Poll Me Twice, Shame On Me

- Hey everybody, welcome to Ponte of America.

“I'm John Love at I just wrapped a great conversation”

with Nate Silver, Claire Malone and Gail and Drew were launching a new podcast with Cricket called Still. Counting, it was great to get the gang back together. We talked about Trump's politics and what he would be doing if he were actually trying to help Republicans

when the Senate, we talked about the races they're watching, including Michigan and the challenges facing Abdul al-Sayed and the broader battle between the left and the center left and how each are trying to define what a Democrat is.

We talked about political modeling and what it can tell us and what it can't tell us and all in all we had a great time. So do me a favor, subscribe, just still counting and enjoy the episode.

Gail and Claire, Nate, welcome, this is awesome. We feel welcome, thank you. - Thank you, thank you. - Thank you for having us.

This is so exciting, so I'm just first of all,

a huge fan of all of you and I'm so excited that listening to you now is gonna be on cricket because I get so hooked, especially as we get close to election day and so as a favor for our listeners, I am gonna save, I have several very pedantic questions

about modeling and I'm putting him at the end and if people get there and they don't wanna hear those questions and be part of it, that's fine. And but so at a respect for the real political sickos, I'm gonna keep to politics and then for the model sickos

have a little section at the end to talk about statistics and data, but I do wanna start with Donald Trump. Nate, your model has Trump approval at around 39, disapproval at 58. We've joked about Trump trying to lose the midterms

the trade war cat with Canada, the focus on the ballroom, the dismissal of concerns about data centers, the war with Iran and hosting a midterm convention to make it all about himself. If Trump were making state-of-the-art decisions

based on the data, what would he be doing

“if he were trying to help Republicans win the midterms?”

Gail, why don't you take it first?

- What would Trump be doing if he wanted to win the midterms? He would probably end the war in Iran as quickly as possible. He would undo whatever tariffs still remain after the Supreme Court decision

and he would probably try to elevate people within the Republican Party who aren't him. We saw during Trump one that whenever he would chill out and step back from the media and put himself a little bit less front and center,

his approval rating would go up. I think that often how have my head I'd say, that's one thing you can do, but I think there's a bigger challenge to this time around which is that what people are really upset about

is the economy. And so even when Trump disappears from the media landscape or stops tweeting or stops doing whatever, people don't forget about how pissed off they are

about prices and inflation, the war in Iran, and things like that. And so that kind of strategy,

“I think, while it may have worked during Trump one,”

won't work during Trump two-point-o. What he really has to do is make people feel materially differently about their law in life when it comes to inflation in the economy. - So you shouldn't do a photo app at Costco

with some gallons of milk or... - McDonald's. - McDonald's. - Well, you don't want to kick it out. - Stick about trying to lower the cost of gas at those four gas stations where he like purchased,

or if he like rented them out to make gas cheaper, or whatever, like, I mean, nice stick,

but like if you could just do that for 340 million people,

I think that'd be what he wanted to do. - Oftentimes the worst decisions in a presidential term get baked in early. You know, look, what he should do is collaborate with Elon Musk

to build a time machine and undo his decision to go to war in Iran. Quagmire's aren't planned. Quagmire's are the result of poor planning. - But it's also, it's interesting,

like the baked-in thing is so true. Because now I'm thinking like, what could your advice? There were like six months ago, all of Trump's advisors were saying,

you've talked about affordability, affordability, and I'm even thinking back to November of 2025, like right before all the war started. And then that means like, it was like three weeks before Venezuela,

that was when Trump was announcing all of the, okay, we're doing deals with the drug companies, we're getting your cheaper drugs. And like that was kind of Trump's stride, right? Like I'm doing deals and it's gonna be cheaper for you

and they started the Trump RX website. And I think that was kind of like peak his comfort level.

you need to incorporate a $4 billion agenda.

But then it kind of it's almost like the confidence high of the dealmaking kind of got there. And then Venezuela happened and then it was sort of like this sliding scale of, I mean, you can armshare psychologize all you want

then it sort of slides into Iran. - Yeah, no, I'm sure you thought well but as well I went good and didn't consider the fact that Iran is literally like 10 times more complex notoriously so.

“No, look, I think he's kind of like grasping at straws.”

We're renaming like Ontario, like America, which is how it sounds like an amusement park where we're gonna get's tetanus. He's trying to get attention and like and look, so we are roughly on the one year

anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination. And there were a couple of moments when you felt like Steven Miller and Trump were gonna double down on authoritarianism. There was obviously all the ice stuff

that happened a few months after that. And like and they kind of are doing less of that now and it just seems like it's gimmicks and he's out of ideas.

He's also never particularly cared

about Republicans' fate in the midterm. Right, if he had, he would have never have endorsed Ken Paxton. I mean, I think Talarico's a good candidate but you probably need a Ken Paxton level below replacement level candidate

to win as Democrat in Texas still. He didn't care about losing those two seats in Georgia in the runoff in 2021. I guess it was, I mean, my years confused.

“- Yeah, no, which is why I think John's asking”

a hypothetical, which is if he were going to behave as if he wanted to win the midterm so what would he do? And he doesn't seem to be behaving that way. - Yeah, I guess it's, let's say he is not,

obviously, better economic fundamentals not doing, not continuing a catastrophic war, launching a new trade war with Canada was also an interesting choice. But politically right now, right?

He's hosting this midterm convention. You have reporters chasing Republican house members to ask if they're willing to go. You have people like Mike Rogers who is in a tough race in Michigan

deciding to go, which I thought was an interesting choice. This midterm convention is presumably not what a president would be putting on if he were trying to be the most helpful, because he's trying to recede and let them run against him, which is,

seems also unacceptable. Claire, what do you think? - It's funny, I should say it's interesting to think in this way, because about what he should do, because we're so used to sort of the analysis

of the after the fact, with Trump. I mean, I think that's our, our mode of thinking. But it sort of speaks to the problem that Republicans are gonna have to face for the next five to 10 years, is what what comes after, right?

And it's almost like, it's super awkward right now, right? You kind of can't, you know, to not have like screens against you on social media.

“Maybe you have to show up to the midterm thing”

and yet you know the right thing to do. Like, JD Vance embodies this problem, right? Hence all the, I mean, I'm not saying I know who leaked a lot of those meetings about Iran strategy, but like, it was to JD Vance's advantage

in a tough situation to sort of say like, hey, there's some voices in the room saying, maybe we shouldn't go to war with Iran. - Yeah. - And now you see sort of see these little matchups

between JD Vance and AOC, right? Going back and forth and then, you know, I'm sure JD Vance hasn't the back of his mind. Like, what a Tucker and, you know, a Macy talk about it, their little dinner, you know?

