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Welcome back from Thanksgiving break. I hope you're not sleepy from too much turkey because we've got a great show lined up. We'll first hear from political guru John Hood as he tells us all about North Carolina, the Tar Heel State. And then we'll hear from pollster James Johnson as he gives us a read on the American electorate. All that in my very own rant about why recent global elections are good news for one Donald J. Trump. Let's dive in.

And joining me this week on State of Play is John Hood. John's the president of the Pope Foundation and a syndicated columnist and political analyst in North Carolina, where he's been observing things in the Tar Heel State since 1986. John, welcome to Beyond the Polls. Thank you very much, Henry.

Well, eventually we're going to get to North Carolina being one of the key swing states in the country. But first, we're going to get to North Carolina as being one of the key earlier states in the Republican nomination contest. How does it look on the ground there? Does it look like it's Trump to lose? And is anybody breaking through to maybe mount a challenge?

Well, the way I would describe North Carolina in this context and usually is that it's a battleground state that's somewhat redshift just slightly to the right of center. And so a lot of the patterns you see in other states, including early primary states, are similar here. Trump is way ahead. Some of his support is very rock solid.

Some of his support is not particularly rock solid. People who are not paying a lot of attention yet. If you look at the polling, you'll see a very large gain. He'll be at 50 percent or so of the Republican electorate at this moment, but also a significant number of Republicans say they want somebody else.

And that's, I think, the latest poll I saw on that. It was maybe 27 percent of the North Carolina voters want Trump and maybe 18 percent want Biden. And the rest of them want somebody else in their respective parties or somebody not in the two parties. In other words, most North Carolinians don't want the contest that appears to be in the office.

Well, do you think that could play into in the Republican primary into either DeSantis or Haley, since they seem to be the two people who have double digit support in the early states? Either one of them making a run at Trump if people begin to say, hey, we actually have a choice in this election.

doomsday scenario and would like to avoid the meteor crashing into our house? That's essentially the best argument that Haley or DeSantis have is we'll give you the best of Trump. As you recall, the first term of Trump will give you policies that are comparable, but none of the disastrous policies.

potential of a second term. And some Republican voters will be left cold by that, just as they will be in other states. But others will be open to it. It's just that the claim, at least, is that a lot of these voters who are not already the rock solid Trump just haven't been paying a lot of attention to the prospect of a potential candidate, a potential primary in just a few months. And that maybe a combination of news events and second thoughts

will give one of these candidates a path forward. You might think Haley would be the one because she was the governor of a state that rhymes with North Carolina, but don't assume that North Carolina and South Carolina have similar political dynamics. They actually don't. South Carolina is a much more Republican state, much more Trumpy state, actually, even within the Republican caucus, Republican electorate, Republican coalition.

But so, yeah, there's an opportunity here, but obviously the window is not very wide open.

Now, North Carolina, if I recall correctly, has partisan registration. Correct. But independents can vote in either party's primary. That's correct. You got it right. So what that suggests to me is that unless Biden goes into free fall or decides to pull out, if I'm a registered independent on primary day, I can either stay home or I can pick a Republican ballot.

Do you see any indication that registered independents are beginning to recognize that they could play a significant role in avoiding this Trump versus Biden showdown that you say the data suggests they would strongly not want to see? There is some. First of all, that is more the common practice in North Carolina. They're independents who vote in either primary, but more vote in the Republican than the Democratic primary normally.

So that's going to happen probably even more so in the 2024 primary. And at least for the Nikki Haley campaign, that's explicitly part of their messaging is she has appealed to the general election swing vote to the extent there is one. And so if you're an independent who can choose a Republican primary ballot in March, which is when our primary is, that is going to be part of the pitch. And it's a similar pitch for DeSantis, just it's been more explicit from the Haley people.

So let's move into the general election. As you mentioned, North Carolina is a swing state, but it tilts slightly red that most of the close elections have moved to the Republicans, certainly at the federal level, although you do have a Democratic governor. How does North Carolina look right now for either Trump?

or one of the others as a Republican nominee against Joe Biden? Is it about 50-50 like it's been in the past, or is it leaning a little more red than it has in previous recent presidential races? In the most recent polls, Henry, it's a little more red for the presidential matchups than in the past when it was a little closer. Now, that's not because Trump or one of the other candidates has surged. It's because Biden has dropped.

