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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we're doing our 2022 election wrap up with a bit of a Focus Group retrospective. Going into Election Day, much of the conventional pundit wisdom crescendoed into prognostications of a big red wave. But if you were listening to the Focus Group podcast, you weren't that surprised by the little red trickle we ended up getting.
We're going to talk about why so many of the races we've been following all year ended up breaking the way they did. And we're going to revisit past episodes that were signs of things to come. Just like when, you know, sitcoms used to do that thing where they'd cut together all the best clips. That's basically what we're going to do today. And my guest today is a three-peater, uh,
Amy Walter, editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report. Amy, my friend, thank you for being here. Is this the first three, Peter? Do I get a jacket? You are. You're always leading the pack. I am so proud to be in that club. Thank you so much. And yes, I'll be waiting for my embroidered
jacket in the middle. I do love swag. So listen, you're on the record as a listener of this show. Very much. And sometimes you hear me shout you out because you're one of my favorite people who thinks about politics. I appreciate you. Yes. And you've watched a bunch of these focus groups and have been on the show. So I just want to start by saying, in terms of how the election went-
Were you like shocked like everybody else was? Or did you feel like, yeah, this is kind of what I thought, mixed baggage? Right. Mixed baggage, definitely, especially the Senate side, which I know this is where the focus group spent so much time. And what I really loved was listening to these voters and
really have to deal with their cognitive dissonance, right? They could both be unhappy about the economy and inflation, but also not really crazy about these Republican candidates that were being offered to them. And so you heard them wrestle through that. On the House side, I was expecting Republicans to do a little bit better in that you could see
as we were coming into election day, that so many of these Republican candidates were within the margin. Maybe they were down a point. Maybe they were tied. And Sarah, you know as well as I do, when you go into sort of a traditional midterm election, the undecided voters break disproportionately for the party that's out of power, right? The change party. But in this case, that didn't happen. And I think...
It was surprising to see some of these candidates really hold on, despite the fact that both sides saw polling that showed these races were leaning, if not toward Republicans, were likely to break that way. But overall, I don't think anybody should have been surprised that Republicans, they win the House, not by as big a margin as they'd like to see. But as you and I have talked about from the very beginning, it's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very
candidates matters in statewide races when those states happen to be purple toss-up states. It didn't matter as much in the big dark red states or the dark blue states. It matters immensely in purple states. And that's where the focus group comes in. That is where these swing voters, we were listening to what they were telling us. They were telling us,
All kinds of things were wrong. They were frustrated with Joe Biden. They were frustrated with the economy. But man, when it came down to just vote choice, these candidates, in a lot of ways, they couldn't get there. But obviously, one of the big things that kind of overhangs this election, we'll get into a bunch of state-specific stuff in a second, but I wanted to go back to a group of suburban women who voted for Trump in 16 and then Biden in 20. And this group happened two weeks after the Dobbs opinion was leaked. And I think that's a good thing.
And I think the woman you're about to hear was the start of a long trend in the focus groups. Let's listen. Very concerned about Roe v. Wade. I'm Catholic. I consider myself pro-life, but I do also agree that there is a time and place where abortions are necessary. And the idea that the Republicans are kind of pushing that shit through just doesn't
It scares me. Something that's been precedent for 50 years or however long it's been, longer than I've been alive. And that just makes me really nervous. And not even necessarily just that, but what I've heard about how that can domino effect into other areas like same-sex marriage and things like that.
And so our elections are tomorrow. And so looking at candidates, you know, it's hard for me to, with that new knowledge, so quickly trying to look at the candidates and say, like, who's going to be able to do something? Because I do consider myself more of a fiscal conservative and more, you know, moderate to left leaning in terms of social issues. I think maybe for the longest time, I've just sort of done the Republican ticket because I,
I kind of had my blinders on and said, well, you know, fiscal conservative, you know, that's kind of what I feel like the Republicans are more so. But now I think the social issues are becoming more important for me to consider when I'm voting. So we're going to talk about abortion a lot in the context of other races. But we just heard this over and over again, the abortion thing where
It wasn't the thing that was front of mind or dominating. They did care about the economy. But when you get to vote choice, the vote choice, it was one of the big things that people put out there for why the candidates were too extreme. And so how do you think abortion ultimately ended up affecting things?
Yeah.
Think back to where we were in 2021 in November. The president's job approval ratings were pretty much where they were on election day in the mid-40s, and yet his party loses the governor's race in Virginia, a state he won by 10 points. And abortion was an issue that was used by the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, to try to call out Glenn Youngkin as being too extreme, even having him on tape saying, you
don't worry, when the election's over, we'll be able to do more on this issue. I just can't talk about it publicly. It didn't seem to move the needle because it was a theoretical conversation. By the time Dobbs happens, it's now, oh, this isn't theoretical anymore. This is reality. But
The thing to me, Sarah, that was really perplexing was how differently the issue played in different states. Right. So Texas passes a six week ban and there's frustration about it on the left and within the abortion rights community.