So it's basically just a microcosm of a problem

that they're all going to have to deal with in the next two to four years. - Yeah, that was quite striking, especially the comparing contrast against Kamala Harris' unwillingness to distance herself

from to Biden is that JD Vance is preemptively distancing himself in one of Trump's worst issues. And look, if you look at the history of presidential second terms, there isn't the same high floor that you have in first terms.

You can look at Bush, for example, I don't know if Nixon's a fairer comparison by the way also, and I'm somebody who is very much in the Biden was too old-trained. 80-year-olds are not very good at change, right?

80-year-olds are not very good at multiple channels of negotiating one way and tacking the other way. Like, that's an issue too. I'm not sure if he has quite, you know, it's little apples and oranges with Biden.

But yeah, look, our job is to forecast the landscape of like what's possible now and historically, and recent mid-term environment doesn't change that much between Labor Day and the election. You don't have debates, for example.

You don't have, you know, a focal point of national news, Trump does something, people don't like for the most part. It's very hard for any president, even Obama realized this, to make positive news by commanding the spotlight. I mean, I think that sort of tells us exactly

what we need to know about what this convention is going to look like and how Republicans are going to run between now and election day, which is, okay, you think back a year ago, Charlie Kirk's assassination. That was a very unifying moment for the right,

because it reminded them everything that they don't like

to feel difficult.

Now, of course, that was a solitary actor,

not somebody who's representative of the left, et cetera, but still for Republicans, it's a rallying cry. We feel under siege, we feel under attack.

“And so I think that what we're going to see at this convention”

and what we're going to see throughout the next two months is trying to pivot towards, remember all the things that you don't like about Democrats. And those are many, right? Like, after all of this voter still trust Republicans

more on the issue of immigration, not just the border, but immigration in general. They're still skeptical of Democrats on the economy and inflation. And so really, it's important to remember here,

when you see all these polls coming in that are positive for Democrats, that's not because Americans broadly, like the Democratic Party, like what Democrats are offering, it's just because Republicans are the ones who are the main character right now.

And so they're voting against Republicans. To the extent that, you know, it will work to a certain extent to save these guys or socialists, they don't care about crime, they don't care about inflation, they don't care about illegal immigration and things like that.

And so to the extent that Republicans can remind, especially more maga inclined voters, remember these guys are still out there and if they get back in Congress, they're going to make your lives difficult

or you're not going to be happy with the result. Like, that's their job for the next two months. - And you look like you're fighting the last war, sometimes, like I'm someone who thinks like the, the day them ad was probably a pretty effective strategy

against Kamal Harris in 2024. But if you're refining the woke wars, it kind of feels like you're living in the past a little bit. There's a whole new constellation of issues from Iran to AI. You know, by the way, there's both a lot of history

with Trump and with midterms in general,

where these almost always go badly for the president's party,

even when the president's more popular than Trump is. And Trump has always done poorly throughout his two terms, one and a half terms, I guess now, when he himself is not on the ballot. Whatever you say about Trump, he does have a certain kind

of charisma, maybe we need a new word for it.

“- No, I think he has, I think people like to pretend”

it's not the case or that it's just say so as something like kind of failing. But of course, he's extraordinarily charismatic. We know that because when you see JD events at the podium, trying to insult Joe Biden,

different's like, "Look, this made us uncomfortable." He's just, he's a sick man, why are you saying this? But Trump could, could do the song and dance, and it would work. (upbeat music)

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- So, let's talk about the Senate, actually.

First of all, just which races are you watching?

Most closely, this cycle, Claire, why don't you kick it off? - I mean, Michigan, I think has become the obvious answer. And the most, I feel like every cycle, there's one race where kind of the media and voters, like the dramatic sort of tension and attention goes to it.

And it's obviously, was it the tipping point in the forecast, was it the most--

“- I think in our forecast, Texas, is the most frequent?”

- Texas, mostly, okay, yeah. - More importantly, align with conventional wisdom, right? But, you know, most polls have tele Rico narrowly ahead there. - Yeah, but I think Michigan for me displays the most complicated dynamics of the Democratic Party, right?

So, in races like in Texas, right? You can kind of see like, okay, this candidate is trying to do the thing where it's, I kind of look like an independent or like a very conservative old school, Blue Dog Democrat, right?

I talk about God and religion, right?

I'm talking about Tyler Rico.

Michigan has more of these modern party dynamics, which is, I mean, I was just reading on the train over here, right, how Jewish groups in Michigan are reacting to Alcaya's apologies, the apologies aren't enough.

It's pretty extraordinary that some of the Democrats aren't endorsing in that race. I mean, it's sort of like this, you know, you could imagine if it were a public, a really heated Republican primary,

there's a lot more coalescing whereas in this phase of the Democratic Party, it's sort of people kind of, the factions are eating each other a little bit, which I actually wasn't, I don't know if I expected it

to the degree that it's existing and it's sort of making for an interesting, you know, drama. - Click to be, this is all fascinating because you can kind of put it into buckets

how you wanna analyze the midterms, which is one, the overall environment, very blue, the generic ballot right now, favors Democrats by a six to seven points. Great, that could be a blue wave environment.

“You analyze it according to the map, it's very red, right?”

Like the median Senate seat that Democrats would have to, sort of in general, not let alone this red map in the Senate, like the median Senate seat is four points more Republican than the nation. And on top of that, they're gonna have to win in places,

Democrats are gonna have to win in places like, say, maybe Iowa or Alaska or Texas. Then, candidate quality is a separate lens that you can look through. And so James Taylor, I don't really see him as a blue dog,

like yes, he's a pastor, he's a... - It's more of the aesthetics. - Maybe he's talking about that. - Maybe his vibe is very like, he is the most generic Democrat you can possibly imagine.

Like, he's not centered left. He is just out now sort of. He's said weird woke things, yes, he's religious, but like, he's religious in a lefty way. He's not... - I know, but the religion in an lefty way

is still even stark in the Democratic Party. Like, candidate to talk about God in religion, like, I was in Iowa 10 days ago,

and like, Rob Sand is always sort of slipping it in there.

Like, it does actually, I just think Rob Sand is... - I just think Rob Sand is... - He is centered left. And he knows how to run against both parties. - Yeah, yeah.