So the overall numbers are lower than you would expect them to be just a year out. There's quite a lot of people who are undecided. So the numbers are lower. The Democrats have dropped. That means there's a little bit of an edge for Trump. Trump usually doesn't have the Trump in previous cycles did not have quite this. This only at this particular moment as we speak, because of, I think, Israel and some other things Biden has dropped.

But a good way to think about North Carolina, people often assume that because North Carolina has only voted once for Obama and Georgia has voted, you know, has U.S. senators or Democrat and all that, that Georgia is more blue than North Carolina. This is not really true. This is a good example of mixing up federal and state. Georgia is a more Republican state than North Carolina when you get past federal offices. U.S. Senate

results were a little screwy, as you know. But North Carolina has only elected four Republicans as their governors, ever.

once in the 19th century, twice in the 20th century, and once in the 21st century. It's just very difficult. They've never elected a Duterte general to be a Republican, ever, in North Carolina history. And so Democrats often are more competitive in North Carolina than, for example, they have been recently in Georgia for some of these statewide offices other than president or most recently U.S. Senate. Some of that is because

North Carolina just doesn't have that Atlanta, very large urban core that dominates its politics in the way that Georgia does. North Carolina's got urban cores. They just don't add up to as much of the general electorate. And it's a plurality suburban state. People identify as suburban. So it is absolutely either-

regardless of who the nominee is, I suspect at this point, has the potential to win North Carolina. It's just in recent cycles, it's been a little bit shifted red. The Senate races have been a point here, two and a half points there, all very close. The Republicans happened to win them, but they were competitive. The Tom Tillis race was competitive all the way to the end. The Ted Budd race was quite competitive, even though Democrats didn't understand that. Probably could have made it much more competitive if they'd thrown some money into that race in 2022. It was

All these races in North Carolina are very close. Have you seen any indication that Democrats in North Carolina are trying to attract the suburban vote by using abortion the way they are in other states? Absolutely. It's a huge part of their messaging. And you'll notice in the North Carolina messaging and in some of the other states, notice that they don't even use the word choice as much as they used to.

partly because school choice there's some things that problematize that word from a democratic candidate they use freedom they actually say freedom democrats are the party of freedom what they mean is abortion to a large extent so yes this is a big part of the democratic messaging they are hoping it didn't really in other states it did in north carolina the abortion messaging in 2022 didn't really do a whole lot for them uh but they're still hoping that it will in 2024

So one of the things that you have to take into account when you're talking about a state is the difference between district based elections and a statewide election. And North Carolina right now has a redistrict, the House, U.S. House map that was pushed upon them by a Democratic controlled Supreme Court, which has returned seven Democrats and seven Republicans. Republicans won control of the Supreme Court.

And that map is no longer in play. That map has been replaced by one drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature, which most people here in Washington say will guarantee a three-seat pickup and maybe a fourth seat. How does it look in North Carolina, and how can you describe what that will do? Who might we be seeing coming up here, thanks to the newly favorable maps from the Republican ranks in North Carolina?

Well, one potential Republican congressman, I go back to Washington after being out for several cycles, is Mark Walker, who was, you may recall, the head of the Republican Study Committee, significant player in the House when he was there and then got redistricted out.

but is now running for one of the new seats. The conventional wisdom on the North Carolina congressional map is correct. It's probably a three-seat net gain in the current context. I doubt that fourth seat happens for them. It'll be a competitive seat in the northeastern part of the state where a rather moderate and quite effective Democratic candidate would be running for reelection there. But at least a three-seat gain is a lot.

Oddly, the Democrats haven't really filed a legal challenge. North Carolina, everything always gets litigated. The Jiggles case came from North Carolina, Baker v. Clark. There's all these history for North Carolina, and they just haven't really figured that out yet. They've challenged one of the legislative maps.

And that's not going to work either. So I think this map will stick, that they'll have a lot of challenge striking it in federal court. They might try, but I doubt that it'll happen. So there will be a Republican-leaning district in the triad, the sort of central part of the state where Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point are. That's the more Walker-possible return. There will also be one in the Charlotte area and one in the Raleigh-Durham, the Raleigh area, all of which could be Republican pickups.

