditional conservative laid back. He didn't seem to have – he wasn't an Adam Kinzinger or Liz Cheney. He didn't seem to have a ton of urgency there.

at least until like January 6th, which he did kind of call out Trump on. He didn't seem to have to have a lot of urgency about stopping Trump before that. But he does seem like he doesn't want Trumpism to take over. So I think for somebody like Asa Hutchinson, endorsing DeSantis is kind of pointless because DeSantis is just bringing Trumpism without Trump, whereas Hutchinson truly wants a different direction for the Republican Party.

Wait, wait, wait. He was okay with Donald Trump until January 6th. So that would suggest that he's basically okay with Trumpism. But if the breaking point was January 6th, then you're like maybe not okay with the like crazier anti-democratic stuff. So then wouldn't DeSantis still fit that bill? Yeah, maybe. I guess it's interesting that you would interpret it that way because I would kind of interpret it the opposite. Yeah.

But no, I mean, like, you know, as, you know, Jeffrey and Amelia mentioned, some of his kind of governing decisions are to kind of put it mildly decisions that Ron DeSantis, if he were governor of Arkansas, would not have made. And so I think that that kind of like strong conservative tendency is.

You know, Hutchinson is a guy who was conservative in the 90s and 2000s, but wouldn't be considered, you know, like conservative or conservative Republican today. Right. And that's kind of what he, you know, kind of what it represents. And, you know, quite frankly, I don't think he is going to be siphoning a lot of votes from anybody. Right.

you know, it doesn't really matter if these guys kind of jump in, it doesn't hurt, you know, like, especially at this point when no votes are being cast, like is Asa Hutchinson still going to be an active candidate for president in January or February when Iowa, New Hampshire voting, uh,

You know, maybe not. And in that case, you know, if if he just wants to get up on a debate stage and and kind of make the case for, you know, as as, you know, probably doomed as that case is, if he wants to make a case for that kind of George W. Bush style of conservative Republicanism, you know, go crazy.

I mean, one area where he has actively split from DeSantis is on Ukraine and what the U.S.'s interest is in the Russia-Ukraine war. DeSantis obviously has said that the U.S. does not have an interest. And, um,

Hutchinson explicitly said that he thinks that's wrong. So I think you're right, Nathaniel, that he is seeing himself as someone who is bringing forward this kind of older vision of conservatism and, you know,

Yeah, you know, maybe for him it just is about getting on a debate stage and airing his ideas and trying to make Trump and DeSantis and anyone else who represents this newer, Trumpier version of Republicanism answer for that.

Yeah, right, because one of the things you can do as a candidate on a debate stage or just in the press in general is you can potentially move the posts of where, like, moderation is. So if only Trump and DeSantis are running, then moderators

Yeah.

one potential way that candidates who ultimately have no shot at winning can change the course of a primary potentially. But I think we'll just have to wait and see how this plays out. For now, definitely looks like, Nathaniel, your idea that this ultimately doesn't matter that much is reflected in the amount of news coverage of Hutchinson's announcement.

He picked not the greatest weekend to leak that or to sort of make that clear. Isn't it like the perfect weekend, though? It's like his pitch is don't elect Trump, and Trump just got indicted, so you'd think that it would be great timing for him. That's fair. That's fair. I mean, not to pile on Asa, but...

I guess it's a double-edged sword in the sense that, yeah, he can go on the Sunday shows and be like, we shouldn't elect the person who just got indicted. But it also means that his news itself is going to be stepped on in a major way. So, you know, we will see what happens next. I have a feeling that, you know, having been doing this for seven and a half years, the Trump show is about to blot out the sun. But, you know, prove me wrong.

Let's move on and talk a little bit about the elections on Tuesday in Wisconsin and Chicago.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is currently divided 4-3 with conservatives in the majority. But with the retirement of one of the conservative justices, Tuesday's election between conservative Dan Kelly and liberal Janet Protasewicz will determine the orientation of the court going forward. The race has been the most expensive state Supreme Court race in American history. Amelia and Jeff, you wrote about this for the site. This race is technically nonpartisan, but in practice has been, you know, anything but. It's been very partisan. And it's been very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very

How have Kelly and Protasewicz positioned themselves on the issues, Amelia?

