How Chaos Helps Donald Trump, Plus the Return of "Javanka"?
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. On this episode, I speak with Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith about some messaging that he's testing that he thinks could help pull Joe Biden out of the water and possibly even capture some elusive Nikki Haley voters in those swing states.

We also talk about double haters, you know, those voters who hate both Trump and Joe Biden, and how the chaos around Biden might actually be helping Trump. I know, Trump himself is considered the biggest chaos agent out there, but maybe not as much as we think. But first, I want to talk about some of my latest exclusive reporting at puck.news, another reason to subscribe to my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest.

I'm hearing from sources close to Ivanka and Jared that Ivanka is feeling around, poll testing her friends, floating the idea of returning to Trump's orbit. That means the campaign and then possibly administration. This is a significant about face because in 2022, when Trump was standing alone on that stage in that ballroom in Mar-a-Lago announcing that he was running for president again, he was at his lowest.

He had just endorsed these very extreme MAGA candidates like Mehmet Oz and Kerry Lake that had lost their elections in states that Republicans were expected to win in the Senate.

The party was furious at him. They were ready to move on after January 6th, and suddenly Ron DeSantis is polling ahead of him in New Hampshire. Finally, they had their MAGA action figure they always wanted. Ivanka wasn't at her father's announcement and hours later put out a statement distancing herself from him, saying she's not interested in being involved in politics.

But now as his prospects look better and it looks like it might be a 50-50 chance that he returns to the White House, she's starting to see how she could fit into all of that. There's also the whole Jared Kushner of it all, her husband. He's got this $3 billion private equity fund and a lot of that money was raised from...

from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. In fact, $2 billion were raised from the Saudis. So if he was to join the White House in a way that was on the up and up, avoiding any conflicts of interest, he would likely have to divest. Although who knows in the Trump administration if that would be necessary. For more details on all of it, check out my story, Ivanka Interrupted.

Evan, you are a Democratic pollster. You've offered your blueprint, your polling to the Biden campaign and White House. And what I hear so often from Democrats is don't trust the polling. It's too far out. Don't look at the polling. Move.

Most of the polls show Trump ahead of Biden, at least like the popular vote in a number of battleground states. You know, Biden is behind by like three to five points. What do you think? Do you think we should trust the polling right now? Even your polling shows them even right now. Yeah, I would say we can't trust the polling on what's going to happen in the election. You know, polling is always just a snapshot in time. It has very, uh,

little predictive power, it's not a magic trick. It can't tell you what's going to happen in the future. So I would say any polling out there around the horse race is... It shows something that's up for grabs. I don't even think there's conclusive polling on the effects of things like RFK, who he's better for or worse than. I don't think we can judge that yet. But I think we can trust the polling

as science, right. As, as what, what it really can be, which is a description of the electorate currently and what they care about, what voters care about, what they want to see, what they're upset about, uh, that stuff all works, right. Uh, what doesn't always work is when you try and substitute the polling for an election and say, okay, it's, you know, Biden's up 0.4, Trump's up 1.6. That stuff is just, you know, is, is nonsense. And, uh, I, I,

You know, voters will have their say. Voters also are going to make a decision. Right. There's these two candidates are extremely familiar to the American electorate. There isn't much left to learn about who Joe Biden is as a person, who Donald Trump is as a person. So there are voters who still want to see.

What happens over the next couple months? Who delivers for them? Who makes the right kinds of promises? Who hits the right sort of note? And then the election day will be the real poll. That's a good setup for what I wanted to ask you further into the conversation. But we do know so much about these two people. How can advertising be effective? I mean, I feel like from what you've just told me, you think that

polling helps to adjust policy, right? To hit on what the various voting blocks that you still need to win over, what they want to hear, how to target them. But like,

is political advertising really working? Can it work for these candidates where like a lot of the beliefs about them are baked in even among the electorate that they're trying to steal or at least reactivate? Yeah. In Blueprint, you know, we tend to stay away from the horse race polling. We did one just as sort of calibration exercise to kind of see where we were. But the overwhelming majority of our polling looks at exactly what you're talking about, which is what will actually convince people to vote a certain way? What do people really care about? What do they want to hear?

