1: Trump vs. The Blue Wave: A Midterm Extravaganza

I'm also a little bit older and I'm the founder of Yaui, a singer who is able...

My role is "Shoppy-Fi" because "Shoppy-Fi" is the other platform I tested with at the start of the first time.

I've been waiting for all the seconds. All tools that are important for the development of the universe are, for example, from "Laga" to "Direct" in the dashboard. Now, your cost is only on "Shoppy-Fi.com" On and on there is it in 2013. We're going to start with the development. The biggest advantage of "Shoppy-Fi" for me is, that we don't need a technical advantage for the future.

We can all over the back end and the front end, and as soon as we start with "Shoppy-Fi" we're going to start with "Shoppy-Fi". If you're going to "Shoppy-Fi" then you're going to start with the platform that's actually "Shoppy-Fi". It's simply the main task. Our whole business is going to start with "Shoppy-Fi". Now, the cost of "Shoppy-Fi.com" is now on "Shoppy-Fi.com".

“I think I'm just like a little bit nervous. That's why I'm...”

No, I know. I know. I know. It feels weird. It feels weird. Welcome to "Still Counting". I'm "Dear One Drake". I'm "Clamolone". And I'm "Mate Silver". And we're talking too fast because it's the first episode and we're a little nervous. I also read my name. I was like, "I'm "Clamolone".

And this is our first official episode.

Yes, we did a "Freed Warmer". Yes, we talked to "Pods of America". But this is it, folks. From now on, on Wednesday evening, you're going to get a "Still Counting" podcast episode in your feed. And so, for... First, I'll say this is what we're going to do on today's podcast. We're going to do a Mid-Terms Extravaganza. We're even going to kind of play a game. We're also going to talk about sort of the past year plus in Republican voter sentiment.

It's been a pretty top-seater of a year for the Trump Coalition. We've talked about the convention and all that jazz, the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death. Before we get into everything that we have to cover today, though, we should say, "Welcome back, everybody". To our past listeners, spread the word. Welcome to the new people. Hopefully, if you have no idea who we are really.

Welcome to "Still Counting". Well, actually, Claire, who are we? Who are we? I'm "Clamolone". [laughter] We all worked together at a data site called 538. And I was hired by Neat to be like the normal magazine reporter.

I was hired by Neat to be normal. I was hired by Neat to be normal. It'd be like a magazine reporter person. And then I'm sort of a traditional reporter. I am a writer at the New Yorker. I covered media and politics there. And I am currently on "Book Leave" for the year.

Actually, going back in like six months. And I'm writing a book about the Ma'am movement. That's who I am. Nate, who are you here? I'm Claire Malone.

[laughter]

“Yeah, so my trajectory into journalism, if that's what you want to call it,”

is highly non-traditional. Before I ever got into journalism, I was an online poker player. I was building baseball models.

Basically, 2008 comes along.

I'm living in Chicago. This campus hipster, as I thought, in a name Barack Obama, decided to run for president. It was a very exciting time in politics. And also a time when there had been in baseball and sports,

a lot of talk about analytics. This was a kind of money ball revolution, so to speak. I was going to be burned out with the baseball stuff. The poker was not going super well to be honest. So started trying to build a forecasting model.

First for the Democratic primary in 2008. And then general election. And it just kind of improbably took off. But yeah, I try to look at the world. Sometimes do reporting, but I'm looking at the rules.

He's reading books. I'm reading for the books I do actually. He's really reporting. Which, for the most recent book, involved Hangout and Las Vegas playing poker for a year.

I spent a lot of time in Vegas. It was a nice excuse. I should still look on Bali, Miami. But I don't do a lot of insider gossip with, "Oh, what's the scoop about the internal polls in New Hampshire?"

“Like, I think that is actually a waste of time.”

You're being spun a lot of time. I think the goal of the model. We talked about the son of the pod save trailer. It's to force yourself to be more rigorous in analyzing the news. And now, and now he started five to eight,

which is at the New York Times. Then moved to ESPN. Then they closed it. Yaddi, yaddi, yaddi, yaddi. Now he has a wonderfully silver bulletin.

That's us at silver.net. But like, we look, we got flippers, our mentors model. We got more and more. Okay, I will do a briefer, who am I.

I was hired by Nate at 538. That's not in the last weirdness initiative. I'll tell you that much. I was hired to be a podcast Twink at 538. We were hired at about the same time.

Yes, we were. You came from Wisconsin. I came from straight from Wisconsin Public Radio, which at the time I could not have imagined

How good of an education Wisconsin would have given me

for what was to come in American politics.

Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me?

Why did you bring this to me?

Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me?

Why did you bring this to me?

Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me? Why did you bring this to me?

Why did you bring this to me? But there's lots of layers in Flipper. There are expert forecasts.

“You know, isn't new Hampshire now a state that's in play.”

How realistically do you take telekos? You know, the model says telekos is a slight favorite in Texas.

Do we do we do it by that or not?

They're going to get into all of these.

“And we're even going to get into Trump's popularity and his coalition and why not?”

But first we're going to play a little game.

I mean, not first. We're going to play a little game in order to talk about all of these states. But it's education. But it's education. We're not.

But a little game, which is we're going to draw the most competitive Senate races out of a hat. And that's most competitive according to the polling averages. And that means that we don't know the order that we have. Yeah, we're going to be the state of the race in gamified. Yes, exactly.

And I will say I have a GD politics hat here, which is only because. So you don't understand the show because I'm ashamed of the show and also because we don't have still counting birth yet, but I hear it's coming. I hope it's coming. I think it's coming. You know, we got to meet.

You got to start advertising. I mean, we all love the next. We live in New York City.

But you got to stop advertising the next for free.

We're getting silver bulletin heads. By the way, I'm happy to advertise the next. You know, it was like this. Dolan doesn't kick me out of. Okay.

It's clear. You are first. Okay. So pick a race out of the night. We're by the way last night in preparation for talking about all of the Senate races.

“I think I watched ads for every single Senate candidate or most of them.”