But it doesn't seem to have any impact at all in the governor's race or even as a top of mind issue. Or Georgia, a swing state where, again, they passed a law that was very restrictive, wasn't playing a starring role as much as it was in Pennsylvania or Michigan or even Wisconsin. So where it mattered, it mattered a lot. I think it did in some of these suburban districts.
that Democrats won in 2018, those former Republican districts filled with a lot of women who sounded like that focus group woman. I'm a Republican because I'm a fiscal conservative. I consider myself pro-life.
But I don't consider myself in favor of government restrictions. Right. And so those are the voters, I think, that were very much in play. And it was you're right. It was hard to understand how significant that was going to be in their vote. And what we saw were voters who both said, I don't think the economy is doing well. I don't really like Joe Biden that much, but I'm going to vote for a Democrat. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Okay, so we're going to work our way from east to west as we talk about the states. And I want to start in my home state, Pennsylvania. And I can tell you there is no candidate more reviled in these focus groups this year than Doug Mastriano.
I mean, we could like basically not find a swing voter who was voting for Doug Mastriano, which makes sense. Dude got crushed by 15 points. But the thing that was interesting to me, actually, from the Pennsylvania focus groups was that the voters actually liked Josh Shapiro. And I just want to play a couple of clips from swing voters who foretold this sort of absolutely crushing Shapiro victory.
Mastriano scares the crap out of me. He's terrifying. He terrifies me. He terrifies me. I have a friend who lost two babies, and if he gets in office, what he wants to do is she would have had to carry those babies to term and suffer through it. That's ridiculous. I always liked Josh Shapiro. I thought that he would make a good governor. When he renounced his...
candidacy, I knew that he would make a good candidate because he's helped a lot of people. Like, I mean, I've had problems like with something that he helped with. I had a contractor do something to me and Josh Shapiro was instrumental in helping me get back my money. So, I mean, it's not just that, but I feel like he's a man of his word.
This is just not always the case. Like you can get a lot of negative polarization where people are voting for the lesser of two evils. But I think what really just jumped out at me was how much a lot of the swing voters actively liked Josh Shapiro. Were you watching him? Like, do you think he's got a hate to do this? Such a hack question. Does he have a future? Does he have a future? You think this guy could be like a 24, 28 candidate? What do you think?
He's absolutely going to be in the mix. And it is somewhat unfortunate, to your point, that a lot of people are going to look at that race and say, well, of course he won. He was running against a guy that every swing voter you ever interviewed said, he scares me, right? So how hard can it be? But
Part of the reason I think he came into the race with pretty good favorable rating and a good base is that he spent his time as attorney general doing the thing that somebody like Maura Healey, who we'll probably hear a lot about too, the new governor in Massachusetts in terms of her future, going after big pharma, going after corporate actors that played badly. Right.
The Catholic Church. The Catholic Church and the sex abuse scandals there. So both of them taking on big, powerful institutions. The fact that she is able to and Josh Shapiro able to sell something more than just, look, I'm the Democrat. You like me because I'm going to be good on all of the
touchstones and cultural issues, but instead to say, actually, I've shown that I can deliver for you and I'm willing to take on even the biggest, most powerful institutions, that has an appeal that goes beyond partisanship. All these new governors, Sarah, don't you think we're going to hear a lot about these new Democratic governors? I do. I mean, look, I think
One of the things I've said to Democrats, you know, you guys don't have a lot of a bench here and they didn't seem to have a lot of good surrogates. And part of their messaging problem is not their message as much as their lack of messengers. And I think that's the problem with these big fields of candidates on both sides is like people get sort of overexposed as presidential candidates.
And then people start looking around like, oh, I don't want Elizabeth Warren again. And like, oh, no, Bernie Sanders. You know, it's like, OK, well, like, who are the new people? And I think that Whitmer, you know, winning by 10 points, I think Shapiro. I just think it gives the Dems a few more stars, people to look at and contemplate. And even, you know, some people to give some lessons on, hey, how do you win in some of these purpler states? Right.
Just shout out to Maura Healy as part of the lesbian tsunami that swept in. That's right. All two. All two of them. I mean, two more than ever. Two more than ever. Hey, you know, it's a pretty decent out of what, 50? It's a decent representation for the lesbians. There we go. We'll get them all in. All right. So let's talk about Pennsylvania Senate. So this race was called for Fetterman on election night. The final margin is like four and a half points, which is really, really solid. Right.
So Fetterman outperformed Joe Biden in a lot of key places like Lackawanna County, which is Scranton, Erie County. And if you compare the Oz Fetterman map to the Trump Biden map, you'll see a lot of rural red counties that break 76 percent for Trump, but only 70 percent for Oz Fetterman.
And we had talked to some of the Trump Biden voters, the swing voters in the suburbs who were really squeamish about Fetterman. And this was what was interesting to me is I think our typical swing voters that were the Trump to Biden voters, actually, a lot of them started to come around to Oz because they were kind of these college educated suburban folks that were like, oh, I don't know about Fetterman. But even back in May.
