Here’s the Scoop, Election Edition: The Final Countdown

0:00Garrett Haake: Hey, Nightly News listeners, we have something a little different for you today. You're about to hear a special election edition of our NBC News podcast. Here's the scoop. In this episode, Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haake sits down with experts to break down the key issues shaping the upcoming midterms. Take a listen. Tens of millions of votes have already been cast. The rest come on Tuesday. And then we'll know who will control Congress for the last two years of the Trump administration. If you elect a Republican House and a Republican senator November 3rd, we will continue to put America first every single day.

0:38We're going to shock the world when we beat the billionaires and take back Texas. If we're willing to vote for change up and down the ballot, then this election might not just mark the moment this country began to move in a better direction. This will be the moment when we began leaving our worst impulses behind. Welcome to Here's the Scoop Election Edition. I'm Garrett Haake, and this is it. The ads, the attacks, the polemics, and the posturing all brought us here. We've spent eight weeks trying to make sense of these midterms. We've discussed what's on voters' minds, from affordability to foreign policy to data centers.

1:18We've gone deep into factors driving change in the biggest battlegrounds and explained the challenges in pulling off free and fair elections in this political environment. But now that we've seen the details, it's time to step back and take a 30 ,000-foot view. So today, I'm calling in backup. I'm bringing in three of NBC's top political reporters with decades of collective experience covering elections. They've been crisscrossing the country these last few months, and I've wrangled them into the studio today to open their notebooks and share their expertise ahead of election night. John Allen is a senior national politics reporter.

1:55Earlier this cycle, he road tripped along I-80 from New Jersey to Nebraska through a slew of battleground districts, gathering insight and leaving a trail of cigar smoke in his wake. John? Hi, Garrett. Bridget Bowman is a national politics reporter and is, I'll be honest, the brains of this operation. Nobody understands the polling and the data behind elections better than she does. She's also keeping a close eye on Senate races in Maine and Texas, and you may have heard those races are pretty close. A little bit. Hey, Garrett. Hey. And Ryan Nobles is our chief Capitol Hill correspondent. He has a deep understanding of the dynamics on Capitol Hill and is well-sourced with all the key players.

2:35He, too, has spent much of the last few months on the road from Maine to Ohio and places far further afield. Yeah. Ryan? Finally getting those airline miles back up, Garrett. That's good. Well, guys, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you all for coming in. And look, I mean, we've all covered elections for a long time, and sometimes they kind of blend into one another. But sometimes there are key moments and key sort of pivot points that kind of define an election. And I want to talk to you each about some of those moments. And Ryan, I'll start with you. I mean, I know you experienced one in South Texas that kind of like was the light bulb moment for you.

3:07Garrett Haake: Yeah. You know, a lot of times when we go out into the field, we go in with a certain set of expectations because we've been reading all the polling. We've been hearing all the pundits spin us one way or another. Right. But sometimes when you get on the ground, what you're seeing in the polls and what the consultants in Washington are telling us don't often match what you're hearing on the ground. I had the exact opposite experience in Texas. The one thing that we've been really closely tracking is the impact of Latino voters in this election. I think you could make the argument that Latino voters are the new swing voters in the United States.

3:35Garrett Haake: There used to be soccer moms or national security moms. Now it is the Latino voters. They swung big for Republicans and President Trump in 2024. This year, it feels like they're tracking back towards Democrats. And that's what the polling's telling us. And that's what I found when I was in Texas. We started in Dallas, drove all the way down to the southern border in McAllen. And just the palpable almost anger from Latino voters who thought they were getting something from Republicans and President Trump versus the reality of what they're experiencing was really noticeable. You know, one of the leaders that we talked to, the president of the Hispanic Business Council, Javier Palmeiras, described it as buyer's remorse.

4:14Two words, buyer's remorse. That's what our community, basically, if you could sum it up by that, that phrase right there. They were shocked by the way they felt betrayed. And that anger has only built over time, not gotten any better.

4:29Garrett Haake: And the other part of it that is really hard to ignore is the impact of that President Trump's immigration plan is having specifically on this community. And what was a bit eye opening to me as somebody from the Northeast is how even Latino voters on the southern border were craving for a border security plan. They wanted it as much as anyone. And they're happy that the border is secure. What they feel is, though, is that the administration's gone way too far with this heavy-handed mass deportation program. It's making it hard for them to do basic things like staff a construction outfit, which is a big part of what drives the economy there.