Just to kind of get a flavor. I was like, I want to see. And did it make you feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about American politics? Well, I have to say it was quite pessimistic. Like that was after watching like, you know, kind of close to like 40 minutes of just like, you know,

Don't, don't, don't, don't. Like it's, um, Well, none of these people have ever been to Washington to see.

It was, it was basically all about like how much beef costs and isn't it terrible and insurance companies.

And, and that was both parties. It was like, yeah, it was quite striking how publically it was. Anyhow. Okay. I picked North Carolina, which is a bad pick.

It's definitely a bad pick. It's bad pick because we're pretty sure that the Democrat Roy Cooper is going to win in his race against Republican Michael Watley, uh, Roy Cooper. And that, and that win probability according to Flipper. Trade Mark Nates over.

It's pronounced the dolphin. It's like, like, Flipper. Hey. We've already had a problem with Furies and the 538 politics podcast brand. We really don't need to give them any father.

How do you name it, Flipper? Are there good because, like, ours for regression or, like, we don't really want to know. Okay. So, but Flipper gives, uh, the Democratic win probability at 86.9 per centage points. Let's put it like that.

It's, it's, it's not a sure thing that Cooper wins a North Carolina. But it would be embarrassing. But if he doesn't, Democrats are fucked anyway. That means the polls are probably probably way off again. They need four seats.

By the way, Gale and you're saying, well, 50, 50 is such a cop out. It's kind of a coincidence because, like, we think it's going to be, and everyone thinks it's going to be a very democratic year. But they have to win four seats. Two of which are in quite red states.

North Carolina is not a quite red state. It's a slightly red state. Like we have in your, your hammering is actually a bit of a falcon. Because this is Saul. This is Saul.

This is Saul. We're introducing producers Saul who has innate, uh, reading pretty good handwriting. And I would agree with that. Uh, that's the only job that might survive the AI apocalypse. It's like good handwriting.

It's rare. What you were going to say is that Trump won North Carolina by three points in 2024, which is a slight red state.

“And Harris only healing one of the whole thing by one and a half point, right?”

So North Carolina actually moved toward the tipping point. It was one of the few positives out of Kamala Harris's night in November, 2024. Was that North Carolina actually became more purple. And Cooper's a strong candidate. He's the former governor.

If he weren't to win, then it means the polls right out. We're off. Where we off again. Right. Yeah.

I mean, in terms of overall trends to look at. I think an interesting one here is that we've all been talking about the anti establishment sentiment amongst the electorate. This go around Roy Cooper is like a two term governor. He has a good candidate like well known in the state.

But he is. I mean, he's not really the establishment because he's running against the democratic party in part. And he's like, you know, I don't belong to anybody I'm my own man. He's very much been a future of state politics and not national politics. And so I think the benefit of being a governor suggests that he is a good candidate to run in North Carolina.

But he's not running, you know, the Republican Michael Wattley is not really a populist outside or who can say. The establishment has sort of taken the country in the wrong direction. Whatever he's like the former chair of the Republican party in North Carolina. So I think whereas maybe being so entrenched in politics could have been a vulnerability. The contours of this race are not going to let us see that great.

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Second day there. Of course. This is pretty Michigan. No, no, no, no. You're magic, thank you.

I'll say I'd leads by roughly two points in the silver rules. I'm pulling average. It's not, including by the way, a new Glengarif poll. I don't think that came out last night after publication. But mine that might cut it down to one or one and a half.

Look, we've talked a lot about Michigan. If you haven't listened to any of the previous episodes. We're a pod save. We're not talking about the Michigan race.

The basically of the land is something like this.

Michigan is about as purple as it gets. It almost exactly follows the national trend. The national trend this year is around D plus seven, meaning in the average state. If you count up all the votes for all four and third and fifth house races,

you'd expect Democrats to win by about seven. Michigan therefore is also about a plus seven.

“The question is, can L side be a quote unquote bad enough cad eight?”

I'll explain what I mean by that, right? Or my Roger is a quote unquote good enough cad eight to overcome that seven point spread. Now, the different ways to define bad cad eight when a certain type of election nerd, like me means that it just means they're likely to underperform the baseline. It doesn't mean they're a bad person.

It doesn't mean that I don't think they're a bad guy. Yeah, and there's a lot of research that I think people are in some degree of denial about that says in general more moderate cad eights. How you define moderation is complicated tend to overperform. And moderation we should say just complicated to define it can often be affected by gender race,

things like that. It's interesting by the way that Elsaid is kind of like playing in to this kind of almost like

Fuckboy image, right?

Like that says that he lifts.

So he's raised a lot of money. He inspires a lot of young voters. He also turns off a lot of voters.

“And so, so, but, you know, here's the thing, even if you believe and we do that moderation”

hard to define probably helps. We also understand that polarization is driving everything and actually voters are pretty smart, right? Booters might say, I understand that my Roger's might come across as moderate, but empirically he's going to but with Trump the launch majority of the time and Elsaid will probably but with Democrats the launch majority of the time and we're kind of moving into a

parliamentary system where the candidates matter less. So in a model you might say, okay, there's like a three or four point penalty here. Seven point question is enough to cover it. In the polls, there's for now a little bit more of a penalty. It's closer to a toss up maybe Elsaid by one point.

And by the way, in my in my tour of candidate ads last night.

I mean, I actually think the way that Elsaid is kind of trying to present himself to general election voters is not moderating on the issues, right, which is, which is, I think, kind of, you know, key for his campaign, right, he's running a real like true believers Medicare for all plan in some ways. He's not actually a democratic socialist, but I think he's sort of running the Elizabeth Warren playbook where it's like, I'm a progress.

No, hold on, wait, let me finish my thought, which is like, I'm a progressive, but like, don't worry, I'm not here to tear down capitalism. Like, that was her thing. And I, but I think where he is, where you see him trying to quote unquote moderate is on that perception of him as an extremist, right?

So like, he has a lot of stuff about like he has the ad with his grandparents. He has the ad about like, I grew up playing football in Michigan. Like, I feel obligated as a Ohio and just a muck fish again. But like that stuff, um, that stuff. Was that one planned? Was that one planned?