When we were talking to just Trump voters, the straight up sort of Trump voters in the more oral areas, we found real openness to Fetterman and some real mistrust of Oz. Let's listen. He did go around and have all these town halls all over the state, which at least he heard both sides of the issue. I have to give him that. I did like his ads that he was running during the primary. I've seen some of those, but apparently they're not true from what I'm hearing, but I'm
I would consider them, but I would have to research it a little bit more. Oh, I plan on voting for him. And, you know, recreational marijuana. Again, you know, what's the issue? You know, it's definitely not the same as alcohol. And I smoke, so I know I've been smoking for a long time. I mean, yeah, I'm totally for that.
I think from obviously a medical standpoint, he's brilliant. From a political standpoint, I think he's putting on a front, quite honestly. You know, I think he's trying to follow what he thinks Trump did, which is I've got a good TV show. I've got a lot of money and I've got friends everywhere you look. So I think he's thinking, well, if Trump did it, I can do it too. And then he got the endorsement of Trump. So he's like, well, if Trump thinks I can do it, then I really can do it. So for me, like stick with what you're good at.
These are all Trump voters, just through and through Trump voters, 16, 20. And they never liked Oz, this group of people. And so what do you make of Fetterman? And do you think that running people like him is something Democrats will try to emulate now going forward and trying to pick up more of these sort of white working class voters in these swing states? Right. It works in some places and it doesn't work in others. Right. We had a real life experiment in 2022. Tim Ryan,
He was essentially running a similar campaign as John Fetterman. He just happens to be running it in Ohio, a state that is much redder than
than Pennsylvania. But I remember so well, Sarah, listening to that podcast and thinking, huh, that's really interesting. But, you know, by the time we get to the fall, Republicans will have basically taken the bark off of Fetterman and exposed him as he's a Bernie liberal, he's soft on crime. And now you go back and you listen to those folks. And it was pretty clear that that was going to be a harder message to sell than
than we believed or certainly I believed at first because they had this image of him as just a regular guy who wants to decriminalize marijuana, who looks genuine compared to, as that one woman put it, the guy who's been on TV forever and thinks, how hard can it be to run for office? So that authenticity gap was so important there.
And to me, I just keep going back to the summer right after the primary. So June, July, September.
Oz kind of disappeared. Totally. And there was this vacuum there that the Fetterman campaign brilliantly filled. And they made this race of I'm the regular guy. He's the outsider. He's the New Jersey guy. He's the huckster. He's a fraud. I'm the real deal. And by the time the Oz campaign got up and Republicans got up on the air with the crime and the he's too liberal piece, it did
damage to him. But you're right. It wasn't enough to convince probably some of those voters in your focus group that he was too risky of a pick. Right. Which is the bigger risk going with Fetterman or going with Oz? And they just I think we're ready to say, you know, Fetterman may end up being a liberal Democrat, but at least he's like the real deal, as opposed to this guy who doesn't even seem like he knows anything about what he's talking about.
These are places where you'll do focus groups with Trump voters who like also like Bernie. Like there just is that sort of core of voters that kind of hate the establishment and they want the authenticity and they're really kind of hate the like slick voters.
political performance stuff. And I think that what was showing up in the polling as Oz closing the gap, because he was closing it, the crime stuff was really landing with the suburban voters. Like it just was like a lot of the swing voters we were talking to. This is one of the races I got kind of weak need on, even though I knew how intensely people love Fetterman. It was all over the groups. It was just all over the groups, how much people love Fetterman and
But I was like, I don't know, man, the suburban voters, the crime stuff was working and it stuck to certain people like Mandela Barnes and Fetterman more than
They have a record on this. They do. I mean, this isn't... Unlike Shapiro, who has a very different record on it, right? Correct. And so it was sticking to them with those suburban voters who didn't want to see crime coming out of the cities and into their suburbs. But for the rural voters, the Trump voters, or just the redder areas, they didn't watch Fetterman's debate. They didn't care about Fetterman's debate. They just thought he was a fine dude. Out there in Pittsburgh, they were like...
This guy's good. Who is Dr. Oz? He's dude's not even from here, which was basically Fetterman's message. And I think there's was a lot of advantage to your point about Oz being gone to some of these Democrats who like they did this with Tudor Dixon, too, where they spent a lot of money and defined these candidates early.
Tudor Dixon was defined by her comments around, you know, if a 12 year old's raped, she should have to carry the baby to term. And Fetterman defined Oz as an outsider. And like, even the crime stuff, none of it could overcome it. I'm supportive of some of this idea of, of setting the narrative early and trying to lock people in. Cause I think that worked. Yeah. But Fetterman had the other advantage, which was a very non-competitive primary, shall we call it? So Fetterman,
Conor Lamb didn't lay a glove on him. And meanwhile, Republicans are beating themselves silly over all kinds of stuff. And, you know, we did. We all assumed that Republicans would eventually come home, which you're right. They did. But they came home inconsistently. You know what I would like to do? I haven't done this yet, but is to put the map of Fetterman and then say like a Bob Casey or maybe even in the long ago days.
like the early 2000s or the 90s, where Democrats would do much better in Lackawanna County, would do much better in those working class areas around Pittsburgh than they would in the suburbs of Philadelphia. You know, he didn't put that entire coalition back together because it's never going to look like that again. But being able to do both of those things, right, do well enough in the suburbs and
And hold on to some of that old coalition in Scranton and Pittsburgh. That is a good model. But again, it has to be the right candidate and has to be the right state. And so to me, one of the stories of this election was candidates mattered a lot, but not everywhere. Yeah.
