Still Counting: Trump vs. The BLUE WAVE: A Midterm Extravaganza

It's from the folks who brought you the 538 podcast, and it's called Still Counting.

Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Gayland Druke have spent their careers breaking down political data, honing their expertise and the numbers behind the numbers. Election results, demographic changes, historical trends, and the polls. And on their new show, Still Counting, they are going to cover even more. From politics to prediction markets to AI, and even sports. Yes, sports.

You can listen, Justice Kavanaugh. You'll get rigorous analysis of few hot takes, but no spin, or false sense of certainty. Just the numbers and what they tell us about this moment, delivered fresh each Wednesday evening. We are so excited to share this with all of you. So without further ado, here's a sneak peek of Still Counting.

“I think I'm just like a little bit nervous. That's right. No, I know. I know. I know.”

Still weird. It feels weird. Welcome to Still Counting. I'm Gayland Druke. I'm Claire Malone, and I'm Silver.

And we're talking too fast, because the first episode, and we're a little nervous.

I also read my name. I was like, I'm Claire Malone. And this is our first official episode. Yes, we did a free warmer. Yes, we talked to Potsay 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, you know, first I'll say this is what we're going to do on today's podcast. We're going to do a mid-term 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 topsy-turvy year for the Trump coalition. We're going to talk about the convention and all that does the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death. Before we get into everything that we have to cover today, though, we should stay. Welcome back, everybody. Yeah. 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 Claire Malone. To the screen. We all worked together at a data site called 538. And I was hired by need to be like the normal magazine reporter. I was hoping need to be normal. I was hoping need to be normal. It's be like a magazine reporter person. And then my, 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 why I am.”

Nate, who are you here? I'm Claire Malone. Yeah. So my trajectory into journalism, if that's what you want to call it, is highly non-traditional. Before I ever like 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 is, I thought, in a name Barack Obama, decides 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 burn out with the baseball stuff. The poker was not going super well to be honest. And so started trying to build a forecasting model. First for the Democratic primary in 2008.

And then general election and it's just kind of improbably, probably took off. But yeah, I, you know, I try to look at the world. I sometimes do reporting, but I'm looking at the rainbow books. I've written to you for the books I do actually do the recordings, which for the most recent book involved, hang out in Las Vegas playing poker for a year. I spent a lot of time in Vegas, yeah. It was a nice excuse. I should still look on Valley Miami. But like, 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 a”

model, we talked about this on the pod save trailer. It's to force yourself to be more rigorous in analyzing the news. And now, and get, and Nate had a, he started five to your date, which is at the New York Times, then moved to ESPN, then they closed it. Yaddi Addi Addi Addi, now he has a wonderfully silver bulletin, which is a silver dot net. But like, we look, we got Flipers, our interest model. We got a little bit of a new model. Okay. I will do a briefer, who am I? I was hired by Nate at 538. That's not

the last weirdness initiative. I'll tell you that much. I was hired to be a podcast to Wank at 538. We were hired at about the same time. Yes, we were. It 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. I think that we

combination of field reporting analysis, looking at the data did things like the J mandolin project and once 538 shut down, I started GD politics, which is a podcast that I host on Mondays. And Thursdays talking to a bunch of people who are journalists, authors, sometimes politicians, pollsters, who book it data and try to make sense of it all. I'm going to try to take some of that knowledge that I get from all the people I talked to and bring it to folks here as well.

But anyway, enough of that enough throat clearing. Let's dive into what's on hand today. But first, let me just say, dear listeners, and for our YouTube audience, I'm looking straight to camera for this one. Previous listeners, new listeners alike, spread the word. Subscribe on YouTube wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, right in review us, like, I don't know exactly how the algorithm works. That's Nate's job. But apparently, it's delicious.

On Apple podcasts, the more you rated review us, the higher up we go, and the more people see us, and then maybe get introduced to the podcast. Basically, we're out here trying to rebuild an audience. and it's gonna, it's like a political campaign, it's gonna take all of us. - Yes.

- Okay, I would, third I would never do that, right?

“That's why we're, we're, we're, we're, we're,”

- We're like, do our, do our, do our, do our, do our, do our, - So, the podcast, podcast, Twunk now. Okay, we are officially post main points. - We're officially, I almost wore a white suit coat this morning. - Which, first of all, wouldn't have clared.

- Would have popped up. - You're a conda-nast employee. You must not be wearing white after way, would it? - It's an old school rule. - So yes, we are post-layer today,

which is officially when we stop wearing white, when we go back to school, it is also historically, when people begin to tune into the elections, like all in our highly polarized and partisan and engaged environment.

