Amy Walter: A 50-50 Race
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm just delighted to be here today with Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report. She also hosts the Odd Years Podcast. What's up, girl? Hello, Tim. Long time. No chat. I know because I'm with...

I'm with Sarah. That's a thing. I've kind of let this lesbian buddy comedy thing happen over on the Focus Group podcast. I know it. And I'm like, no. We can have a cross, what is that? A cross platform? Cross pollinate. Yeah. You know, we can kind of break down the barriers between the L and the G. That's right. You know?

That's what we do.

Big picture, just looking at the presidential first, then we'll get into down ballot. How do you look at the state of the race right now, you know, a week out from the debate? Tim, it's funny because I was just having this conversation with folks this weekend about what's the best analogy to describe where we are in this election. And I start with saying, all right, like you, Tim, I'm not as big of a like,

football aficionado and all of the details of this. But this is what I know about football. I'll help you punch it up. I'll help you punch up the analogy. Thank you. All right. So here's the deal. In July, you had Team Red that was in basically first and goal.

And Team Blue had like half their team on the field and the quarterback had a dislocated shoulder and a broken ankle. Okay. And that's where we were. Yeah. And the only way that Team Blue was going to win is if Team Red just fumbled and fumbled and fumbled. All right. Now what we have, and here's my challenge, is that both teams, maybe we have like a split screen, and both teams are at first and goal. And I don't know which one.

is going to be able to get it over the line. So they're basically now in that same zone. You think it's even right now? That's what you're saying? Yeah. Total coin flip. If you are...

And this is no judgment at all, but are looking at all the different forecasts and models and basing your mood on whether it says 55% or 62% or 71%, you're never going to feel better because it's essentially...

50-50 race with movement coming on the margins that I just don't know that we're going to be able to pick up in traditional polling or modeling or any of that. Now, could we get to a place in October where it feel like we're going to be vibing a lot, right? Who does it feel like has the momentum? Where's the issue set?

Or what are we talking about more than not talking about? But like, I don't know. I look at all of those states. I look at the polling and all of those. I look at the results in those swing states from the last two cycles. They've all been decided by three points or less, actually, mostly less.

I'm partially with you. Well, I'm partially being clocked by you because yeah, okay, my mood is drastically impacted by each data point and each movement, each new forecast update. It does impact my mood. And, you know, I also use artificial means to mood stabilize, you know, because that's what you got to do sometimes. But at the same time, I think that some of it is, there's a silliness to it. Part of it that I don't participate in is like,

I'm so mad at you, Polster or, you know, a modeler, because you're not correct about what is going to happen. Right. You haven't put into the model things that I think are important. I find that very stupid and kind of a waste of time. And actually almost, particularly if you have your Kamala hat on, like,

Potentially actually harmful. Like if your entire existence is arguing on the internet that Kamala is definitely going to win and that anyone that doesn't think that she's going to win is part of a Russian plot. Like you're actually probably hurting Kamala. You're probably not making any difference at all. But if you are, it's negative because there's a reason why Kamala's campaign leaked internal polls that showed them losing.

Right. Because they want people to be engaged. Like they do not buy the kind of thing that like it helps the narrative for people to think that she's winning. Yeah. And that's what the campaign wants. So anyway, putting that aside, I'm going to give you my state of play bullish pitch for Harris and then let's talk through it. OK, so we have a Pennsylvania poll out yesterday that has her up three forty nine forty six one poll in Suffolk.