5:03Garrett Haake: So there's a huge amount of dissatisfaction. I think that's certainly working towards James Tallarico's favor in Texas. But Texas is only one example of this Latino voter movement. I think all along the southeast in house districts in New Mexico and California and Arizona, I think you're going to see this play out. But it was remarkable to see how closely the polling aligned to what the folks on the ground were telling us. John, did you find that same buyer's remorse dynamic on your road trip? Yeah, absolutely. The thing that really stood out to me, and you and I have been covering Trump rallies and the MAGA base for more than a decade now, right?

5:39And the thing that really stuck out to me is for the first time, I talked to multiple-time Trump voters, three-time Trump voters who were criticizing the president. Usually you ask them, what do you think about this policy? And they go, Trump, Trump, Trump. What do you think about that thing that did it? Trump, Trump, Trump. And this time people were quick to criticize him. There was one woman actually earlier this year, right after the Iran war broke out. I went to Scott Perry's district in Pennsylvania, which is a swing district. But Scott Perry is a very MAGA Republican. And I went to a very MAGA area and talked to people at a gas station to see what they thought about the Iran war.

6:15It seemed like a reasonable thing. There was one young lady who had some choice, profane words for the president of the United States. But I also found on my more recent road trip the same thing, just whether it's tariffs. Farmers are upset about reciprocal tariffs, so they're not able to export things as easily as they were before. The cost of diesel has gone up, so transporting things is difficult. As we know, everyone is upset about gas prices. So Ryan was talking about on the border the specific issues with immigration, which I think are true with Hispanic voters whether they're on the border or in other places.

6:48I talked to Hispanic voters in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, which is where you have a huge Republican Hispanic population. And they also were frustrated with the way the president has gone about immigration policy. But everyone sees prices. It's the one thing that everybody in the United States, regardless of class, race, everything you could think of, everyone sees that and everyone's upset about it. Not everyone will vote for Democrats because of it, but certainly even the president's base is disappointed. Right. I mean, to that end, Bridget, the affordability polling numbers tell a very clear story.

7:24I mean, it certainly indicates that Republicans have basically lost the economic argument. But are you finding that they kind of lost it all at once? Was it a slow burn? Like, what does that mean? It was a slow burn. And actually talking to sources who are working in House and Senate races asking, like, when did things start to turn? One conversation jumped out with a Democratic source of mine who described voter sentiment about the president as kind of like a heart rate monitor. And the places where he saw two big spikes, the first was actually in 2025 around the Liberation Day tariffs where voters didn't like what they were seeing.

7:54And the second spike being the Iran war because it just had such a visceral impact on prices. And remember, the president campaigned on saying, I'm going to bring prices down on day one. And voters just were not seeing it. And if you look at our NBC News polling average of the president's approval, you see this very steady climb in disapproval starting around Liberation Day, April 2025. And it's just been kind of slowly moving, kind of been a slow motion car wreck for Republicans in terms of the environment. And the other promise that they feel like he broke. So he said, I'm going to end inflation.

8:23And he said, I'm not going to start new wars. And so the price is being connected to basically two broken promises. And actually, that's a voter's word or voter's term, not mine. Talk to a guy in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, who just said, stop breaking your promises. If I could say one thing to him, I would say do what you said you were going to do.

8:42Garrett Haake: No forever wars and tell us what you are doing to get us out. Don't make things up that we want to hear. Tell us exactly what you're going to do. Yeah, and we'll talk more about the war later. But I do think it's interesting that, you know, as we take this and as we approach Election Day, we really don't know where the floor is yet for President Trump. And that could still have a wider impact. One of the issues that I want to make sure we talk about that's sort of a new issue this cycle is the impact of AI and data centers, which is not something I certainly had ever discussed in any of my election travels before this cycle.

9:16And it really took over, particularly in some specific races. And, Ryan, you found that to be true in Ohio where that Senate race at times kind of looks like a single-issue race.