Pertusiewicz, I think, has made it very clear where she stands on a number of key issues that will be very relevant if liberals are able to take control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And those two major issues are abortion and redistricting. She has not said how she would rule in an ongoing lawsuit over Wisconsin's 19th century abortion ban, which...

has been in effect since last summer, has made it effectively impossible to get an abortion in Wisconsin because this is one of these really old bans that just basically says no abortion in any circumstances unless the pregnant person is about to die.

That is not popular in Wisconsin. And so she has basically said that she's endorsed by a bunch of pro-choice groups, that she supports abortion rights. So it's pretty clear where she lands on that.

And then the other issue is redistricting and the fate of Wisconsin's congressional district and legislative maps, both of which are quite friendly to Republicans and have already gone through a round of litigation. But that could be reopened if the liberals had power.

control of the court. And she has said basically that she thinks that the maps are not fair. Kelly, interestingly, while I think it is, it is very easy to guess at his position on abortion, has been trying to basically argue that his views on abortion don't matter. So, you know, he's done legal work for anti-abortion groups in the state. He's very conservative. He's

but he has been, you know, he has not been full-throated in his support for the 19th century abortion ban. And that makes a lot of sense because it's, you know, it's like less than 10% of Wisconsinites think that abortion should be illegal in all cases. It's really not a popular position. So those have been the major issues where the candidates have been

distinguished and, in the case of Pertusiewicz, actively distinguishing themselves. Have there been any other prominent issues in this election? I mean, you know, should we kind of think of this election as a referendum on abortion in the way that we were thinking about some of the special elections that took place last year after the Dobbs decision came down?

I tend to think it's a bit of a continuation of what we saw in the 2022 midterms. You have Kelly and Kelly's allies running ads, essentially saying Protasewicz is soft on crime. She gave out too lenient of sentencing as a judge in Milwaukee County, whereas Protasewicz is running a lot of ads talking about

how she's impartial and that she's in favor of abortion rights. So these are sort of the dynamics. And obviously we saw a lot of that in 2022. So it seems like it's a bit of a continuation of that. And obviously in the 2022 midterms, I'd say Democrats feel like they got a bit of a win. If you're saying that those were sort of core sort of competing issues that given the results, especially on the Senate side, that Democrats came out a bit better than

for it. And I guess we will see if that, if there's a continuation of that, um, in this race as well. Yeah. I mean, we do have very little data, but from whatever tea leaves we do have, does it look like not only the issues, but the outcome will be a continuation of 2022? Yeah.

I would say that it's – to be clear, we have basically no polling. The only survey that we've seen that at least as of this weekend that had popped out in public was actually from a Republican pollster sponsored by one of the leading outside supporters for Kelly. But the poll still had Protasevich ahead by a couple points.

um so it's you know we don't have much to go on for the pulling perspective but produce which has greatly outraised kelly she and her allies have outspent kelly and his allies in terms of advertising

And combined, the liberals – the liberal candidates in the primary led I think it was 54 to 46 or 53 to 47. I don't remember off the top of my head now in the first round in terms of their combined percentage versus Kelly and the other conservative candidate who was on the ballot, the primary. So I think liberals feel like they probably have an edge headed into it. But –

There are a couple – there's a couple constitutional amendments on the ballot and a non-binding referendum that basically asks whether people who apply for welfare benefits should have to work –

And it's essentially – and there's been criticism that conservatives in the Wisconsin legislature basically wanted something like that on the ballot to try to gin up Republican turnout. And so it's – we just don't have a ton to go on to say like with much certainty about where the race is going. But I think there are reasons to think that Protis Seawich should be viewed as a favorite. But how much of a favorite is harder to say.