You know, we're an explicitly Democratic project. We're trying to elect Democrats. We're trying to help the Biden campaign message effectively and other Democrats up and down the ballot, swing congressional races, senators. You know, we even talked to state parties, unions. Your polling shows...

Trump and Biden tied at 47%, right? And this is likely voters? That was registered voters. Okay, so they're not necessarily likely voters. Democrats seem to think that when you look at just likely voters, that helps Biden, right? Yeah, it tends to. Again, what is a likely voter? You know, six months out from an election. We still aren't sure. There are voters who say they're going to stay home.

I think horse race polling at this moment in time is not a place to focus. But you did note that Donald Trump's approval rating is three percent higher than Biden's. It is. It's a retroactive. We tested a retroactive approval rating of how people approved of his time as president. Right.

which was, you know, 2016 to 2020, which now feels in many ways like ancient history. Wait, so it's 3% higher than it was when we asked, when we asked voters, how did you, how do you approve of Donald Trump's time as president? Not,

Not necessarily who he is currently or anything like that, but how do you approve of his performance when he was president versus Biden's current performance as president? Donald Trump's three points higher. Now that's pretty close to margin of error. Uh, but it's still, you know, people are nostalgic for, for pre COVID times for times when inflation was lower. Uh,

And when we look at what you had asked about, which was, you know, what do people want to hear? You know, how can Biden and Democrats message effectively? A lot of it has to do with the economy. The economy is the biggest issue. Immigration is the other big issue that's

Really, I should say immigration and the border because we're starting to see a little bit of disaggregation there. And those are two issues that Republicans tend to pull better than Democrats, right? They are, although it depends on how you come at it, right? Voters trust Democrats more to do things like protect the middle class and protect Social Security and Medicare and fight for working people.

But they trust Donald Trump right now and the Republicans more on things like lowering prices and interest rates. Right. That's one of the that's one of the fundamental problems that that Biden is facing. And that when we looked at Bidenomics and the sort of political failure of Bidenomics to break through and and be a successful president.

messaging strategy. That was the real problem is people thought Bidenomics meant, oh, we'll get you a job, right? They think Democrats care about getting you jobs, right? About job creation, about, you know, good jobs, well-paying jobs, however you want to frame it. But they didn't necessarily and continue to have a really low association between Biden, Bidenomics, Democratic Party and lowering prices. And that's what they care about. We saw this huge gulf

between what voters said they care about in the economy, which is lowering prices, lowering interest rates, lowering the cost of gas, things like that, and what they thought Democrats were focused on, which was creating jobs, making sure. And we're pretty close to full employment, right? We have a great job landscape right now, jobs landscape. But we don't have a great inflationary landscape. And there is still considerable work to do for Biden, for the Democratic Party to really convince voters, hey,

I understand that you care about the economy. I understand that within that, you really care about where prices are and where inflation is going and how, you know, what mortgage rates look like, what eggs cost at the store. They have to sell and really convince voters that they, that Biden personally understands this challenge, that, you know, that his political persona is a champion, an avatar of the middle and working class who gets a kitchen table conversation about

household budget, things like that, that he is empathetic and that he's fighting and on their side, that he's at least mad about it and upset that working families in this country are, and middle-class families. Yeah, it seemed like they changed their tone from a few years ago where they were sort of selling Bidenomics as if it had been this great success and that everyone should be feeling the effects of it. And the White House has instead changed it to a bit more of a conciliatory tone saying, you know, we understand Bidenomics

what you're going through and I'm fighting for it because clearly the policy on its own, people aren't feeling the effects quite yet. Who knows in November though, right? Right. And, you know, you can say we're not here to judge is it right or wrong or is the economy good or bad, right? All we can really say is people are still upset about prices. You can say they, you know...

You can go out there and say voters should be grateful that jobs are so good and wages are rising and all this. It doesn't really matter what they should or shouldn't be grateful for. You know, voters still get to decide who wins this election. So you have to meet them at where their concern is. And right now their concern is still primarily prices when it comes to the economy. Here's a question.