All right, let's go to Michigan, where Governor Gretchen Whitmer beat Tudor Dixon by about 10 points. And there was also a ballot initiative to add the right to reproductive freedom to the state constitution, which passed by about 13 points. Now, this is one of those races where people were wigging out right at the end. They were like, oh, my God, Whitmer's in trouble. I never thought Whitmer was in trouble because our Michigan swing voter groups, even though they had kind of mixed reviews of Whitmer, Dixon was like a non-starter. Let's listen.
I think Whitmer did a pretty good job with the pandemic. And I think she did a pretty good job with everything except fixing the roads. But I mean, we've had a lot of other candidates promise more than that and not come through with as much. So, but I really don't like Tudor Dixon because of the abortion thing, as well as her being a Trump supporter and,
So I said I was on the fence, but I'm leaning more towards Gretchen. You know, she locked the state down early, but then kind of the restrictions kind of just went away and there was really no explanation, you know, of opening up or why we were shut down for so long.
And over time, I've now seen different ad and campaigns for Tudor Dixon. You know, I kind of disagree with her stance on abortion and things like that. So that's where I'm kind of like in the middle. I wish another candidate would stand out. But right now, that's probably my two choices. I'm leaning more towards Gretchen.
So we did a bunch of swing voter groups in Michigan and people are mad about the roads. Gretchen Whitmer, if you're listening, you have to do something about the roads. People are very upset about them. And they were also, they had lots of COVID complaints, but like 10 points, that is a big, impressive victory. And so it's weird because it felt like from the focus groups that they were doing a lesser of two evils thing. Like they just did not like Tudor Dixon, but I don't know in a swing state like Michigan, like Trump,
Won Michigan in 2016. Like, what do you make of a 10-point victory for Whitmer? I do think this is where an issue like abortion and isn't this another Secretary of State? Moon attack. Caramo. Okay. Christina Caramo. Yeah, total nutcase. Okay, because I know you've talked about
her and the many other Secretary of State election deniers. So the energy was all on the Democratic side, right? With that ballot initiative, Tudor Dixon, the Secretary of State's race, two competitive House races. And by the way, they both overperformed too, Alyssa Slotkin and Dale Kildee, in districts that are really tough. And the
The exit polls, right, take it with a grain of salt, et cetera. But this was one state where the abortion issue, it was something like 40 plus percent of voters said that was their top issue. I mean, it blew away inflation as a top issue. And that's what's fascinating about these governor's races, right? If we had this conversation in 2020,
February of 2021, and we said, what do you think the governor's races are going to be about next year? We would say, oh, the reaction to COVID. And then, of course, we watched November 21 and the schools and parents, and absolutely, it's going to be about COVID. It wasn't about COVID at all, right?
And I remember listening to this podcast with Tim Alberta. You know, he makes a very good case for why her pandemic behavior, both personal as well as the rules for the state, rubbed people the wrong way. And it could be a liability. But at the end of the day, it wasn't anything like that. Yeah. I mean, I got to say, though, when I watched her debate, I was like,
You're actually good. You're good. I think you're impressive. Yeah. There's no way you can bounce out of a swing state like Michigan with that kind of a margin and not start getting some real energy behind you. Oh, there is no doubt about that pressure that is going to be on her.
or on the others in the Democratic Party to be pushing her. I don't know. Is it 24? Is it 28? Whatever it is, she is on absolutely on the short list. She's on short list. Yeah. All right. Let's head to Nevada. So secret normie Joe Lombardo eked out a win in the governor's race over Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak.
we had only one person receptive to him and our group of disaffected Nevada Democrats. I actually liked this group. This was a different kind of group for us. You know, we knew that in Nevada, the thing that everybody was worried about was that
that all these Democrats who were mad were going to vote against Sisolak for the governor and then Cortez Masto, who was like the most endangered member of the Senate. That's the one Republicans really thought they could pick up because they just thought these like independents and sort of soft Democrats were going to come their way. But
Interestingly, because we did detect a lot of people being upset with SysLac, but nobody was interested in Adam Laxalt, who ended up losing to Catherine Cortez Masto. And there was a major reason why. Let's listen. I love Cortez Masto. I think she does her best to serve the Nevadans. She's doing great with health care, lowering the cost of medications. And I mean, she's working with law enforcement. She's doing a great job in my opinion.