I mean, the fundraising differential was something that we did see in some key races in the 2022 midterms where the abortion rights side just blew the other side out of the water in terms of fundraising. So, you know, obviously that's not determinative this time around, but it's interesting to see that same pattern repeating itself going into tomorrow's election. Yeah, I mentioned at the top of the show that this is the most expensive election

state Supreme Court race in American history. I feel like we've seen a lot of those records broken in recent years just because the amount of money going into even just state-level politics has been somewhat astronomical. In this case, we're talking about tens of millions of dollars. Where's all that money coming from?

So for Protis Sawich, she's out-raised Kelly in terms of their individual campaigns very significantly. It's like – I think it was like 12 million to 2 million. I don't remember. I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head now, but it's a lot. Now, about two-thirds of what Protis Sawich had raised sort of in the month and a half leading up to this.

actually came from the Wisconsin Democratic Party. And where the Wisconsin Democratic Party was getting that money included a lot of well-known funders on the liberal side of the aisle. So George Soros, for example, I think gave a million. J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire governor of Illinois, gave a million dollars to the Wisconsin Democratic Party that was then given to Pertusiewicz.

By the way, again, to your point, nonpartisan race, but both political parties are very clearly backing their candidates because on the Republican side – so Richard Uhlein is a very well-known billionaire mega-donor on the Republican side, a lot of conservative causes. Well, his wife gave a half a million dollars to the Republican Party that was then sent over to Dan Kelly's campaign. So you can see these partisan connections. But for Kelly, most of the spending has actually been from allies, not through his campaign. Right.

So Uline and some others have spent their through packs, have spent a lot of money on ads. And one of the actually the little wrinkles in this, though, is that campaigns like individual campaigns get a much better rate when they purchase ad time. It's much cheaper for them than from outside groups. So Protosewicz and her allies have not only outspent Kelly, but the fact that most of the spending has been through Protosewicz's campaign has actually given them like

You can't just compare the dollar amounts to understand sort of the degree to which – like the points buying in terms of the number of television advertisements are much greater on Proto-Sewich's side because she gets those cheaper rates or she's been able to take advantage of those cheaper rates to a much greater degree.

You know, this being a somewhat high-profile election, considering that this is an off year, means that the results may get a decent amount of attention, especially because it's in a purple state. And I'm curious, like, before we get those results and narratives start forming, given the electorate that we expect in this kind of an election, you know, off-year state Supreme Court election, right?

Should we take the results to indicate something about the trends of Wisconsin politics? Or is this a kind of like one-off, this is unique, don't build it into your narrative model of what could happen in 2024? Yeah.

In some ways, this is similar to a special election. And we've talked on the show before about how special elections can be predictive of the next election cycle, but only when you look at them in aggregate and average them over time. You know, this is a big election. It's statewide. But I would always be hesitant about drawing conclusions from any one election. This is also a nonpartisan election. Technically, you know, I think that

that 95% of Wisconsinites will know which party the candidates are affiliated with, but it's not going to be on the ballot, which I think makes it a little dicier to kind of use as a straight like, oh, Democrats overperformed by this and, you know, therefore Biden's going to win reelection. What's turnout going to be like a third of eligible voters higher? What are we thinking here? Probably about a third, right, Jeffrey? What do you think?

Yeah. So actually, what's interesting is the primary had the highest turnout of eligible voters of any recent spring primary, as they call it in Wisconsin, a February primary election with 22 percent of the voting eligible population. So, again, yeah, to put that in context, you know, you had 70 percent.

or more of the voting eligible population vote in 2016 and 2020 in the presidential election in November. So you're talking about a much smaller part of the electorate. Now in the April general, it's been, it's tended to be in the thirties. But when it's corresponded with the presidential primary, because in presidential years, if it happened in an even year, the judicial election would happen at the same time as the presidential primary in April in Wisconsin, obviously that would drive more turnout.