9:25Garrett Haake: Yeah, it was kind of bizarre to see the backlash that data centers have just all of a sudden created in this political environment. And I spend time outside of Columbus and outside of Cincinnati, which are two hubs for where there's just been a data center explosion in Ohio. And I want to focus on southern Ohio, right along the Kentucky border. That is MAGA country. country. We were in Claremont County, which is about 45 minutes outside of Cincinnati. That's a 75-25 Trump district. And the folks that we were talking to there were so angry, specifically with Republicans, because this idyllic rural environment that they had built, that they had invested their lives in, they felt was being torn apart by these data centers that were just the size of six, seven football fields showing up in their backyard.

10:14Garrett Haake: And, you know, Now, they're angry with politicians across the board. Who do I blame? I blame John Husted, President Trump, along with our local commissioners. They don't care about other people's lives. But it has a unique impact in Ohio because John Husted, as lieutenant governor, was kind of in charge of the economic development efforts in that state. He championed the attraction and the tax breaks that were associated with data centers. Now, he wasn't the only politician in Ohio that was doing it. I mean, that was a very quick payday, as we've seen in Loudoun County, Virginia, to help a tax base that was struggling.

10:49Garrett Haake: But now the backlash is something that came so swiftly that many of these politicians weren't prepared for it. And Sherrod Brown's tapped into that. Now, it's not as if Sherrod Brown was this anti-data center warrior. Right, nobody has clean hands here. Exactly, up until about six months ago. But it's been an opening. And the thing that I found most interesting about my conversations with these Trump voters, particularly in Southern Ohio, was that the data center issue almost was an opening to question a lot of other things about Donald Trump that maybe they didn't have a very specific or direct connection to.

11:20Garrett Haake: So the one voter I talked to whose farm is being uprooted by a data center, they're widening the one lane road in front of her house. They're putting in a huge pipeline that's going to destroy this well that they've had on their property for 50 years. And she said, you know, they promised me all these things. Now they're undercutting me by destroying my land. It made me think, why are we at war? Why haven't prices come down? Why haven't we released the Epstein files? You know, all these things that a Republican voter wouldn't even allow themselves to criticize Donald Trump for. The data center issue is an opening to then question everything.

11:59That's I wanted to bring you in on this, John, because I feel like there are there's connecting of the dots here. Right. It starts with the data centers and affordability. And then it kind of connects to this corruption idea like somebody is getting rich off this and it isn't me. Where are you seeing that play out? How do you see those dots all being connected on the trail? So it's really interesting. I mean, look, the Democrats would have told you in Trump's first term. or literally in any other Republican's term as president, that their buddies were getting rich at the expense of the little guy.

12:25That's like their message forever. It doesn't always get traction, but Donald Trump is giving it traction, right? So there's, I mean, I was shocked. I was in Iowa right after I'd had a conversation with Ryan, who told me, I think the ballroom stuff is breaking through. And I was like, that's nuts. Americans don't care about the ballroom. Who would ever talk about that? And then I was having a conversation with this woman, Darcy, who is a Trump voter, and she's going to vote for Ashley Hinson, the Republican in the Senate race. But she was very frustrated at the president. And I asked her my favorite question of anybody, which is, what would you tell the president if you could tell him something?

12:59And she said, go live with a senior citizen living on$1 ,500 a month in social security. See how we have to live. And then she went like right into the ballroom. Interesting. And I think what the president has done with his sons getting rich, certainly during his presidency, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, having deals all over the world, him building a ballroom at the White House, is he's given this sense that while everyone else is struggling, he's using the opportunity to enrich himself, to better his surroundings. I don't think he looks at the ballroom that way. I mean I actually think he's the rare politician who's like, you only live once and I'm willing to take the political hit.

13:40I want a ballroom. Yeah. Yeah, well, and also to like in his mind beautify Washington. I think Washingtonians don't take all of those things as beautification. But like a good example is they like cleaned up the fountains in Washington. Most politicians would never do that because their constituents don't want the money spent on that as we're seeing. But I think the big point here is he's just given so many openings to make the argument that he is basically bilking Americans for himself, including himself. Was it yesterday or recently this week? he basically said we're making money we're getting rich you know we the we is interesting there yeah like i think he meant the u.s but it wasn't clear and i think a lot of people interpreted if you

14:20Garrett Haake: don't feel like you're getting rich you're certainly not part of that we right well i keep telling people to believe him and not their lying eyes right not their lying wallets the same problem joe biden had okay we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we're gonna get into the weeds how the issues and the trump effect have been playing out in races across the country. Stay with us.