I think she's, you know, doing okay. I wouldn't say great, but it seems like she kind of goes to bat for Nevada. You know, I'm not saying, you know, I always land on their side, but I think we could do worse for sure. I'm undecided. I just know that he ran for governor a while ago and lost. And pretty much, you know, I mean, I know that he's pro-life and it's kind of extreme.
with the pro-life, but it's not just that. It's with no exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the mother's life if needed. Right. That's a definite no for me, no matter what. So this was one of those groups where they did the thing where nobody talked abortion at the top. Nobody said it was a key issue. But then as soon as it came to candidate choice,
Between Cortez Masto and Laxalt, abortion and like the extremism overall became the thing. And I had Ralston on. Ralston watched a couple of groups with me. Ultimately, he predicted and he man, he was he out on a limb on this. He predicted that Sisolak was going to lose and Cortez Masto was going to hang on. And I think I know I know because he came on right before that.
the election that part of was thinking was watching groups like this because people were mad at Sisolak over some of his COVID stuff. But with Cortez Masto, they're like, yeah, she's okay. But more, they were also like, Laxalt's a crazy man. Right. And this is another place where the funding issue mattered. I don't know when Cortez Masto first went up. I'd have to go look at
the logs from Ad Impact, but she was up on the airwaves very early with ads that focused almost exclusively on how she had helped Nevada come back from the pandemic. And obviously, this is a state where the pandemic hit, not just hit incredibly hard, because this is a state that needs tourists and conventions, etc., to thrive. But
But it also hasn't bounced back as quickly as other parts of the country. So people still struggling here. And so she had to make the case that even though things hadn't really gotten 100 percent back to normal, she was doing all that she could to get back.
resources back to folks who were hurting. And so I think that's what you heard from that very first voter, right? Which was, look, she's doing her best. She's trying hard. She's helping us with healthcare. So those ads clearly were having an impact. And then, you know, this is something that John Ralston said to us too, from the very beginning. And I know on your podcast, which was Laxalt wasn't a very good candidate. He looked good in comparison to
to the other people that we've been talking about, Sarah, but in terms of
quality in a swing state, Lombardo was, he was the much stronger candidate. In fact, if you had flipped the tables, put Lombardo in the Senate race, I'd be very curious to see what would have happened in that instance, because Lombardo was from Clark County and too understood then what it means to have to win in a swing state and made the economy the issue, which again, when we're talking about the governor's race and the impact
that COVID restrictions had on people's livelihoods, it was a more compelling message and one that I think resonated more with voters. Yeah, we call him a secret normie in our shop because he started out in the primaries kind of yunkiny, but he was doing some of the election denial stuff, but like he never went very hard on it. And as soon as he was in the general, he pivoted hard to the economy and like never really looked back.
Well, and then who had that story about how Trump learned that he didn't say he was a great president during the debate and Trump was mad and let him know it. And so at the last Trump rally in Nevada, he made sure to say he was a great president while he was on the rally stage, but then...
didn't really mention him again. So you're right. It is very Yunkin-y where you're able to appease the Trump wing of the party without alienating enough of the independent voters. And it's hard to do. And-
In fact, he's the only Republican to defeat a sitting Democratic incumbent. Yeah, because Evers pulled it out there in Wisconsin. That's right. That's right. Okay, let's go to Arizona. So Mark Kelly defeated Blake Masters by about five points in the Senate race. Yeah.
I thought this race was really driven by personalities. And, you know, you and I talked about vibes the two candidates gave off. Mainly the people thought Masters was a weirdo. So McConnell ally Stephen Law reportedly said that Blake Masters was the worst testing candidate in focus groups he'd ever seen, which sounded very familiar to me. So let's listen to what our focus groups thought of the candidates starting with Masters.
My impression of Blake Masters is that he could be as dangerous to Arizona as Trump was to the end of his term. Of course, Trump supports him, so figure it out. He is not my choice at all. I just think he can't be trusted. I think he is just like Trump in some cases. So no, I'm not a fan. Some of this is due to the TV ads you see with all his quotes and everything. And, you know, I just sit there and I'm like,
Okay, we've reached double digits on very questionable things he said.
He did make the comment about he's strong on abortion one way with no exceptions. And then when he realizes that it doesn't work well for his campaign, he goes back and whitewashes his website of everything. His comments about the Unabomber, his comments about the military leadership, privatizing social or social security. But it's just one thing after another. And it's like, at what point is like, you know, this guy is he's shady.
There's something about him that's shady. He's young too. He's only like 35 years old. I'm older than the guy.
I think we need the Republican vote in the Senate. The Blake Masters is not the Republican vote that I want there. Or at least he's not the guy with the Republican vote that I want there. So it falls back on, I got to go with Kelly. I don't like Kelly for a lot of reasons. He's anti-gun and so on for obvious reasons. Sure, but he's the lesser of two evils here and I got to go with him. He seems more of the diplomatic type. Blake Masters doesn't strike me as the diplomatic type.
Masters just was like unlikable, like he was an unlikable guy and the voters didn't like him. And even when they were like not that hot on Kelly and Kelly was getting tied to Biden a little bit, they were still like, but he's fine. He's fine. I remember early in the cycle talking to a Republican strategist who said, you know, the best thing for the Masters campaign would be to not run ads with him in them. Yeah.
That's what they need to do. But he kept going to camera, right? All the ads were to camera. What I love about not just these focus groups, but just campaigns in general, we assume that, oh gosh, voters don't pay attention and they don't really care. And you can just run millions and millions of dollars worth of ads and win that way because these are big states, big media markets.
Voters can sniff out people really quickly and immediately go, don't like that person. Don't trust her. Oh, that person seems like they're authentic. That person is totally faking it. Right. They do it instantly. And I think that's.