But even then, it's only – in recent times, only in 2016 when both parties had competitive presidential primaries going on did it eclipse 40 percent of the voting-eligible population. So my number has sort of been in my head of like –

35, 36, because that's actually what we've seen sort of the highest otherwise. But it does seem like there's a lot of engagement, all this spending, and you'd have to think that with all the spending and the view of the race as being competitive, that those factors would tend to drive higher turnout.

So in the grand scheme of like judicial elections in Wisconsin, it would presumably be on the higher side. But if you're thinking about like presidential elections, you're talking maybe half. It may be a little more than half if it's a really high turnout.

I mean, I think the way I'm thinking about this in terms of abortion specifically is that this is just kind of a signal of how much the issue has persisted as a real motivator among significant key Democratic blocs. And that's really important because I think one of the big lessons that we should take from the 2022 midterms is that, you know, abortion is

wasn't rising to the top of Democrats' priority lists everywhere, but in places where there were really serious bans in play, where people were aware that abortion access was very seriously restricted, this was a really big motivator for Democrats, and especially for some subgroups of Democrats. And so one of the big questions I've had is,

you know, okay, we're now six months past, six months, five months, I don't know, time is too much for me. We're some amount of time past the 2022 midterms. And, you know, how much are Democrats really thinking about this? People have kind of had more time to get settled into a

post-Dobbs reality? Are they just accepting that this is the way things are on abortion now? Or are there states where, you know, this could continue to be a significant motivating issue going into 2024? And that's especially relevant because there are states like Arizona where folks

full abortion bans are still making their way through the courts. So while a lot of the full bans are going to, you know, be in states like Arkansas, where like I don't, you know, Democrats may be mad and motivated, but I don't think it's going to make a big difference in 2024. There are some states where this could be a big deal. You know, Florida, um,

another example, they're poised to pass a six-week ban. So I think that's the way I would think about it. And I would be looking at, you know, turnout and margins, again, just as a sign of how much do Democrats still care about this? Are they willing, you know, are they tuned in enough that they're going to turn out for this election that, you know, at another time, I think would have been a very, very sleepy election that we would never be talking about on the podcast.

Yeah, well, you know, I don't know. Never say never. We like our elections here. We've gotten pretty nerdy in the past. We do, we do, we do. But we would not be talking about it for like, you know, 20 minutes. And we also probably wouldn't be live blogging, which I should say we are going to be live blogging tomorrow night. We're actually going to start in...

Thank you.

We'll see, you know, like, hey, if you were a juror, how impartial could you be in this case? See what New Yorkers have to say about that. And then as we move along into the evening, we're going to train our focus on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Chicago mayoral elections. You're going to have lots of 538 Live blogging to follow tomorrow evening, Tuesday evening, I should say, if you're listening to this on Tuesday. And then I'll also say we're going to have a podcast on Wednesday morning reacting to

both the unsealing of the indictment and the results in the election. I know, folks, that you may have wanted an emergency podcast Tuesday afternoon once the indictment is unsealed, but we are going to be busy live blogging the elections, so you'll just have to hold tight. This is what happens when there's too much news at one time.

Let's move on, though, and talk about the Chicago mayoral race before we go. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, as folks know if you've been listening to this podcast, lost her reelection bid in the first round of voting in February. And now the two top vote-getters are facing off to become the next mayor. They are Brandon Johnson, a progressive who's backed by the Teachers Union, and Paul Vallis, a centrist backed by the Police Union. I think folks can probably guess that public safety and criminal justice, you know, like in other cities, has been a hot topic in this election era.

Nathaniel, how has that debate played out in the months leading up until now?

Well, basically the debate on public safety has been playing out. That's, I think, a strong point for Paul Vallis, who is the more conservative candidate. He is the pro-police candidate and the police are pro him. He's been endorsed by the local police union, which is a potent force in politics in Chicago. And he has been attacking his opponent, Brandon Johnson, for his passport for essentially defunding the police.

He has said that it was not just a slogan, but a real political goal. Johnson has been coming back from that, really kind of backpedaling on what he said back in 2020 on that issue. But, you know, it is something that has come back to haunt him.