I think people pay attention a little bit sooner than that. But nonetheless, we are going to use that as an opportunity to dive into the midterm. So right now, Nate, your model named Flipper, suggests that Democrats have an 83% chance of winning the house,

and the Senate forecast is split exactly 50, 50. And did you design the forecast that way to build suspense at the start of election season? I'm kidding.

So when you first launched, the Senate favored Democrats--

- Slime, slime. - Slime, slime, slime. - Wait, wait, wait, not overwhelmingly,

“but I think it peaked out about 58% less than a month ago”

in terms of Democrats, like we heard of taking the Senate. What has happened between then and now? - So a couple of things have happened. Number one, people get really sensitive about like 50 versus 55, versus 57.

It's not a big deal. It's like an MBA game. It's like one point being scored, or two points being scored, you take it from nicks ahead by a point to the Raptors ahead by a point or whatever else.

So when you're near 50, small moves affect the probability of fair bit, that's getting a little technical. There are a couple of things that have happened. One is that we've started to get more polls

among likely voters, and not just registered voters.

And that matters because turnout is relatively low. It midterms higher than it used to be. But as our models been adjusting to those, earlier in the cycle, it felt like there was a bigger, didn't feel like, I guess I don't know if it has feelings.

I guess we use AI, right? Maybe it doesn't have to be. - It doesn't have to be. - It doesn't have to be. I used to be an anti-anthropy morp�icizer,

and now just to use the other model of things. Anyway, and as we've gotten more generic palate polls among likely voters, they don't show quite as much an enthusiasm gap. I mean, I'm being too technical.

- Now I'm just, by the way, to interject, now I'm just thinking about whether or not you think the model could ever kill you. (laughs) - Per discussions on Twitter and I, yeah.

- I switched from Claude to Chechee PT, and then because it was trying to kill you. The Claude opuses were kind of weird, right? They would like, they'd be quite stubborn and lazy. - I don't know. - What was Claude opuses?

I don't use it. - I don't use it. - The whole range of AI use here, which is like, Nate has at least 12 AI employees. I use AI.

- Regularly, but like, don't make it code for me. - I've literally, you don't use AI. - I do not use AI. - I don't know what it is. - My time.

- Here's the summary version, right? As we get closer to the election,

“I think you see like a little bit of a rebound”

in Republican enthusiasm. It's having a marginal effect on the numbers and some of these kind of less-pulled races in the generic ballot. Look, Trump's approval rating is 38% or so.

His disapproval rating is 58.59%. He's not very popular, but Democrats aren't that popular either, so I think you might be seeing just the slightest bit of a version to the mean.

But there's lots of layers in Flipper. There are expert forecasts, you know, isn't you Hampshire now a state that's in play, how realistically do you take Tyler Ricos? You know, the model says, "Teller Ricos"

is a slight favorite in Texas to do it, but-- - They're going to get into all of these things. - And we're even going to get into Trump's popularity

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 in the-- - But it's educational. - But it's education, we're not. 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-- - No, we don't. - Yeah, we're going to give you this. It's the state of the race in Game of Thrones.

- Yes, exactly. And I will say, I have a GD politics hat here, which is only because-- - She doesn't have a-- - She doesn't have a chair, because I'm ashamed of she'll.

And also because we don't have a still counting merchant, 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 stop advertisement.

I mean, we all love the next. We live in New York City, but you've got to stop advertising the next for free elements. - We're getting silver bulletin heads. By the way, I'm happy to advertise the next.

I was like this, Dolan doesn't kick me out of the-- - Okay. - Square, you are first. - Okay. - So pick a race out of the time.

- 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 what-- - 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, well, none of these people have ever been

to Washington, DC.

It was basically all about like how much beef costs

and isn't it terrible and insurance companies? And that was both parties. It was like, yeah, it was quite striking how publicly it was. - How many, how?

- Okay, I picked North Carolina, which is a bad pick. (laughing) 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 Wattley, Roy Cooper, and that win probability according to Flipper, trademark Nate Silver. - It's pronounced the dolphin, it's like, Flipper. (laughing)

- It's a good visual. - How did you name it? - We've already had a problem with Furies and the 538 Politics Podcast brand. We really don't need to give them any fodder.

- How did you name it, Flipper? - R's are good 'cause like, R's for regression or like-- - All right, I don't really wanna know. - Okay, so, but Flipper gives the Democratic win probability at 86.9 Percentage Points.