It just came to me, it just came to me. But that's, but that's where he's trying to moderate on, is the perception, right? Like, of him as a, as the, like, scary, which is, which is, which is, which by the way, my Rogers is playing into by, like, saying his, saying, like,

updoor of man. You know, so there's, there's interesting dynamics, but what we mean is a moderate candidate. Yeah, I'll say somebody who got some blowback from in the comments after we were on the comments. Because I had described Elsa had as a below average candidate.

We're liable to perform below where a quote unquote generic democrat is. I was really talking about the numbers and the perception of Elsa had as an extreme candidate. And I think, like, people interpreted that all to be about Israel, because that's kind of where a lot of the comments are sort of,

I guess, in the left space online. But I really don't actually think as much as that has been a sort of knockdown drag out fight for the Democratic Party.

“What is going to decide this, right? So I think the most important thing that,”

like, my takeaway for the Michigan race is that it is a very high profile test for progressives for the activist life. You said he hasn't moderated that much. I will say on issues like, and I think issues like, defund the police abolish ICE Medicare for all, those kinds of things will actually

motivate voters more than the Israel question. Because those are the, for example, health care, safety, cost of goods, corruption. Those are the kinds of things that are motivating voters in the selection. I mean, I looked through all of the polling and really,

like the Israel Palestine question as much as it may motivate activists for the broad sort of base of American voters. It is not ranking up there. It's really, again, inflation sort of incompetence in government and corruption, then the economy more broadly.

Data centers, flock cameras, like these are local issues that are actually on.

“Like the one, when you ask people, like, what's very important to you?”

50% of voters say the Warren around 22% of voters say the Israel guys issues. So I think I just want to say here that, like, when people, when this battle plays out sort of in the general election in Michigan for Senate, I think that the test is going to be, so he has pivoted away from

defund the police. He has not pivoted away from abolish ICE. He's pivoted a little on healthcare was he wrote a book with the sort of prologue written by Bernie Sanders about Medicare for all. He said, you know, I don't want to, now he said, I don't want to

abolish private insurance, those things can coexist, et cetera. And so I think that this is going to be viewed as a test for whether the left can perform in a battleground state ahead of what's going to be also a knockdown drug out fight in the 2028 Democratic primary.

Look at me, we got the most boring and the most controversial. He is, he is a former podcaster. Yeah, wait, out for me. But recovering podcaster, that might be too much to overcome.

Yeah, well, we, this is amazing.

Because polling groups have asked Americans, what are the most attractive

and least attractive traits for a candidate?

You know, these kind of strategy groups.

“Can you guess what one of the least attractive traits for a candidate is?”

Well, now I know. Podcaster. We can never recommend. Well, socialist was also one of them. He said, again, he, he is not DSA, although he sort of is seen

oftentimes with AOC and Bernie Sanders and people who align with the, yeah, yeah, I don't think you're allowed to pick. It's like a socket. You can't pull. I'll hold it for you.

I'll hold it for you. Okay, all right. Thank you. What is that? That's some rich stuff.

You just said. Okay.

I got by a, which is Josh Drake, the Democrat versus Ashley

Henson currently in the polling average. Henson leads by 1.3 points. Republicans have a win probability of 65%. To be clear, Trump won Iowa in 2024. So, I'm going to say a little bit more.

Can I give you a funny before you do your thing? Of course you do. Again, in my tour of watching all these ads. So, we're obviously, you know, talking about the, the difficult thing about this midterm, which we'll talk about a little bit more in later in the episode

is Trump sort of being like pretend like I am on the ballot. And a vote for me went a lot of Republicans are obviously trying to distance themselves from him because of Iran, things like that. And Ashley Henson has a very funny campaign ad where it's totally like, it's like, you know, her just doing the kind of like around the state.

And then there's just like a flash for a second of picture of Trump.

And it's almost like someone at the last minute was like, we got to add him. So, it's just like, it's like a dash of Trump. And then you go back to like the, the Ashley Henson Iowa stuff. It's a perfect visual metaphor for the line that Republicans are trying to walk. Which is tricky because right in this midterm cycle Republicans want to turn out low

propensity agavoters who show up when Trump is on the top of the ballot. Not in terms of that same term. It was historically not showed up in midterm years, but at the same time,

“if you want to talk about a state that should be just like fully in the Republican coalition,”

almost no questions asked, but has seen some vulnerabilities for the party. You have to talk about Iowa again, when for Trump by 13 percentage points, it is a relatively rural relatively white state. A part of the electorate that Republicans have done very well with. But looking at polling work that friend of the pod Mary Radcliffe has done.

Amongst rural voters, if you look at generic ballot polling from when Trump took office to now. Republicans have caught their advantage in half. So Republicans had a 26 point advantage with rural voters when Trump took office. It's now 13 point advantage. If you believe that if you believe that because I think I'm not a big cross-tab guy.

Again, there have been some problems with this kind of polling in the past, particularly in while around presidential and midterm election. The kinds of rural voters who are showing up in the polls right now are more likely to vote for Democrats, anyway, et cetera, et cetera. But if the polling is to be believed, this and there are some explanations as well.

Like the tariffs are not particularly sort of going well for an agricultural based economy in part. And so there is both you see some data suggestion and you also see some narrative reasons for vulnerability. Also, we've already gotten into some like candidate quality issues on the map, the cycle. Iowa is a place where like, there are not any candidates facing real like challenges in terms of probably not. We don't have a Ken Paxton on the ticket.

We don't have like a Susan Collins who wait over performs. Yeah, it is more generic candidates if you will. And I mean, Sebastian, Mike, well, they all have they all have good stories. Yeah, Josh Cherich is a Paralympian basketball player. I think you want a couple medals.

Yeah, so like that's a good, you know, like, and his. But we don't have any only gold medals proven. We don't have any to do that. We've been electoral juggernauts on the ballot anyway. Well, rub sand former fashion model, rub sand by the way.