How are voters looking at Biden in terms of whether he aligns with their values right now versus Trump and how he aligns with their values? Have you seen any changes in those metrics? Well, it's hard to say what's changed. We have seen some decline in the...

uh in the sort of personal ratings of biden sort of biting biden as as as a guy right not as a politician or a president or anything like that you know there used to be there were people who were ambivalent on biden um but there weren't a lot of people who thought he was sort of you know an evil or bad person we we have seen some uptick in uh

you know, largely driven by partisan polarization, right? As Republicans really convince themselves that Biden is a worse person than they may have used to believe him to be. So is that just like political advertising that's working right now? Is that what you think it is? Is it the Biden crime family, the whole impeachment...

exercise. We haven't seen that stuff really break through on Biden, right? We haven't seen them. It's just that, you know, he's a Democrat, right? And Republicans don't like Democrats and Democrats don't really like Republicans. And over the course of his presidency, some of that

you know, entrenched political animus has worn down on his sort of personal appeal numbers, right? Now, there are things you can do to counteract that. I also think one of the things that Biden has done

uh, lost a little bit is, is exactly that persona. Uh, we were talking about that sort of Scranton Joe. I get it. I understand, you know, I'm not like the other Democrats. I'm not some coastal elite from an Ivy league school. I'm a working class guy. Um, and we've seen them try to reclaim some of that, right. They released that, that Scranton Joe ad, uh, just the other week. And I think they do need to recapture some of that persona because that's what people liked, right? People, people generally liked, uh, Biden, um,

even as vice president, right? And he's just driving cars, wearing aviators, and licking ice cream cones, right? That was a likable guy. The guy from Pennsylvania, the guy from Scranton, the guy who wrote Amtrak. And now he's just sort of...

you know, he's just the president, right? He's just a Democrat in a suit who does Democrat things and Republicans don't like that. So you mean soft Republicans that he can win over? Yeah, soft Republicans or Republicans who were so focused on, you know, hating Obama or hating Hillary Clinton that they weren't really thinking about how they felt about Joe Biden in any particular direction. Do you think that all of the college campuses and the protests and the

feeling of chaos. Do you think that that is what is rubbing off on Biden so that these soft Republicans that he's sort of losing right now, do they think he's catering too far to the left? I don't think that's costing him with soft Republicans. I do think the perception of Biden as, you know, maybe not

And this is a persistent theme, not just across the campus protests or but we see it extend into foreign policy. We've seen it extend into into economic policy as well. Of just sort of what what is the goal here? Right. What is the mission? What is he trying to do? What is his desired outcome? And.

I think, you know, sometimes this White House, because they believe in the ability of, for example, you know, our diplomats working in the Middle East to make progress or they believe in, you know, the ability of of.

you know, various validators and messengers and surrogates to work with the, you know, work with university presidents, try and get the situation under control, or they believe it's the domain of mayors and local authorities. Also, they know that once school breaks, this is going to be over, right? Yeah, they're certainly hoping that, right? You know, in the next couple of weeks, a lot of these students will, you know, not just school ending, but, you know, their dorms, they won't be able to stay in their dorms, right? Even if they want to continue the protest or their campus housing, whatever it may be.

But but we see sometimes a perception that and foreign policy is another place where we really see this, not just on Israel and Palestine, but on Ukraine, on China. When we pulled a little bit around the Houthi conflict, when that was sort of really hot.

you know, it's just sort of, you know, is there an overarching ideology here, right? Are voters able to connect dot A to dot B to dot C and say, all this stuff going on around the world, all of these places that we're seeing in the news, you know, I understand what America is trying to accomplish, right? And that goes all the way back even to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Right. I was thinking about that because that was a moment when his approval ratings really dropped and he hasn't been able to bring them up since then. It's something where voters just sometimes struggle to identify a through line.