- Like, he did do the thing on immigration where he said, you know, the open border policies of Joe Biden were nuts. And like, that's, that is sort of table stakes for what a Democrat needs to say in order to win

in a place like Texas. But I would say he is generic average, whatever. I'll say it is a below average candidate. He's going to underperform in Michigan, right? Like, a Democrat should be winning this cycle in Michigan

by like, seven or eight points even. Probably at the top of the ticket, the governor, Jocelyn Benson is going to win by close to 10 percentage points. I think we can expect already

that that's going to be closer to like a five point. - And candidate calling, meaning because you think that he has been so divisive to the party itself. - Yeah. And also that he is viewed as extreme

because he has taken more left positions on any number of things. And it is also approach in the way that you talk and whether you're sort of more of a firebrand. And then you look at somebody like Mary Peltola

who is an out-and-out good candidate who's also changing the contours of the race in Alaska. And so you have, I think, a really interesting and these factors are going to be pitted against each other.

“What matters more, does the blue wave come crashing down”

and sort of none of these candidate quality issues end up making the difference in the end? Is it the case that we are so stuck in our partisan ways that red states are going to stay red? Blue states are going to stay blue,

even in a very politically dynamic environment. Politically where there is a blue wave. Like I think these are some big questions that we're going to get answers to. - In some ways, the math is pretty simple.

All these states, Alaska, Texas, Iowa, et cetera, are roughly R plus 11 or R plus 12 states, meaning in a neutral year to expect them to vote for Trump by 11 points, 10 points, call it, right?

You get to all these states that with average candidates

should be a three or four point Republican win.

“Can Democrats make up for that with a candidate quality advantage?”

And Alaska, you might be on that happening, potentially. In Ohio, where Brown is kind of a quasi incumbent, and won a tough race in 2018, in a similar environment, that you might have more confidence about in Texas. I do think, I mean, Calarico's fundraising is quite astonishing.

I do think it's more about Ken Paxon being a weak candidate than Calarico's. - It's got tablet, Father. - Yeah, and in Michigan, I mean, that's the thing. So Michigan should be D plus 70 plus eight. So if you have like a four point candy quality disadvantage,

and we can talk about what that means, that might not be enough there, right? Elsa, it has a bigger question, or Democrats have a bigger question in Michigan than Republicans do in Alaska, because the environment is so blue.

And by the way, I think I'm one of those people who believes

that more moderate candidates do do better.

I think there's lots of empirical evidence for that. It's not the only dimension of candidates strength. He is somebody who has an impressive background, else I had. - He's a charismatic person when he's speaking. Honestly, I think a lot about--

- Tucker Carlson likes him. - Sure. - Yeah. - No, I mean, it's true. - It's true, yeah. - I don't know how much--

- Justin Waters likes him too. - Yeah, Justin Waters couldn't help but like, I don't know how much the Tucker Carlson endorsement is a feather in his cap, but-- - Are we gonna talk about circumcision on this podcast, Sean?

- All right, it's all I ever want to talk about. (laughing) - No, we actually want to hear-- - Yeah, I want you to like, I don't think it's necessarily-- - But it's, I think it's the, you know, with Mom Donnie,

“I think we're watching the mom doc, like, what you have to do,”

no matter who you are. Like, you know, I'll say it as a particularly divisive candidate right now, given where the party is, but no matter what happens if you're a candidate, you have to, in a primary, afterwards you have to mend fences,

and oftentimes you moderate. Like, if you look at Mom Donnie, who's now an office in New York, holy smokes, right? Like, with this smile in his face, which I think is a genuinely a real part of this, right?

Like, it's like the friendly face of democratic socialism, like I think that goes a really long way. But, you know, you also see it with like, AOC and the squad in Congress, or some of the members of the squad in Congress.

Like, you sort of enter the, for lack of a better phrase, the parliamentary environment of, okay, I have to make deals. I have to, you know, work the back rooms. It's not just about what's happening in front of the camera,

and I think, you know, I think outside is in a tough place with that because of where the broader party is, and I, and where Michigan is, and what-- - What do you want? - I do think that this is gonna get clipped and get me in trouble.

- Oh no. - People in the national media care disproportionately about Israel and Gaza and Palestine relative to, if you serve voters, not how they feel about it, but how much importance--

- We've had to deal with it. - We've had to deal with it. - We've had to deal with it.

“- Okay, but I don't think people realize that, right?”

And so like, you know, I'm from Michigan, Michigan's remarkable for having a very high Arab-American population, but it's 2% roughly of the voting pool. It's not 20% or something like that. It did move a lot.

Dearbar and Michigan, the most Arab-American city in the country, gay, what, only 40% of its vote to come with a hair, as a big Trump vote, a big Jill Stein vote, a big other vote. But at the same time, like, you know, Michigan is a swing seat because it's demographics on average are pretty similar

to those of the country as a whole. - Well, this is a question. I mean, how much should L.S. I'd like that vote, right, the Arab-American vote, that turned against Harris and the Democrats because of Gaza.

How much does it make sense strategically if you're an L.S. I'd campaign thinking about turnout, right? Okay, like, he's not gonna win over the establishment part of the party, like, how much can it be a turnout game? Like, because I remember, you know,

I live in a part of New York that's really South Asian. And on Election Day here, it was like, they did the same thing that trumped it, right, which is low-prepensity voters, right? Like, this is your first time voting an election ever or in a couple cycles, so it's strategically turning

out the deer-bound vote. How much does that make sense? Or how much is that a win-able stress? - Two percent of the Michigan population. I just don't think there's enough of the vote that can make the difference, like, in a mid-term.

- We're talking about, we're talking about margins here. We're talking about, like, you know, oh, our fundamentals forecast says they should win by three points. Like, you know, one or two points matters in that context.

I mean, I'm always someone in general

who thinks turnout is a bit overrated relative to persuasion. But that's less true in a midterm than in a presidential year. Turn out as lower in midterms, you can have these big enthusiasm gaps in the past. They can be as large as, like, five points

where if you pull register, I think, you know,

which did so well in presidential years,

did not modulate voters very much at all in the midterms. That didn't quite translate. I don't know if it was the young nature that coalition or what, but like, you know, Obama's people were saying it weren't good to begin with

in 2010 and 2014. But like, that enthusiasm gap really expanded that quite a bit. And by the way, with Trump's disapproval rating it at almost 60% in some of these polls and a negative 20, you're not gonna have Democrats win the House Popular Vote

by 20 points, right? What you might have is a lot of people who are sowing on Trump because he's a lame duck because of Iran because of tariffs, because of Epstein Gate because he's just been an office a long time.

They just won't turn out to vote. They'll be watching football on Sunday and not take the time to vote the next Tuesday. And so that's where the,

that's where the Lekeland enthusiasm could translate.

And by the way, people don't realize, they think, well, his approval rating might be 38%, 39%. But they're all really enthusiastic backers, like, actually not that either. And our tracking his variable number is down to around 21%.

So, and this is fatigue that you very often get in a second term. And because we're in a modern news cycle,

“it feels like Trump's in president forever basically, right?”