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16:14Bridget, we were both obsessed with the Texas races, but I do feel like that is kind of ground zero for where the affordability and the kind of corruption and the data center thing like that Venn diagram all overlaps in Texas. The interesting thing on the corruption piece in this Texas race and in some other red states with Senate races this year, is you see Democrats making this cost and corruption argument saying your costs are up and there are other people, like John was saying, getting rich off of it. But interestingly, they're not talking as much about President Trump directly. They're tying it to the Republican candidates specifically.

16:43And that's probably most at play in Texas where Tallery goes on the air with ads saying Ken Paxson is the most corrupt politician that exists. And we do hear from Republican voters. We just did a focus group recently with Republican voters who voted for John Cornyn in the primary. And we're wondering where they are now. Almost there are five Republicans, one independent. All of them described Ken Paxson as corrupt. But almost all of the Republicans were leaning towards him anyway, which is just a reminder, like how strong of a forced partisanship is today and how polarized we are. So we'll have to see where they some voters are very openly struggling with this thing.

17:19He has a lot of skeletons, but they feel like they just can't jump the fence and vote for another party at this point. Is there a sense that those people might just stay home? I mean, what's the like what is the last couple of days of this race look like when it comes to like trying to motivate or demotivate those people who could decide the Senate majority? Yeah, it's a good question because for Tallarico, it's a math problem, right? There just are not enough Democrats in Texas. It's the same in all these other states like Iowa, Alaska, Kansas. And so he does need some of them to break and vote with him.

17:47And there was one voter in our panel who did that. I should say focus groups are just this very small group of people, not representative. Disclaimer applied. Exactly. And there was one Republican there who was leaning towards Tallarico. So I think for him, it's making sure that those people definitely show up and also maybe just pushing this corruption message further. there for folks who are on the fence about Paxton, just reminding them some of the skeletons that he has in his closet. Ryan, I'm going to ask you about your favorite topic when it comes to the midterms, and that's Donald Trump.

18:14We, in our first episode, had James Blair on, who runs MAGA Inc., who was kind of defending the Republican idea that Trump's on the ballot everywhere, so they might as well use him. He has tried to make these midterms about himself for better or worse in many places. But you've been out in a lot of these House districts. How much are you finding the sort of Trump mood music of it all is a dominant factor for voters? And how much are these sort of individual issues still poking through in the battlegrounds that will ultimately decide?

18:42Garrett Haake: So there's like three or four House races that I'm watching to see how the Republican plays it. And then it'll be a thought experiment and a test for the impact that Donald Trump is having on this race. Well, one good example is Virginia one. That's Rob Whitman, a longtime incumbent Republican, very much more of a George W. Bush Republican than he is a Donald Trump Republican. But he's been, you know, votes with Donald Trump most of the time. Certainly he's not polarizing of Donald Trump. I begged him in an interview to ask if he wanted Donald Trump to come campaign for him. And he didn't even want to touch the issue, didn't refuse to say yes or no.

19:13Garrett Haake: But he's run a campaign in that district with Trump decidedly at an arm's length. Then you go to rural Wisconsin, Derek Van Orden, who's in the fight for his life, two term Republican incumbent as MAGA as they come. He told me I am running arm in arm with Donald Trump. If my supporters don't come out, it's because I have not run close enough to Donald Trump. And so, you know, Donald Trump is the devil that, you know, in this case, and you cannot ignore him. And so for someone like Van Orden, he's like, I need to fire up his base. I have to have to beg them to vote because if they don't vote for me, I've got no shot.

19:50Garrett Haake: Where Whitman is hoping that there are enough traditional Republicans. Non-MAGA, sure. Yeah, non-MAGA Republicans that can get him over the hump that it doesn't also alienate independent and Democratic voters. But to Bridget's point, which I think when the dust settles on all of this, I think the overwhelming question that we're going to get an answer to is just how polarized is this country? Because under any metric, this should be a Democrat tsunami. When you have a president whose approval rating is in the 30s, when you have gas that is approaching five dollars a gallon, when you have all this litany of issues that is pushing against against the Republican Party right now.