Now, what we're hearing is that the House Speaker wants to take the Charlotte area seat. That's correct. Tim Moore, who was the longtime Speaker of the North Carolina House, he's actually from a county...

into sort of the foothills west of Charlotte, but he would be in that district. He is running. He's not a shoe-in to be nominated necessarily. A lot of times state legislative leaders assume they are better known outside of the political world than they are, but he is certainly going to be well-funded and has a good chance of winning. And if he wins the primary, I think that district is almost certainly going to elect a Republican.

What about Bo Hines, the young man who seems to have been flitting across North Carolina in search of a congressional seat, barely lost to Wiley Nickel in a swing seat outside of Raleigh in 2022? Is he looking at that third seat? I doubt he's going to take on Walker or Tim Moore, but is he looking at that other pickup seat?

Well, you know, I might have to check to see what he says today as opposed to yesterday. But no, you're incorrect on that. I think he is going to run against Mark Walker in that situation.

in that triad area district. I'm not sure why he's not running the triangle, and maybe he will. I mean, I honestly don't know. This was funny. A couple of years ago, he literally shopped around. They were looking for condos in different locations. So he could run in any of the three, presumably. You don't have to live in the district to run for Congress, of course, but it would be very difficult if he didn't live at least near one of these three places. So I assume there will be a condo

And that he will rent it with his wife and they will, quote, live in or near the district that he runs in. And I think it will be the central district, the sixth. Wow. So how much of that old, how much of that sixth district, the central district, did Walker represent in Congress? And how much residual name identification or support do you think he will retain?

Well, he has a fair amount. Some of that district was previously in his representation and some was not. There are some other candidates in the race. The mayor of one of those three cities, High Point, Jay Wagner, he's a Republican. He's running in the district. So there's no, Mark Walker's not guaranteed to win the primary, but he is fairly well known and represented at least part of the district. And perhaps more importantly, he was in the media market.

Because, I mean, people don't even remember what district they're in. But he was in the local media a lot during that period and has relatively good name recognition in that central North Carolina Piedmont Triad TV market.

So one of the things that stands out about North Carolina to me is that it has been a leader, consciously so, over the last decade in pro-growth policies, of which you have personally played a significant role, both in the Pope Foundation and where we got to know one another when you were the founder and the head of the John Locke Institute.

Tell my listeners a little bit about what has been done in North Carolina and how it's kind of provided a template for other Republican governors and legislatures to follow over the last few years.

Well, the first thing to know about North Carolina, this is another good example of you have to get granular to understand these state and local debates. North Carolina was historically, since the 1930s, a rather centralized state. So unlike, say, a Tennessee or a Virginia, where there were local roads, schools were mostly funded locally. That's not North Carolina's history. North Carolina's history is dominated by that. There aren't even any county roads. Everything's state roads.

state funds most school expenditures and has so for 100 years. So that means if you're going to reform the tax code in North Carolina and the income tax is the primary source of revenue,

You can't just sort of eliminate it and expect fairy dust to settle over the mountains and valleys of North Carolina. It's not going to work. It's all about spending and thinking about how you're going to do this strategically. Starting when the Republicans took the legislature in 2010, that first session in 2011, they made some changes. 2013 was the big one where they started a gradual change. They went to a flat tax. They had three rates and went to a flat income tax.

They also got rid of some of the deductions, got rid of some exemptions. And so they expanded the base and lowered the rate. That traditional mantra of tax reform was a net tax cut, though it wasn't gigantic. And then in subsequent years, they continue to pull the income tax rates down, particularly the corporate rates. What they're currently phased to get rid of the corporate tax entirely in North Carolina by the end of the decade.

What we revolutionized in part was something that is now common in lots of legislatures, which is the use of so-called revenue or fiscal triggers. So you set a certain amount of revenue you expect to receive. If you get that in the following year, then your rate goes down as scheduled. If not, the rate doesn't happen. This is to reassure people that as you change the tax system, you're not going to suddenly leave

the state without sufficient funds for schools or sufficient funds for other services. That's what has thrown some other tax reforms for a loop when they seem to be reckless. People don't like people like reducing taxes and making their states more attractive. They don't like recklessness.