They did look at two particular swing counties as well. So, you know, it seems like they took the effort seriously versus some of these polls. And she's had a persistent lead in Michigan and Wisconsin. She has...

basically solved the enthusiasm gap problem there is a you know maybe not all parts we'll talk to this when we talk about the bullish side for trump not all parts of the coalition but much of her coalition much of the coalition that turned out for joe biden in 2020 is solid right there are some you know gains you see certain places high educated former republicans and and

Donald Trump lost last time. And so, you know, she comes from a place where it's like, if you're going to be able to turn people out, if you've added a little bit, if you have those two states, there's a bunch of different paths to victory. They got to feel pretty good about the state of the case. And that's kind of my bull case for Kamala. Would you add or subtract anything from that? I could also hear you in that. If you say since Kamala Harris has gotten into this race,

She has been on offense and there's not really been anything to take her off of offense, right? Like she has not had self inflicted mistakes. There's not been an event or a series of events that has taken her off of that sort of forward momentum. And again,

You know, if you think, all right, it just keeps going this way for the next 40 whatever many days, then, yes, you can sort of see how she is pressing the case. And it's Trump who is desperately trying to, like, get back into the race. And that's been pretty clear now after the debate that he doesn't.

Well, let's start with the debate. That was his one opportunity to do that change and put her on her heels. He did not do that, obviously. Now it's the, well, let's keep pushing on immigration. Even if it's talking about cats and dogs being eaten, that's better than talking about maybe anything else because immigration is the thing that he wants to talk about. Of course, it's his wheelhouse. He feels comfortable there.

But I don't know that that's really getting the job done in the way that you need to in order to prosecute the case. He needs to make her the incumbent. And his ads, actually, Tim, this is what I'm really curious to see. We've now had, I want to go in and check what the numbers are now, but the amount of money that's getting dumped into those key swing. Pennsylvania, really? Just Pennsylvania, for example, is.

The ads are telling the story that the Trump campaign wants to tell. She's been a cheerleader for everything that's gone wrong under the Biden administration. She loved Bidenomics. She was the border czar, right? If you think you're electing a vote for change, you're not. But he didn't make that case in the debate particularly well. And she's been able to push back on that narrative in part by not giving more oxygen to this idea that

she's just more of the same or that she's going to be not just more of the same, but maybe more liberal. But 49-46, let me just say this. Before we get to the Trump bull case, let's just be on coconut time for a minute and talk about the Pennsylvania poll. Let's talk. 49-46, two swing counties, Erie and up by Allentown, where she's up in both. Same pollster had Fetterman winning. That's pretty good. Yeah. And if you get Pennsylvania...

You'll be winning Michigan, right? She'll win Michigan. I think Wisconsin, we always get fooled by Wisconsin.

that it just doesn't make any sense to me that the polls show her up by four points in Wisconsin, but tied in Pennsylvania. Remember, Biden won Pennsylvania by like two points and won Wisconsin by less than one. So either Wisconsin is not the outlier, Wisconsin is actually where this race is. And in that case, then Pennsylvania is also in her camp. And that's the

That's the blue wall being reconstituted. Or Wisconsin is going to be once again, like really close as a tipping point state instead of Pennsylvania, which everybody's rightly focused on because Trump is focused on Pennsylvania and not as much on Wisconsin. But yeah, you can sit on 40. You could say 49, 46, given how important Pennsylvania is. Sure. I'd like to see some more polls out of Pennsylvania. Yeah.

Sure. As you would like as well. More is more. Pollsters, get in there. Yeah, get on it. Let's continue to talk about that upper Midwest blue wall and the case for her. A couple other data points that I would look at as part of the blue wall case is that we do have Senate polls in all those states. Yes. And the Democrats are winning in all of them. Yes. And so, I don't know, maybe, again...

polls are polls. They're not crystal balls. But you combine the fact that you have Casey winning in Pennsylvania in all these polls, you have Baldwin winning in Wisconsin. You know, there's gonna be some crossover voters, but those two numbers are going to have to meet closer to the middle, right? I keep coming back to that too, which is, which is the, I mean, I've been having this conversation, Tim, for

Well, months, even when Biden was in this race, right? Especially when Biden was in. That was the case for those of us who were like, it's time to move Bison. It's like Biden's losing by 10 and Bob Casey's winning by 10. Seems like a Biden problem to me. And that number has gotten smaller. You know, the gap is smaller, but still the Democratic Senate candidates persisted having better poll numbers than Harris. Right. And so you can look at the Senate polls and say, well,