That was pretty clear from the beginning that Masters' only hope here in winning this race was that Biden would just totally collapse and bring Kelly with him and that Kelly was just going to get caught up in the depressed Democratic base.
But what we saw in every one of these races, and this is why your Trump to Biden voters and your swing voters mattered so much, because how did they all win these races? Somebody like Mark Kelly, somebody like Cortez Masto, they're winning independent voters now.
by either double digits or high single digits. That's not supposed to happen in a midterm election. The out party wins the independent voters, right? Those are the folks, the ones who say, I don't really like Biden. They're still voting for the Democrat. I'm somewhat disapproving of the economy. They voted overwhelmingly for the Democrat. So to not be able to sell your candidate at a time when people don't feel great about the incumbent party
is pretty remarkable. Dude, and you were onto this. This is something I remember reading from you early on, which was like the decoupling of these candidates from Biden and how like just unusual that is. It's so unusual. I mean, I looked at the group of voters who called themselves somewhat disapprovers, right? So they didn't hate Biden at all.
But they also didn't think he was doing a very good job. And in all these different polls, they were voting for a Democratic candidate with a huge undecided. And so talking to pollsters and other campaign folks, it was like, OK, these are really interesting group of voters, but I bet they're just not going to end up voting. They probably sit this out. They're younger. They're probably less motivated. Well, it turns out they did show up and they voted for Democrats by four points and
Just as a point of reference, in 2018, those somewhat disapprovers of Trump, they voted for Democrats by 30 points. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like that just doesn't happen. Right. This was supposed to be an election about the economy. And yet.
the candidates and we'll go back to the first issue, the issue of abortion, make this much more of a choice election than one just about the economy. In the same way, Sarah, that 2018 wasn't about the economy. Remember, Republicans were like, this will be fine. The economy is awesome. People are really happy with their 401k. And Trump has actual positive approval ratings on the economy.
Yeah. Voters were like, yeah, the economy is doing well. I'm not voting for a Republican. Are you kidding me? I hate Trump. I'm not voting for them. I'm going to actually I'm going to loop back around to some of this. I want to dig in at the end to talk a little bit about Trump and other things that were informing these decisions. But I want to just finish with I think it's the race I was just the most scared about, just the governor's race in Arizona, because Katie Hobbs, which is clearly the weaker candidate,
Like she was a weaker candidate than Kelly. Kerry Lake was a stronger candidate than Masters in a lot of ways. And yet Hobbs was able to hang on. Let's hear what voters thought of Hobbs and Lake starting with Hobbs.
I don't think she'll hurt us too much. I don't think she's going to do anything good for the border. I don't like the idea of supporting sanctuary cities, things like that. But I don't know if she can accomplish that anyway. So, yeah, it's just the extreme other side is what scares me more, I think. And
And we probably will still have a Republican state-led government, other than the governor. So I don't know what she can get done. Carrie Legge is a nut job. She is a right of right. I don't think she's in touch with...
Anybody that is even close to even conservative, let alone moderate. I mean, she is so far to the right that, I mean, I think she will destroy Arizona if she has the opportunity. And unfortunately, our legislature will feed right into her politics. So she scares the hell out of me. And I hope that there's a chance that she will not win.
But unfortunately, right now, polling is looking like she is bleeding from what I see. So in the focus groups, and we did a bunch in Arizona, because obviously it was a really important state, had a big governor, secretary of state race, and also a Senate race. So we went in there a lot.
I did find swing voters mostly going for Hobbs, but in this group, I remember there were at least two guys who were going to vote for Lake. It was funny because one was a Lake Kelly voter. Yeah. How do you – how do they sort of rationalize the Lake Kelly voter? He was mad. He was mad at Hobbs for not debating. He thought it was just a weak sauce move. And, you know, I've seen people subsequently –
sort of try to retcon the Hobbes decision not to debate and say like, see, it was the right thing to do. I continue to disagree with that. I think she should have. However, there's no denying she won. She won by less than 20,000 votes, but that's a bigger margin than 2020. And I want to run a theory by you, which is,
It's different state to state, as you've noted, and I completely agree. States are just so different. But there's a shifting that's going on in the political coalitions, and there's some political realignment where you see these college-educated suburban voters moving more to the Democrats because they hate this Trumpy brand of Republican politics, and Republicans picking up more of these working class voters, not just white working class, but working class voters in general. And normally, I argue that Democrats are getting the worst of that. A
alignment because there's just more working class voters than there are college educated voters. However, in a midterm election, these college educated suburban voters are more likely to turn out. And I think that that was just a big help in a state like Arizona. What do you think? I think that's exactly right. And look, when we have the final numbers for this election, I'm very curious to see that because
I think what we saw in many of these competitive races in suburban areas, more white than not, you had really pretty significant turnout. But in places in California, Florida, and New Jersey, safe Democratic districts that are majority-minority districts,
very low turnout and where the Democrat is winning by 15 points in districts that Biden carried by 30. And so that's really the question, Sarah, which is what happens when you get a sort of quote unquote traditional turnout?
