Answering your questions before Election Day

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0:13Tamara Keith: It's the Friday before Election Day. And as you probably know, the political news cycle is always wild, but it is especially wild right now. So the best way to stay ahead is to follow this show wherever you listen. On Apple, that means looking for the big plus sign on our show page. On Spotify and the NPR app, there's a big old follow button that you can smash. Following us is the best way to make sure you get the latest developments. Today on the show, we thought we'd crack open our listener mailbag and see what's on your minds as we approach the end of voting. So let's get into it. It's the NPR Politics Podcast.

0:55Tamara Keith: I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And those mailbags sound like dings on a computer. You're right. You're right. Let's jump right in. Our first question comes from Nathaniel, who asks, do you prefer reporting on midterms or presidential years? Are there unique opportunities that midterms have? Well, I do think that presidential elections are ones that people pay closer attention to. In general, I mean, when you look at the drop off between presidential elections and midterms, I think that makes it pretty clear because we've suddenly kind of almost gotten into this like cult of personality where you have like a celebrity president who everybody kind of pays attention to.

1:39It's one race. It's two people that you're – that I think people can home in on more. But I do think midterm years are interesting because the fact that the solar eclipse that is the presidential race is not there. And people have to pay more attention to some of those down-ballot races that are really important. And I think this year is going to be super important because when you have a presidential election, whoever that president is, this year is going to lay the groundwork for what kind of governing majority that person has. I mean, I feel like such a stereotypical political reporter saying this, but like, yeah, presidential elections are just more fun.

2:16It feels like it's more like the New Year's resolution of like the election cycle, because, you know, especially a new president, voters have a lot more like wish casting, like they're like they're just looking sort of forward to stuff. Whereas midterms are like the report, like the like the grades come in. They're weighing in on what has happened, like the performance of a president. And it's just like and usually they're not happy. So the vibes, you know, depending, this changes, of course, isn't the same. every midterm cycle, but it's usually the voters being like, okay, well, here is how things actually shook out versus like what I was hoping would happen.

2:53So I don't know. It's always fun to like catch voters and sort of the hopeful or like wish casty part of an election cycle versus the like, well, here's the reality. Here's the report card. I don't know. I mean, I kind of feel like, you know, maybe I'm a little biased because I, my first job as a political reporter was putting together a briefing book in a midterm election in 2006, 20 years ago. So I'm celebrating that. Thank you very much. And I found it so fascinating. I mean, the stuff that happens in congressional races, some of these House candidates that nobody pays attention to, their backgrounds, who they are, where they come from, the kinds of ads they run, this stuff is just so unique and so interesting and sometimes really weird and stuff that you just want to tell people about that you would never talk about in a presidential year.

3:41Tamara Keith: Oh, my God. There's been so much weird stuff this year. And yet I am here to say that I am also on team presidential year. But it's more of like a have your cake and eat it too kind of a thing where I'm like, what? You mean I get to have even more elections? I get to have all the fun of a midterm, but add a presidential on top? Let's go. Yeah. And I think there's like a social aspect to like, because we have like such a powerful executive in this country, like so much is put into like the psychology and the sort of specificity of like individual people. And as just like a pure psychological experiment, like it's very interesting.

4:19Like I find like, oh, what is it about like a certain thing about a certain person that like resonates with like, you know, American voters writ large? It's hard not to be like a little like captured by that, especially because you also get a congressional race at the same time, too. You get all of it.

4:35Tamara Keith: You get it all. Yeah. It's like a smorgasbord or whatever that word is. It's fun. Next, a question from Aaron. Aaron asks, many political polls have been wrong recently. How can you as a reporter provide an accurate news piece utilizing poll results? Domenico, this one's yours. There have been some high profile misses that get a lot of attention and certainly make people say, God, why do we even pay attention to the polls? And the thing is, Not every poll is created equal, just like saying the media is so biased, I don't like the media. There's good reporters, there's bad reporters. There are good polls and there are bad polls.