20:28Garrett Haake: But yet you have people in a focus group who are saying, I still don't think I can vote for a Democrat. Even a lot of these people that we've talked to that are have soured on Donald Trump. Almost it benefits Republicans in these midterms because, like, well, I'm not voting for Donald Trump. I'm voting for my Republican member of Congress and I'm a Republican. So there is a degree of Donald Trump being on the ballot that actually kind of boomerangs back to hurt Democrats. Interesting. Because you're not voting for Donald Trump, right? You're voting for the Republican ideal. But I just think the polarization of the country is such a very kind of fixed issue right now that, to Bridget's point, in Iowa and Kansas, you cannot win with Democratic votes alone if you're Ashley Hinson or if you're Adam Hamilton.

21:11See, I do think it's different, though, depending on where you go. I mean, like in Texas or Kansas, where you don't have as much of a history of like split ticket voting are different from Iowa, where you do have a huge history of like having a Democratic governor. It's been a while, though. Yeah, but not so long that people don't remember doing it. And likewise, in Michigan, where like, John, I was so struck that Mike Rogers would not answer a question about whether he's a MAGA Republican. What does that tell you is going on in Michigan? He needs everybody, right? That he needs the traditional Republicans and that he needs the Trump Republicans.

21:44Does that get you Trump Republicans? It doesn't get you Trump Republicans. But trying not to alienate them. I think he also is pretty – I think he's pretty confident that the Trump Republicans are likely to come out to vote against Abdul El-Sayed. And we'll see if that bet pays off for him. You know who falls into a similar category who we really haven't talked about enough is Susan Collins. Yes. Right. I mean, she's somebody out there who's trying very hard. She's not really trying to have it both ways. She's trying to be Susan Collins, Republican, not a MAGA Republican, not a traditional Republican.

22:14How is she faring? And where else on the map do you see sort of Republicans finding candidate qualities able to distance themselves in the appropriate way from Trump? Yeah. Maine is a really big one. When you ask, like, where is the president looming large? It's in Maine. Senator Collins is the only Republican, as you know, Ryan, from Covering the Capitol. She's the only Republican in a state that Trump lost in 2024. I was just up there for a few days to talk to a lot of voters. And the number of voters that I encounter, almost all of them have at some point in their lives voted for Susan Collins.

22:43Like she is an institution. She's probably shaken the hand of every voter in Maine at some point. Yes, it's so small. People have worked directly with her office on things. But, you know, folks who have voted for her, especially folks who split their tickets in 2020 between Biden and Collins, are now saying some of them are now saying I can't vote for her again because of the president. That I just feel like even though she's tried to distance herself on tariffs, on the war, that she hasn't done enough to stand up to him. And it's interesting when you talk to folks who are supporting the Democrat Troy Jackson, when you ask them why, they'll first tell you why they're voting against Susan Collins.

23:15Interesting. Which is just partly a product of the system where Jackson became the – Negative partisanship is a hell of a drug. Yes, exactly. And so the president is really, really looming large in this race.

23:23Garrett Haake: And I would think if I can add on my trip to Maine, the one thing that I found was a breaking point for a lot of these independent minded voters in Maine that have supported Collins for a long time because they thought that she had the juice to bring back money and programs to Maine. The vote for Brett Kavanaugh that subsequently led to the end of Roe v. Wade. That was a marker for them. Right. Because Collins's argument has always been to them. I'm the lone Republican voice that's standing up to Donald Trump. I've cast all these votes that conveniently still allowed something to be passed, but I still voted no.

23:55Garrett Haake: The Kavanaugh one is one that sticks out like a sore thumb because she was the deciding vote that put Kavanaugh over the hump. And then that ultimately led to the end of Roe v. Wade. So that it's one very tangible thing that you can point to that she hasn't had on a record in previous runs. And it's important for women. Women are going to be so important in this race. Senator Collins actually won women by a couple of points in 2020, even as Trump lost them by double digits. And I talked to a lot of women voters when I was up there. Some of them did bring up Kavanaugh as well. So women's going to be on election night.

24:26I'm going to be really curious about the exit poll number from women in Maine as a sign of where the race is going.

24:30Garrett Haake: Also part of the reason Democrats probably got rid of Graham Plattner. To me, the other more sort of modern issue that I feel like is pervasive everywhere, and I said we would come back to this, is the Iran war. Like what do you think the likelihood is we're sitting around in December saying like this thing was cooked when the war started in February? Hi. I mean, look, I think that we could have sat around two years ago or like when Trump came in and said, the odds are Democrats are going to pick up seats in the House and Senate. There's a historical marker for that. But what we saw was the president almost entirely on a downward trajectory in terms of approval rating from day one.