North Carolina focused on having a slow and steady wins the race approach and also focusing on spending. North Carolina has essentially now for more than a decade more or less followed a spending cap so that spending does not go any faster than inflation and population and is sometimes a little lower than that. So as a share of gross state product, state spending has actually shrunk

quite a bit, maybe 18%, 19%, something in that range over the course of time. That's only done, again, through diligent stuff. Grand sweeping bargains is not necessarily the answer. So we did that. But also on the regulatory side, Henry, as much as taxes matter, the difference between a tax rate at 6% and a tax rate at 5.5% or 5%, you don't want to go carried away about it.

So there's also regulatory reforms and other changes that made North Carolina an attractive place. And you can see it in the jumps in the national rankings, significant growth that has happened and relocation during COVID in particular. North Carolina is now ranked multiple times the best state to do business by a lot of the national entities. You know, probably not a huge difference between being ranked number one and number four.

But North Carolina is always in the top three or four, and that didn't used to be the case. Our tax system is now in the top 10, used to be in the bottom 10. Well, that explains why so many people are moving down there and so many businesses are setting up shops. And they're mostly welcome.

Well, I'm not going to ask you who's not welcome. Just in case I might be on that list, you know, tell the real estate agent to use a alias when I'm looking for places outside of Winston-Salem. Well, thank you. How can my listeners follow your work?

Well, my home base for my column is Carolina Journal, which I founded some 20-something years ago. It might be 30-something years ago now that I think about it. So carolinajournal.com is an easy way to find my column and my work. And those are my colleagues as we cover North Carolina politics and government. John, thank you very much for your rundown on North Carolina. I'm looking forward to having you back on Beyond the Pulse. You're most welcome.

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Your chance to redeem real prizes is just a spin away. Care to join me? Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. This week on Polling Barometer, we've got, heaven forbid, a real pollster. This pollster is James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners, and this is his first appearance on Beyond the Polls. James, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. A real pollster, but not a real American, as you might be able to tell from my accent. Well, then tell us, you know, how is it that you saw the light and decided that the revolution was correct and that you have joined us unruly and ungrateful colonists over here on the other side of the pond? Well, I still get asked plenty of questions about Harry and Meghan, so I haven't fully escaped. So...

I was previously the pollster, chief pollster to Theresa May when she was prime minister of the UK. So I ran the polling focus group capabilities at 10 Downing Street between 2017 and 2019. I came out of that job and co-founded my polling company, JL Partners, with my business partner, who was the head of analytics there.

at the Conservative Party, basically the UK RNC equivalent. And we came together and put together a polling outfit that's been up and running in the UK for four years. And last year, I made the move, as did the company, to the US. And there's a few reasons. Always been fascinated by the politics. There's a lot more politics going on here in terms of not only budgets, but also opportunities.

And obviously, you guys have the race of the century coming right up next year in November 2024. Well, and you have been already diving in. I've seen a number of your polls that you're doing for media clients or doing on spec, and I've written about them in some of my columns. But one of the things that stands out for me is that everyone is dealing with this

The movement away from answering your landline telephone, which was for many decades the gold standard of pollsters. Everyone would answer their landline. You could get a representative sample. And the movement away from that has just changed the polling industry dramatically. And every pollster has a different methodology. You have one of the more unique ones. Could you tell my listeners how you have adapted and why you think this answers the challenges that everyone in the industry is trying to deal with?

Yeah, well, the first thing I'll say is caveat it with if any pollster is sitting and tell you that they're the 100% accurate one, they're probably lying to you. So we think we've got one. Well, as George Costanza says, it's not a lie if you believe it. Indeed, I think whoever does might end up regretting that decision. So, look, we think we certainly we think we get closer to the results than others do. And the reason is twofold.