On the flip side, you have kind of Johnson. He's also kind of talking about crime, but in a way that's talking about kind of funding some of the more root causes of crime. He's also talked about increasing taxes on the wealthy to pay for a whole host of social services, including things for education. Education has been another big issue. Both of these candidates' backgrounds

have been in education. So, Valis was the CEO of Chicago Public Schools and also in Philadelphia. He's been a big supporter of charter schools in the past, so he also takes a kind of a more moderate position on that. Whereas Johnson was an organizer for the Teachers Union and- Was an actual teacher at one point. Right, right. He's a teacher himself and has been endorsed by the Teachers Union, which is another powerful force in Chicago politics.

So it really is a very interesting, very stark ideological contrast. I would say probably the most conservative and the most progressive candidate emerged from the primary in this regard. And also, as with any kind of urban politics, race is a dimension of Alice's white, Johnson is black. And I suspect that you'll see that show up in the voting patterns as well.

Yeah, you said, you know, the most conservative and most progressive options emerged from that primary. You know, as a result of what kind of voting patterns, like, could we see who got what support where in Chicago? I know that as you did with New York and Los Angeles, you broke down Chicago by sort of political neighborhood. Where do Vallis and Johnson get their backings from, you know, beyond the unions, but when it comes to the actual voters? Yeah.

Yeah, so I hope folks can, on Tuesday morning, go to FiveThirtyEight.com and check out my article about the four political neighborhoods of Chicago. You know, I always have fun digging into kind of the local voting patterns. We went ward by ward. Basically, I think, you know, for I assume most people who are listening to this podcast aren't going to know, you know, what the neighborhoods in Chicago are like. So I'll kind of make broader generalizations about the voting blocs.

Um, so in general, you know, I think that Johnson support Johnson kind of surged late in the primary. Um, a lot of like Chicago's progressives who tend to live on like the North side, um, you know, tend to be kind of, you know, younger, uh, white, you know, progressive voters. Um,

They voted for Lori Lightfoot in 2019, but she really disappointed them and they were kind of fishing around for another candidate and seemed like they settled on Johnson in the first round. He just kind of narrowly beat Lightfoot there, but he did win a lot of those precincts and kind of the most competitive

progressive areas. Chicago's had, like many cities, kind of a burgeoning DSA Democratic Socialists of America movement. I've seen some socialist members get elected to the the city council, and a lot of those same wards ended up voting for Johnson.

um valis on the other hand is supported um by you know the conservatives who do exist in in chicago um you generally see kind of a pocket of like pro-business democrats in like downtown and the areas immediately north of of that um but then you also have a fair amount of um what are kind of have traditionally been called kind of like quote unquote white ethnic voters so you know these are working class areas like you know traditionally

Irish American and Polish American areas of Chicago that are a little bit further flung in like the Northwest and Southwest quadrants. And those are really some of like Vallis' base areas.

given his focus on public safety, especially. And then the kind of other two voting, big voting blocks in Chicago are essentially black voters and Hispanic voters. In the first round, black voters tended to go for Lightfoot and Hispanic voters tended to go for Representative Chuy Garcia, who was kind of the fourth main candidate in the race. So they are in large part up for grabs. And I think that is going to be a big determination of who wins the runoff is that, you know, who voters of color end up opting for.

Yeah. I mean, is it clear at this point? Do we have any more polling than in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race? Yeah, we've had a lot of polling in Chicago, actually, like far more polling in Chicago than in Wisconsin, which has actually shocked me considering that I would expect that Wisconsin would be more interesting to a national audience. And also, it's a lot easier to poll a state that everybody polls every two years rather than a municipal election. Yeah.

but, uh, but yeah, um, we have seen, um, polls that have generally, um, put Valis. Wait, wait, I'm sorry, Nathaniel, did you just say that it's easy to pull Wisconsin? Because I'm pretty sure, uh, it has like the biggest errors back to back in 2016. That is fair. That's a good point. I guess that could be scaring people off. Um, but like in a, like generally speaking, the smaller the jurisdiction, the harder it is to pull. And like Chicago, I guess Chicago is a, is a very large city. It's basically, you know, it's almost the size of Kansas. Um,

But this is like, it's a primary, you know, both Vallis and Johnson are Democrats. And so, you know, it's always hard to, you know, like voters are fluid in primaries. So I don't know, if I were a pollster, I would rather stake my reputation on Wisconsin. But anyway, that was a tangent.