When I read the accounts of like something Obama did as president, right? Like it feels kind of totally foreign. You know, with a mess where in the world's series in 2014, I'm like Obama was president

and that feels like age is a go-in. - Ebola, doc. I mean, that's it. - Ebola, yeah.

- Yeah, I'm sort of where Israel and Gaza fit in.

Nate, you may be right that it has more saline. It's among maybe a smaller subset of like hyper-engaged people and sort of maybe political elites. But that can be a vicious or virtuous cycle depending on how you want to describe it

because that also led to tens of millions of dollars coming into the race to try to turn people against Abdul. And then that becomes a challenge for him to rebuild after a primary in which he was diluted with negative ads. And so, you know, clear to your point about, you know,

people moderate when they get to the general in a strange way in part because we're in this sort of post-2020, kind of revision in which people go back and sort of restate or undo things they said in 2017, 2018, 2019, and through maybe 2021,

“they kind of do their moderation during the primary, right?”

And so what is Abdul Duns since? He has not changed his political positions. He really just kind of apologized for a statement that was a divisive about an attack on a synagogue, right? In the efforts to try to repair relationships

with the Jewish community, but that had come after the primary and so he sort of, he's in a difficult position, right? Because he, like, it's not about moderating, right? There is a kind of specificity. And it's not about his issues, right?

It's not about his interests. Right, it's about a controversy and there are people for whom his remarks after the primary, maybe were either kind of either too little too late or they had already.

There was nothing he could say to undo the fact that they have this fear, some rooted in Islamophobia, some based on just disagreeing with him on his position on Israel. So do you think that's like a challenge?

And regardless, right? Like any time we're talking about Abdul specifically,

“even the his strengths, you're not talking about Mike Rogers, right?”

Because I think whatever your position is in the ideological fight, it is pretty clear that if this is an election about what Mike Rogers will do in the Senate and how he will side with Donald Trump, that is the strongest place Democrats could be,

which is why on Fox News, it's a songpiker and Abdul side by side day after day after day. - Like I have trouble picturing what Mike Rogers looks like. - Right? - Honestly, I think I don't like to talk about

like I don't think Mike Rogers knows what Mike Rogers looks like. It is he is, he is, but this is his strength, right? Because Mike Rogers, I am totally, yes. - I am generic Republican, old school, I'm not a Trumpy person that should give you some reassurance.

When in reality, the fact that he's going to that midterm convention tells you something about his balance between donors and Trump and what's happening in Michigan. - Look, one of my hot takes two is that American voters are actually pretty rational and the aggregate, if not individually.

- Why hot takes is that people are just good, - Clare. - In Italy, salt to the earth, salt to the earth, Michigan. That's what I say. I'm always saying that.

So you see a lot more cross-parts in ship in gubernatorial races, right? There's a Republican governor of Vermont, there's a Democratic governor in Kentucky, Kentucky, for example, Kansas, Kansas.

You don't see that as much, Kansas is not voted for a Democrat for Senate since 1932. I think there's something like that, because people correctly infer that maybe I think Mike

He's looking about with Trump 90% of the time,

which you could literally name on one hand, the number of members of Congress, who routinely vote against their party, Susan Collins, kind of, Jira Golden is retiring. - So, Markowsky has a system she benefits from in Alaska,

where you have a top-force system where you can actually end ranked choice voting. So people are kind of rational, say, I might be worried about, I'll say it's position on this or that,

but he's gonna vote for against Trump, and that's what I care about. When Trump has a 37% of people writing and Michigan or whatever. - Yeah, I mean, to be clear,

I mentioned that I think that he is a sort of below average candidate. That doesn't mean that he's gonna lose. As we mentioned, he has a good amount of cushion. I think John, I would be curious for your take on this as well,

because we all remember from the 2012 election, at least all of us millennials, and this remember from the 2012 election, when Romney's advisor was like, "Oh, you know, we're gonna shake him up like,

"and I just got to go for the general and moderate him, right?"

“And it's important to remember that people,”

first impressions matter to be your mom,

about it or whatever. And the first impression that people got of, I'll say, it was a fighter, and somebody who's fighting the Democratic Party, right? And so I think for a lot of people that gives them the sense that, "Oh, we already think of the Democratic Party as quite to the left.

"You ask Americans broadly is the Democratic Party, "too moderate, too conservative, too left wing. "American's broadly feel like the Democratic Party "is already too left wing. "He's positioning himself to the left of the Democratic Party

"in a battleground state." So a lot of people, and this is an identity thing, too. We know from social science that when voters look at women and in particular candidates of color, they view them automatically as more to the left.

They assume that their policy positions are more to the left. - He was like, he was in the lacrosse, bro, though. I mean, he comes across as very broy, and in the same way that like, you know, in this ad, he has raised on Senate Islander,

where he's like, has a football and things like that, right?

And like, it's kind of like coming across like-- - That's a grandparent. - That's fair. And look, John can tell us how effective it is to sort of moderate and reposition yourself and pitch a different, maybe side of yourself

in the general election. It clearly wasn't successful for Mitt Romney,

“but I think it is something that will be a little bit hard”

to do because of that prime. And it's not just because, you know, a packed dumped amount of money against him. It's also because voters think the Democratic Party is already too far left.

If you position yourself to the left of the Democratic Party, you're even further away from the mainstream. - Look, we're a representative democracy. I think flip-flopping is fine if you're saying, I'm trying to meet the voters halfway to where they're at, right?

I've never-- - Oh, yeah. - Flip-flopping should be normalized. But that isn't-- that's like a normative take. That's not how American politics necessarily works. Like, what's the point of--

- What's the point of my mind? - I've got a change in years long of arguments with internet leftists about, I think the data says that you're more to the center that helps on average, right? - I've just found the whole SIA discourse a bit weird

because he has gained ground in the polls, immediately after the primary. Rajas was ahead by one or two points in the polling average and now SIA is up by-- - It's a three or four.

- I mean, it's like, consolidation of the Democratic Party and there was a lot of nationalism.

“- Oh, but it's more, I think it's totally--”

- But it's a lot of it is just, it is literally private party politics, right? And the fact that, like, I mean, I said at the top, this is where the race where the drama is, as a member of the media, who formally covered campaigns

in that way, like obviously there's something going on here, right? Like, we gravitate towards, like, the New York Times politics assignment desk and the Wall Street Journal to a lesser extent, like, that really does drive a lot of the way that race is covered and the way--

- You know what I mean? - And the-- - Scruti on El Sia had increased when the main race became less interesting because Grand Platner dropped out. - Oh my gosh, it is actually been--

- It is actually been so funny to me. I've been thinking about that, that we're all like, all right, who's this guy in Maine and then, like, Susan Collins did have the really hilarious-- - Oh, I swear.

