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Hi, I'm Henry Olson, and welcome back to Beyond the Polls. I've got a great lineup of guests today, so let's just dive right in.
Well, the world is not simply dominated by discussion of the Republican contest because the winner of that contest goes on to meet the winner of the Democratic contest, which right now looks to be President Joe Biden. But there's a lot of controversy about his age and other issues. And here to talk with me about that and all issues non-Republican race related is Jeffrey Skelly, the senior elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight, which is now a part of ABC News. Jeffrey, welcome to Beyond the Polls.
Hey, thank you so much for having me. Well, let's just start with that. You know, with Biden, there's been polls that show either a majority or close to a majority say he shouldn't run again. There's polls that say, and I'm talking about Democrats. I'm not talking about nationally. I'm talking about Democrats saying, I don't think he should run again. There's Democrats who say in the same polls or different polls that he's too old. There's an Emerson poll of Iowa that came out that now
says that he's at only 50% support in the Iowa Democratic Caucus, most of that going to undecided rather than
his two minor challengers. What do you make of all of this? And is this just a 10% teapot or should we start looking at this information seriously? I think my view of the democratic race, if you are willing to even call it that, um, is that Biden was always unlikely to get a serious primary challenger. Um, I actually wrote about this in July and I sort of laid out the reasons for that. Um,
First of all, you know, it is tough to challenge an incumbent president. I think also an important thing is that a lot of the names that get bandied about who would actually, you know, could actually cause Biden trouble are
You know, say like a Gavin Newsom or a Gresham Whitmer or what have you. They're sort of in like the same ideological zone of the Democratic Party as Joe Biden. I mean, Gresham Whitmer, I think, is a co-chair of his campaign for reelection here.
And so if you're sort of thinking about historically where primary challenges to sitting presidents tend to come from, they tend to be at least somewhat ideologically based or they're really centered on one major issue, say like Eugene McCarthy running against Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Right.
uh, over the Vietnam war or, uh, Pat Buchanan in 1992, you know, at the end of the day, he did sound like he won any contests against George H.W. Bush, but he was clearly making an ideological challenge, um, to the sitting president and his party's primary. So for me, like the missing ingredient here, and you see all these polls and it's clear that there are a lot of Democrats who are at least at the very least hesitant about Biden running again, uh,
But I think the missing ingredient here is that Biden's not unpopular among Democrats. He's not struggling in terms of his approval rating among Democrats. I actually just went and double checked just to see if
If things had changed at all since I since I wrote this in July and I didn't think they had, but I was looking through the crosstabs, a bunch of a bunch of approval polls and Biden's approval rating among Democrats is sitting around 80 percent on average, just like it was when I wrote the piece two months ago. So I in this among Democrats and I think you need to see that number. You needed to see that number a lot lower a lot earlier.
i think to create the environment where biden might have even said it's maybe best if i step aside so i think that's a that's keeping party leaders in line it's keeping you know people who actually could give him a significant challenge uh you know not the rfk juniors of the world but people who actually could in in any universe defeat biden in a primary you know
it's making them hesitate or even, you know, they're not going to actually jump in, even though it does seem like there's certainly an appetite for an alternative. But then if you ask people like who that alternative should be, they can't really tell you. I saw one poll that had
Biden matched one-on-one against all these big Democratic names, and he beat all of them. Not handily, actually, you know, like 10, 15 points. The only one he lost to was Michelle Obama, which is a candidacy, I think, that exists in political fantasy land. Yeah, that's a popular one with pollsters, but has basically no basis in reality. Yeah. She's, I think, been pretty clear about that. Oh, she's been completely clear about that, and...
You know, like a lot of these people, you know, it's like the Oprah boomlet of a few years ago. Oh, this person's good on television, attractive, smart. It's a completely different world in politics. So I think Michelle Obama, having lived with politics for most of her adult life with Barack, knows what it takes and knows it's not her skill set.
So moving to the general election, I was in the dentist's office the other doctor's office the other day and doctor asked me about the race. And it's like, why is it? Because, of course, this person is just a normal person. So they're not following the incentives. When I told them what the results of the polls were, it's like, why is that with all of these indictments that Donald Trump can still win?