uh, with the president, right? Where, where they say, what is this guy about? Right. With, with Trump, you really knew what he was about, right? He, and you know what he's about. He's America first. He, he sort of wears his policy and his worldview on his sleeve. Um,

and anything he does, you know, even if you think it's ridiculous, you, it all sort of fits, right. Obama wasn't dissimilar, right. You knew he had this sort of lofty, um, globalist kind of worldview. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a highfalutin values-based approach to, to America's role in the world and America's obligations to its people and things like that. Right. Um, George W. Bush, right. The global war on terror and not that different. Right. No, no, not that different, but also just very clear, right. Whether you agree, you,

knew what you were for, you knew what you were against, right? You knew you either liked it or didn't like it. With Biden, it's sometimes harder to identify the focus or the narrative or the through line. And in very busy news cycles, the news cycles only got, I mean, we're just talking about George W. Bush, the news cycle is much busier than it was then. Voters really, you know, appreciate

being able to understand the events of the world and the events going on within our country along a presidential narrative of what they're trying to do for America's role in the world and America's, you know, activities here, you know, what we do with our government, right, at home and abroad. And that's been something that has plagued Biden a little bit. Yeah, because the story is chaos.

And he was supposed to be the person that was, you know, steady hand. Enough of the Trump chaos. Now we have Biden. He's the adult in the room. And instead, there's been a sense that there's chaos abroad. The world feels very chaotic right now. And to a certain extent, America feels very reactive.

Right. And in part, that's because the Biden White House, you know, clearly trusts in certain processes that take place largely behind the scenes or out of the headlines or, you know, have to be like sourced anonymously or whatever the case may be. Right. And they trust in those things. It's just the American people don't always see those working. And if you don't get results out of that, right, they've struggled to get results out of that in the Middle East, for example. Right.

then the American people just kind of go, what are we doing here, right? The world's going crazy and we're on the back foot. Even though, particularly on foreign policy, this is probably where Biden has the longest established and clearest set of principles about. He knows what he's about on foreign policy. That's the irony of it all, right? Yeah, very, very deep. Is there a feeling that he needs to

abandon the left, particularly on Gaza and migration and like even the economy and head closer to the middle to win this election? Like, should he just give up on on the left flank in the party? It's not as much about giving up on the left. It's just about doing what what what voters like in different places. And so, you know, on Israel, Palestine, for instance, we have yet to see and I think most most other pollsters who have looked at it have yet to see Israel, Palestine pop in the poll. And

Really? As a highly salient issue that voters overall, but even, you know, even and especially independent swing voters in critical states. What does it rank for you right now, even like among younger voters?

General voters and then younger voters. I'm curious. Voters overall, foreign policy is always, you know, in the middle of the bottom half. I mean, even things like Ukraine are way at the bottom. And it's and it's highly divisive. Right. Compare it to, you know, support for Taiwan, even other foreign policy issues or or, you know, our position on trade with China. It's less popular or I should say more divisive. Our position on Israel is.

than other foreign policy areas. With young voters, it remains pretty close to the bottom. We have some polling coming out on this soon. Oh, wow. It's really in the middle of the pack. It's along there with things like climate and stuff like that. But at the top is jobs and the economy and inflation and prices, even with young voters, under 30 voters. And, you know, John De La Volpe just had a poll out that showed...

you know, every, every pollster tests different sort of issue batteries, right? So some are longer, some are shorter, some are shorter, something that would be in the middle for us might be at the bottom for him, right? Just because it's different lists. Um, but you know, this has consistently been an area where we just, we just don't see it being a determinative issue for the kinds of voters that win elections, um, which are primarily independent voters, primarily swing voters. Um,

principally in swing states, right? I mean, entirely in swing states. You know, one of the sort of

guiding principles of Blueprint that we try to communicate to everyone we talk to, whether it's the campaign or other players and stakeholders in democratic politics is just we can win this and we need to remain laser focused because we have a really strong argument to make on these core, highly salient issues of inflation, pricing, the economy and immigration in the border. Right. We have an argument to make there. We can win that argument.

And when we get distracted and pulled into issues that are, you know, again, this isn't a judgment on whether these issues are important or affect people or whether this side or that side is right or wrong. We're not going to win this election on Israel-Palestine. We're not going to win this election on Ukraine. We're not going to win this election on climate. People rarely vote based on foreign policy.