First, we use a mixed method approach. So rather than just calls to landline, we use calls to landline, we use calls to sell, live calls to sell, as well as text to web, so SMS invites to web surveys. And what makes us unique in that regard is we have another methodology called in-app sampling. Now, what does that mean? Well, basically, it means if you're playing a game on your phone...

while away the hours or while away a subway ride or whatever it might be, a boring meeting perhaps, and popping up on your phone is a notification saying, would you like to win 50,000 in-game points? Great. Complete our short survey. We ask our respondents to fill out that survey. They fill in their personal details at the end so we can link them back to the voter file to make sure they're real. And that allows us to reach people who are not answering questions

on other traditional methods. And the second USP in that, the second sort of unique thing we do is to determine the distribution of those methods. We don't just say, oh, we're going to do 300 live calls this time. We have an in-house model that works from the voter file and from academic data to

to spit out which combination of methods should be used to reach a given audience. So for example, if we're polling over 65 Republican primary voters in Arizona, our in-house model is probably going to say do more landline calls. If we're doing a younger audience, it's going to say do more in-app calls. And that combination of those two things means that we're reaching people who aren't otherwise being reached by surveys, particularly younger people, particularly African Americans, particularly suburban women.

And it means that we're able to be more accurate. And we road tested it in last year's midterms in the Ohio Senate race. And we actually got the most accurate result in the country. And we were within 0.2% of the result. We were also polling school board counties in this election, school board districts in this election, just gone. And we also had some very accurate results there. So as we go into 2024 and into the primary season and beyond,

We think we've got a unique set of methods that can help us get a bit closer. All I can say is I don't have a landline. I never take calls on my cell phone from people I don't know. I don't know that I would respond to a WebEx invitation, but please, please, please advertise on Clash of Clans. Maybe that's the way we're going to get you, Henry. Maybe you'll answer your first poll. Yeah.

Well, so I know you've been doing things on the GOP race. How do you see things looking? I mean, I know you've been doing more state-level polling than national, but how do you see things looking now that we're after Thanksgiving?

Well, I mean, clearly Trump remains the front runner. I don't think that's going to surprise anybody. We are seeing Nikki Haley come up a bit, but we're still seeing DeSantis really sort of holding on to second spot in Iowa, whereas Haley's doing a bit better in New Hampshire. I think one thing we can safely say is it looks like Vivek Ramaswamy is off the map. He had a small bump actually before his first debate performance.

And actually, since that debate performance, he's either stayed stable or trended down. So it's really coming down to the classic question that all the commentators are asking. Is it going to be DeSantis or Haley in that second spot? Now, what I would say from looking more deeply into the polls is that if people are looking for somebody to put up against Trump, that person probably should be DeSantis.

And I won't bang on for too long about it, but one of the reasons is that there's three key audiences in this race for the GOP primaries. One we call the Trump true believers. These people are voting for Trump no matter what. The other are the Trump apostates. They really don't like Trump. They're really turned off by him. They like Chris Christie. They're never Trumpers.

The third group, which is also, by the way, the largest, are the Trump agnostics. And I've talked to these people in focus groups. They are people who quite like what Trump achieved, but they're a bit sick of the drama. They're not really sure if Trump can get things done in a second term. And the problem for Nikki Haley is that she really appeals to the apostates, the people who really don't like Trump, but she doesn't appeal to either the Trump true believers or the Trump agnostics in the middle.

DeSantis hasn't got a chance with the Trump-Drew believers, but he has got a chance with the agnostics and the apostates. And if he can connect with them, if he can become their man, then it's possible that he could close the gap with Trump. I don't think it's likely, but I've enjoyed reading your pieces on this, Henry, and it keeps coming back into my mind when you wrote a piece about

earlier in the fall about the prospect of Iowa polls understating DeSantis and overstating Trump. And on that basis, I think you could see DeSantis do a bit better if he can keep in second place.

Have you begun to see in Iowa any movement towards DeSantis after first the Reynolds endorsement, now about a week ago, the Bob Vander Plaats endorsement? Or have you you may not have been in the field since either of those events? Yeah, I haven't been in the field. Others have. And there hasn't really been a detectable shift. But look, I was notoriously hard to poll.

A lot of candidates, a lot of voters haven't made up their mind or just sitting on it and not thinking about it until the day. I think this electorate is more fluid than it looks. We did a poll in Iowa back in the summer and we did a number of questions matching up to Santos against Trump on various issues.