In the polls of the Chicago mayor's race that we have seen, Vallis has tended to be a few points ahead of Johnson, generally within the margin of error, though. And when you look into those crosstabs, it does look like Johnson is generally leading among black voters. And again, Johnson himself is black, whereas Hispanic voters are generally seem to be leaning toward Vallis.

So, you know, again, kind of perhaps reflecting the fact that that demographic has has shifted right in the last couple of years. So it could be close. There are, though, you know, more black voters in Chicago than there are Hispanic voters. And of course, the margins within kind of their base are going to matter, like in the first round.

um, Valis was like running up shocking numbers among kind of these like working class areas. He was winning like 60% of the vote, whereas Johnson tended to just be kind of eking out the areas, even in like progressive places, but also he was facing more competition, right? Cause like, you know, like Chewy Garcia kind of identifies as progressive. So he was maybe siphoning off some of that vote, maybe still similar light foot vote. So,

Um, it's, it's hard to know. I, you know, I obviously like just looking at the top lines again, I think you'd have to say that this race leans toward Valis, um, but it is also competitive.

Yeah. And to Nathaniel's point, we should mention Garcia endorsed Johnson. So you do see sort of the progressives lining up behind Johnson. And thinking about sort of like race and ethnicity, the overall population of Chicago is like a third white and then basically like 30% black, 30% Latino. But there is definitely a larger voting age population that is white and then black and then Latinos and thirds. So

This is where like the margins I think will be very important. It's like how much can Johnson consolidate voters, especially in the south side of Chicago, which is traditionally where there's – I mean we should mention also Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country.

and that you see this very much in the voting patterns too. And so if Johnson is able to run up really large margins in Southside, that could give him and keep it close among Latinos. That could give him a path. At the same time, if Vallis is keeping Johnson's margins down more in Southside and winning some of the heavily Latino parts, that would be a sign that he's probably on his way to victory.

Yeah, I mean, on the flip side for Vallis, you know, he has been battling allegations that he's not really a Democrat, you know, that's, that's not gonna to play well in Chicago, but he was recently endorsed by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin. So he does also have some kind of major endorsements behind him that have come in recently. And he's

you know, Galen, you were, you were asking about the most important issues, um, looking in the crosstabs of that Northwestern poll that, um,

Nathaniel was mentioning, even though education has also been an issue, it seems like for voters, this is really revolving around the issue of crime. About 50 or exactly 50 percent of registered voters said it was an important issue. And one really interesting difference, though, was that 80 percent of registered voters over 65 years old said that reducing crime was an important issue compared to 31 percent of 18 to 29 year olds.

So, you know, that's a pretty huge age gap and it'll be interesting to see, you know, where that motivates people. Does it are, you know...

If the kind of young progressive folks in the north side of Chicago are less motivated by crime, you know, are they still very motivated to turn out for Johnson? If kind of older people are really caring about crime, who do they turn out for? Who do they vote for? You know, in certain parts of the city, it would seem like Vallis is getting a lot of his support from some of those people. So it'll be interesting to see how all of that breaks down.

Yeah, you know, we talked about ad spending and spending overall in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, but here in the Chicago mayoral race, you also see Vallis with a pretty significant advantage over Johnson. Between Vallis and his allies, Ad Impact came out at the end of last week with a report that said that Vallis and his allies had spent twice as much as Johnson on advertising across TV, internet, other things. So that...

That sort of edge could be very impactful, especially since we're already seeing – we have other signs that Valis may have a slight edge to begin with. And the sort of ads that they were running, Valis has definitely read a lot of ads talking about generalization.

