How to separate the signal from the noise when covering the midterms

0:00It's Consider This where every day we go deep on one big news story. If you follow politics on NPR, you probably know this voice. Trump's economic approval rating is only 35 percent. That's tied for the worst mark in either of his presidential terms. That is, of course, NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro reporting on all things considered earlier this month about the results from the latest NPR, PBS News and Marist poll. Whether reporting on NPR's radio shows or the NPR Politics podcast, Domenico not only brings you the numbers, but also the nuance behind the data.

0:38Overall, there still appears to be, I have to say, a COVID economic hangover because pre-COVID, in February of 2020, we polled on this. In many ways, the narrative taking shape for these midterms fits the usual pattern. The president's party looks likely to suffer losses in Congress. That almost always happens. But voters this midterm cycle are placing even more blame on President Trump for the state of the economy. When it comes to actions that Trump has taken proactively, things like tariffs, the Iran war, which has driven up gas prices, people are blaming him directly for that. In that latest NPR poll, 63 percent of respondents said price increases were Trump's fault, including about a third of Republicans.

1:20Consider this. There is a barrage of data and countless other stories to keep track of when covering elections. So how do you separate the noise from the signal?

1:32From NPR, I'm Emily Fang. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, President Trump in China. The latest on a summit that was billed as a major meeting on trade and AI, being overshadowed by the war in Iran, a close ally and trade partner of China? What's happening with tariffs and how is it affecting consumers? On the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:06It's Consider This from NPR. NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenica Montanaro has spent years covering elections and parsing through voter data. As we sat down for our Reporter's Notebook series, I started by asking him how he stays focused on the big picture so far out from the November elections. You have to kind of take these things that can feel very chaotic in the moment, figure out how to cover those things, but also keep an eye on that bigger thing that seems to matter to most people overall, which has continued to be the economy. We've seen spikes in some of these news events like ICE and immigration and customs enforcement, deportations, some of those big issues that we've seen really cause a lot of strong emotion very reasonably.

2:55But the number one thing continues to be, even through all of that, the economy. That is so much. I mean, Domenico, be real with me. How do you keep on top of it? Well, it's not just me. We have a good team of reporters and a good team of editors who take a look at the landscape. We take a step back. We take a breath. I think the thing that distinguishes public media, if I can say, compared to cable news, is that we're not hitting you with the same story over and over again all day long. We are at NPR trying to take a step back to think about what is happening all over the world and the things that are most important to people.

3:29When it comes to covering politics, that's not just Trump, Trump, Trump all the time. It's how are people's actual lives being affected by not just Trump's policies, but just the economy in general? Or when you're somebody who's emigrated to the United States, and you're trying to figure out how to make a life, how is that affecting you in the ways that you might vote or might not vote? You know, what are the parties doing to try to appeal to some of those more apathetic voters who are maybe potentially going to sit on the sidelines? Because, you know, in midterm elections, We see a 30-point drop-off from presidential elections when it comes to turnout.

4:05And even in presidential elections, if you get 60 percent of eligible voters to turn out to vote, that's high. So we're talking about a country here in the midterm elections where more than half the eligible voters are not even going to turn out to vote. A lot of that is because people feel really disconnected from the political system. And that's a major problem when people feel like politics isn't what makes things possible because it's the only path that we have. One thing that I really appreciate about your reporting, Domenico, is you are often citing polls that NPR, PBS News and Marist, a polling company, are doing together.

4:40Like NPR does its own polls. Can you talk about how those polls come together and how that informs your political reporting? Well, number one, I think it's important that having a good national representative sample of voters is important to sort of checking whether or not assumptions that you might make about a certain news event are actually going to be the case or not. Or do we learn something new through that? And to be able to pair that with good, strong, on the ground, anecdotal information, what you don't want to have as political reporters is to go out to one area, hear from a few people who are really passionate and think that that's the thing that's going to happen.

5:20And then what you don't want to have happen is you read the polls and think, well, everybody thinks this way because a majority of people say X, Y, Z. People are very complicated and we need to capture that nuance. And I think it's really important to do that with pairing both of those things. Do the polls then help direct your on-the-ground reporting? Do they help you identify, for example, political elections that you want to take a closer look at? Yeah, I think one area where polls are best is on issues and how things have moved longitudinally, how things have moved over time. I think horse race polling, it's needed, but it's only a snapshot.

5:55And the country is so partisan right now and so polarized that telling somebody that there's a four-point edge for somebody when there's a three - or four-point margin of error, meaning the results could be within a range of eight points there, that doesn't tell you a whole heck of a lot. But when you're able to poll and say, are you in favor of same-sex marriage, for example, and then over time you see that move significantly outside the margin of error, now you have a story to tell. How often are you going to local town hall discussions to report stories? Me personally, I will sort of pick and choose my spots.

6:35I'll go to a campaign rally here and there or a big presidential speech or conversation, something that's sort of in the moment at a 30 ,000-foot level. You say this might be a place that's indicative of X, Y, Z. So let me go and take a temperature of people here. But when our reporters and local reporters who we've increasingly relied on at local public radio stations are out there and telling us that something bubbles up, this is something they continue to hear. For example, AI data centers is something that I think we've continued to hear. opposition to at town halls that we've heard from local reporters and local media that then becomes a more of a national story and maybe we'll pull on or so sometimes it can come from, you know, the from the grassroots from a town hall.

7:20Sometimes it can come from a poll number and seeing if that plays out where we are. So I think all of that is important. I'm curious if these local issues are driving a lot of the coverage you're focusing on for these midterms more than, say, national issues? Well, I think national issues, unfortunately, I say unfortunately, it's a little editorial of me, but I think that all politics have become national. And I think that is a little bit sad, frankly. The old axiom used to be that all politics is local, and that's just not the case anymore. And I think a lot of the problem here is that you've had such a reduction in the number of local newspapers and local reporting in-depth number of reporters on the ground at those town hall meetings, finding out what the budget is for the aerator, for the lake, the thing that people are arguing over.

8:06I mean, I remember when I was a reporter my first year, I was a local news reporter in New Jersey. And I went to a lot of these really small towns and listened to the things that they were discussing, what the tension points were, and almost never really considered whether they were Republican or a Democrat. Now, when you go to those kinds of places, you start to hear more about culture issues and the kinds of national things that people argue about that you really didn't hear about 25 years ago. I also see so many more campaign ads or relevant posts on social media now. And that's where voters seem to be interacting with candidates, even sometimes where artificial intelligence might be playing a role in how those ads are targeted or how you interact with those ads.

8:50How does that change how you report on candidates and their platforms? Yeah, no doubt about it. We have to be on top of being on social media, seeing where these campaigns are at. And often, or increasingly, I should say, there are deepfakes and AI. And that's become a real point of controversy. And I think these 2026 midterm elections are going to be the first ones where we're really seeing AI start to kind of be experimental and be something that plays into this election. And I think people are gonna have to be really, really skeptical of everything that they see, take a beat and see what actual reporters are really saying about some of this stuff, because it can look really real.

9:29And it's going to play an even bigger role in the 2028 presidential election. Thank you, Domenico. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Glad to talk about all this. This episode was produced by Gabriel Sanchez and Michael Levitt. It was edited by Adam Rainey. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Emily Fang. Why do some of us feel so tired and other people seem to have endless energy? What we've discovered is that different people have very different kinds of mitochondria. And some people's mitochondria seem to be quite a bit better at flowing energy. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast.

10:11Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.