5:12Frankly, national polls are pretty darn good. They've done a lot to adjust for the low response rates that we've seen decline over time. In the 1980s, about 30 % of people who you would call would respond to a poll. That's below 5 % now, 4 % or so of the people that you reach out to. And they're using multi-modalities they've adjusted to try to reach people in all kinds of different ways, wherever people are, whether it's recruiting them online or sending text messages or calling them in Spanish or English on their cell phones, etc. There's all these kinds of lists that people buy to try to do as much as they can to try to reach and get a representative sample so that we can have a good, solid idea of how people are feeling and thinking about attitudes toward any kind of major issues in this country.

6:00And the thing is, you hear me speak a lot about polls, but you're not going to hear me talk a lot about horse race polls if you think about it. I might say a race is close, but that's about it because there are things called margins of error. And when there's a three percentage point margin of error, that means there's a range of six points. So the precision that people look for in these things is real folly. And that's where things can get really tricky. And that's not to say that there won't be big misses. And I think in particular, state polls are a mess. I mean, there's a lot of junk out there.

6:30There's a lot of pollsters I'd never heard of before. You got to look for ones that have, you know, long track records have been doing this, who know how to do it, who you recognize in name. I will also say for the people who say we shouldn't report on polls, go talk to campaigns and go talk to corporations. They all spend millions of dollars to poll with the same pollsters, by the way, that you've heard from that, you know, publicly the good ones that are out there. And they use that to spend millions of dollars on campaign ads, where candidates should travel and what the messages should be, whether it's for CEOs or candidates.

7:04Look, like polls are pretty effective at telling you a general direction that things are moving. You know, I wouldn't like bank on the specificity of like an outcome like Domenico saying. But, you know, it provides a little bit of like, first of all, scientific data. Whereas if you talk to a group of people at a bar like that is anecdata, that is not super helpful. It is more fun. I'll be honest. No offense, Domenico. But like people chirping is more fun than, you know, the bag of numbers that you usually deal with. But it is more scientific. It is more rooted in something. It is a better cross-section.

7:39But, you know, yeah, that's how I use it. It's just like, OK, here is like if polls are maybe like Mara says this a lot, Mara Lyson. She says this a lot, which is like if polls are the what, you know, what we do when we report and talk to people is the why. It's like a sort of like a different part of this like larger piece of work we do.

8:00Tamara Keith: OK, we have a question from Tyson, who, thank you very much, sent us a question by voice memo. How is the executive branch going to be affected if one or both houses of Congress are taken by Democrats in the midterms? That sounds like you, Tam. That does sound like a me question, recovering White House correspondent Tamara Keith. What I would say is that there has been, for the first two years of this Trump term, a very compliant Congress. He hasn't had an ambitious legislative agenda other than that one big, beautiful bill act that passed last year. He hasn't asked Congress for a lot, in part because he's just been doing it on his own through executive action.

8:43Tamara Keith: I don't expect that to change. I expect him to continue to try to wield power through brute force and with his executive pin. The question, though, then becomes, what does Congress do about it? If Democrats are in control in the House or in the Senate, they're likely to investigate whether the president is abusing his power. Yeah, I mean, it really is a check on the executive branch when you have split government. And often that happens when people are frustrated with the direction that the president is taking the country. And certainly that seems to be the case this time around and has been for almost every midterm since World War II.

9:22So I think you're going to see more, as you're saying here, Tam, oversight, meaning investigations, discussion about what's happening. I think Democrats, the one place politically they've got to be a little cautious is on how far they go with impeachment investigations. Because there's only been two times in midterm elections that the party in power has gained seats. That was 1998 and 2002. 2002 is a huge asterisk because it was after 9-11. And 1998 was because people thought that the Republican Party went too far in their impeachment investigations of Bill Clinton. I also think this depends entirely on what strategy Democrats have here, like irrespective of impeachment.

10:04Like, do they want to only bring things to the president that they think might not get vetoed? Like, how cautious do they want to be? Or are they going to, you know, send a lot of single issue bills on things that the American public is asking them to fix? And who knows, maybe Trump will be forced, you know, to respond to sort of sort of public sentiment on some issues and maybe he'll have to sign some bills. Like, I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility, depending what comes to his desk. Like, he might be forced to actually interact with Congress in a way he hasn't before. Because, yes, the Republican Party has been a little, let's just say, like, not subservient.