25:02So you can look at all sorts of policies that people didn't like that started out, but really that Iran were locked it in. I think after that point, it was very difficult for him to turn anything around. And, you know, he will tell you that he controls the Strait of Hormuz and your gas pump will tell you that that's not true. And, you know, so I don't know how he gets out of that. But I think in December we will look back at that and say this was the moment where, you know, the fate was sealed in terms of Republicans losing significant.

25:37Garrett Haake: I would argue the Iran war is what put the Senate in play. I don't think I mean, when we talked about the Senate map in February, conventional wisdom was Democrats could have a good night, but the map is just not favorable to him. Right. To them. There are too many Republican held states that they'd have to flip. And now we're talking about a realistic, maybe likely outcome that it's either 50 50 or Democrats take the advantage. And the Iran war is the tipping point there. That's when things change, because that's why Iowa and Kansas are in play. Right. Because of gas prices and diesel prices.

26:09Texas probably isn't in play without that. Alaska. Well, yeah. It's funny because I feel like a year ago, Strait of Hormuz would have been a great Jeopardy answer, right? It's just one of those things that most people didn't really know. And now it's like built into the American lingua and sort of understood to be almost like a code for talking about gas prices. I mean, including the president, perhaps. He seemed very surprised that the Strait of Hormuz was taken, which was not a surprise to anybody who had done, you know, know, defense war games before. All right, we're going to take another quick break.

26:41And when we come back, where the map stands as we head into election day.

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28:34We've talked a lot about the Senate, but it is the House that, you know, all the prognosticators say is most likely to flip. It's a harder thing to wrap your mind around as a layperson because most people barely know the name of their member of Congress, let alone those around the rest of the country. But fortunately, Ryan knows all the members and he's going to list them. No, I'm just kidding. Maybe I know like 60 out of 435. So talk a little bit about the House map as you see it, Ryan. And like, where do you think the majorities are going to be decided? Yeah.

29:01Garrett Haake: So I think that we're going to see Democratic gains in basically any seat that's around a plus 10 Trump district, I think, are legitimately in play. There are some bullish Democrats that put that number at like plus 15. So any place that the president carried by 10 or more points or 10 or fewer points is theoretically in play. Is an open an open seat, which if that were to play out and Bridget probably knows his number off the top of a head better than me, but we're probably talking about a plus 20, 25 seat majority for Democrats, right? If we're in that range. It depends. It depends. It depends on which one you're looking at.

29:34Garrett Haake: So, but you know, there are a few pockets that I think are interesting. Like if, so I know I'm a Virginia reporter at heart, so let it out, forgive you me, but I think Virginia is going to be the best indicator for us early on in the night for a couple of reasons. First of all, their polls close early 7. They count fairly quickly except in Northern Virginia. But there are three districts in Virginia that are basically three microcosms of what the entire house map looks like. You've got Virginia 2, which is the Norfolk district. That's a perpetual swing district. It goes back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, depending on the mood of the country.

30:04Garrett Haake: You've got Virginia 1, which is the Whitman district that we just talked about. That's a district Republicans should keep. But in a bad environment, which they're currently in, it's all of a sudden in play. If Whitman goes down, if Shannon Taylor beats him there, that's a sign that Democrats can count on the majority. The question will be by how much. Virginia 5 is where John McGuire currently holds that seat. That's a seat that was redistricted a while back to favor Republicans centered around Charlottesville. Tom Perriello is running in that seat. He held that seat way back during the Obama years.

30:35Garrett Haake: That's a seat that Republicans have no business losing but is competitive in this cycle. If Democrats were to win there, now we're talking wave tsunami type night. And based on those three districts, it could give us a pretty good indication of where the night is headed going forward. I watched Mike Johnson on one of the Sunday shows this past weekend say that all the polls are wrong. Those polls are wrong. They're based on faulty analysis. Look, in the last week, Shannon. And that Republicans are going to hold the House. But this is this is talking point that all the polls are wrong. So for the sake of argument, let's say all the polls are wrong or let's just imagine we don't have the polls to guide us.