We know the ads are like he's a former fashion model. It's like, oh, you don't really have a lot to work with here. He used to be very good looking. It is. Wait, like, yeah, it's like you can't go with socialists. So you go with former.

“Now that's what the Iowa is the closest thing to like a.”

Generic D versus generic R. And so therefore as that generic number has slipped. Just a little bit for Democrats. I was moved with it. So when we launched flipper.

Um, it was kind of toss up to tilt. Our now we'd call it lean R. I mean, two to one is more than a tilt. I'd say. Um, but I know it to me is like the benchmark for Democrats had a great night, right?

I'm not sure it's a tipping point as much as like Texas where you do have a severe Canon quality issue or Alaska, which is its own drummer. We'll talk about that in a minute. But like I, if I were falls, that means Trump deeply fucked up. Okay.

We were planning on going through nine of the most competitive races

according to the pulling averages.

“I think at this point it would take us about three hours.”

And although we all have the speaking stamina. I don't know that the audience has the patience. So we're going to go to a speed round. We're going to put one minute on the clock for each of the remaining races. We're not listeners.

We will get in more in-depth into these races in the future. But uh, all right. 60 seconds. Let's see if we can do it.

And Claire, your first up.

Okay. I got a hyo. Brown versus Houston in the Senate race. Sherrod Brown versus John Houston. Uh, when probability for Sherrod Brown is at 61.4%.

According to Flipper, I mean, interesting one. Sherrod Brown is a former senator. He's got a really gravely voice. People love.

So rude to make the Ohio and do this in just a minute. Uh, uh, on the gubernatorial side. Do we want to do that? No. No, we shouldn't do that at all.

Uh, but no, if candidate quality wise, I think Sherrod Brown is an interesting Democrat. He's awesome. I can talk this fast.

“He's also a, um, older white guy who has a more moderate stance on Israel.”

So he doesn't have any of those like party controversies that you see. And Michigan, which used to be sort of like swing together state. That's all I got. Go name one in 2018, which is a similar year to this one. Um, people like Democrats, when this were the red states,

they went in Montana. They went in Ohio and even West Virginia in 2018. Okay. Okay. We have 10 seconds left.

And all I'm going to say is, yes, he lost in his last Senate race, but he outperform common Harris by eight points. And if you add that together with the blue environment, this time round. Be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be.

Okay. Okay. Good. Is Nate next? Yes.

Nate is next. Okay. Okay. Start. Go for it.

Nate, you've got to go. We're on the clock. Taxes. I'm getting the easy ones. James Tellerico against Ken Paxton.

Uh, look, the number I point to first here is our friend,

actually, not our friend. Beto Oroq. That's all. Who lost five. 45 seconds.

He's actually only 15 seconds. 2018. The best anchor year for this midterm. Trump's first midterm. Beto Oroq lost by 2.5 points to Ted Cruz.

The question is basically, can Ken Paxton be a worse candidate than Ted Cruz to the point where you make up at 2.5 point deficit. You have not particularly seen since 2018. Favorite rule them graphic trends for Democrats in Texas. You saw great trends in the summer.

For Democrats. You saw South Texas reverting. Um, more red. Do people think that Talorico is Hispanic name? That's one question that I have?

Galen. Okay. You got to do anything. Uh, I think. Ken Paxton steal a pen.

And that speaks to candidate quality. And we are at time. Great. Okay. [CLAPPING]

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Okay. Here we go. Open it up. Okay. Go.

Alaska. I can see Russia from my house. Okay. So it is Maripotola versus Dan Sullivan. Maripotola currently has a- Sorry.

Dan Sullivan currently has a 54% chance of winning according to the forecast. This is a very interesting race because we talked about candidate quality. But it's a very poll toll it isn't electoral juggernaut. She's outperform Democrats in two elections. One by nine points another by 20 percentage points in a blue wave environment.

That could mean that she could actually win here. There is a voter and franchisement issue here, which is that there are two Dan Sullivan's on the ballot. I would worry that if voters get confused and want to cast a ballot for the incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan. And don't and get confused that they could be disenfranchised in a way. But it is a ranked choice election.

Right. And so hopefully those people will still be infranchised. Nonetheless, Maripotola who has rejected Kamala Harris's endorsement in this race in a way or her fundraising. Except for himself from the Democratic Party, which is a smart move in a state like Alaska and is running on fish family and freedom for the win. Very impressive.

I was like, you're like, you're monologue. I was like, who is full or so. Yeah. Did you ever do a quiz ball? I did debate.

Which is why I talked to you fast. Okay. Back to you, Claire. Okay. I'll do a bit.

All right. Here we go. One minute. Okay. I've got Maine.

Troy Jackson versus Susan Colin. Collins. Jackson. Jackson has a win probability of 64.7%. And I mean, have you.

I could all I can think of is the cousin thing. Listen, Susan Collins is a high quality candidate. She is, you know, her, her ads for this race emphasized her insideriness, the power that she has for Maine.

“You know, Trump, despite the fact that she voted to impeach him, Trump is still endorsing her, which I think speaks to her power within the party.”

Susan Collins has done something very funny, which is insinuate that Troy Jackson is married to his cousin. Second cousin. Second cousin.

So she's basically insinuating that he's a bit weird.

And he is basically trying to, that's, that's hurtful because he's trying to introduce himself to Maine voters. Very, very. Again, girls will come back to these. Nate. How many fucking states do we have?

Nine. We have four points. Okay. All right. Here we go.

On the clock. One minute. Kansas. And by the way, you might think that George is remaining race, but no. We actually have Kansas in Clipper as being an unlikely tipping point state.

We're elected in Georgia because us off seems to be in such a shape even more than North Carolina. But yeah, Kansas. I have a lot of family in the Kansas city area. A lot of them are liberal Democrats. They've been talking to me about how you better watch Kansas.

You better watch Adam Hamilton against against Roger Marshall. It's at the very, very edge of feasibility. You have seen Democrats with the governorship of Kansas a couple of recent times. They have not won a Senate race in Kansas since 1932. You do have some polling.