Very rarely. Very rarely. Maybe in 2001. 2002. Yeah. The Bush midterms. Right. Where he broke where he broke midterm trends. But yes, it's rare. And it doesn't mean it isn't extremely important to a certain set of voters. It just means that those voters, you know, in a very realistic, you know, sort of hard headed way.

understanding of what it takes to win an election. The priorities of those voters, you know, can't be the focus of a national presidential campaign. Yeah. I was actually talking to a Biden advisor who was saying the same thing, like that they should tack to the right on Israel and Gaza. And, you know, to get out of the distraction, you know, I don't even know if it's tacking to the right. You just need to say something and kind of put it to bed.

Right. You need to move away from it. You need to let people know where you stand. And it's OK. They can like it. They can like it or not like it. You just need to move away from the issue and get back to the things that are going to win this election. Even if you lose 100000 voters in Dearborn, Michigan. I don't think you're going to lose 100000 voters in Dearborn, Michigan over this. But I think you'll find if you're able to focus on, you know, we've looked a lot at Haley voters, for example, and there are something like 150000 Haley voters in Michigan. Right.

I think that number is about right. And that's on top of the independents, the swing voters who are already determining Michigan. So do you think Biden can win those Haley voters? Yes. How would he do it? So we've actually seen the economic argument be highly, highly persuasive to Haley voters because, well, there are a number of reasons. One, you know, Haley voters are just a natural opportunity. They've already voted against Donald Trump once. All we need to get them to do is vote against him again.

Right. You just you just need to get them to repeat that. Now, it's harder to get them to vote for a Democrat and cross party line, but they've already decided they vote. They're going to vote against Donald Trump.

at least in their primary. The bridge that we can build is a relatively attractive bridge. It's around tax cuts and tax policy. We found Haley voters extremely skeptical and disfavorable towards the Trump tax cuts and towards Trump's tax policy.

They viewed it as economically irresponsible. It grew the deficit. Oh, so these voters think about the deficit, Haley voters. Oh, yes. We actually have seen the deficit pop really in a lot of places. But Haley voters in particular, you know, these are mainstream conservative Republicans, right? By and large, you know, various wings of the Republican Party there. But they like good fiscal policy. And when you grow the deficit and the debt...

And when we see inflation, you know, skyrocket in the aftermath. And they also didn't like that they felt the tax cuts only helped the very rich. Haley voters, about two thirds of Haley voters felt the Trump tax cuts helped people richer than they were. And they want to see fiscal responsibility that's done in a way that protects the middle class, right? And that's sort of what the president has been offering. He's starting to really form up

his his description of that. That's always been a Republican, though, talking point, the deficit. It's hard for Democrats to do that, especially after you have these massive fiscal policies like Build Back Better. And what was the other one? The infrastructure deal like the deficit has not been Biden's thing. And he did partner up with some of the more progressive members of

Congress to make this happen. Everyone said he passed the largest legislative package since FDR, and he wore that as a badge of honor for a long time. Sure, they're not talking about it anymore, which I've noticed, but at the same time, that was his big win.

Well, you know, they have accomplished some deficit reduction. They do. You know, they put out the press releases on it. Right. They talk about how Biden has brought down the deficit. I'm not seeing it in the news, though. No, no. That's that's a different story. Are they running ads on that? I don't believe that. I don't believe they're running ads on the deficit. See, that's the thing, though. They're leaning into democracy and abortion. Do you think that that is salient with democracy?

Nikki Haley voters. Abortion is good across the board. Haley voters specifically. Democracy, not so good with really anyone. There are some places where democracy works, but there's no place where I'd say it's the most attractive line of messaging to pursue. Because, you know, to get back to your sort of question on values alignment, voters are...

aligned with where they align with Biden on values the strongest is when it comes to um

you know, these sort of soft values of what we'd like to see in our society of, you know, openness and, you know, protecting people's freedoms and, you know, not being too extremist, sort of, you know, allowing people to live as they choose, things like that, right? And I don't mean that in a particularly ideological way. I mean that literally, you know, sort of American, you know, we have our freedoms, we have the right to live our life our own way, right?

where voters align more with Trump is on these sort of harder values of, you know, crime and national security and like protecting us, right? Protecting the society that we have. And that's a challenge for Biden as well, because that turns Trump into sort of a threat reaction, right? That your values that align with Trump are activated by threat,

Right. And right now, if you don't police those threats, right, if you if you don't mitigate the threat response that people feel when you're president, then then their response will be to vote for Donald Trump or to feel more pulled towards Trump. If the threats feel mitigated, if it doesn't feel like American society is under siege.

whether it's economically or culturally or militarily or whatever the case may be. If American society doesn't feel like under siege, then people can focus on here's what I want that society to look like. And that's where they align more with Joe Biden.