- I'm not going to say anything. - I'm not going to say anything. - I'm not going to say anything. - I'm not going to say anything. - I'm not going to say anything.

- I'm not going to say anything. - I'm not going to say anything. - I'm not going to say anything. - Because it doesn't. - Because it doesn't.

- Oh my gosh, so funny. Where was it going this? Oh, yeah, but now we're just like, okay, so now we're doing Michigan. - Well, like, it's like, it's like, it's like, what's up? - Back, back this truck, right the fuck up.

This is a fantastic exercise for us to learn something about the American voter, testing and sort of a left activist in a battleground state is a really interesting thing for Americans to find out about weather or not. I'll say I can, and look, it's going to be a blue wave

environment, so like, well, I don't think that most of our voters are going to like drill down on,

they're just going to be like, if he won, he won and like, the left is ascendant and they can win in battleground states.

“And if he doesn't win, then I think, you know,”

there's going to be some recriminations with the Democratic Party, whatever. But like, this is not just like, ooh, you know, that like, if we can't talk about like rape allegations, we have to talk about the fact that there's like,

you know, an Arab-American Muslim guy running in Michigan, like this is a genuinely interesting race. (upbeat music) - Positive America's brought you by Cook Unity. - I love Cook Unity.

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“- Yes, whatever happens, I think people are gonna”

try to find ways to confirm their priors, right? Because, let's say, look, I just really hope that I've dual wins, but let's say I've dual wins, and he underperforms compared to other results. People will say, oh, that is evidence

that the left isn't as strong, electrically, but I think rightly people will then say, what also, that he was dealing with $10 millions of dollars done on his head in a primary that kind of put him back, like people will find a way to sift through the data.

I think part of the reason they don't believe the polls is because instinctively, for reasons based on, I think some bias, but also just evidence that like, oh, they just assume that a left candidate is gonna do worse, they see the fighting over antisemitism,

they see like Fox News focusing on all of this, and I think these, the polls were wrong in the primary, right, they gave them to big of a lead, and so maybe they're wrong again, and it's either tighter or we're behind,

even if the model, the flipper model, has him at 60% to 70% Nate, is it gonna be Lucy and the football at the polls, because or do these polls correct for what they got wrong in the primary?

- I'd say a couple of things. One is that there is a long, long history, including a Michigan particularly of primary polls being way off. Bernie Sanders was down 20 points in the polls in the primaries, and was the 2016,

it was the biggest forecasting error in like the history of our polling database, basically. So if you can have a 20 point error, you had, by the way, a 20 point error in Wisconsin, in the hung race.

So polling is very, very difficult in general, but much more so in the primaries. In general, elections, you have anchors, you know roughly which people are good in turnout, and what the demographic makeup will be

in a state like Michigan where it's quite regional. You don't really have that in a primary, where there's sometimes very high turnout, sometimes very low, young voters can now be overrepresented in polls, because they're online,

that used to be the opposite problem. They wouldn't have to be the phone, right? There might be issues with that potentially,

where, hey, youthful enthusiasm is always a hell of a thing

to have, but there's a bias, sometimes in which voters polls survey, but the thing is like,

“I think all the indicators are kind of surprisingly”

rational in the selection. If you look at the history of midterms, if you look at special election results, you can talk about Republicans big corporate money raise, but Democrats are raising a lot more

than individual contributions on a race by race basis. You know, you can look at the aggregate amount of turnout in their primaries for Democrats and Republicans. You can look at states, but they've had nonpartisan primaries like Alaska

and Washington State, for example. I don't know, you could look at generic ballot,

So both the polling and the non-polling indicators

align pretty well, and the models do say, the models do say that LCA is likely to underperform. And so he'll probably win by two or three points, but there's a big margin of error on that. And part because polling isn't inherently uncertain,

“and he's a, you know, he has weaknesses and settings, right?”

He's not just a Francesca Hawn who seems totally disinterested in reforming her past views and doesn't come across as a very frankly charismatic politician. I just want to put a couple of numbers as less that sound like I'm fully talking out of my ass.

Like when I'm talking about a, like above average candidate, below average candidate, I'm referring to work that friend of the pod, Laksha Jane has done over at split, take it, looking at do candidates over underperform a generic Democrat and any given race.

And so you can look like who's the most underperforming Democrat in America? It's Elhan Omar. She underperforms the generic Democrat by about 13 percentage points, then I think it's Primalajai Paul and then Somer Lee,

or something like that, and then after that, it's Elizabeth Warren.

“And, you know, Elizabeth Warren, I think underperforms a generic Democrat”

by about 13 percentage points. - All women and women of color, I will point up. - Well, except for Elizabeth, well, I guess there's the debate about Elizabeth Warren. - It's horrible, it's horrible, it's horrible, it's horrible, it's horrible, it's horrible, it's horrible.

- I said women comma, women comma and women of color. - Just looking back to what November of 2020, but, so, to be clear, like there's evidence backing this up, but like most, like for example, if you look at AOC, she is a talented politician, she performs out about a generic Democrat level.

You can be to the left and you can make up for it with your political talents. But there is just some evidence of candidates like this underperforming. And so, I think that is where some of the, maybe anxiety within the Democratic Party comes from, and I just want to add one thing, which is to put a number to what you said, and the average error in a governor or Senate primary, so a statewide primary,

is 13 percentage points. - 20 points is more than that, so yes, it's still a larger than average error,

“but you should not go into these affairs, thinking that the polls are going to get you”

within two or three points of the answer because they never have.

- Yeah, the margin mirror is like literally, if you calculate it empirically, meaning based on how accurate polls actually are, I'm not the sample size. It's like literally a 25 point margin of error. When you hear a primary poll, especially for a down ballot race, a 25 point margin of error, you have to apply that in your head to get

some are close to reality. - Then why are 25 point margin of error in races that are often decided by a couple of points? So why not, let's just take that money, and I don't know, like let's do something fun with it, you know what I mean? I want to ask you one question, because you wrote,

you know, we've been talking about sort of which candidates overperform, which candidates underperform. Now, there is this problem, right? Because even if candidates that are further to the left may do worse in a general election, the democratic base is really dissatisfied

with what's centrist and centri-left Democrats have been offering. There's a lot of anger and mistrust, because if the bargain is, you get less than you want, but we win, and then we don't win, it doesn't really work. And so I think there's like two big problems in there.

And you wrote a piece about what your questions were for the centri-left, as you defined it, one is what does it take to persuade people inside of a primary, right? But more broadly, what is it that the centri-left is offering that is not just, like Jerusalem Dempso talks about this at the argument, right?