I think that's probably not a trick. But like, a device to get fundraising.

I am not sure I request those internal polls.

But, you know, if you want a real wild card, Kansas is your state. All right.

“And the last one here, claro, give you the timer back.”

Wait, is it your turn? Yeah. We got the final. We got the timer back. We got the timer back.

Yeah. We got the final. And the last one here, claro, give you the timer back. Wait, is it your turn? Yeah.

We got the final one. Oh, I'm, yeah. I was like, okay, ready. All right. You look first.

Go. New Hampshire for a real plunker at the end. Uh, so the primary was, of course, Tuesday night. Chris Popos, who is a member of Congress for the Democrats. One that and Johnson, you know.

People have generally thought of this as a pretty boring race. The Democratic win probability there is 86%.

“But it has got, the polling has actually, there has been some polling showing”

Sanunu in a tight race. Well known family in the state. Yes, exactly. This is a Harris plus three state in 2024. So although it has voted recently reliably for Democrats, I don't think it's as a blue

as people think of at first blush.

Here we have, you know, what'll be interesting here is that if you think of the motto of New Hampshire, they're free or die. Oh, my god. Five seconds. I'm going to talk about how socialism is going to be.

Yeah, it's not going to work very well against Chris Popos compared with the more progressively or personally. Also, like, he kind of ran away with that. Yeah, I mean, your time is up. Sorry.

And this is the last state. We're done. We're done. We're done. Okay.

How did that feel? I sort of panicked. Again. [LAUGHTER] Uh, so we're going to move on to--

Well, let's clean this mess. Yeah, oh my god. We got to clean up after ourselves.

That was generally really putting ourselves to work here for this first episode.

I know. I look, I would say one thing to summarize, right? No. Your minute over me. This is over you.

It's a good way to go ahead, grad. No, but you have kind of two categories of races. You have races that are going to follow the national picture probably. So like North Carolina, Iowa. And then you have weird races where there are exceptions because the electoral system

and equality are both. So like Maine, Alaska, Michigan. Yes. Saps. Good time.

Saps? That was our everybody. That was work. Uh, okay. We're going to talk about the Republican coalition in the context of this Republican convention

that is happening in Dallas, as we speak, all by the way, dear listener. If you were listening to this Wednesday evening or Thursday morning, you may already know some of what has happened at this convention where we're recording midday on Wednesday. So we are in the past year. In the future, you probably have more knowledge than us already, but we're going to talk about

the value of a convention. We're also going to talk about the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination. Also in the context of what that has meant for the Republican coalition, a unifying moment. But a lot of moments that have not been so unifying for the Republican party in the time since. So first of all, to use a convention that past listeners may be familiar with,

Claire, is this Republican convention in Dallas a good use of convention or a bad use of convention? I would argue that all conventions are a bad use of convention because they require me to go to a convention hall and spend five days indoors listening to people talk. Modern conventions are essentially television programs, three night television programs. There's usually not really anything substantive going on.

You know, there's never going to be a broken convention.

I mean, I think, well, listen, actually, yeah, I mean, we, there could be, that's true. We live in it, we live in that time, but, you know, like. People, so the next would never want to champion. It's very. What I'm trying to say is conventions are basically just a time for people to pump up their voters,

get people on television.

“And that's what, and usually there's a polling bump coming out of the convention for whatever party just convened.”

What Trump is trying to do here? You just have convened. Thank you. I'm a writer. What Trump is trying to do here?

What Trump is trying to do here is, first of all, he's headlining both night to the convention, which is both expected because it's Trump. But also, probably a bad idea conventionally speaking, right? Because he's what I'm doing. I'm just so good.

You're so good. Because in, in these midterms, a lot of, you know, he's an easy and popular president. His policies are currently on popular. And what a lot of Republicans want to do is politely run away from him. And he is, you know, I think his theory of the case is what we were talking about earlier is getting low-prepensity voters to turn out.

That's kind of like they're, they're one trick with elections.

I, I just don't see that as it's, it's not, it doesn't allow candidates to, t...

If someone wants to hold you close, let them hold you close, appear in their ad, whatever you want. It doesn't let people just sort of distance themselves because he's now going to, you know, run the news cycle for the next three days. So I would say bad use of convention. No, no, no, no, no, what's going to watch this fucking thing? It's going opposite the national football league, which is far more important to the future of this country than anything that happens in dollars. I'm literally being serious. I could not give a fuck about this thing, right?

Yes, it's dumb politically because Trump is the biggest problem that Republicans have. You don't want to showcase him. And, you know, going back to the two runoffs in Georgia after 2020. He's been hugely problematic to, to Republicans trying to win the Senate. He's endorsed candidates who are poor. He may be helped push, can packs it over the top in Texas this year. You know, even among Republican influencers, so to speak, people are starting to feel more iffy about Trump.

That's kind of what usually happens in second term. So this thing is, is boring and stupid.

“I mean, how can you, you have to have something better to do? We might only have 10 years left. If AI destroys the world, don't spend a fucking night watching a fucking Republican midterm convention for fuck's sake.”

Watch football. Absolutely, literally. And to be literally, it's better to be willing to watch football. Hashtag still counting. We will have the ratings by the next time we convene. So we will be able to tell empirically whether or not anyone listen.

I just want to sort of paint a little bit of a conundrum for the Republican party right now, which is that again, in Trump's first term, Americans were more bullish on the economy than they were on Trump.

Again, most important issue here. So a majority of Americans thought that the economy was doing well

or proved of Trump's handling of the economy in his first term, whereas he was underwater. His approval rating was in the high 30s, low 40s, or worse. And so when Trump took a step back and let the economy economic performance speak for itself, or the lack of foreign wars speak for itself, then that would kind of be helpful. So in that context, you would say, what the fuck would you be doing, holding a Republican midterm convention,

“you should just disappear and let everybody run on whatever record they want to run on,”

because people feel more positive about the fundamentals in the country. In this moment, Donald Trump is more popular than his economy. Right. Okay. So if you look at silver bulletin. If you think about it, what a compliment. What a compliment. So if you think about it, he's 20 percentage points underwater on just raw approval rating.