Johnson having said that he wanted to defund the police, that's shown up a lot, and that Val is talking about how he's going to fight crime in Chicago and really prioritize public safety, those kinds of words. And he's talked a lot about his endorsements because he's trying to fight back this idea that he is not sort of a true blue Democrat candidate.

There was there's various like like radio recordings of him talking back the day where where he has made statements that were basically used to say that he maybe he was like a little more conservative or he wasn't that much of a Democrat or, you know, and the Johnson campaign and Lori Lightfoot in like the primary and the Democrats have tried to use that to attack Fallows for not being conservative.

uh, you know, basically a, a real Democrat. And so, Valis' advertising has also been definitely trying to, uh, fight back against that idea, um, by talking about all of his endorsements, um, from various Democrats. So, you see, uh,

And also reaffirming that he is in favor of abortion because there was, especially in the primary, attacks on him saying that he wasn't in favor of abortion rights. And obviously we know how salient that issue is right now among Democrats in Chicago. While there will be Republicans voting in this election, Chicago is extremely Democratic. So that's going to be an issue that if they could have made a case that Vallis was really anti-abortion, that would have been really problematic for him.

Yeah. I mean, to wrap up on a similar question that I asked of the race in Wisconsin, we've seen now several big cities with this kind of a lineup between a progressive and a more moderate or more conservative Democrat. And in New York, we saw the more moderate candidate win, Eric Adams. In Los Angeles, we saw the more progressive, although still pretty mainstream Democrat, Karen Bass, win there.

Once again, before the narrative gets baked in and we have the actual results, how much should we think of this race as emblematic of the direction of American cities overall?

Yeah, I think it's harder with cities because they are so idiosyncratic. Different cities are different from each other. There are obviously broad similarities. But, you know, the candidates and the kind of political relationships in cities are kind of notoriously just like complex and specific. And so I don't think people should be drawing any large conclusions from this other than, you know, just probably, you know,

Urban politics is complicated. It is urban cities just because they vote Democratic are not necessarily, you know, liberal or progressive. We know that, you know, just by, you know, even in Los Angeles, the conservative candidate, Rick Caruso, got a decent chunk of the vote.

That'll certainly be the case in Chicago as well, regardless of whether Vallis wins or loses. So I think just like the takeaway should be city politics are complex, but not necessarily drawing any conclusions about the progressive or movement is on the rise or the moderates are striking back or whatever. Well, I mean, when we look at the results in recent national elections, it does look like cities are moving to the right though, doesn't it?

There is some evidence of that to some extent, although we were mainly talking about the 2020 presidential election. And I think it's one of those things where I'd like to see it over a few elections. Now, there is some evidence, you know, for instance, in like Latino, heavily Latino parts of like New York City, California.

And Asian, I think.

whose origins are like the Indian subcontinent with people who have Chinese or Japanese background. It's a really, really broad thing. And someone who's a Vietnamese American may have a very different perspective on politics than someone who is Indian American, for instance. So I want to be careful about that. But you definitely saw in 2020, especially I think in Los Angeles too, or in the Los Angeles area and some areas where we know that there are sizable

Vietnamese American populations, for instance, that there was a shift to the right in those places. So there is something there. And I guess it's a question of whether trends continue. But it does suggest that there is the potential for Republicans to have a more diverse coalition. At the same time, though, we shouldn't be like totally overstating that because at the end of the day, it's still a very, very white party.

All right. Well, as I mentioned before, we are going to be live blogging throughout the evening as we get results in. So if you want more specific answers to the questions that we have been asking on today's podcast, tune in to FiveThirtyEight.com. But we're going to leave it there for now. Thank you so much, Nathaniel, Amelia and Jeff. Thanks, Galen. Thank you, Galen.

And folks, as usual, a reminder that we have a live show in New York City on April 19th. To get your tickets, go to 538.com slash live show. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Hope to see you there. My name is Galen Druke. Anna Rothschild is in the control room and Tony Chow is 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 wherever you get your podcasts, or even better, tell someone about us. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you soon.