Like, what is the centri-left that is not just incremental or cowardly leftist, right? Or like people that want part of the left agenda, like is there a way in which you could have a liberal politician who, in the way that Obama did, in the way that I think Bill Clinton did at the time,

that can have a vision that is as big and clear and a worldview as defined as that of a Bernie Sanders, but that isn't from the left. Well, look, liberalism is not the same thing as leftism. And in fact, it's liberals in that kind of was a dominant political philosophy of the late 20th century, pretty much in liberalism, if you look at how it's defined in Europe,

means, you know, you want more liberty you see you want free speech, you want free markets, you also are concerned, though, typically about institutions, like rule of law. And liberalism is trying to sell the problem of like,

okay, we want to give people freedom basically,

but we don't want to have total anarchy here. We're not libertarians exactly. And so, and so, how do we meet with that? Liberal societies often tend to be very rich, as well. So you have the luxury, maybe, of letting people kind of have their cake and eat it too,

But yeah, I wish American media discourse separate out those two things, right?

To say, I care a lot about like individual freedom. I care a lot about institutions like I, you know,

“and I think as an empirical matter that market-based solutions work better than central planning.”

Like, those are things that are fairly coherent and consistent across different strands. So that, but like, look, the average democratic voter, or the average media members, not going to care about abstract political philosophy, so much. I think the establishment, I think the center left, right, the centrist, or the center, center left liberals, have kind of let themselves be defined

with a democratic establishment when they shouldn't be. You know, the notion that like, Kamala Harris was a centrist, I think is, is ridiculous. You know, she is a, the democratic party, the main line of the party is a progressive party. Maybe not leftists, I mean, it's an acoustic, aggressive. You kind of need, I mean, I think what you sort of need is, I mean, Obama was sort of

classic where you need like a service policy, right? Like, so he had, we're going to reform the healthcare system, Elizabeth Warren, that I felt that that, that presidential primary was notable because Harrison, Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand were all running and they were all talking about child care, as an important economic issue, that felt like a real sea change.

That's like a sort of service policy that you can have. You need almost like a, the rhetoric and aesthetics of a big tent liberal party, right,

“which is positivity, no sort of litmus test, I mean, I think Bernie Sanders, in 2017,”

went on this interesting tour where he was endorsing pro-life democratic candidates. I can't remember what city it was, maybe in Nebraska, something like that. Yeah, in Bernie on, on guns, like for example, right?

So it's basically like, we need a positive rhetoric, a big tent, and like two big splashy

bread and butter policies that help people, and then kind of these tertiary things of like, well, here's the social issue that you might care about if you're on the far left, and that's something you're voting on. Yeah, it's interesting to, my take on your questions on you mentioned that well, Democrats get less of what they want, but they win.

To me, I think the exchange is a little bit different, which is, we were in a place in 2024 where actually, like, Democrats didn't really want or like, Democrats and left leaders didn't really want like the immigration policies, for example, that Joe Biden was offering, and so what you really want to do is give them close to 100% of what they really, really, really want, say that's like healthcare, say it's a public

option, something like that, and then you want to sort of break with your party on issues where either Democrats don't really care, or Republicans are on the right side of public opinion. So you say, for example, and this is where the vision comes in, I'm so left on healthcare. You know, I want X, Y, and Z, whatever, like I'm Bernie Sanders, but better on healthcare. And guess what, Joe Biden, you do the James Tallarika on immigration, guess what, Joe Biden,

completely fucked up on immigration, we need a secure border, and we don't think that people should, we, you know, the position of the Democratic Party from here on out will be that, you know, one illegal border crossing is one illegal border crossing too many, and we take this issue seriously. And so the idea of like the set, like what what Kamala Harris tried to do was like

“be in the middle on everything. That's what like Susan Collins tries to do is be in the middle on”

everything. And that is, I mean, that can be popular in some contexts, at this point, like, I feel like those years are a little bit behind us. Right now, if you're going to feel authentic, if you're going to feel like you have a vision, right? You want to go left on one thing, on authentically left on one thing, but go right on another. I mean, we're going to go back to Barack Obama. He was like to the left of Hillary Clinton on the Iraq war, but then to the

right of her on basically everything else, Bill Clinton, again, he was like to the left on healthcare,

but then he was to the right on crime. And so these visionary Democrats that you've mentioned are not saying, hey, left, I'm going to give you everything you've ever wanted. They're saying, I'm going to give you the thing that you can't live without, but then I'm going to appeal to the rest of the country on the things where Democrats have shipped the bed. Yeah, the thing I would add, though, it's like, right, like that is a kind of whatever mercenary way to look at the different sets of

issues, right? But a great politician, both on the matter of being persuasive, but also I think great in the sense of being driven by a genuine sort of set of ideological precepts, right? Like, there is a, there is a, you can make an ideologically go here in argument for being

care from the job market, because of your understanding of the way markets work and believing in having a immigration, that is sort of generous, but also very well kind of controlled legally, right, like a generous legal regime, right? Like, there is an ideological worldview that would be the kind of classic liberal worldview that could be made, that could piece these things together with the story that is kind of exciting to hyper-engaged people in part, because it can be both optimistic

with, it can, it can be sort of a big and grand without assuming that the biggest and grandest answer will be coming from the far left. It just hasn't been a center left or a kind of liberal figure since Obama who seems able to do that. Yeah, if you look at the polling going back to like the Iowa Democratic caucus in 2008, Obama won both among the most liberal voters and the most moderate voters. Their moderates for community was a postpartisan pragmatist and because

of Iraq and things, the liberals were convinced that he was a true, I should say, more left progressive, right, a real progressive. Um, Kamala Harris is a polar opposite of that. Progressive things, she's a centrist, centrist thing, she's super woke and far left, and to some extent, that just gets to like, to raw political talent. I don't want to keep going back to Michigan. You know,

“I think, I'll say it has a fair amount of like, raw political. And yet, I do. Yeah. Well,”

it's rhetorical when you say, I don't want to keep bringing up this, you like, Susan Kohler,

you're talking about, you're talking about Troy Jackson's second cousin. Who cares, you

slip with your second cousin? No, he's just a friend to my feet. A rob stand might be among the more talented. I can't stand. I think that's a great example because this is what he's doing. He's running against both parties and in an environment where the Democratic Party is not popular, and the Republican Party is not popular. You want to put yourself above the partisan phrase, and Rob's hand does that literally every campaign. He does, Rob's hand does something that I see.