And of course, as we're talking, Donald Trump has led in a few of the most recent polls. He hasn't been behind by more than two points in a poll taken in the last two weeks. He's within a couple of tenths of a point in one important polling average. So the data, while they don't back up what he regularly says, which is he's ahead by miles, they actually do support that this is at best a nip and tuck race for Biden.
Why is that? Oh, it is a it is a great question. I think I sort of have a couple immediate thoughts. One is that Biden is the incumbent now. So he he gets to own the conditions of things, whether you're talking about the economy, the conflict in Ukraine, you know, inflation, of course, is an issue on a lot of people's minds. And so I think to some extent,
His position in the polls is a reflection of a president whose approval rating is around 40 percent and has been stuck in the low 40s for a very long time now. There hasn't been a lot of bounce in his numbers one way or the other. He's just sort of been stuck there. He has very poor approval ratings among independents. So I think to some extent.
That has to be part of this conversation. At the same time, people also, you know, they're familiar with Donald Trump. So I think it also shows that there's a lot of Republican support for Donald Trump and that, you know, there are independents out there who say, yeah, sure, Trump,
There are problems with them, but we're not happy with the status quo, and so we're at least open to the possibility. I mean, I think you see in a lot of these polls, you have a sizable number of undecideds, and they do tend to come mostly from the independent camp. Not that there are actually a ton of independents, but a lot of people self-identify that way, and you have to push them to ask them, do you actually lean toward one party? And most do, but most polls don't report their crosstabs that way.
So I think that that's like, so that's, that's part of the conversation. And I think the other thing that's worth mentioning is that like I,
I think it's very worthy of discussion to talk about these polls because it's been a long time. I think 1956 was the last time we had a rematch in a presidential election, Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. So people are going to be much more familiar with these candidates starting out than I think you might get in another kind of election, especially one where there's no incumbent running. But historically, we do know that polls taken this far out
can't really tell us that much about the final outcome. And a lot of that is down to, we don't know what the conditions will be like a year from now. And that I think is much more important to where the race, the potential rematch between Trump and Biden actually goes in the end. And we just don't have, it's going to be a few more months before we start to get some idea of just what that's going to look like. And of course, yes, we have no idea how sort of how
how continued legal strife for Trump is going to play a role in this race if we end up with this rematch, which is the way things are looking at this point. So there are just a lot of variables in that. But I do think it is, of course, notable that they're running about even in these early polls. And maybe that's also just a general reflection of the fact that we live in a very divided country and one where the two camps are pretty close in size. And so, yeah,
the default of a close race is, you know, basically, I think, a fair baseline expectation in any presidential election right now. Yeah, it feels kind of like that legendary period in the 1880s when every political race was, like, decided by tenths of a point and a stray comment here and there. New York was a swing state, you know, back in the good old days. You had, like, the largest state in the country. It's like if California were the, you know, pivotal swing state today. Yeah, exactly.
Well, yeah, you're talking about the polarization, and we're recording on a Wednesday, and Mitt Romney, former presidential nominee, former governor of Massachusetts, current senator of Utah, has announced that he's not going to run again, and that his retirement statement...
basically took a swipe at both parties, saying there's a problem with the left and there's a problem with the MAGA right, and pointing to some sort of center, which is not typically what a retiring person does in their farewell speech. What do you make of Romney's retirement, and what do you make of Romney's statement?
It's interesting. Obviously, Mitt Romney has gone from being the 2012 Republican nominee for president to something at times an odd fit within sort of the GOP as – I mean that's, to be clear, a sort of a blanket statement. I think it's –
the face of the Republican Party right now is Trump, or at least that's what we associate it with. But that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of Republicans who still like Mitt Romney. But I do think that the party has obviously shifted to some extent since he was the nominee. And there are many Republicans who dislike Romney, including many in his own state. And I think that's another aspect of this retirement, is that he faced probably a challenging primary battle. We don't know exactly...