And they liked DeSantis on a lot of key issues like, can you beat Joe Biden in an election? Will you stand up against woke values? They rated DeSantis higher on those questions than Trump, despite Trump having a very large lead in the poll. Now, look, it could just be that they're going to vote Trump, whatever. And certainly, you know, the political, the criminal trials that Trump is standing in have only galvanized his support.

amongst many of these primary voters. But there is still that warmth for DeSantis there amongst the Iowa electorate and the caucus goers. And although, you know, if the polls happen tomorrow, Trump is very much advantaged Trump, he does still have room to close the gap. The biggest problem, I think, Henry, is if we're still in a world by January where DeSantis and Haley are fighting for this second spot.

because then we're just going to see what happened in 2016. They're going to split the vote and Trump's going to win. So one thing that Kristen Soltis Anderson, pollster for Echelon Insights, a Republican firm, said on a previous episode is that she likens a lot of Trump voters to the sort of people who go to the same restaurant down the hall. And they go down the street and they always say they want to look at the specials, but they usually end up ordering their favorite dish, the meatloaf.

Are you seeing kind of that attitude? So she's very skeptical that the Trump agnostics are really agnostics that she or she thinks that they're really more the sort of person who wants to be open minded, but they know what they love and they usually come back to it. Are you seeing some of that or do you think that she's maybe overstating the attraction to the try and the true?

Look, I think a lot of that is true. I think that shows why Ramaswamy hasn't done a great job, because ultimately these voters, the voters who like Ramaswamy are sticking with Trump.

The thing is, Trump's lead in Iowa is the most narrow of the three early states. He's on around 40% of the vote. So if that can be, you know, it's easier for a candidate to close that gap than in those other early states. We know that Iowa also has late swings. So I think fundamentally in the polls at the moment, it would be very hard to disagree with that.

But what I do think is there are other things at play that might hurt Trump. A sense, perhaps, is he taking Iowa seriously?

DeSantis is about to have reached 99 counties in Iowa, if he hasn't already. And he's going to be using that along with his endorsements to say, look, this race isn't predetermined. I've got a presence here. His debate performances have also been good. Our last poll after the last Republican primary debate had DeSantis ahead of Nikki Haley. That was a national poll, not just in Iowa. So at the moment, yes, I think Christine is right.

But do I think that can change and change very quickly in Iowa? Yeah. Do I think that the Santas is likely that the Santas is going to win Iowa? No, not either. But I just don't think this is pre-written in the way that perhaps some have suggested it is.

Let's move forward to the general election. You had a very interesting piece about your swing through Georgia, that unlike Sherman, you left things in your path. Stores are still open. Houses are still standing. But you were focusing on the group that I call the double doubters, other called the double haters. You're calling the double disapprovers. And those are the people who dislike both Biden and Trump. And if they could wave a wand, both people would disappear and that actually have a better choice.

What are you learning about the double disapprovers and how they're, more importantly, how they're weighing the choice they don't want to make?

Well, I think the first thing to say is they really, really don't want to make that choice. I mean, it was quite shocking in some of these conversations I had in Georgia with independents, with people who voted for Trump last time, with people who voted for Biden last time. When pushed to choose between Trump and Biden, one chap put his head in his hands and he just couldn't bring himself to do it.

They feel that Trump is more drama, more chaos. A lot of people still feeling concerned about January 6th amongst those swing voters. And they feel that Biden has made a mess of it

isn't up for the job, isn't firm, isn't able to sort of do the day-to-day, let alone be an effective president of the United States. So it's a really sort of a sorry sight, really, in terms of their views of things. But they do have this sense of inevitability, too, that that probably is going to be the matchup.

And where are they on that? Well, some are sticking with what they did before. I spoke to one college graduate who voted for Biden in 2020, despite his ideal candidate this time around being DeSantis. He says that he'll vote for Biden again if it's Trump because of January 6th.

Spoke to one lady who's voting for Trump again because whatever the case, Biden had pursued a much less unifying agenda than she expected him to since his inauguration in 2021. And others are simply not voting or voting for a third party candidate.

So there's one. So I think there's one certainty, which is that, you know, the third party candidates are certainly going to do better. I think a lot of people are going to be staying at home. And I think a lot of people are also just going to be reluctantly sticking with what they've done before. One other element I must talk about, Henry, is the African-American turnout, because that is the absolute key in a state like Georgia. And also very important amongst those double disapprovers who are African-American.