10:37What's another word for that? I went with compliance. Compliance is a good one. Let's use compliant. And they have been kind of going along with Trump a lot. And Trump has been very disinterested in domestic policy in the second term. So they have been taking a backseat. But if there's a different kind of Congress in there who wants to, you know, shore up their own brand because they've been out of power for a while and Democrats have been like actually without any power, they have been actually weak. And if they want to make up for the time they've lost and sort of shore up their brand by doing – like passing a lot of single-issue bills, I think that could be a very different world in which we live in, a very different posture that the president has to be in.

11:13Yeah, and you've got to think that the only things that they're really going to be able to try to get done in a bipartisan way are things that have huge majorities of people in both parties who agree with those things, like AI data centers maybe needing some guardrails. Because the problem in this country is that you don't have districts that are incentivizing compromise. You don't have a lot of competitive districts in this country. You have 10 % of the house that's essentially competitive. That does not breed compromise.

11:42Tamara Keith: Though, if Democrats have a very good night in the House, then there are going to be a lot of Democrats from red districts who are going to have to govern differently than Democrats who come from safe blue seats. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll have more of your questions in a moment. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from BetterHelp. Your brain has limited storage. So why is it still holding on to that embarrassing moment from years ago? BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that gives you space to talk about what's taking up too much of yours.

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13:44Tamara Keith: And we're back. Let's go to more of your questions. This one comes from Courtney, who asks, Are political debates dead? And if not, when they're held, are they doomed to be ever more divisive at the expense of platforming policies as they have been in recent years? I want to like, Courtney, this is a good question. I want to like talk about the first question in this because like this is something I am noticing. There are fewer debates happening. Like I'm wondering if this is like also part of like the slide we see away from like politicians and campaigns relying on traditional media yet less like talking to fewer reporters.

14:20Like everyone's just relying more on social media to get their message out so they feel like they don't have to do things like talk to newspapers and TV stations or do debates. Like they don't need to rely on on these like sort of traditional methods to get their message out. And, yeah, I mean, I think the other half of that question is if everyone is just communicating to their little bubbles in social media and using these like platforms that are more like, I guess, favorable to them. I don't think any good can come of that. But like, you know, I don't know. So maybe this is a moment in time and people will go back to having debates, but I really don't know.

14:55Tamara Keith: That said, there actually have been kind of a lot of debates. We haven't covered them extensively on this podcast. But, you know, there were like four Senate debates in Maine in a very short period of time. Now, Susan Collins is a more traditional candidate who I think saw debates as beneficial to her, which I think might be why so many debates actually happened. There was a debate in the Alaska Senate race. There was a flurry of debates. I just don't know if they really moved the needle. Yeah. Yeah. I think, look, politicians are always talking point machines. I mean, our job is to try to get them off those to press on vulnerabilities whenever there are these debates or interviews.

15:36And that's a real service to voters considering the only thing they really see from politicians otherwise is their campaign ads or a speech here and there or a clip that goes around. Pressing them on their policies in the debate, it's an important part of the democratic process. So, you know, I don't think that they're dead. In fact, I think we're going to see a record number of debates in the 2028 presidential primaries.

15:59Tamara Keith: Only because there's going to be so many people on stage that they have to have multiples. And you're also going to have a lot of them who want attention and who need to up their name identification. And it's just a little bit different in, you know, Senate races where you have an incumbent who's way out front or is very well known and doesn't want to give a challenger an opportunity. You know, that's where I think those presidential debates where President Trump was a little hesitant to have too many debates. That's the kind of thing you might continue to see some haggling on. But in a post-Trump world, I'm really curious to see how that winds up playing up.

16:33I think we're going to see a ton of primary debates.