Who was going to run in the end? There was a former Speaker of the House, or is he the current Speaker of the House, excuse me, who has an exploratory committee going. And I think there's also talk that Attorney General Sean Reyes might run. But the potential for Romney to have a really difficult
battle for renomination was there and did you know did he have sort of the did he want that did he want to go through that because we did know that looking at at polls among utah republicans that uh he'd sort of varied between slightly more unpopular than popular and slightly more in terms of approval more popular than unpopular but close enough to 50 50 that
You know, if it if it turned into a head to head race, he could, you know, he could be in trouble. So I think that also has to be factored in here in terms of maybe his dissatisfaction with the Senate and the prospect of, you know, trying run for renomination.
So when somebody makes a statement pointing out the pox on both your houses, one has to wonder if there's a house that he's looking to go inhabit that would be a new one. And lo and behold, there's this discussion of No Labels, the group that is openly trying to put a bipartisan centrist ticket, not centrist in the sense of literally moderate, but balanced non-extreme ticket together,
Does the fact of Romney's statement suggest that maybe he would be interested on the ticket, even though he took a slot at both Trump and Biden for being old and saying that he would be in his, I think, early 80s if he were to finish out his term? Could one imagine that he might?
look at that if it is offered or in more likely perhaps endorse it if it's not his race, but it's a ticket that he likes. Oh, well, I mean, let's say let's put it this way. I don't think you ever lose like White House fever until you're six feet under. I think I think at the end of the day, even if you've had a long political career, you
If you've been that close to the mountaintop, obviously, in terms of having narrowly lost in 2012, I can imagine a world where Mitt Romney would at least ponder the idea of running. I do think at the same time he is, despite his many, you know, the sins he may have committed in the eyes of some Republicans, he is a Republican. So, you know, like with any candidate who gets mentioned for this, there has to be a
to sort of forego your partisan allegiance to actually run. So, you know, people have talked about Larry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, of course, who's a Republican. Joe Manchin, obviously, his name's been thrown about a fair amount, obviously, a senator from West Virginia, a Democrat. So you have to be willing to do that. I don't know that Romney would be, but I do think that
Mitt Romney would be perhaps the most interesting name that I have heard bandied about because I do think that he has – he's just going to be more well-known than a Larry Hogan or a Joe Manchin. And I do think that he would struggle to win over some Republican voters, but there might be a few Republican voters out there who say, oh –
I'm not a huge fan of Trump, so Mitt Romney is an interesting option. Some Democrats and independents who are not happy with Biden being the choice might entertain the idea.
Voting for Romney, someone who voted to impeach Donald Trump. So Romney would certainly be interesting. And I think he would be just about the most high profile option I've heard mentioned besides maybe like the rock or something when it comes to, you know, to be clear, I that that was a joke I threw into an article I wrote about.
about no labels, because I think that they need somebody who is gonna grab eyeballs. And Mitt Romney would be maybe the politician, the name among politicians that would be sort of the shiniest one I've heard of as a possibility. - So here's the shocking and highly unlikely hypothetical I'm going to throw at you. Romney Cinema, 2024, as the no labels. They have a famous friendship.
and he did a Ted Lasso impersonation where they treated her as the boss, Rebecca, and he came bearing biscuits. Man, woman, Democrat, Republican, run with it. Who's disliked by a lot of Republicans, Democrat who's disliked by a lot of Democrats. Exactly. Maybe it's perfect. I don't know. I mean, look, I think it's highly unlikely that
Well, I mean, historically, we just know that it's incredibly difficult for a third party to actually win, much less even carry a state. But if you're going to have one win 10, 15 percent of the national popular vote, I mean, that's...
That sounds like a ticket that could maybe do that. I mean, they would certainly raise some money. They would be notable. You'd have two, you know, this again is in the sort of the Biden-Trump rematch universe. You have two candidates that people are not happy about having to vote
For one of them, again, they're not happy that this rematch is happening, except for sort of the, you know, the partisans on both sides being content with it or content enough. But largely speaking, we've seen, you know, poll after poll saying that majority of Americans do not want this rematch. So in that universe where people might be, you know, open to the idea of turning to an alternative, that would be a pretty interesting ticket.