What's happening is that Republicans have a down ballot problem. Right. Right. That why aren't their down ballot candidates hitting Trump numbers? Like, who are these who are these voters that are voting for Trump but are like, I don't know what I'm going to do on the Senate? You can also assume, Tim, that those people are going to end up like nobody's going to win a Senate race in a battleground state by 10 points or eight points. Like, it's just we know this is going to be.

you know, four or five. Well, Ruben Gallego might. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. That might be the exception. But it's, we're talking about, you know, a 50-48, a 52, you know, whatever. Like, these races are going to narrow. But anyway, going back to the point of like, how are these Democratic Senate candidates, do they represent the true Democratic number, right? And that, yeah,

Ultimately, this is where Democrats will end up because they are not burdened by what has been, namely Biden. Yeah. And that Harris just needs to get those skeptical views.

Baldwin voters, skeptical. I don't even know if they're skeptical as much as they're like, I just don't know. Like, who is this Kamala Harris person? She'll have an easier time consolidating them than you could argue that Trump will have in pulling them back.

The way to vote for him in order to compete with Sarah. Sarah puts a lot of working and obviously on the focus groups, doing the focus groups, recruiting focus groups. People should listen to focus group podcasts. I do a little less work, but at bedtime when I'm supposed to be going to sleep, I scroll through TikTok. That is a very, very important. Thank you for doing that for all of us, Tim. I appreciate that.

You're welcome. And it's very scientific. And last night, you know, at like 1215 or something when I should have been sleeping, I came across a tech talk I want to play for you because I found it so fun. And it was a guy who's in North Carolina. He's going door to door and he is speaking to undecided voters and he's giving us a report on.

And it's a very lengthy TikTok, but I just picked out three. There were three people that he said, he said he didn't believe most of the people that told him were undecided, but there were three people that he believed. And I want to play for you his description of these undecided voters because they might explain the Baldwin Road or you were just talking about. Let's listen.

First is a man in his 70s. We spoke only through his doorbell camera. We did not have a face-to-face interaction. He told me that he was definitely not going to be voting for Donald Trump, but he wasn't sure if he would vote for Kamala Harris. The second is a 25-year-old white guy. We had a long conversation after he shared with me that he was originally planning to vote for RFK, but hadn't been paying a whole lot of attention to the election since his candidate dropped out. So he seemed...

persuadable, maybe lean Trump, just because that's who RFK endorsed, but was clearly not particularly aligned with that candidate.

The third was a middle-aged South Asian man who didn't realize that he was eligible to vote, let alone the fact that he and his wife were both already registered. So he left our conversation planning to go do more research, but my takeaway was that he had tuned the election out because he didn't particularly think that it applied to him. So there's my Sarah Longwell focus group. That is actually excellent. It goes back to your original point, Tim, which is,

And this has been the point that Democrats, even before Biden dropped out, have been making, which is if you just pull together the coalition of people who voted in 2020, who voted in 2022, voted in 2018 in those key swing states, North Carolina being the exception because they did go for for Trump. But there is a big enough coalition that has already been assembled that

of people who don't want to vote for Donald Trump. And the only question is, could they be inspired, interested in voting for somebody like Joe Biden? And many of them said, nah, I'd rather sit out or maybe vote for RFK or some other third party candidate. I just can't get excited about Biden and that Harris's job is to just reconstitute them.

So that seems to be what your North Carolina TikToker is picking up, right? I was just like, it's the three guys. It's perfect. It was like the RVAT voter. It's a 70 year old Republican guy who's like, I don't like Trump, but I just don't know if I can get there. It's a 25 year old bro. Who's maybe for RFK. And then it's somebody that's disengaged. That's in a, that's in a democratic constituency, right? Like that's it. Those are the undecided groups. And you say, those are gettable voters. Yeah.

It's been fascinating watching this RFK thing, by the way, because you had Democrats for months out to, you know, sink RFK Jr. Because it's clear it was clear when Biden was in the race that he was a resting place for a lot of disaffected, not Trump voters. Right. Like, I don't want to vote for Donald Trump.