He, first of all, like, those, that great interview with Jonathan Martin was just like, nope, nope, nope, great. But I, I saw him talking about education in, in an, in a sort of, in a, with, in a town hall, or just a small sort of whatever political meetup of some kind. And he basically was so straightforward. He said, look, I'll be dealing with a Republican legislature. These are

“things I think can get done that I think would be helpful. Right? There's a kind of like treating”

people as if they're a smart and being pretty, being pretty direct. That I think because it's a state race and not a national race, I think there's like some space for that, right? And part because you don't have to be as worried about kind of the traditional partisan dynamic and anything you say and kind of going to be dumped on your head from either the right or the left. I was there. Like I talked to him a couple weeks ago and went to a bunch of the town hall. Like I kind of did the,

the like the journalist day with Rob Sandek when I was out there for other stuff from my book. And it's interesting. There's a couple of things that I think, one, it's like he's been in the state for a long time doing these kind of, well, now, I guess wonky. Like being a state auditor is a little wonky, right? And he wrote like the book about the big lottery scandal in Iowa. He kind of does the Iowa thing where it's like, I'm going to show up. I go to all the town

halls and he is a little bit, he's kind of like when he's on the stump, he's kind of doing the like aweshocks, but then there's like a little acid thrown on to it. Like he'll still like twist the knife a little bit, which is interesting. He's also a former runway model. So people like looking at it,

right? Like there's also a, it's also like the thing. This is the first thing Claire showed me when

she got back from. Oh yeah, because he's old. He's old modeling from Milan. I don't even the Milan photos are really being our huge help in, uh, in Cedar Rapids, but no, but no, mine is my own Iowa. Well, what is true is that he did go to, he went to the East Coast for college,

“but then in a way that I think like, you know, people with political ambitions do like,”

and also he grew up in Iowa and wanted to go back there. But like he went to Iowa for law school, right? He like stayed in the state. But when you actually hear him talk about issues, he often does skirt. Like I went to a town hall where a candidate, a voter kind of like kind of laid out this like question for him to take a big smack at like big ag, and he didn't, right? Big agriculture business in Iowa. And he didn't, right? Which I was like, oh, that's an interesting thing that

just happened here because he is dealing with a, you know, a state with vested business interests and also, again, a Republican legislature. But he was like, I texted a couple of people and I was like, this is like a very notable political talent. In the same way that like my former classmate John O'Sough is really good on camera and a very sort of poised presence. And those are, there are people who are, I don't know what John is like on the stump, right? John, we're going by

first. We're going by John. No, but like, I don't know if he's good on the stump, but he's very good,

which is incredibly important in this age and like, you know, like, you haven't had it in quite some time.

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“I got to get back in a therapy. Oh, wow. Yeah. What are I doing? Do I want to leave it?”

I was talking about that before. I'd love to leave it. I was talking about the intrusive thoughts. I have just from the walk from backstage onto the stage and it horrified the crowd. Yo, that's a perfect reason to go to therapy. I don't know. That's the better place for that. John, do you ever? I'm good. Better help. If I'm on the street. All right. And like I will see like let's say there'll be a commotion or people are doing about a traffic spot or something. You know,

just see something. I not only imagine them fighting and then a crime and then a death and then a trial. I am standing on the street. I am I am testifying at that trial. Wow.

Like that's it fully the full story unfolds in a second of two people just being mad in a parking lot.

Oh my god. Yeah, that's an mental. That's that's something I should get talked to somebody about. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking about the news. Yeah. For you, it's the news. It's a better help dot com slash PSA that's better at glp dot com slash psa. Now, we do I could keep talking to three of you, but I do want to just close with some very quick. And as I promise, quite pedantic questions about modeling. I'm going to bring them out of the up on my laptop. These are these.

These are all right. All right. I'm going to go. You can and take these. I'm going to try to get through a few of these. All right. In your Deluxe model, they there are let's say three kinds of data. Poling fundamentals and ratings by expert presumably the fundamentals and come and see say economic conditions fundraising, whatever you're incorporating are in some way reflected in the polling. And then the ratings by experts are also reflective of the polling. So I just want to understand

qualitatively. What does it mean to include data that is dependent on the other data? For example, does the fundraising data slowly receive? Because the fundraising advantage would predict a change in polling as the election gets closer or does the fundraising data continue to matter as you get closer to the election day, even though presumably that would have to be accounted for in the polls if it does. So we've lost. There's a far more clarity. I'm so sorry. I have a

drink shot. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Is this okay? I really have I these are things that have annoyed me for a long time. Okay. Can I just okay? I do that. I'm sorry. Answer number one. Poling gets more important as you get closer to the election. It's more accurate. You get more of it. So it becomes more of a polls mostly model by election day. Number two, the reason we look at fundraising is because it's a measure of grassroots support. And one of the few things you have that isn't

a poll that is actively data collected within that election that shows people movement or people power. So we only look at money raised from individual contributions, not PAC money. We actually put a big multiplier on within state contributions because those are much more likely to reflect how voters

“in that state feel. So I think and how do you decide what that multiplier is? Like how empirically?”

Yeah, empirically. What could that possibly mean? What the fuck does it mean to empirically weigh the value of a grassroots donation? Come on. John, you know what I mean? What are you talking about?

He does, yeah. Listen, I've always been working on our false pretenses. This is what the role

I said. I want you to know, Nate. I almost went to the University of Chicago Law School and I spent two days at that place and after that experience, which felt like six years, I did not enroll. Go away, so, so, but seriously, how do you periodically draw a scatter plot? We lots of data for Congress. That's one nice thing. We have data on every conversion number is going back to 1990s, so thousands of races draw a scatter plot of fundraising versus the outcome using all fundraising

data. Then draw one using only in-state fundraising data and the in-state is a tighter fit

that's not my question, but that's not my question. I agree that in-state fundraising is more valuable than out-of-state fundraising. I am asking, how can you possibly decide what the multiple is of the in-state fundraising? Because whatever you're doing, you are waiting the value of the fundraising in total, so the weight that you're applying to the in-state fundraising in some way determines the entire, the impact it has on the overall model and I'm saying, how do you do side,

empirically, how to weight that information? Through the magic of multivariate regression analysis. Yeah, because we have a lot of data, you can take a bunch of factors that, you know, in Michigan, I'll say it's raised a lot of money by the way. It's another factor. On either hand, it'll say it is very progressive. If you have thousands of races, we can compare those two things you can disaggregate and say which factor is more important over the long run.

Just like with this kind of the same thing, it's like the money-ball type analysis where you can say we have hundreds of baseball players. We can say what contributes to winning is a batting average, or OBP, or home runs, or pitching, or whatever else. It's the magic of a big deal. You look skeptical. No, I'm not skeptical. Some of this is skepticism. Some of this is genuine curiosity. I'm not really sure what the balance is. We'll have to run a bunch of simulations

to figure out what the answer is there. But I guess because part of it, right, is then so you

use that scatter plot to determine the influence of the fundraising, right? But a lot of that data is then also going to be in the model in other ways as well, right? Like you're going to take that outcome data that has determined the value of the fundraising, it's going to go in the model

“in another place. And I guess when you're running 40,000 simulations, how smart are those simulations?”