- Let's put it like that, it's, it's not a sure thing that Cooper wins a North Carolina. - But it would be embarrassing for you. - 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, oh, 50, 50 is such a cup out. It's kind of a coincidence because like, we think it's gonna be, and everyone thinks it's gonna 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 hammering, it's actually a bit of a fucking limit.

- It says this is Saul. - This is Saul, we're introducing producer Saul who has innate reading, pretty good handwriting, and I would agree with that. - That's the only job that might survive the AI apocalypse

is like good handwriting. - It's rare. - What you were gonna 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' 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 pulls right out, we're off, we're 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-round. Roy Cooper is like a two term governor. - He's 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 outsider 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 gonna let us see that. - Great, so takeaway is panic at the disco for Democrats if Roy Cooper loses. - Nate, next, please. - Secondary.

- I think you're picking out of the half. - Okay. - Secondary, can I? - Secondary, can I? - Of course, is this pretty Michigan, Michigan? - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

in the Silveroolism pulling average. It's not, including by the way, a new Glinger of Poll, I don't think that came out last night after a 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 in three different 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 caddate?”

I'll explain what I mean by that, right? Or my garage is a quote-unquote good enough caddate to overcome that seven point spread? Now, the different ways to define bad caddate, 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 know there's any-- - They're not charismatic, yeah. - And there's a lot of research

that I think people are in some degree denial

about that says, in general, more moderate caddates, 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, the L side is kind of like playing into this kind of, almost like a fuckboy image, right? It's like, oh, yeah, I'm like women,

I like, you know what's like, he's not like-- - I think it's more like, he lifts, right? - That's what you lift. - 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, 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? Boaters might say, I understand that Mike Rogers

might come across as moderate, but empirically, he's gonna bet with Trump, the launch majority of the time, and LCA, we'll probably bet 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 tossup, maybe LCA, by one point. - And by the way, in my tour of Canada adds last night, I mean, I actually think the way that LCA is kind of trying to present himself to general election voters is not moderating on the issues,

which is, I think, kind of 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 progressive, 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. If that was her thing, 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 say, "Muck Michigan," but like, that stuff, that stuff, that stuff, that was the plan, was that one plan? - It was, 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 for-- - Which is for-- - Which, by the way, Mike Rogers is playing into,

by, like, saying, his, saying, like, "Updoor of Mon." And, you know, so there's, there's interesting dynamics about what we mean as a moderate candidate. - Yeah, I'll say to somebody who got some blowback from, in the comments after we were on--

- Never read the comments, man.

- Because I had described, I'll say it as a below average candidate or liable to perform below where a quote unquote generic democrat is. I was really talking about the numbers and the perception of, I'll say it 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 dragout 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, for example, healthcare, safety,

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 than the economy more broadly. - Data centers, flock cameras, like these are local issues that are

“on, when you ask people like, what's very important to you?”

50% of voters say the war in Iran, 22% of voters say, the Israel-Palestine issue. So I think I just want to say here that 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, 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,

a head of what's going to be also a knock-down drag-out fight in the 2020-28 Democratic Party. - Look at me. We got the most boring and the most controversial. - And the first two picks. - He is, he is a former podcaster.

- Yeah, wait, I could come here, right? (laughing) - A recovering podcaster, that might be too much to overcome it.

- 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. - Podcasts. (laughing) - Well, socialist was also one of them. He said, again, 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 think you're allowed to pick, it's like a sake.”

You can't pull on, so I'll hold it for you. - Okay, all right, thank you. - But what is that? That's some rich stuff, he just said. (laughing)

- Okay, I got Bywa, which is, Josh Drake, the Democrat versus Ashley Henson, currently in the pool.

- That was an excerpt from the first episode

of Still Counting, thanks for listening. - Do you hear the rest head over to Still Counting wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe? Or watch us on YouTube at Still Counting Podcast. - Do episodes drop every Wednesday evening.

Don't miss 'em. (upbeat music) - I'm Nate Silver, I'm Gailindruk. - And I'm Claire Malone. - We're back.

This time with our friends at Crooked Media for a new show called Still Counting. - Yeah, numbers are hard, it takes her easy. - And frankly, numbers have only gotten harder. - What does the data actually cite?

How do we reconcile that with the other things

“that we're seeing in American politics and around the world?”

And how do you use that data to understand or maybe even dare to predict the future of American politics? - New episodes every Wednesday starting September 9th. Subscribe to Still Counting on YouTube.com/At Still Counting Podcast

or wherever you get your podcasts.