Traditional Democratic constituencies. They were a lot of Democrats. Now that Harris is in, those anti-Trump voters mostly went to Harris.

and the people still sitting in RFK Jr., what we found in our polling back at the end of July, the group of voters who say they like Trump's policies but don't like him, right? That group of people which in our swing state poll, it's like 17% of voters fall into that category. And

And 13% of them said they were going to vote for RFK. That's a big problem if you're Trump in a state that's going to be decided by a point or two, right? I'm sorry, I've got to come back to that. Did I get that right? In your poll in July, what I'm going to call the Brit Hume voter...

like the national review voter right you don't have to like him personally but you like his policies they like his policies but they don't like the tweets that was 17 percent of trump's vote or the electorate 17 percent of the overall electorate put themselves in that category that's big that's a bigger number than i would have thought it would have been i would have thought it would have been more like nine yeah maybe and we'll see what it looks like

You know, like this was literally like right as the switch was happening. I mean, these are they're pretty conservative. Some of them are gettable, not a ton of them. Sure. But you could argue the best thing for Harris would be that they remain focused on Trump's personal behavior and go, OK,

I'm going to stick with the third party person. But RFK being off the ballot in North Carolina is helpful to Trump. He's still on the ballot in Michigan. He's still on the ballot in Wisconsin, which we were talking originally about the blue wall. That's probably helpful to Harris there. It's a small number, but it's still critical. Yeah.

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He also has resolved most of his enthusiasm issue. We're not at 2016 Trump. You know, you don't see quite as many F your feelings flags when you're driving around this great country as you're used to. But still, if you look at the polls, most of his core base is excited to vote for him. He only lost, you know, by...

We all know the number in Georgia, 11,000 votes. And, you know, it was in, except for Michigan and most of these States, it was a pretty manageable number that he lost. If you're saying that he's kept most of his coalition and that there's more of these kind of working class, uh,

black and Latino men and, you know, who are, you know, disaffected from the democratic party who are hurt disproportionately by inflation and that there are more of them than there are of the 70 year old wall street journal reading guy that voted for Trump twice. And it's flipping the other way. There's some of those Sarah's over there working on getting those people out, but let's just pause it. There's more of the, in the first group than the latter, um,

then that gives him like a pretty clear coalition for getting over the hump. And he's only got to do it in Georgia where he lost by 11,000 votes and in Pennsylvania where he lost by what was the Pennsylvania number? Yeah. I mean, it's like a little less than two points. Yeah. There you go. I think you're exactly right. I'm glad that you brought that up about just the electoral college math, because, you know, we talk about,

a lot about all these other states and they matter. And it's, we're not, I'm not going to discount them, but if you're the Trump campaign and they've said this from the very beginning, all we need is Georgia and Pennsylvania. And of course they got to keep North Carolina in their column, but they don't need to win any other States that they lost last time than those two to get to 270. And the ad spending has also suggested that that's where they're going to be putting the

all of their time and energy in just getting those few voters. And if you say, well, what's their biggest challenge? You're right. It's, it's expanding the ceiling, the Trump ceiling. Like what is the, we've been having a conversation for years about, is there a Trump ceiling? Like has he maxed out on the Trump vote that there are very few people who are ambivalent in the electorate about Donald Trump. And so it's,

He's had two elections now where he keeps bumping up against the ceiling. Now, he raised it a little bit in 2020. You know, he went from 46 percent of the popular vote to 47 percent of the popular vote. And then in some of these states, you saw him.

go up a tiny bit or go down a tiny bit. But ultimately he has two things that he can do to win. One is that he still never breaks that ceiling, but ultimately,

There is a third party, whether it's the green or the whatever, that still is siphons off enough from Harris. Like if you're the Trump campaign pushing not Trump people into a third party choice. Right. The other is that they spend all of their time getting those votes.

very difficult to turn out because they are inconsistent voters for a reason. They are not plugged in. They are not reliable voters. But you spend all of your time

Doing nothing other than trying to get them to turn out. And he seems like he's been doing that media wise, though. I don't it doesn't always seem like they've got a they've got a significant ground game and a grand game in that sense. Yeah. One more thing on Pennsylvania. And you kind of alluded to this earlier when you were talking about the disconnect from the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania polls.