The economy is net negative 28, so almost 30 percentage points.

Inflation is net negative 40. So on one hand, if you're going to use that equation from the first term,

you would say, well, if Trump is able to distract people from how pissed off they are about inflation and the economy, maybe it's not so bad, which gets back to it. You said, clear, like, can he turn out those low-prepensive regulators? And what is he going to do? How is he going to try to do that? Like, it's not just a sort of, he's going to call everyone, he's going to call everyone communist. Right. Like, that's exactly it.

It's reminded people, and we're already seeing this with the Elon Musk sort of funded ads in Ohio, and Texas about trans issues, which to your point, Nate, on the Pod Save America podcast, was like, you're kind of fighting the last battle here. It's not clear that that's going to work in this new environment. All that to say, Republicans see their job here as to remind every, like, to drag, to drag Democrats down with them,

and not let sort of a good economy and lack of foreign war speak for itself, because people don't feel like we have a good economy, and we aren't tangled in a foreign war. No, there is a function. There are a lot of people who are not very enthusiastic about this midterm.

“A lot of them are Republicans. They're not going to vote for Democrat, will they vote or not?”

Trump should be able to, like, if Republicans lose, like, Iowa, the Benshark we had in the first segment,

like, that's a eligible state, or should be for Republicans, for example, to work as strong candidate. He's not a former incumbent, like, sure, Brown, or something like that. So holding a line there, I'm still not sure that spotlighting Trump, helps. I mean, yeah, probably Democrats biggest vulnerability is that, is that they're not that popular, and as I have the shift in the primary electorate to the left,

a lot of those chances aren't popular with general election voters. Can you kind of clear, which is more popular today? Donald Trump or the Democratic Party? Trump? Trump? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and you see the sort of, like, quote unquote high quality democratic candidates,

are off-gins sort of saying, like, they're distancing themselves from the national party. They're playing up state issues. They're, they're being a little bit more, you know, I'm an independent, even though there's a D next to my name. But it kind of, like, Trump's second term now kind of feels a little shambalic,

Like, like, kind of like a failing, a failing Broadway show where they're try...

right? You come up on stage yourself and sing.

“Is Trump running a very good tune? You know, like, America would a little dancing frog, maybe?”

No, you had a wrestling match on it. It's like a little holly little shimmy. Give me a little, a couple jazz hands. Claire, what do you think? Is it going to work? We can get a little theater criticism. Still counting is brought to you by zip recorder.

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I've got my own small business hiring's not easy. No, I, I am very meticulous about my hiring process, believe me or not. I hired out of you, kind of. Wait, but the feet, yeah, the feet of strength portion was very difficult. And possibly illegal.

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“Okay, so I think we are coalescing around this Republican midterm convention being a bad use of convention.”

Fair enough, by the next time we meet, we will have sort of numbers as to whether or not people pay attention and whether or not Trump's approval rating went up or the generic ballot tightened or whatever all that jazz. I want to move on though to a tougher topic, which is that we are at the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination. I am sure this is going to be a theme or one of the themes of the convention as it's happening at the same time as that anniversary. This was a moment of party unity and a lot of sort of frustration and fear for the Republican party,

especially after multiple assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The Republican party has had a topsy-turvy year in terms of sentiment about sort of how much the coalition has held together. But at least a year ago, it felt like there was a lot of unity.

And also, we can talk about that, but I also want to talk about this first and foremost from the perspective of political violence.

Yeah, absolutely. Which, you know, we can get into the numbers, but at the very least if you look at the polling, Americans feel like political violence is increasingly a problem in this country. I mean, Nate was supposed to speak on a college campus the day after. I did. I did. I was like a day or two after because I'm trying to read what I wrote. Being a blogger when I was saying is you're not allowed to like invent your reaction to something when you actually reacted to it in real time. And I waited a couple of days because like it did hit emotionally like Charlie Kirk is a prominent political figure who gives talks and college campuses.

I'm probably not as prominent, but like, you know, I get hate mail and things like that. But the financial crisis, the onion tried to kill you. And the first story I wrote was kind of annoyance. Praise more elegantly than annoyance, right? But like, it's like, why does it have to have a fucking take about this, right? This terrible thing happened.

“It's frightening. How do we prevent it from happening again? Why do you have to fucking take everybody, right?”

And then, and then a few days later, the political move feels like September 11th again, meaning that like it felt like, you know, I mean, I guess I'm older than YouTube.

I remember like my first time at a college you would go to like facilities and you'd have like the security threat levels and things like that.

And, but what's what you're later that 9/11 feeling of the combination of unity, but also kind of weaponized unity like that.

It's faded.

By the way, you know, you also had an assassination attempt against the president at the White House Correspondence dinner this year.

That kind of fades into the background. You had an arson at Josh Shapiro's house. You had a kidnapping plot against Richard Whitmer. You had the congressional softball suit shooting right. I mean, you had Mr. Pelosi house attack. All these things, Sam Altman was the target of. I mean, the majority violence recently are producers put together a timeline of some of the political violence that the country has experienced over the past couple years and like I. It made me feel sad reading.

I mean, sad for the country, but it made me feel sad how much of what was in the timeline that I didn't remember.

So, you know, United healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and fatally that happened in 2024.

“I mean, I remember that it didn't. Brian Thompson that happened in 2025 for it December of 2024.”

Wow. That's really, I guess it. So, yeah, it happened right after the election. Yeah, I mean, I think that really speaks to him. I did not remember, you know, the Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker of Merit. Yes. We're killed in 2025 as well. And Charlie Kirk and the assassination attempts, and as you mentioned, the arts in the Josh Shapiro's house also.

I mean, this is like very different, but created this environment where people were having reactions to politically centred violators like the killing of really good and Alex predi and the clashes in Minnesota. And it's just like, yeah, and the way that I almost didn't remember the amount of like high profile violence over the past year and January 6 and you had. But over the past year and riots in 2020, let's be clear. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, the past year has been, I mean, just to take the Kirk, the Kirk shooting felt.