And so, you know, abortion is one of the best messaging approaches we've tested. But it can't it doesn't stand alone. Right. Although I know, you know, in swing districts, when we polled abortion reproductive rights, you know, in swing districts that are highly divided, where a lot of voters aren't particularly fond or vacillate between the two parties, which is what makes them swing districts. Right.

You know, reproductive rights is twice as popular as the Democratic Party. Like, of course, we have to hitch our horse to that. Right. But could they if there's like a ballot measure, will they just vote on a ballot measure and then vote for a Republican? Are you seeing anything like that? I think ballot measures around reproductive rights are important.

very smart and a very good idea for Democrats. You know, if those ballot measures activate voters around those ballot measures, that can be difference making. You know, if it's someone who just shows up to vote in the presidential and flips the ballot over, you know, whatever happens in their state, then sure, it's, you know, it's sort of a wash. But I think the ballot

measures that, you know, that are planned across the country and are really necessary after the Dobbs ruling to, you know, shore up the status of reproductive rights in various states. You know, those do promise to activate voters who otherwise might be, you know, not as jazzed about this election. Right.

But I don't want to leave you hanging on Haley voters. But the economic argument there is very strong. They are Republicans. They look for fiscal responsibility. They can clearly be persuaded that Trump was not fiscally responsible in the way they would like, that his tax cuts were not particularly smart and did fiscally irresponsible things vis-a-vis the debt and the deficit, and did it by cutting taxes on people who were not then. Republicans like tax cuts.

But they want to feel them. I mean, they want to feel them themselves, right? Who cares about a tax cut for someone who isn't you? If they're not seeing their wages go up, okay, say a corporation gets tax cut, okay, then where am I, you know, am I getting a higher salary? Sure. Yeah, exactly. I understand that. And what, where Democrats can successfully marry our sort of mainstream messaging to that, and when we've tested it out, it tests really, really well with Haley voters, is marrying that sort of responsible tax policy, responsible fiscal policy to, you know,

doing it in an equitable way where the very wealthy and big corporations are the ones who we balance, who we achieve fiscal responsibility on the backs of, and we protect the middle class. So we've seen more and more of this messaging out of the Biden camp.

No one under $400,000, making under $400,000, you know, no household is going to feel these tax cuts. You know, the fact checkers will go to town on that. But that is really good messaging, right? So when you marry the fiscal responsibility, sort of olive branch to Haley Republicans, to a core democratic message of equitable tax policy, you have a winner.

that can bring some of those Haley voters over the line. Now, whether we drive that messaging and, you know, we're going to, the Democratic Party is going to spend $1.5 billion, right, all in on this presidential, something like that. The other side will spend the same amount. But, you know, we have a lot of money to try and drive that messaging, whether we choose to do that and whether we do it in a smart, targeted way on Haley voters. You know, that's not my job to, that's not something I get to control.

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What do you know about double haters? These voters that say that they are anti-Trump and anti-Biden. Are they going to go out and vote for a third party candidate like RFK or Jill Stein or Cornel West? Or are they going to stay home?

And how are they going to impact the election? Because last election, 2020, was one of the highest turnout elections in history, right? Yeah. And I think I think we're going to have high turnout again. I really do. We are going to look at the double haters. Frankly, for most voters, the general election only really got underway, you know, two months ago, a month and a half ago. Yeah.

State of the Union, things like that. Of course, us in politics world, you know, we've been in this election for like a year now. I've been in this election since 2020. Yeah. Yeah. Since 2022, basically, when Trump announced. Yeah. But for a lot of voters, they're really just starting to engage and try and think about how they're going to cast a ballot. And most most people don't try and think about politics as little as possible. And I can't blame them.