Because I'm less deep in the demographics than you are. And just to point this out, he lost about 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania. So that's not nothing. That's a significant vote share. Why would Pennsylvania be behind Michigan and Wisconsin, I guess, is the question. I just think about that just without actually looking at the math, just with my knowledge of the state, you look at it and it's like, well, you've got Philly and Pittsburgh. So you've got two big metros. You've got two suburbs.

You're wasting some of the Philly suburbs in New Jersey. You assholes in Cherry Hill should be moving across the river there to try to help out Democrats because you're just wasting your vote over there in Cherry Hill. There's nothing good over there anyway. You get better food on the Pennsylvania side of the river. Wow. Just something to think about. You're going to get a lot of...

You're going to get a lot of negative feedback on that from my fellow GW grads from South Jersey. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's fine. Just, you know, just move across the river. More black voters, more Hispanic voters. Like, why? You know what I mean? I just, I can't explain it. Like, why Wisconsin? They've got Penn State, I guess. Madison's bigger than, but you have Harrisburg and college, you know, State College.

I don't know. Just like on its face. And like you said, Biden did better in Pennsylvania. So it's confusing to me like what would explain it. This is...

An excellent, excellent question. And some of it is... You're bringing out your almanac right now? I'm bringing out some of my... Well, this is looking at catalyst data. So this is their modeling of who voted in the 2020 election. And if you look at... All right. So in Pennsylvania...

Which, as you pointed out, you've got the Philly suburbs, right? And you've got the Pittsburgh suburbs. Those are great. Like Montgomery County is going to go 65, 75% for Kamala Harris. All right. So 80,000 votes. He won Pennsylvania by he carried white college voters, 53, 45. Okay. That's great. Now look at Wisconsin, a state that has, uh,

a bigger white non-college population. But among white college voters, like many of whom are living in Dane County, he won white college voters by 20 points. That's the answer I was looking for. It's the white college voters in Pennsylvania. Some of it's the white college voters. He did a tiny bit better. Like if you look at how...

He did with not white, non-college voters. He did just as well in Pennsylvania as Wisconsin. Yeah. And, you know, you've got to get,

in both cases, black turnout in your major cities. It feels like Joe Paterno's fault that there's something culturally about Penn State that is pumping out college-educated Trump fans at a higher rate than Wisconsin. I don't know. It feels like there's a Big Ten thing happening here. Well, I think about Wisconsin being...

For so many years, it has been so evenly divided, right, between the two parties. It's kind of like gotten calcified there. And the rural areas are just conservative, even though they used to be Democratic-leaning. But Dane County is growing faster now.

I guess maybe the way to explain it is that Wisconsin, it has been a perfect balance where for every Democrat that is moving over to Republicans in rural, which ancestrally Democratic areas, there's another Democratic voter that emerges in the suburbs of Milwaukee or in Dane County. And

That balance has been quite remarkable and, you know, evenly divided. In Pennsylvania, what I think has happened is that you've got the ancestrally Democratic areas, not just in the rural parts, but thinking about Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, you know, the western, northwestern part of the state. Allentown, Erie, all of those places that

you know, you would see Democrat Bob Casey's dad would carry by like 30 points, right? Young Casey's not going to win it by that percentage. And the reason that Biden carried Pennsylvania when Hillary Clinton didn't is he just did a couple points better, not in those immediate suburbs around Philly, but in those sort of, you know, smaller areas.

city regions. The one place that's fascinating about Pennsylvania, actually, which also goes into our down ballot races, is, you know, you think about, again, how the Scrantons of the world have been moving away from Democrats. The one part of the state that has been moving toward Democrats is in and around like the Harrisburg area.

And this is the one sort of bright spot in the state for Democrats. If you look like there's only so much more vote they can get out of Philly, there's only so much more you can get out of the suburbs of Philadelphia. But that part of the state is growing and is moving in their direction.