I think it was, it was amplified by the political media class feeling like, you know, all of us are on social media. Everyone worries about their families. That felt very frightening where it's like we are now 10 years into super hardcore polarization. I mean, listen, we used to be on a mainstream news network and now we're on. But we are a journalistic podcast that has no political affiliation, but we're out of left leaning network, right? That speaks to the partisan nature of the country itself.

But I think just like the violence associated with that, the fact that it's, you know, people like flocked cameras and AI, I brought up earlier. Like people are really worried about these sort of existential things. And so I think that the Kirk killing felt was certainly amplified by a political class that felt personally very frightened.

“And then I think this past year of, I mean, yes, the killings of Renee Good and Alex predi and others, right?”

I think we, we also forget like people who are dying in ice custody. I mean, I was particularly like there was there been a lot of sort of really disturbing stories about children and detainment centers. I think there was a little bit of not just sort of the political violence angle of it, but the number of times that we were reading about deaths in the context of US government actions was out of the norm. And I don't think, and I think Republicans felt that too, right? That is a, that is a thing that is, it was sort of a deathsoaked year in a way that felt very, you know, the political violence of it felt very like 1960s.

I mean, we talk about that a lot, but it's now, I think we kind of can't deny that we now live in an era of political violence.

And I think a little disturbingly, and I'll stop in a second, that we live in an era where because of that hardcore partisanship,

in fighting with in both parties, there isn't a lot of clear moral leadership, right? Like who do people listen to, right? Like that's a, that's a thing I've been thinking a lot about because a lot of, you know, you can have voices in the party saying, Please don't amplify this, please like let's all call for calm, but America actually has a little bit of a moral vacuum problem. I think it's one of the reasons, I mean, this takes seriously when the astronauts were up in space, everyone loved the astronaut content because they were like,

I mean, they literally are like the best and brightest, but they were also being philosophical and religious and like, or like the pope, right?

“I mean, obviously the pope is now a partisan figure too in America because that's what we do.”

But there was this sort of sense, I think of like, well, we need like some bright spots. And I think about that as sort of like this vague America's moral code kind of rattling around. I think that's very real. And I think back to the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination and like the degree to which it was treated in at least amongst online communities, which again is so not real life, but like, as a point for sort of jokes and like a debate over whether or not like Charlie Kirk was a good guy or it was just about or whatever on the left and like where is the moral authority to say

Then people were also getting fired for posting things which is also and then...

I want to put some numbers to this to be like that guy.

“Because I think this encapsulates we've been talking a lot about a feeling and I think that these numbers from the US Capitol police sort of encapsulate something and I'll quote from their numbers that were least at the beginning of 2026.”

The number of United States Capitol Police assessment cases has climbed for the third year in a row. In 2025, the US Capitol police investigated almost 15,000 concerning statements, behaviors and communications, directed against members of Congress, their families, staff and the Capitol complex. That is a 58% rise in threats against members of Congress from the year prior in 2020. And by the way, I believe that the Supreme Court asked for a budget increase this year because like almost purely because they want more security.

And from also like a rigorous perspective, we know you said like who's the moral authority? When you ask Americans like is political violence acceptable, you get sometimes numbers as high as like 30% or so, 20%, 30% or so. That polling, we should take that with a lot of skepticism. You know, it's people maybe answering an abstract ways off the cuff when you get down into the specifics of like, do you think a specific act of violence is justified like a killing, a property destruction, whatever. The percentage of Americans who say that it is justified is in these single digits. It's like 4% or lower.

I mean, when we're getting into talk of real sort of harm to individuals, maybe say as low as 1 or 2%. Bad news is in a country of 340 million people that is still far too many people who endorse the use of violence in politics.

But what we do know about how to get that number lower and how to make people understand that political violence is never acceptable.

Is it requires the political leaders from which they take cues. And so if we don't feel like either of the parties have a clearer more authority and there is this kind of breakdown and interparty fighting and like no one, it doesn't really feel like, but it's also, you know, the thing, I can't find the number right now in the document, but it, the United Healthcare killing was like broadly Americans said that that kind of assassination is immoral. But for people under, let's just find the number.

Yeah, I got the number for you.

But yeah, so, so for, so this is an Emerson College poll and the majority of voters 68% by far, right, said that the actions of the killer were unacceptable.

But 41% of voters between age 18 and 29 found that killing to be acceptable. And I, you know, it's such an interesting is the wrong word, right?

“But I think that that vigilante killing because of a healthcare, because of a problem with the healthcare system, which I think, like again, going to the political ads, right?”

Everyone hates insurance company companies, right? Everyone loved Deli Park and everyone hates insurance companies. But I think that the, the direction that younger Americans are going to is on both sides. Like, there's there have been a lot of really interesting pieces about sort of like the hardcore, like quasi-fascist antisemitic things of like college Republican clubs, right? Like, or, you know, or the more extreme Nick Fuentesi.

And I think that that just speaks to, to go to like, you know, the September 11th of it all. The past 25 years of American life had been, there have been profound shifts.

“I mean, I graduated in 2009 in the middle of an economic crisis, right?”

There, with the 9/11 generation is coming of age. And they are dealing with a society that they're, they are right in some macro sense that there is something deeply, there is, there are deep inequities. There are deep problems with our political system. I mean, like, if you are 18 years old and about to vote in this election, you have only known the Trump era as the kind of discourse. And I do, I do find that disturbing, right?

So those numbers are, you know, I think the killing was reprehensible. But that speaks to people having these frustrated ideas about like, how do we, how do we even fix the fuck-up array of the American system on a number of levels? It's also, I would say, I guess as the, again, I was the elder staples statement. Yes, yes, yes, yes. As the only gen X or the intelligent X here, the 1960s and 1970s were profoundly more violent than we have right now. You know, I think that's worth keeping some things in perspective.

Were there school shootings? I mean, like, I think you can, like, politically violent maybe, but like, I also think that we live actually in a quite, I mean, like, people who have school age children.

I mean, a lot more people are murdered.