And Carlos Odio, who is an analyst with the Equis group on the progressive side, working on issues with Latino voters and his analysis thus far in Arizona, was that in Maricopa County, in those Latino heavy precincts, it's not that Hobbs and Kelly did better than, say, the 2018 cinema showing. Mm-hmm.
But they didn't do worse than 2020, right? So they basically held steady, which is that ultimately the kinds of voters they needed to win in those Latino precincts did continue to vote for Democrats and the coalition that has succeeded in electing Sinema, Kelly, Biden, and now Hobbs is suburban Phoenix and
and Latinos, right? It's still there. This to me is sort of the whole thing about the 2022 Senate races and governors too. But you go, all right, where's the battleground for control of the Senate and governorships? Okay. Mostly in states that Biden narrowly carried in 2020. All right. So what kind of candidates should Republicans put forward in these states? Should they put forward candidates that look a lot like the candidate who lost there in the 2020 election or a candidate
That maybe could win there. You know what? Let's go with the candidate who lost. Right. Let's just let's just have more cowbell. Right. Like a Trump like candidate in a state that Trump lost in 2020 did not ever seem like a great idea.
However, if I'm a Democrat looking at this election, I wouldn't feel great overall about the percent of the vote that moved to the right. I mean, part of the reason Republicans did not do as well in the House is that they underperformed in those districts that Biden won by like one to seven or so points. But
What happens when you get a general election electorate that, especially when it comes to Trump, he turns out people that we just cannot find? They don't come out at other times. And so I always worry about spending too much time looking at a midterm electorate and assuming it's going to translate over to the next presidential election.
But I think you're right in that you say, well, who is more likely to turn out in a midterm election? And why has that traditionally helped Republicans up until the sort of Trump era? Well, because it's white, more educated and wealthier voters that tend to turn out consistently. And that would help Republicans win in a lot of those districts. But now Democrats have those districts. That's right.
Hey, just as like a way to wrap up, your baseball analogy was one of my favorite things that I saw on Twitter. I would like to give my own sort of like, here's what I think happened just as a kind of a wrap up. But why don't you do the baseball thing and like give your here's what I think happened like succinctly. Right.
So if we think about it in baseball terms, part of my frustration with the way that many people cover politics is that they cover it basically just in the ninth inning. And so if somebody hits a home run and the game's over, it's a walk-off home run, you say, oh, well, so-and-so won the game. But
There were a whole lot of other innings that led to that moment, things that did or didn't happen that allowed that home run to be decisive. And so if I think about the 2022 election in that term, we start off the first couple of innings, Democrats...
start off a little bit in a hole, only in that we know historically it's hard for the party in power to win in a midterm election. So let's say Republicans maybe started with a man on base, but where Democrats got a good two, three innings because the Biden administration was following through on the promise made in the campaign. We're going to get past COVID and the economy was going to come back.
And that worked until about June, July of 2021, when it all kind of came crashing down with Delta and inflation. And then, of course, Afghanistan and then the infighting in Washington. And that's basically...
innings four or five or so where it becomes, oh my gosh, this is looking like a traditional midterm election blowout, especially after the results in Virginia and New Jersey. But we get into the spring, I guess. So we're now in like the sixth inning or so. Things are still looking pretty dire for Democrats. But then we get into, well, let's call it six and seven. And that's the summer of
2022, that was sort of the turning point in this game where we have the Dobbs decision, we have success legislatively for Democrats, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, Republicans are fighting amongst themselves, Democrats are kind of united, but
And then, of course, Donald Trump taking up all the oxygen for most of the summer, whether it was Mar-a-Lago or January 6th or his rallies and his attacks on Republican candidates. And it kind of puts the game into a very different place where it looks like now this game is tied up.
But then I think it really was the last couple of innings where it's true that momentum was shifting. You could see it in the polling. It was tightening up. That lead that Democrats had in the sixth and seventh inning was starting to fade. And so that's what gets us to the ninth inning, where it's a tied game. And in some of these races, I would, again, my...
Years of following politics would tell me that, all right, in a tied anything, the tie goes to the runner, which in this case would be the Republican Party. But in this case, that wasn't.
what happened. It's actually the tie went to the Democrats because in these swing states, independent voters, swing voters said, you know what? It's like that person in the Arizona focus group. You know, maybe I don't really like what Democrats are doing, but I don't know that they're going to do as much harm. I'm less worried about the damage or the risk of voting for this Democrat than voting for a Republican who seems way out of step.
And so I think that's the way to think about how this whole series of events came to get to this very close nightmare. And then, of course, extra innings in Georgia. Extra innings. Because, of course, Georgia. What do they call that? Free baseball. Free baseball. So...
because you and I talked a lot over the past, you know, year and a half and you sat in some focus groups and I'll just say, if you and I go back to that phase of Delta Afghanistan, one of the things that I was saying about the focus groups at the time was just like how wild the enthusiasm gap was, right? Like Republicans were still in like, this was stolen from us mode. They wanted to vote for any living, breathing Republican, didn't care who that showed up at the Virginia races, but,
McAuliffe was making it a referendum on Trump, which just was not working there. And there was this pent up energy around the grassroots Republicans in Virginia. And then you saw the independents break over a lot of local issues that COVID, schools, things like that.