Do those simulations inside of each simulation? Is there an understanding that the quote unquote random, I'm not using that word? I'm saying the randomized sample that has taken place inside of those 40,000. Are there, is that a smart randomization that understands the ways in which various data? It's a super fucking smart randomization giant. I'll tell you that much. No, there are a lot of models in 2016, like famously like the Princeton election consortium model had Trump with only

a 1% chance of winning the New York Times model had I'm at 10% or something, our model at 538 had a 30% instead of 29%. And the reason why is because our simulation architecture was better. Because errors in the polls are correlated. Okay. So the correlation of the errors is accounted for in the random sampling that takes place when you're running the 40,000 samples. And we can do fancy stuff, right? We can say one simulation will test what happens if Democrats really overperform

among the Hispanic vote, right? That has a big impact in Texas and Florida may be not so much in Michigan for example. Or what happens if Republicans have low turnout? But Democrats win the persuasion battle and things like that. So yeah, we're actually we have micro data on every congressional district and how they're related. And then how do you make sure that in your random sampling, in which inside of those random samplings, there is an understanding of the race,

relationship between the data that you are then randomly sampling what the correlation could be when you're running those random samples. Do you know what I'm saying? Because I'm really good at this and I've done those kind of things. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm definitely, it's hard. But this is what I'm trying to understand. Like I, like I'm sorry, I've like

“putting on a, I very rarely get to sort of like, you know, map the, what does it agree? You have to have”

a lot of knowledge of the system you're trying, so one very important thing about politics,

most important thing in some ways. And since the 1990s, we've had more and more polarization.

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, this is my fault. No. It's what's happening here, basically like, you know, when you go to your doctor and like, they're really smart. But at the end of the day, the doctor being a doctor is an art, as much as a science. Is that what you're trying to say here, that it's as much of an art as it is a science or am I? First off, when you make predictions over here, you get a lot of feedback, right? You can say where my model thuck up and where,

and you're being accountable, we're putting this out there. Do you ever take the model and go back and run it on a previous election in real time to see how it would have done? I mean, inherently, you're using past data to guide the parametricization of the model. But you have to be careful because like, we have these things that are called overfitting institutions where you can be overly literal. Oh, a candidate whose name starts with C and ends with N and as a woman, right? They

always lose the general election, right? So you don't want to nominate anybody with a last name

“C if they're a woman kind of thing, right? You have to like, look, this is why you actually have”

to know something about politics. You know, we can't use the same model that we would have when we first had a congressional forecast in 2010 because the climate is much more partisan. Things like

that in the data, but also you can observe it by being a smart person who understands American

politics. Right, but that's where I sort of, this is where I struggle. I like have like a philosophical, I struggle, I'm not saying in a majority of way, I genuinely struggle to understand what qualitatively a model is given that every election is unique and only run once and that the pulling on what you base it is both kind of, you're trying in the data to account for both the unknowable unknowables of what will happen and the unknowable nobles of what people think at this exact

moment and it's hard to, and I don't know if the model, when I think people, when I think people miss is that unpredictability is predictable, that people should know, wow, man, people, people should know that in a gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin, where literally three candidates dropped out

within the final month of the race, you don't have any fucking clue where the race is at based on

a bunch of shitty internet polling by college kids, right? That's predictable. We don't forecast congressional primaries because the model would have these margins of errors of 25 or 30 points. It's predictable that in midterms, the error used to be a little bit higher than presidential elections, although it's actually reversed, reversed lately to some degree. If you don't

“have a lot of polling in a race, if you have contradictory data, you should be less confident”

about those forecasts. But look, a model is, in a literal sense, it's a computer program, it's a computer program designed by me, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a structured way of thinking, right? It's saying, okay, here's all the shit I know about American politics, and here's all the data I have, and we have lots of data in politics. If I'm looking at the model, am I really looking at you? Is that my, is the model about merely a mirror, Claire, and Gayle,

and I'm so sorry. No, it's fine, Gayle, he's not telling you some things, I'm sure, because it's IP protected. Oh, that's what I'll say, because I would less, I really, we have these 10,000 word methodology sections. I want to get, so Claire and Gayle, and now I had pitched a name for this show, and the name was Alpha Dogs, and nobody but me like this name, and I just want to understand what? It's two male, it's two male. But it's two male. Yeah, it's two male. It reads male,

even though I do believe I'm an Alpha, it is, it is two male. I didn't even realize that this was one of your pitches, the main pitch that I don't even know that it had your name by it, but that I assumed

“was from you was showpole. No, in fact, it wasn't, but thank you so much. Thank you, I think showpole”

was a, would have been a great name for that. I put my initials by that, by that, I was like, I can live with that, but perhaps Claire, two male. Two male. Thank you to all three of you for taking the time to talk today. We're so excited about still counting. Everybody, please go subscribe. Nate, thank you for indulging me on this. I am, I am, I am, I have, I'm really am interested in like the, sometimes I actually think my problem is just really that I worry that, and this is what

I've worried about, certainly in 2016, was that people, they're not as responsible with what the model means, is what you're responsible, but they don't take what you're saying about it. They just take the number, but I am just sort of interested in the sort of what it means to be modeling an election and the difference between like sort of prediction and sort of the, whether a model is

“predicting the future or trying to predict the present, you know, but for another day, I think,”

for another day. And so everybody, subscribe to Still Counting right now, right now, right now, Gail and Claire, Nate, come join us, the, the, the, the, the, the, the water, the water, the water's warm. We, we have, we have lots more data and hot takes than folks are today. That's for sure. We need me to get to calcium. I want to talk about calcium. I'm afraid to start making bets because I think it's going to be a problem for me because I, you know, I got to get

George Santos. I've got the devil. I've got the devil. I've got the devil in me. Should we start a crooked in house, uh, with fantasy. How are we, we're that like on the money on calcium on poly, because obviously, we don't, but I'm politics on it for like a sense of propriety or whatever because of NCAA rules, because of NCAA rules, but we could start a fantasy league where we do bet on politics. Oh, rejected. Thank you all so much. And, uh, let's hear some. Thank you. Thank you,

Gail and Nate and Claire for joining. You can subscribe to Still Counting. The new app first

new episode is going to be up on September 9th and we, a positive miracle, we back in your feeds after the holiday and, uh, see them. Positive America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Ferris Safari with Reach Erlin, Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefco, Jordan Cantor,

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