16:35Tamara Keith: Also, in defense of debates, there was a really big debate in 2024 that ended Joe Biden's presidential career. The most momentous debate in a long time. So maybe debates aren't dead at all. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. I question the premise. Yeah, yeah. OK. Debates don't matter until they do. Until they matter a lot. When I first heard the question, I'm like, yeah, because there's been some notable races where you haven't seen debates. But yeah, yeah, I think, you know, maybe I've been turned around. OK, let's move on. Next up, a question from Chad, who asks, what from this year's midterms are you watching as potential indicators for the presidential election in 2028?

17:16God, where to begin?

17:18Tamara Keith: I mean, it begins on Wednesday, right? Like the primary is going to start so soon. We are not even going to have caught up on our sleep debt. I mean, OK, I'll start with issues first. I am very curious to see how different candidates talking about Israel, America's relationship to Israel, how voters react to that, because I do think particularly for a Democratic primary is going to be one of the main issues. You know, and then there's like there's just the candidate level stuff. Like I look at someone like John Ossoff in Georgia, like he's looking like he might really overperform Democrats in the South.

17:55And he's one of those people who's like sort of favored as like a potential 2028 candidates who knows if he will run. He's saying no. But I'm just saying like there's all these like individual people who are running this year that have like kind of the presidential shine on them a little bit. And I do wonder how they're going to perform. So, I mean, those are like kind of top of mind, the first things that come. Yeah, it's really funny. I was the first thing I was going to say is John Ossoff's margin. Yeah.

18:20Tamara Keith: Well, and also whether Keisha Lance Bottoms wins, because if there's not a Democratic governor, I don't think he can run. Right. Well, yeah. I mean, that's one consideration because a Republican governor would wind up appointing someone to the seat. So how big is the Democratic margin in the Senate if they win the Senate, right? That's another open question. But there have been people who've run before and they don't just consider the Senate seat behind them. So I think that he's going to be somebody who people are going to be asking. He's going to be saying no. And then there might be a hint.

18:52There might be an open thing. It's this dance we're going to see over the next six months. You know, there are a handful of potential 2028 candidates in solid states like J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland. What do they say on election night? Do they give any hints of the future or are they focused on their states? You know, you can't really read into which states will go, you know, in which direction to say that they'll be competitive for 2028. Midterms are very different. The margin for the Senate, though, will be interesting to me for only what it means for how hard it will be for one candidate or the other in 2028 for what the president's governing margin will be, because this really lays the groundwork for a lot of that.

19:35Tamara Keith: I have a completely different answer than both of you. OK. So I am watching what happens in Michigan with Abdul El-Sayed. He is a progressive candidate, a populist progressive. I'm also watching the Michigan seven house race where Will Lawrence, a DSA affiliated candidate who has given up his membership, is running in a swing district. How do those candidates perform in their races? Do they win? How is their margin? How do their margins compare to more moderate candidates? I'd also look at North Carolina and Roy Cooper. He's the Democratic former governor who is running for Senate there. How are his margins?

20:18Tamara Keith: And what lessons do Democrats broadly take from how these candidates perform? Like maybe there are no lessons to be taken, but I think also you could get the lesson of like, well, you know, those more moderate candidates in North Carolina and Georgia perform better than the more progressive aligned candidates in Michigan. Who knows? And that's a lot on the Democratic side. There are going to be things to watch for Republicans as well. What messages work? How much do they want to align themselves with Trump in a post-Trump world? And which of these candidates decides that they're going to say, you know, we need to draw a line and show a difference and say why I'm not like Trump?

20:59There could be some of that depending on who wins where. Yeah.

21:03Tamara Keith: I mean, you saw Ted Cruz out campaigning with like literally every Republican Senate candidate. Obviously, President Trump was out there. J.D. Vance has been holding a lot of rallies, though notably not as big as Trump's rallies because he's vice president. So I do think like how these midterms go may determine how quickly President Trump becomes a lame duck and how quickly Republican, potential Republican candidates start making that daylight brighter. I mean, I think that is the biggest question here is like if Trump really, really biffs this, if this is really like a full repudiation of Trumpism, because now we're 10 years in.

21:45I mean, I know you're hearing this from voters, too, which is like people have Trump fatigue. I'm starting to hear it a lot. And if the Republican Party performs really, really badly, even underperforms what we're seeing right now, like I think the pivot to 2028 on the Republican Party will be the beginning of the big distancing. Let's see if that happens, because I think that'll be probably the biggest shift in political vibes in a while.