This was my 2020 back when I was doing, you know, anti-Trump political stuff, not just flapping my jaw on a podcast. I was just like more money in Harrisburg, more money in Harrisburg media market. I was like, that's where the, that's where the Republican voters against Trump are. Like that's where the gains are in Pennsylvania. I agree. I have one more. I'm hoping you can,

in the way that you've enlightened me that Penn State grads are the problem right now in Pennsylvania. I want to know what the Georgia to North Carolina thing is because there is like a conventional wisdom like that is congealed that it's like because of what happened in Georgia in 2020 that Georgia is a better bet for Democrats and, you know, because of Cal Cunningham's

texting problems and the narrow loss last time. That also doesn't make sense to me. Charlotte, you have two metros and obviously Atlanta is much bigger than Charlotte, but you have Charlotte and you have Raleigh and you have Asheville. And in the Charlotte burbs, similarly, you're wasting some of the suburban vote in Rock Hill. So maybe you Rock Hill Democrats could and the Cherry Hill Democrats could all get together and have a little migration across the border into swing states. But

you know, I guess fewer black voters, obviously, it just comes back to about black voters. You have these smaller black cities, too, in addition to Atlanta. And that's really what it is. That's a big piece of it. The black vote in Georgia, it's a third of the electorate. That's a big, big deal. And you've got 20% of the electorate in North Carolina is black. Now, you said 33% to 20? Yeah, 30% to 20. That basically answers it. That's big.

The other piece is, you know how the Atlanta thing is a big deal, too, because if you're in a major city now and you go, you know, you draw a circle around a major, draw like circles around major cities, like two miles out, five miles out, 10 miles out, 20 miles out. Right. It's like dark blue, blue, purplish, blue.

Purple, red, red, dark red, right? That's how it goes. It expands out. There's nothing like that in North Carolina. In part, like the density is a big issue. I was just like in Asheville a couple of weeks ago, and it's quite remarkable. You're in downtown Asheville, which is probably D plus, you know, 85, right? Yeah, right. Every...

Everybody, they got their crystals and they're brewing their own beer and kombucha. It's all... Little signs, all are welcome here. They got to make sure everybody knows they're welcome here. Everybody's welcome. Even though everybody knows because everybody's a Democrat. But then you drive like two miles outside of the city and it's like Trump flags, right? So there's no... There isn't that sort of...

buffer between dark blue and dark red. And that's the other challenge in a state like North Carolina is getting those areas that are fast growing. If you've been to North Carolina, you'll see like the excerpts just keep, especially in and around like wake and those counties, like the excerpts just keep spreading and spreading and spreading. Um,

Those become the key areas for this election and certainly for the next election. The other piece of it, Tim, is like for every kind of liberal who wants to go and, you know, have their readings done for them in Asheville by a licensed person.

tarot card reader there's a conservative person from the midwest or new york that's moving to wilmington to golf and retire this is right and the atlanta burbs to the like what your point is and those purple burbs like the alpharetta's my buddies from coming yes out there like you know once you get like 40 minutes outside of town that's getting pretty purple now yeah right it used to be it was like

blue and then it was like all the suburbs red red red red red now it's like purpley and you got to get into like pretty far out before you get into the dark red again that is enlightening it's going to be negative for bill crystal because bill crystal has been selling hard on the north carolina's undervalued thing but um a if you think about what it takes to

When North Carolina, then you've got to do. In fact, you can listen to our podcast this week. I sat down with Michael Bitzer, who's great politics professor, covers politics in North Carolina. And his theory of the case is.

Democrats have had two issues there. One, they really haven't maximized turnout of black voters outside of the urban core. Right. So you've got rural black voters that need to be engaged, have not engaged younger voters in a way that they should, and then haven't invested until now in those areas.

parts of the state that I just talked about that are, you know, they're still going to be Republican, but instead of being 65-35, you know,

Maybe it's 60-40, right? If you just get five points more in each one of those swing counties. You need all those Duke kids to re-register from New Jersey as well. See, it all comes back to New Jersey problems. So really the problem is New Jersey? Is that your answer to everything? Well, I mean, it's something that's coming to me as I'm getting more data inputs from you. Right, yeah.