Okay, well, I will keep my eye on this bizarro world. It's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like that Star Trek episode Mirror Mirror, where they go through the transporter and turn out into the evil Federation where Spock has a beard. You know, when Romney starts wearing a beard, I know we are in the bizarro world political. Letting it, you know, letting a little five o'clock shadow develop instead of being very just kind of perfectly...
trim all the time. Yeah, that would be interesting. I should mention, you know, we're here talking about it. Cinema, obviously we haven't, hasn't, she has not made a final statement regarding her plans for running for reelection here as an independent in 2024. She's raising money like she's running, but she's holding out so far and we, you know, she's, she's facing a difficult three-way race from the looks of things if she does indeed run as an independent. So, yeah,
You know, if she's looking for an off ramp, that would be an interesting one. Yeah, well, that's the thing. A lot of these people, they go up or out. And what's more up or out than a historic presidential race in a contested year? You know, what's the worst that can happen? She can end up on the board at Bain Capital. I mean. Yeah, I think she's going to probably be just fine one way or the other. So, Jeffrey, where can my listeners follow your work?
I write for FiveThirtyEight.com and that's spelled out F-I-V-E-T-H-I-R-T-Y-E-I-G-H-T.com. And that is the number of electoral votes in the Electoral College. If you're wondering why we have that name and we are part of ABC News. And yeah, that's it. I guess my Twitter handle is Jeffrey V.S. V as in Victor, S as in Sam there at Twitter. Or sorry, X, excuse me.
The artist formerly known as Twitter. Yes, that's great. I keep waiting for that to be said more often, particularly since Elon Musk has named his children after various letters and so forth. Well, thank you very much for appearing on Beyond the Polls.
Well, the Republican race continues to both enthrall and bewilder. And here to tell us why what's happening or what's not happening is happening is the extremely qualified Amy Walter, the queen of sophology and editor-in-chief and publisher of The Political Report with Amy Walter. Amy, welcome to Beyond the Polls.
Thank you, Henry. Happy to be here. Well, let's start with the big dog, you know, Donald Trump. His lead seems to defy political gravity. And the question is why? Yes, indeed. In some ways, his lead defies gravity. In other ways, it makes a lot of sense.
He's the former president of the United States. As such, he's got some juice. He's got an A.M.I.D. He's got a base. He comes into the race with a lot of money. So, of course, he should be the frontrunner in another bid, in his second bid for office. I think, though, if you said, boy,
Boyd, this is also someone who has 91 indictments and also lost a very close election. And in 2022, the candidates he endorsed lost elections. Republicans had a less than ideal midterm election in part because of the kinds of candidates he supported. You would say, yes, that is defying traditional political gravity. Republican voters should look at that
set of issues I just raised and say, is this really the right guy? Is this really who we want behind us to support and get behind? And to me, Henry, it kind of goes like this, which is, I think you have got
35 on a good day, 35 to 40 on a not great day, 30 to 35 percent of the Republican electorate that is not going anywhere. It doesn't matter what Trump says, does, doesn't do. There we go. So he starts off with a pretty high ceiling, high floor.
I do believe there's a growing percentage, higher than it was, let's say, when he was in the White House, of never-Trump Republicans. So, again, low-end 15%, high-end 20%. And then you've got everybody else there, 40%, 45%, 55% of the Republican Party who...
They're going to look around. They're willing to look around. They like Donald Trump. He's the dish on the menu that they're the most familiar with, and they're comfortable with it. But they're also like, maybe I should try something else. Let's see what else is on the menu. I always get the cheeseburger. Maybe I should get the tuna melt this time. Okay. What I think we assumed would occur is,
was that somebody like Ron DeSantis was the one candidate who could put the coalition of never Trumpers and maybe Trumpers or alternative people who are willing to look to an alternative, put them together, and that would equal more than 50%. He was going to make this a two-person race. No one else was getting any traction. And that...