Okay, I mean, I, I, I mean, I don't know if you can actually, I say something nice about America, the murder rate is way down historically low.

A lot of people were like, I mean, because of unsafe working conditions and, and car accidents and things like that. Like, I'm not, I'm not a big, your signature of certain types of. Yes, I guess, of course, if you cover politics and everywhere. Yeah, but it's an argument that a violent death. Or a well-publicized death in that way is different.

It's tricky to de-amplify things, right?

“Let's not take Charlie Kirk is a political figure journalist, whatever you want to call him, right?”

When there is an act of terror and the primary purpose of the act of terror is to make people fear. You know, and there's evidence that oftentimes terrorist texts, school shootings, things like that, have a copycat effect. Where the more you publicize it, you know, the more incentive there is for someone to try to be the next whatever that gets a movie made about him. To say, I don't think we should be talking about this as much, right? That's very hard to do.

But because you're like, are you being insensitive? And if you say that, then you actually, it's hard to say the unsaid, you know, you amplify it. And and this was pretty good for the whole segment. Yeah, I mean, do you see what I said? Part of the reason I wanted to have this little half segment on Kirk is because like,

it is interesting looking back a year later how it felt because I would have thought it would have more lingering effects. And it did, and the fact that frankly, I have a memory until our producer and until we have these weekly meetings thing about every possible story we can cover, like that seemed like a change. I just wanted to take that.

“Yeah, that speaks to, I think some of like the, I mean,”

it speaks to, you know, the multiple tab to browsing brain, the Twitter brain that we all have. Like it is actually a problem that none of us can remember what happened 12 months ago. And I mean, that's societally, right? Like in the whole, the, like, you know, way to use history repeats itself. Like the fact that people don't have any lingering sense of. And, and, you know, look, we, you know, the president was shot.

Um, or the president, financial candidate, former president, Trump and now current president was shot. Um, in a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was at June or July, 2026, 24. July, yeah. July, 24. You know, you can easily tell a story where that was a pivotal event.

Pivotal event in the election, his favorability ratings went up Joe Biden, exited the race shortly after that. And like, that's kind of not remembered.

“Well, maybe it should be like, if you remember, you know, the first thing I remember about 2024 is the chaos of her Biden, right?”

Um, but we had a president, Chalcanic come within, uh, no leaders have been killed or seriously seriously injured. And like, you know, shouldn't that have been the, it was, I think you're, we talked about this a little bit in the meeting the other day where we were,

you know, Butler is such an interesting shocking moment. The Trump's even reaction in the moment, right? Whatever you can say about the guy, he knows how an image or a visual or work work. And so when he raised his hand and then it sort of became a thing and then Elon Musk was like, that was when he came out to say, I'm for Trump.

It's when Bobby Kennedy first reached out to him and, and that was when the talks happened.

And eventually that eventually led to him endorsing. So it was this kind of maybe maybe we can't specifically tie numbers to that assassination, but it had of profound psychological impact of moving people towards consolidating behind Trump. And what strikes me a year after Charlie Kirk's assassination is that that didn't happen. In the same way for the Republican party,

it is much harder to be the party in power and deal with all of the infighting and responsibility that that brings. But this is very much a conversation for another day. I think we should talk about how sort of consolidated the Republican or the Trump coalition is, because very quickly evolved into conversation within the Republican party about Epstein and the war in Iran. And sort of disappointments with Trump and and that whole thing and I think this will be a reminder for Republicans,

that sense of unity that they had, but I think I'll cast forward to future episodes. Yeah, and just to add one more thing, I think about what the Kirk assassination and the months after it said about Republicans,

I think, you know, there was at first this outpouring and unity.

And then I think some of the traits that have defined the modern Republican party really came out and full force. Like conspiracy theories, right? Very prominently led by Candice Owens, who I profiled here for the New Yorker a couple years ago. I mean, she was sort of talent scouted by Kirk and then she did this quite, I mean, grotesque turn on him and his it was just a very strange series of weeks.

And then people started talking about, you know, conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk and Israel.

And, you know, there were all these things that really, I think exemplified h...

sort of ending up with like the Epstein transparency stuff, which you're right. It's too much to get into right now.

Well, guys, we've had some highs on some lows, this first episode alone.

If this is this is any indication of the roller coaster ride of fun, seriousness, numbers, emotion that we are going to have on this podcast.

“I think, though, I think folks are, I think folks are inscribed.”

No, it's, it'll be fun, but it will also be information worth knowing about what we're thinking about.

And so, Nate and Claire, I want to thank you so much for going on this roller coaster ride with me today.

Thank you. But because we're still counting. I'm not participating in that.

“That's it for today's episode of Still Counting.”

Listen wherever you get your podcast and subscribe on YouTube.

Of course, you can see us in action or pretty faces, all of this lighting, all of the sort of, by just a relation I speak with my hands too much as I'm learning from this project. But anyway, subscribe on YouTube dot com slash at Still Counting podcast.

“We're going to be back next Wednesday evening with the next installment of Still Counting.”

Until then, thanks for listening. Still Counting is a crooked media production. Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our music is by breakmaster cylinder. Our production team includes Reed Trollin, Johanna case, and Ben Hethcomb.

Production support from Matt DeGroat, Katie Long, and Adrian Hell. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the writers guild of America. [BLANK_AUDIO]

Transcript

I'm also a little bit older and I'm the founder of Yaui, a singer who is able...

How good of an education Wisconsin would have given me

Do we do we do it by that or not?

We are what we eat and so are our dogs along healthy active life starts with ...

Fuckboy image, right?

Because polling groups have asked Americans, what are the most attractive

We were planning on going through nine of the most competitive races

Persistent is a good thing when people are doing good things.

I am not sure I request those internal polls.

I, I just don't see that as it's, it's not, it doesn't allow candidates to, t...

Like, like, kind of like a failing, a failing Broadway show where they're try...

It's faded.

Then people were also getting fired for posting things which is also and then...

I mean, a lot more people are murdered.

And, you know, there were all these things that really, I think exemplified h...

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