Yeah, the Virginia's for haters, I think they tweeted this week, you know, an inverse of Virginia's for lovers.

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So let's do the house really quick. And then I have one last thing for you before I let you go. So we've talked very little about the house. I use your reports as kind of my rule of thumb on house stuff. And so if you just give us just like a four minute kind of lay of the land and just like a couple of bellwethers to look at, maybe that central Pennsylvania one and some others of how you see the house races. You know, I'm a house Stan. I grew up covering the house. Love it.

Here's the easiest way to think about this. Of those 435 seats that are up, only about 25 of them are going to be really competitive, like that will decide control of the house, right? Yeah.

And the good news, if you are a Democrat, is that it is expanding. The possible competitive races have expanded a bit with Harris on top of the ticket so that they put more seats in play. And also it keeps some of their incumbents who were kind of on the bubble with Biden on the top of the ticket in a much safer space. Okay. Yeah.

The other thing that if you're a Democrat, you're feeling better about is, you know, yes, there are battleground races in some of those swing states for the presidential, but a lot of them are in, you know, California, New York, Oregon, where it's pretty blue.

Ultimately, Democrats will need to win, of those closest races, to get to 218, they've got to win about 60% of the most competitive races, and Republicans need to win about 40%. You know, when it comes down to it, I do think Democrats need to have a bump at the end, whether that's a Harris bump, right, that the momentum is going that way, and that takes time.

those 5, 10 seats over the finish line. Or it's that the incumbents in those red states are so strong. So a Jared Golden, a Marcy Kaptur in Ohio, to your point about Central Pennsylvania, Matt Cartwright in Central Pennsylvania, those guys hold on even if Harris doesn't.

And then you get the blue state seats and then there you go. And that puts you over the top. So for the bellwethers, you know, Michigan is going to be critical. You've got two open seats there, both Democrats, right? This is Alyssa Slotkin's seat. She's running for Senate. That is an absolute like 50-50 district. If we get the results of that early on and that Democrats have won that, that's a pretty good sign.

For Democrats, because those are the kinds of seats where you're like, all right, that's a pure 50-50 and they're breaking Democrats way. Okay. They'll clearly pick up in the seats that are not 50-50, but are like 60-40. And yeah, Ohio will be fun too, because that is a state that comes in early.

And you've got Marcy captor in Toledo, Ohio been around obviously for, I think she may now be the longest serving. She has that awesome viral video with JV. Yeah. I'm going to put this in the show notes for people. It's really funny. And a new freshman member, Amelia Sykes, both of them are in, again, this is a state that Trump's going to win by eight plus points.

So Democrats holding on there would be a good measure of how successful they're likely to be in other parts of the country. Anything else you're looking at early? People love that. Like, you know, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, it's election night. Things that are coming in early counties or races or, you know, who counts quick. I get into this every year, Tim. I fool myself by looking at.

When polls close and when, right. And like, oh, okay. North Carolina is Florida. They often do not tell us the real story. Like if all you saw in 2022 was Florida, which is what we saw first. Yeah. Right. And it looked like, oh gosh, Democrats are, they're going to get crushed. Yeah. This is a blowout. And then like 10 minutes later, New Hampshire came in.

And that was an easy, easy win for the incumbent Democratic senator. So we've got North Carolina and Georgia are our two most important states that come in, quote unquote, on the earlier end. But we're not going to have the final results. So looking into a place like

seeing how much of the vote is in. But one of those outer counties, we talked about Cabarrus County, which is outside of Wake in North Carolina. And if Democrats have been able to just narrow that Trump lead there, that is a sign that for Bill Kristol, that they have cracked the code and they've sort of figured out how to win in that state.