The African-American population in Georgia is one third of the state. It's a really, really important voting bloc. They turned out for Biden in 2020. They didn't turn out for Stacey Abrams in 2022. And a lot of polling is suggesting that in Georgia and across the country, African-American enthusiasm for Biden is a lot lower. And I saw that. I saw it time and time again in my trip through Georgia. I spoke to one chap called Gabriel, absolutely fascinating guy, only 23.

used to be sort of, you know, as liberal as they came in his own view. He said to me, James, the blacks are waking up.

We're waking up and we're starting to realise that Biden is not the choice, that we need to look at Trump instead because of a move to the left, an undermining of families. And as he told me, the Democrats are happy to swap African-American votes for the votes of white women. So if there's even a small change in African-American turnout at the next election,

That really, really helps Trump in a lot of these states, especially Georgia. Yeah, it's also in all three of the Midwestern states. Milwaukee, the black population is key to carrying Wisconsin, the black population in Detroit and Flint is key to carrying and Grand Rapids is key to carrying Michigan. And of course, the black population in Philadelphia and in Pittsburgh is key to carrying Pennsylvania. So a small drop in a small increase in the Trump population.

Vote among African-Americans doesn't have to be 80-20. It can be 85-15 on a smaller share of the vote. And heck, that 11,000 vote margin in Georgia becomes an 11,000 margin the other way without any changes among the whites.

Absolutely. It's the one to watch. And one thing that we want to do in the run up to 2024 from a polling perspective is not just get fixed on the top line voting intention. Is Biden up to, is Trump up to on national and state level? We're going to do that, but we also want to do

some really properly quoted, really properly weighted polls of audience groups like the double disapprovers, like African-Americans, like Hispanic voters, because it could be that these sort of more thematic groups are going to tell us a lot more than what the sort of horse race is in a given state. Well, James, it's been fascinating to chat with you. Where can my listeners follow your work, the stuff that you release to the public rather than privately for your paying clients?

Absolutely. You can follow us on Twitter or X. You can follow at JLPartnersPolls or you can follow me on at JamesJohnson252. You can also go along to JLPartners.com to see all of our UK, US and European polling releases. Well, James, thank you very much. And I look forward to welcoming you back next year on Beyond the Pulse. Thanks so much.

All right, you've been waiting. You've been waiting to find out what's on my mind. And what's on my mind is Argentina and the Netherlands. Now, I know they're not in America. I know they don't vote for the American president. And I know that Argentines and Dutch are very different in terms of what they like out of government and what they want.

than Americans. But hear me out that what happened over there is fabulous news for Donald Trump. In fact, you can argue that it's going to be the canary in the coal mine in the way that Brexit was in 2016.

So why do I think that? Well, you've got to understand that in both cases, you have a outsider who is an outsider in an outsider. I mean, I'm talking about the sort of people who won those elections that no rational person going to all the nice cocktail parties and reading all the nice publications thought could ever lead their country. In Argentina, you've got a guy who

who is an out-and-out libertarian. He named his dog after Murray Rothbard. And if you don't know who Murray Rothbard is, Google it, and welcome to learning who the president of Argentina is going to be. This is a guy who takes chainsaws on the stage to depict how he's going to slash spending. This is a guy who, for his birthday, actually beat up a piñata.

in the shape of the central bank to show that he's going to close the central bank, the first large country that's going to do away with central banking if he has his way. So this is the outsider of the outsider of the outsider. And what does he do? He not only wins, he wins the highest share of the vote of any non-peronist in the modern era.

That's an earthquake. That's Brexit. That's Donald Trump. And he did it by mobilizing the same sorts of constituencies. Let's jump to the Netherlands before I tell you how they're the same. Geert Wilders. Geert Wilders is a guy who left a very establishment party, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, known as VVD in the Netherlands, to form his own party, PVV, the Party for Freedom.

And he has named his name as being somebody who is against mass immigration, who has called for the banning of mosques, who has called for not attacks in a physical sense, but is definitely anti-Islam. He's been hiding in a safe house under Dutch state protection for nearly 20 years because of credible death threats. This is a guy who has been derided and attacked from the Dutch establishment for nearly the entire time he's been in politics. And yet,

His party won. His party didn't win a narrow, close election. His party nearly doubled its share, more than doubled share of the vote. His party won by a massive amount over any of the establishment parties. And he's now in the driver's seat. The guy who would never be invited to the correct parties is now going to be throwing the correct parties. The outsider of the outsider of the outsider. And you know what?