Again, at the end of 2022, early 2023, that made a whole lot of sense. And then I think a number of things happened. The first was that Ron DeSantis decided to spend his time going back to Tallahassee instead of
engaging on the campaign trail. Now, he had just been reelected. He wanted to get accomplishments under his belt. He had told people he was not going to announce his bid for president until after the legislative session was over. I get all of it, but it left a big vacuum, and that vacuum got filled, I think, in part by attacks on him by Donald Trump, in part by media scrutiny. And then the second thing that happened, which is really the one we talked the most about, and
Rightly so. The indictments that came down in New York starting this spring, which galvanized not just those 35 to 40 percent of people who already would go to the ends of the earth for Donald Trump, but it took a lot of those maybe Donald Trump voters and pushed them into his camp. And nobody's been able to find the right formula to get them out of that camp.
And that brings us to Ron DeSantis, is that here's a guy who in national polling averages at the beginning of the year at one point got within 15 points of Trump on the RealClearPolitics average.
By the time he got into the race, he had dropped, but he was still personally at around 20 percent. And the most recent real clear politics average has him a shade above 13. And it's been this downward slump ever since his peak in late spring.
What is it that Republicans are looking at and saying, I thought this was interesting, but I'm not as interested once I see, to continue your restaurant analogy, once I see the dish in front of me, I'm going to ask for it to go back to the kitchen. Right. I don't know if it's as much as I want it to go back into the kitchen as it is.
I guess I'm just not as interested in looking anymore. And some of that is, again, I think the indictment really helped to do two things, not just to really galvanize support around Trump, a rally around Trump, but it also took away all the oxygen from any other conversation. Ron DeSantis cannot have a conversation about anything
without also having to address Donald Trump, indictments, the justice system, the DOJ, all of that. All of it is about and in relation to Donald Trump, as opposed to it being about Ron DeSantis and what Ron DeSantis wants to talk about. I also think when we were watching Donald Trump at the end of 2022,
There was a weariness and a wariness from a lot of Republican voters about him. And he even looked not in his words that he was low energy. Remember his kickoff for his reelection? It was a guy who just didn't seem to have that zip on his fastball anymore.
And as the indictments came down and as Trump got back onto the trail and became that guy, once again, the one who he loves being right, they're all going after me. I'm being persecuted. You need to stand with me so we can take it to those terrible people who are coming after the MAGA world. When he started doing that, voters said, well, he doesn't.
look like he's lost anything on his fastball. It doesn't look like those two years he's spent in Mar-a-Lago mean that, you know, he doesn't have that same fire that he had when he was in the White House. He sure looks like the same guy that we saw in 2016 and in 2017, 18, etc. So I think that made it harder then for somebody like Ron DeSantis to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, come look at me. I'm the newer version of Trump. And they say, well, why do we want
Why do we want Robin when we can have Batman? And he's still Batman. I also think there is something to be said that, yeah, Ron DeSantis is not the most naturally gifted in terms of people who retail skills. But I don't know if that is something that is much more...
an inside the beltway kind of take on him than it is on regular people, right? If you follow Twitter,
You would assume that Ron DeSantis' drop in the polls was all about Ron DeSantis being kind of awkward and not knowing how to talk to people and saying weird things to kids at the Iowa State Fair, whatever it is that he did, how he looks, how he acts. That may be some of it, but I do think that more than anything, it's that we are talking about Donald Trump more
in a way that benefits Donald Trump in a Republican primary. And that is really hard to break through.
So the last debate was the one chance they actually had to talk, obviously, sometimes about Trump, but most of the time not about Trump because Trump's decided not to show up. He's not going to show up at the Reagan Foundation-sponsored debate on September 27th. So all of these people have a second chance to momentarily escape the big dog's shadow.