22:12Tamara Keith: And more than vibes. All right. We're going to take one more quick break and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

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23:26Tamara Keith: Welcome back. And it's time for Can't Let It Go. That's the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. Ashley, what can't you let go of? OK, so this is going to be a kind of nerdy political historical one. So you guys are going to really enjoy it. You guys are big nerds. So I did a little bit of reporting on the mess with the Alaska Dan Sullivan, as I like to say, situation. Yes. Thank you for getting that plural right. Yeah. I like to say it like attorneys general. I don't know why. It works really well for my brain.

24:02Anyways, so I called Elaine Kamar. She's at the Brookings Institution, a senior fellow there. But she actually co-authored a book about dirty tricks in politics. So we got into a little bit of like, give me the history here. Like, how often does this happen? And it actually like, you know, stacking ballots with like people with similar names is not like a new thing. It's not great. Like, I just want to say, I'm like, I don't want to make it frivolous. It's not like, you know, this isn't like a great thing to do, but it's not an unheard of thing to do. And my favorite story that, you know, I didn't get to put in my story is this like little story about John F.

24:38Kennedy. So when he was first running for office in the 1946 Democratic primary, this is for the 11th congressional district in Massachusetts, he was running against this guy, a Boston city counselor named Joe Russo. His father, John F. Kennedy's father, Joe, paid this janitor named Joe Russo to run for the Democratic primary to confuse voters and take votes away. And I loved this story because like we don't talk enough about Joe Kennedy. He was a mess. He really played some bare knuckle politics. Like he was this kind of like old timey like political like brawler. It's so funny. And it was just like a like nice story.

25:24And it just kept on thinking about it like, oh, my God. Like I could just imagine Joe Kennedy running into this Joe Russo character and being like, oh, you are my guy here. I need you to help me with this. It's so funny. It's just such a funny story. That's a great story. What does Joe Russo have to do with Dan Sullivan?

25:43Tamara Keith: There you go. This is wild. And it makes me want to learn more of these crazy stories about crazy shenanigans because there's so much of it. It's really hard to write laws to prevent just tomfoolery you know so people try a lot of stuff and we have now used both shenanigans and tomfoolery all right um i am gonna go next the thing i cannot let go of is the film you can see everything oh okay i haven't seen it no spoilers um you should see it dominico you should find the time. I realize it is three hours long. However, it doesn't feel like three hours. It is a documentary of sorts by Nathan Fielder, a comedian by training, and Lance Oppenheim, who is an actual documentary filmmaker, all about Elizabeth Holmes, who is the Theranos founder who had this stratospheric rise to fame and fortune.

26:47Tamara Keith: And then it turns out it was all a fraud. Now, she disputes that. She says she's never lied. But so this is a documentary that follows her in her final days before going to prison for her crimes. And if this doesn't sound interesting, it's just because I'm not describing it well enough, because this was a mind-blowing experience. And yes, I am a consumer of, you know, I watched the dropout. I listened to the podcast about her. My husband read the book. Like, I'm all in on this story because I think it's crazy. But it is just fascinating storytelling. Like, it is surprising and unexpected. And there are all of these moments.

27:29Tamara Keith: You have to see it in the theater because there are all of these moments where, like, the entire room full of people are like, did that just what yeah i'm watching this tonight and i have been emotionally preparing for a three hour documentary but every person i talk to about this is like it does not it does not feel like three hours it's gonna it's gonna be a ride the whole time um i am also i mean this is also having a cultural moment because it's it came out really close to halloween so you know there's gonna be a lot of people dressed as elizabeth holmes and her husband especially like couples like this is um i'm I know at least one of our co-workers is dressing as Elizabeth Holmes for Halloween.

28:07So I am very, very excited. And I'm getting this under the wire because the Friday before Election Day, my next week is just going to be nuts. So I got to watch it tonight. And I'm very, very excited.