What he and Millais have in common is they've mobilized what I call the outs. I wrote a column for a British publication called Unheard about six and a half years ago called It's Not Left Versus Right, It's In Versus Out. And that's what we're seeing across the world. If you're doing pretty well, if you're pretty happy with the state of the country, if you're pretty satisfied with the state of social change in your country, it doesn't matter if you're on the right or the left. You have more in common with each other. You're on the ins.

And if you're dissatisfied, if you're the sort of person who may say, you know, my community has been going down the drain ever since they shipped the factory overseas, or you're the sort of person who says, why is it that we have to have two jobs to make what one job made when my dad was working? Why is it that when I was growing up, people had respect for their community and now we see lawlessness?

There's lots of reasons to be dissatisfied, but if you're angrily dissatisfied, you're the outs. And what's happening is that populists like Millay, like Wilders, like Trump, like Nigel Farage, unite the outs.

And what happened in Argentina is clear. And what happened in the Netherlands is clear. Where did the voter shifts come from? Malay did worse than the center-right traditional in-candidate, Mande Macri, did when he won narrowly in 2015. He didn't do worse in the country. He did worse in the nice parts. If you're a tourist and you're going to Buenos Aires,

Malay did much worse than Macri did in those places. There were people who have the nice homes who would rather have the Peronists that they knew than the libertarian that they didn't. But boy, out in the countryside, the people who had never gotten to the traditional center right away, the rural base of the Peronist population swung to Malay massively.

He got the people who are not the sort of people who would ever go to Teatro Cologne to listen to an opera. That's what Macri's voters did. That's not what these voters did. And they liked Millais. They didn't like the center-right. They didn't like the Peronists anymore because of massive inflation and constant threats of recession. They were ready for a real change, and the real change resulted

was a libertarian, piñata bashing, Murray Rothbard naming, guy with sideburns named Javier Millet. Gerrit Wilders, it's the same thing. You take a look at the big cities, the places tourists go. You know, you go to Amsterdam and they still wanted the government parties. You go to the big cities, they still wanted the government parties. You go to the rural smaller areas, you go to the places that you wouldn't necessarily go to if you've got three days in the Netherlands, big swings everywhere.

They're tired of the chaos. They're tired of the incompetence. They're tired of the dishonesty. And the fact is, for both Millais and for Wilders, the fact that they're despised by the elites is a calling card. It shows credibility. It shows these are the people to trust. Because if you're totally frustrated with left or right in the in crowd, you want a real out. And they're the real outs. What does that mean for Donald Trump?

Well, does anybody think that the polite company in the United States like Donald Trump? You can walk into establishment Republican circles and they'll be muted or privately disdainful. You can walk into any other circles and you know what they think.

But Donald Trump is still popular among the outs. Donald Trump is gaining support among non-white voters. Donald Trump is retaining support of the people who just eight years ago were loyal Democrats until he made them Republicans. Donald Trump is leading in the polls. Sean Trendy at Real Clear Politics, who will be a guest next week, by the way, is somebody who just wrote a piece saying that Donald Trump is in a best position to win an election a year out since anybody since George W. Bush.

That's important. And what's happening here is being mirrored elsewhere. Increasing numbers of people don't trust the elites, don't like the ins, don't believe their media or academic experts, and are willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Look, we've got one year to go. Lots can happen. Lots can happen to Donald Trump. Lots can happen in events. But if inflation is still 3% to 4% in a year from now, the Ukraine is still not winning. And Trump maybe even gets a mistrial, not an acquittal, but a mistrial, not a conviction. One of the things that he can then point to to say, look, it really was a prosecuted mischievous prosecution, an improper prosecution. They couldn't even convince a jury.

Well, don't be surprised if what happened overseas happens here again. And don't be surprised if people who are really angry with the Inns decide that they want the most out politician they can find. And that's me, Henry Olson, with this week's Rant on Politics.

That's it for this week. Starting today, Beyond the Polls is going to move to a weekly basis. That's right. Every week you'll get the latest analysis and data from myself and America's best experts. So set your clocks, bookmark your pages, do whatever you have to do, and get ready for double the pleasure and double the fun as we reach for the stars together and journey each week Beyond the Polls.

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