So the double haters, we are going to do a sort of dedicated study of them. We haven't done it yet because we do want it to develop a little further. Just a few weeks ago, we did a poll where only two thirds of voters said they thought the election would be between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Right. So you had a third of voters out there who thought maybe one of these guys isn't going to be the candidate. So we still we want a little bit of development in voter sentiment before we really hone in on these double haters. Did they say why? Is it because they thought Biden would drop out because he's too old or Trump would go to jail? Yeah. Trump would go to jail. Maybe, you know, we were still the Republican primary still had candidates in it at that point. Right.

And maybe they were reading too much Ezra Klein. I don't know. But there was still like, we're not sure what our choice is going to be. Because again, they're not living, eat, sleeping, breathing this the way media and political people are. That's it. And I could be proven totally wrong by my own data when we finally do look at these double haters. But I think the role of...

of RFK and any other third party candidates who make it onto the ballot and run meaningful campaigns will be basically as a sink for the most highly dissatisfied voters. And all of those dissatisfied voters who could wind up with an RFK or a Cornel West or whoever

they are winnable by the mainstream candidates, depending on what happens again over the next six months. Do you mean by Biden? Because the consensus or the conventional wisdom is that they're Bidens to lose. Well, it depends on which voters we're talking about, right? You have voters who are upset over Israel-Palestine, for instance, in the president's position on that. Except for RFK, though, these are really progressive candidates and some...

Democrats could say that, you know, RFK is an environmentalist. Like, sure, he has a few issues that are kind of more conspiratorial that tend to lean right. But at the same time, he's a Kennedy. He might have some appeals to the far left. So these are people that could take from Biden's coalition on the left. I think it's a little...

with the third party candidates in this election, it's a little more straightforward than what they actually believe. So for example, you know, people on the left of the Democratic Party who are particularly dissatisfied over Israel-Palestine, the president's handling of that, you know, who can't bring themselves to not vote at all, really feel a need to protest. Yeah, maybe they wind up with an RFK, but there are ways for Biden to win them back, again, six months, or not even win them back just to hold them, right? They haven't gone anywhere yet. The election's in November.

Is sitting on the couch better than going out and voting for RFK? No, I mean, it's elected, you know, numbers wise, it's a wash. Oh, is it? Because I was told the couch is also a threat to Biden. Yeah.

More so than to Trump. Maybe more so than to Trump. I mean, the other the other part of this is those Haley voters. Right. If if or and people within the Republican Party who continue to be set to satisfy with Donald Trump. Right. You know, just because we have a way or ways to to maybe bring some of these Haley voters into the Democratic coalition, at least for one election, doesn't mean we're going to execute that successfully.

Right. There are going to be some people, some Haley voters or some DeSantis voters or people who skip their primary or don't vote in Republican primaries anyway, who aren't happy about Donald Trump being the nominee, are pretty frustrated and they stay home or they go to RFK. Right. Or they go to something like that. Right. There are certainly ways in from the right to voting from RFK. I can't imagine a Haley voter voting for RFK or Jill Stein.

Or Cornel West? Jill Stein and Cornel West are more of a stretch, but I can absolutely believe a Haley voter who prides themselves on voting in an election. Because in the end, a Haley voter is just an American. It's just a person. I could see them just writing in Haley. They could. They might. But I think there are lots of people who are going to go vote even if they don't want to vote for one of these people. And some of them will hold their nose and vote for one of the candidates. And some of them will vote either third party or write-in. And

And the job of both of these parties is to prevent those various vulnerabilities, right? Trump is still staring down. I mean, you look at some of the Haley vote numbers out of, you know, Pennsylvania, you know, Philly suburbs in the primary. If I'm the Trump campaign, I'm really concerned about making sure those voters vote Donald Trump in November. Right. And if I'm the Biden campaign, I am chomping at the bit to get them to vote, to show up and vote against Donald Trump again. Right. So, so they're, they're all, there is,

an abnormally large number of people out there right now on both within both parties, you know, to, to paint with a very broad brush, but on the sort of moderate, more moderate wing of the Republican party and on the, the more left wing of the democratic party who are certainly available to the, to, to Trump and Biden in various combinations. Uh,

But who are also at risk of of winding up with RFK, of not voting at all, of voting right. And that's why, you know, when I said earlier in the interview, I'm not sure what the impact of RFK, you know, people are there's this active debate is RFK worse for Biden or is he worse for Trump? Who does he help? Who does he hurt?