31:10What do you see as you're looking at the political environment that are the tells of how these races are being viewed by the people who are running them at this point. So let me take that and twist it just a little bit and tell you, here are the tells that I see that are most important. Every Democrat I've talked to on like across the country has told me how eager they are to vote. And we're seeing that in early voting, right? Like a lot of the early voting cannibalizes what otherwise would have happened on election day. Democrats want to get their ballots out there. Independents want to go out and vote against Trump, people that I've spoken to.

31:48Republicans are critical of Trump, as I was saying before, in ways that they haven't been. To me, those are the tells, right, of what, like, sort of where the wind is shifting in terms of the campaigns themselves. I mean, look, you've seen desperate stuff. Vivek Ramaswamy's ad using Amy Acton's mother, like, and Donald Trump attacking her own wonderful colleague, Monica Alba, about her asking about that ad, told you the same thing, which is that Vivek Ramaswamy is losing. Right. That's not an ad you put on the air if you think you're winning. No, you're up a couple of points. You don't take somebody your opponent's mother who was accused of basically enabling her stepfather to sexually assault her and put her in your ad.

32:29Right. The blowback on that has been incredible. Bridget, we're in the last week now, which is sometimes sort of campaign silly season where you see people start traveling to states they haven't been to before, money being spent in unusual places. The president's going back to South Carolina. He went to Mississippi. What do you make of states like that coming into play right now? Are they really in play? Or is that kind of a function of like, you can't just keep going to the same four states. You can't possibly spend any more money in Ohio and Texas. Like, what do you make of that? I think it is a sign that to some extent, Republicans are a little worried about some of these places, for sure.

33:04In a place like Mississippi, we saw outside groups from both parties now spending in that Senate race. And I think following the money is a really good indicator. Like if Speaker Johnson is saying all the polls are wrong, some of the outside groups that are involved are shifting a lot of money to these Trump-less 10, Trump-less 15 districts that Ryan was talking about. So that's a clear sign. He may be saying that, but what they're seeing in their own data is that these races are in play. So you need to shore up a lot of these places as well. What do you think in the short time that we'll have left until all the votes are counted on Tuesday night.

33:36Are there factors that can still, external factors that could still shape these races in meaningful ways? Like to the degree you guys have nightmare election dreams like I do, what's keeping you up at night in these last couple of days? So I've got a good

33:48Garrett Haake: one on this. And I think it's one we haven't really talked about enough. And that is that people don't really like Democrats either. And I mean, all the polling tells us that, you know, the Democratic brand is hovering somewhere in the low 40s, you know, just slightly better than Donald Trump's personal brand. It's not as if voters right now are enthusiastically going to vote for Democrats. It feels like they're voting against Donald Trump and against the Republican Party. And so as a result of that, if you're an independent or center-right Republican or center-right voter, and you're sitting there and you're sweating over this vote, and you're leading up right till the last day, as we talked about before, in some of these states, Democrats need Republicans to vote for Democrats.

34:30Garrett Haake: Is it enough to push you over the hump to do that? And I think that's a big unknown that we still can't quantify yet. And then I would extrapolate it out even further. The Democrats are now, if they win, going to get keys to at least part of this government. And they're going to have a two year window leading up to the 28 election to improve upon that brand. And now they're going to have skin in the game. So it's not as if even if the Democrats have a monster win on election night that all their problems are behind them. Their problems are really just beginning. Because when I talk to voters, like, they're mad at everybody.

35:03Garrett Haake: When it comes to data centers, it's not like they appreciate the efforts that Democrats have made to protect them. They feel like no one is protecting them. They're just angry at the system in general. Yeah, and I would just add, I keep thinking about the 2022 midterms when Republicans were supposed to have a really good night. And Democrats ended up doing surprisingly well. And part of the dynamic that Ryan was talking about that some voters looked at Republicans that I can't go that far. So one number that I'm going to be really watching on election night is the folks who somewhat disapprove of President Trump.

35:31Because in 2022, those voters did something really funky where they supported the party. They supported Democrats. And so typically they would support the party out of power. So I'm going to be keeping an eye on that as an early indicator of is something interesting going on. Is there a specific race where you might be tracking that to see where it shows up? Oh, that's a good question. I would say any of the red state Senate races, I think that would pick up like folks who are not maybe supporters of President Trump, but not super happy. Are they actually breaking with with Republicans or not?