What Dobbs did, and what I always try to say to people is like, what I saw Dobbs doing is, is it evened out the enthusiasm gap that was so disproportionate in favor of the Republicans. And I don't think it was like the kind of cosmic game changer. You know, you don't see people in the streets and it didn't create a massive blue wave or like a wild rejection. Like you said, it was sort of state to state, but it did even out the enthusiasm gap in a bunch of places where it really mattered and probably overall. But then also,
Also, there is a real sense from people. So I do a lot in the democracy community, whatever that means. But, you know, people who who are concerned about all these election deniers, as I was, especially those running for governors and secretaries of state who are going to be in a position to certify elections. And it was a struggle for me because I could tell from all the focus groups that democracy matters.
was not something that people would say that mattered to them. I don't think there's ever been a swing focus group where someone's been like, oh, gas prices, the economy, crime, inflation, and democracy. Like, just never happens. And yet, I do think the January 6th committee missed
mattered some in helping to raise the salience of some of the sort of election denialism. And just like crime fell on certain candidates in some ways, I also felt like the democracy stuff had hit these election deniers. Mark Fincham, Secretary of State candidate in Arizona, hit Doug Mastriano. People who were at January 6th, bus people to January 6th, ran on election denialism platforms, which ended up being a lot of the Republican candidates in these swing states. Gary Lake
for example. And so I actually think that democracy did kind of matter. There's also this Venn diagram of people who like are an extreme election denier is like a perfect circle with people who are extreme on abortion. And so that kind of came together to create a picture of a candidate that voters just thought was too crazy, that these swing voters and these independents just could not get there on because they were like, these people are nuts. And it wasn't because
because they had this like deep enduring sense of democracy. But democracy was there, in my opinion. It was on the ballot. And sort of once the enthusiasm gap had been sort of evened out by abortion and Dobbs, you basically had a dogfight for these independent voters, a dogfight that Democrats won because of how bad the candidates were. Right. Yes. And so without Dobbs, and I would say to your point, without
Trump and January 6th, et cetera, in the mix, it would have probably looked a lot like November of 2021, like the Virginia governor's race, where you just didn't have as much enthusiasm on the Democratic side. And independents are more Republican-leaning independents. Is that what you are saying? Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. But I guess my question for you, my kind of closing question is like, where does this leave us? You know, like, is abortion...
Something that is going to make a difference in enthusiasm and turnout for cycles to come. Are Republicans going to recalibrate away from these crazy candidates, knowing that while they are poison to independent voters and swing voters, they all got through their primaries. Part because Trump pulled them there, but also because base voters want them. And so where does this leave us now?
So I have been thinking about this a lot, and I think we're going to get kind of a preview of it in 2023 because the folks here in Virginia, where I am, we have off-year elections and their legislative elections in 2023. You have in Glenn Youngkin, a governor who is talking about, we'll see what sort of abortion laws, et cetera, how that plays here, right? So even though
Dobbs happened. Everybody's moving forward. We know that so many of these states still have to go and either adjust the laws that are already on the books or perhaps put ballot initiative on for voters to vote on in 2024. So I do think this debate is going to continue. The other thing, Sarah, that I think a lot about is a great observation made by
Political scientist John Sides, who's at Vanderbilt, and his colleagues wrote a book called The Bitter End, which is a review of the 2020 election. And their point is we are now so deeply polarized that we've become completely calcified.
The races that moved in this election were ones that were already right on the edge, right? So they're purple states in the presidential, or they were purple districts in the last election. So those were the only places that moved from red to blue or blue to red. Everything else stayed exactly the same. The reds maybe got a little redder. The blues maybe got a little less blue because of turnout. But the bottom line is,
This is now not a bug, but a feature that we've now had, what, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, the fight for control of the House and the Senate coming down to, and the presidency, of course, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 votes in just a handful of states and a handful of districts.
So we're fighting over this very small pie, which would seem to make our politics more predictable because it's not as if we're seeing these big sea changes, right? Oh, my gosh. I mean, we do have sometimes a surprise. Lauren Boebert could lose. But other than that, nothing is surprising. But everything's surprising because all it takes is three Senate seats.
moving toward Democrats at the end. Boom, there we go. Democrats now have control of the Senate. And you're right, the Dobbs decision helping to motivate Democrats. But as we said, it didn't help Tim Ryan in Ohio, didn't help Sherry Beasley in North Carolina. So it is still those states that we're talking about, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Michigan, they are all that we're going to be talking about from now on. Hmm.
We didn't even get to split ticket voters, which is another thing you and I will talk about a lot this cycle. I'm sorry. We'll get to it. You know, we've got plenty of time. We've got plenty of time. As my friend JBL would say, good show, long show. Amy Walter, thank you so much for coming back for the third time to the Focus Group podcast. It was so great to have you and talk through all of this.
And thank you to all of you who have been with us all cycle. We are going to do one more episode. We're going to go down to Georgia one last time for this Georgia runoff. That will likely be our final episode of the season. So we're going to be back here next week. We're going to do this again. See you there.