We don't know. I've yet to see numbers that say anything to me conclusively in any polling around his role. And I think that's because his role isn't known yet. It's not determined yet. Yeah, we really don't know his platform that well. It changes. It's been...

over the years. And it's just he hasn't been under as much scrutiny either. And we don't know who the kind of voters who are going to be, you know, sort of left flapping in the window, right? If Biden makes that overture and shores up his position with the left flank of his party. And by the way, we've seen this done successfully this cycle. There was enormous unity between

the sort of mainstream wing of the Democratic Party and the left wing of the Democratic Party around the New York Free Congressional, a special congressional election where everyone was pulling on the same oar. Everyone let bygones be bygones. People who, you know, leftists who hated Donald Trump were out knocking, or excuse me, who hated Joe Biden were out knocking doors for Tom Suozzi to help us pick up a congressional seat in Queens, right? And Long Island. So say he makes that overture and

you know, those voters do come back into the Democratic coalition in a more, you know, more reliable way than they're being talked about right now. You know, then RFK maybe picks up mostly Haley voters and does more damage to Donald Trump. Or maybe it goes the other direction. Maybe the Biden campaign makes that overture to Haley voters in a successful way.

leaves some of the people who are discontent with him on Israel policy flapping in the wind. And they wind up with RFK, right? I think RFK is just a sink for dissatisfaction. His actual platform, his actual policies. I bet that before they went to RFK, they'd go to Jill Stein or Cornel West. Who knows? I don't. I don't. We can guess, but... Well, in the end, though, turnout helps Biden, right? The bigger the turnout helps Biden.

rather than Trump? Not sure. I've seen because there are numbers now and it's increasingly a pattern that Biden does better among likely voters than among registered voters, which would suggest that marginal voters who don't turn out in every presidential election might be leaning Trump. I haven't looked at that myself in detail. Again, I think it's extremely early to determine what a likely voter is versus someone who's not going to turn out this cycle.

And frankly, it's on the campaigns, both of them, to... And by the way, it's narrow enough that it's really hard to be decisive, even in the pattern that's emerging. But it's on both campaigns to just sort of figure out who they want voting for them, right? Is Donald Trump going to do something to...

assuage the fears of people who voted, Republicans who voted against him in the primaries, right? Is Joe Biden going to do something that shores up his left flank or make that overture to Haley voters? Republicans seem to think that those Republicans will just come home. Those Haley Republicans will eventually come home, but they have still been voting in primaries long since she left the race. I think if you were voting for a candidate who was dropped out and you're that PO'd,

it's hard to say you're just going to come home, right? You got to do something. It's also messaging, you know, it's messaging to the party. Yeah. Ultimately. And that's in the same way, the a hundred thousand uncommitted voters who voted against Biden's messaging. Yeah. One of the messages of the uncommitted campaign is,

depending on the state, right? It looks a little different in different states was this is your moment to voice your dissatisfaction. We know we're all going to have to be with Biden in November. This is your moment to voice your dissatisfaction. So there's an argument that those voters might come home to, right? It's the campaigns have this in their hand. This is a live animal right now, this election, um,

And it will remain a live animal probably right up until Election Day because the one thing you can really say decisively about voters who swing around and move around and don't know where their vote is months and months ahead is they break real late and they will make their decision in their heart of hearts in the weeks or sometimes days before the election. Interesting. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. This was fascinating. I hope to have you back and

And I'm sure your numbers will be a little different then. But what if they're not? What if they're exactly the same as they are right now? I do have a theory that nothing is going to change between now and November. If both parties light, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars on fire between now and then, you know, there are a lot of consultants who may have to hang up their hat. It just seems so baked in. I don't know. There's so much we already know about these two people.

And I think people are tuned out. I really do. Yeah. I mean, we could do a whole, we could do a whole conversation on that. Yeah. Tune into the show, but I know you're tuned out. Okay. Thanks so much, Evan. Looking forward to having you back. Thank you.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, The Best. You can use the discount code Tara20. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. I'll be back on Thursday.