28:19Tamara Keith: And I should mention that A24, which is the studio that made this film, is a financial supporter of NPR. But they didn't put me up to it. I swear. This is like, oh, my God, I can't stop talking about it. I will talk to anyone who will talk to me. So come at me. I will say I'm out on this one because I saw a previous Elizabeth Holmes documentary all about the scandals within Theranos. And I think I got my fill. Well, this is completely different. You're going to be out of the zeitgeist. You are going to be missing out, my friend. Oh, as if I care. I have a 14-year-old daughter. I'm not in the zeitgeist.

29:01Tamara Keith: Yeah, fair enough. But she is. All right, Domenico, what can't you let go of? I can't let go of Jay-Z pulling a Dick Cheney. Oh, my God, yes. If you know what I'm talking about. So maybe that's unfair, but that's what the internet says, according to the Zeitgeist. I mean, that was my first thought, too. Right, it was mine, too, and I dug into it a little bit more. But Jay-Z is going to be performing at the Super Bowl, February 14th, 2027. We just went through the World Series. Congratulations to the Milwaukee Brewers. My condolences to Miles Parks, who's a huge Tampa Bay Rays fan. Good for them for getting there.

29:36But now the next big event is going to be the Super Bowl, and Jay-Z is going to be headlining. And why this is kind of like a Dick Cheney is that Dick Cheney became vice president, but he was also in charge of the selection committee for George W. Bush on who should be vice president. And Jay-Z's production company, Roc Nation, has contracted with the NFL for years to try and help with entertainment. And now he's picked himself to be on the stage. Now, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, maybe giving Jay-Z a little bit of cover, said that when he first reached an agreement with Roc Nation to produce the show, I had just one request.

30:16That Jay-Z take the stage himself one day whenever the moment felt right to him. And I guess this is the time. Man, he's picking a time when he is less popular than ever. I can't think of a time when Jay-Z was less relevant. I hate to say that word because it sounds kind of mean, but what bad timing.

30:37Tamara Keith: Or not. Maybe that is just the right time for Jay-Z to put himself back on a national. Beyonce doesn't even have a record out right now. Sometimes he gets a little bit of shine from her, but this is a weird time. But I think you're right. Maybe it'll have a little revival effect. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, it's a little disrespectful, frankly, what you're saying here. Jay-Z is one of the greatest of all time. Well, yes. Rappers, okay? And just because he's older and Gen Z doesn't want him to be, you know, this is another thing I've seen online, that he's an old head. Why is he doing this?

31:09Blah, blah, blah. You're taking this so personal, Domenico. Well, you made it personal. You went after the guy saying that he's washed up, has been, shouldn't even be there. God. Now, I will say, as far as age goes, he will be the same age that Tom Petty was when he performed in 2008. So speaking of people who had careers when they were more popular in a different age, I don't think Tom Petty 2008 was his peak. But there you go.

31:36Tamara Keith: I mean, it was probably the peak of my Tom Petty fandom, though. I was late to the party. And I love Jay-Z. I was very late to the party. Yeah. All right. That is all from us today. Our executive producer is Mathani Buturi. Oh, no. Casey, the friendly ghost, edits the podcast. Our producer is Bria the Black Cat. Special thanks to Dana Scarrington, Kelsey Skoll, and Axe Yukoninov. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. And I'm, I guess, D-Monaco Montanaro. D-Monaco! Shout out to Julie Mason at SiriusXM, who for years has been wanting me to change my Twitter handle to that every Halloween.

32:19So there you go.

32:20Tamara Keith: Senior political editor and correspondent. Senior political editor and correspondent, Domenico Montanaro or D. Monaco Montanaro. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

32:35Tamara Keith: You couldn't replace Yukoninov with something easier? Anna, you're going to die because I'm going to stab you. You kind of die is very good to medical. Your dad joke ability is really something else. Boo! Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Bombas. Whether you're outdoors or just lounging around the house, cool weather calls for cozier footwear. Bombas makes the perfect slippers and shoes. built with smooth, premium suede, plush Sherpa, and warm sheepskin shearling, all with layers of cloud-like cushioning. Perfect for staying in, stepping out, and keeping things cozy all season long.

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