36:03And so Texas, Iowa, Kansas, any of those places. So we have your watch lists. Virginia man has been very clear about that. John, is there some place that you're watching early in the night that you think will be a bellwether? You know, one of the states that I'm going to watch really closely is Iowa. Yeah. People there have been hit on – you know, if you live in the cities, you're getting hit by gas and grocery prices. If you live on the farm, you're getting hit by the diesel prices, by the tariffs. Like all of these issues that are hurting Trump are hurting him among Iowans. They all touch Iowa in a really strong way.

36:33And there are two Republican-held districts that are either leans, Democrat, or toss-up right now. They were toss-ups when I visited them earlier this year. Yeah, not anymore. Well, we just did a whole episode on Iowa for people who are more interested in that topic so they can go back to it. No discussion about the midterms would be complete without asking you to extrapolate what you think it will mean for the next election in 2028. So we'll end with this. Who do you think has the most of the potential 2028 candidates has the most to potentially gain or lose, depending on how they or people they are supporting do on election night this time around?

37:05I would say maybe AOC, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, just because there are a few progressive tests in this election cycle with Abdul El-Sayed, Troy Jackson in Maine. Do you see if both of those folks lose, does it become tougher for progressives like her to really make the case that they are electable? Yeah. And she's also been out on the campaign trail with both of them, too, raising her profile. Michigan is now an early primary state on the Democratic side. Yeah, she's tied herself very closely to El-Sayed in Michigan. That's interesting.

37:33Garrett Haake: I mean, I don't know how you don't start the conversation about 2028 in the midterms and not bring up John Ossoff's name. I think Georgia, I've been making the case for quite a while. Georgia is the state for Democrats when it comes to presidential politics. If they win Georgia, they win the election. If they don't, the path is very, very difficult. You now have two senators there. If John Ossoff were to win, you have two senators there that have won statewide twice in Georgia. How do you not begin the conversation of a presidential election if you're a Democrat with the two guys that have shown that they can win in Georgia?

38:03Garrett Haake: The question is, how big of a margin can Ossoff win by? Warnock barely snuck through in both of his races. Raphael Warnock, who's the other senator there. If Ossoff wins by more than five points, which is, you know, the polling shows is possible in a state like Georgia, he's got to be at least in the top tier of potential candidates. And if he carries Keisha Lance Bottoms across the finish line for governor. Are there going to be three potential Georgia candidates? Oh, by the way, what's next door? South Carolina. Exactly. Which is the first state. So there's the there's the Raphael Warnock argument.

38:33But I want to give a different answer, which is Gavin Newsom, who touched off the Democratic fight back on redistricting. And if he doesn't take a victory lap on election night, if Democrats win the House, he doesn't take a victory lap. It's because he's tied up in someone's basement. You know what I mean? Like here's a guy who said I'm going to fight. And the thing that Democrats have wanted is somebody who says I'm going to fight, not left, not right. I'm going to punch. I'm going to punch right up the middle. And so, you know, I think he is somebody who very much stands to gain from the ability to do that.

39:07As a corollary to that, maybe Josh Shapiro, because in Pennsylvania, they could – Democrats can flip a couple seats here. And he's up for re-election. We don't talk about him right now. He's going to win by a lot in his re-election for governor. All right. Well, we're going to have to leave it there. But obviously, we've got a lot to chew on, a lot to watch on election night. Thank you all for your reporting and for taking the time. Thanks, Gary. Thank you.

39:31All right. Well, that's going to do it for us at Here's a Scoop Election Edition. Thank you for joining us these past eight weeks. If you want to go back and dive deeper, listen or watch our interviews with folks like Republican operative James Blair about the Trump effect or Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt about the safety of our elections, you can find all of our episodes on our YouTube page. Here's the scoop or wherever you get your podcasts. Our show was produced by Caroline Kenney and Amanda Llewellyn, Erica Huang and Bobby Carlisto engineered with support from Jessica Fenton and Jacob Condon.

40:03Gutteri Yocum is the executive producer of Here's the Scoop and Shalini Sharma is the senior vice president of content development at NBC News. I'm Garrett Haake. If you haven't already, go vote.

40:26Garrett Haake: Get The Daily Show's ongoing coverage in Decision 2026. Daily. This ain't your grandma's coverage. This coverage has full hip mobility. It's the most trusted fake news in America. Comedy Central's The Daily Show. New weeknights at 11.