And, you know, Pennsylvania, you're right, everybody's going to be going to Northampton County, which was, we'll go back to where you started this conversation about where the vote was coming in. Which is outside Allentown. Yep. Where the polls right now that, who did that poll again? That was Suffolk. Suffolk. Yeah, found Suffolk.

her leading in Northampton. Yeah. And, and doing better than, and do it again. It's just a poll. So it's like comparing a poll to an actual election result is kind of, it's kind of silly, but they interrupt five and Biden up one. Right. So like, that's to actually answer question is if Northampton County starts coming into Pennsylvania and it looks closer to five than one,

Then come was in business. We're going to start. Right. Cracking the coconuts. To your other crack at the coconut thing. But even to really go back to where we started and why this is a 50 50 race. You're talking about comparing it to Biden's number. So if she's up one in Erie, which I think that's what it was, which they had her up for Biden one by one by Biden one by one. Right. If she's winning by four.

Then you're right. That would be a confidence monitor for winning the state. But if it's back to like one to two points, then we're basically where we were in 2020, which is this is an 80,000 vote situation.

kind of race waiting four days for the media for the fake news media to have the balls to call the race that we knew that we knew was over on thursday that's okay that's a side thing that's a side complaint that i have what that they should have called it on thursday yeah we knew the race was over on thursday i gave them two more days everybody everybody's scared about what trump was going to do so they gave him two more days to to chill out right conspiracy theories anywho that's just a side rant we can do it another time i've got to go we got to go

Amy Walter. We've got to do things. No one's going to call you the human Xanax. You know, you didn't come on and offer any assurances, no calming assurances, no deep data analysis that reveals the secret silver bullet that guarantees a victory. There's nothing. We've got a close fucking race in the house and a close fucking race for the president. And all you've got to do is don't, Tim, don't make yourself crazy looking at those...

projections you need to stop I know it's so it's it can be soothing it's exhausting don't listen to our listeners Amy don't listen we need you we need you coming back here every day where I'll be updating you on the model and your mood your mood will be determined based on whether that model ticked up or ticked down okay that is how we are living the next 50 days all right listen if it works for you man it

It works for you. I'm not here. I am not here to yuck your yum, as the young kids would say. All right. That's it. I appreciate you so much. Yeah. Talk to you later. Bye. All right. Thanks so much to Amy Walter. I've got a few corrections, clarifications and send offs real quick. I got got on a fake Donald Trump bleat. I'm pretty good at this.

But, you know, it's out there, the AI world, you know, the fakesters, the Russians. When I said yesterday he bleeded O and 2, he didn't really do that. That was somebody else sending that and pretending to be Trump. Might be. I keep mixing up office space and the office. I don't know why. You know, we love and appreciate the bobs, especially here at the Bullwark Pod, the office space bobs. I was referencing the office yesterday when I said office space bobs.

People are upset at me for saying the bear is boring. I just want to extend my remarks on that. The first two seasons of the bear were pretty good. Season three was fucking boring. Okay. It was an absolute slog. Maybe it's good artistically. It's like reading a George Eliot novel or something, but it was a bear to get through, so to speak. And I won't apologize for that. Happy trails to Ted Drews Jr. Missed this a couple of weeks ago, 96 years old.

the frozen custard king of St. Louis. I have so many great memories having concretes at Ted Drew's and at the various spinoffs. A great American brought joy to a lot of people. RIP Ted Drew's. And finally, peace out to Diddy. Diddy got arrested yesterday. Hope you saw that. And, you know, I just think it's a little lesson for Donald Trump and everybody in his orbit. Eventually bad boys can be stopped. So we'll be seeing you all tomorrow.

Peace. Peace.

Who else but me? And if you don't feel me, that means you can't touch me It's ugly, trust me Get it right, dawg, we ain't never left We just move in silence and rep to the death It's official, I survived what I've been through Y'all got drama, the saga continues We ain't that bad, go window We ain't that bad, go window

Going nowhere.

We ain't going nowhere. We can't be stopped now. Cause it's bad boy fuck life. We ain't going nowhere. We gonna stay right here. Forever and ever and ever. Cause it's bad boy fuck life. We ain't going nowhere. We gonna stay right here.

The Bullwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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