Who has more writing on this debate in taking advantage of that and why? Well, it's always the candidate who has the most momentum right now. And I think if you're Nikki Haley, who has gotten a lot of mileage out of her last performance, both in fundraising, she's getting a bump in the polls and media attention. She's got to show that she can
This wasn't a one-time thing, right? She can do this multiple times. She's the real deal. I also expect that we're going to pay attention, as we always do, to Ron DeSantis because even as he's dropped a lot, he's still...
in second place or tied for second place. So he's still one of the other frontrunners. This is a battle for second place, Henry. And so right now that battle for second place looks to be between DeSantis, Haley, and then
who also was getting a ton of attention in the last debate. Well, you know, and then you get that question, which is, you know, I saw some of the snap polls, which suffer from some methodological weaknesses, but are kind of the best numerical examinations of viewer sentiment out there. And,
And DeSantis did well, Haley did well, Christie didn't do well. And Ramaswamy was kind of like Marmite. You loved it or you hated it. And so he has gotten a blip in polls, not a greater one than Haley, even though he seemed to have had more love than Haley, in part because he had more hate.
How do you evaluate Ramaswamy's moment or his blip? Is he this race's Herman Cain or even Carly Fiorina, who had her one moment of debate fame in 2015? Or is he somebody who actually has a chance of emerging to become the challenger to Donald Trump?
Good question. I think Ramaswamy has two big challenges right now. One, the media scrutiny is getting much more intense.
And that is and the opposition research is coming out. So I think he now has to answer more questions that are maybe not as comfortable for him. He doesn't get sort of a free ride from that perspective. The other when you hear from Republicans who watch that debate, they're
for the one even the ones who like drama swami who are like yeah i like him he's a fresh face and he doesn't talk like a regular politician he tells it like it is the the next thing they'll say is but he's really young right um and and to me this has been sort of a fundamental challenge for everybody else in that race not named donald trump is that voters look at donald trump republican voters and say you know
The guy's already been president. He will now have more experience going into that job than he did in 2017. And why risk putting somebody in that role who doesn't have that experience, who doesn't have that track record, who doesn't understand that?
all of the sort of traps that Washington sets for you. He's already figured all that out. Now he just goes back in and he's, you know, in, in, in even a better position than he was before. So, um, I, again, if polling was showing Donald Trump losing by 25 points, uh,
to Joe Biden, then it would be an easier argument for a Ramaswamy or a DeSantis to make to say, look, we all love Donald Trump. He's great. But like his time's over, turn the page. We need somebody who's a younger version of Donald Trump to continue the MAGA movement. That's just not there yet. So I'm not convinced that Ramaswamy gets the
uh into you know this becomes a one-on-one uh between the two of them it's also true that he's just not going to get remember if if 15 to 20 percent of the electorate is never trump they're not they're not going to ramaswamy is always trump so if if you think if that core of voters does unite behind one candidate um it's not going to be ramaswamy
And that's a huge barrier for him getting into second place, because, you know, if 40 to 35 or 40 percent are always Trump, if you can get 15 to 20 percent behind you of the never Trump, you pretty much have to sweep the board of the people in the middle. That's right. In order to break through on that. That's right. Last question. You know, we take a look at all these polls. Couple dropped just today.
Trump is ahead in the real clear politics average by over 40 points over Ron DeSantis. But you look at each of the early polls and he's ahead by 30 in Iowa, 31 in New Hampshire and 31 in South Carolina. Big, but he's polling in the low 40s, not above 50 in each of those states. And the reason it's not closer is because of the DeSantis slide that we've talked about, that the non-Trump voters are going down.
What do you make of the fact that the people who are seeing the most of the candidates in the Republican race are not as enamored of Trump as the people who aren't seeing these candidates? Or that is a that is a great question. And I think maybe the way of saying it is in those states where advertising is going on, where people are visiting, the folks who are looking around are say they're open to changing their mind.
are doing such a thing because they're actually being given to go back to the menu analogy, which by the way, I stole from Kristen Soltis Anderson. That was, that's her line, but it's so good. I had to, I had to take it. Those folks are starting to say, you know what?
I am going to get the tuna fish. All right. You know, the hamburger, I've had enough of that, but I'm going to go with the tuna tuna here. Not saying that they're going to stick with it. And then I also just did a little back of the envelope math on the last Quinnipiac poll where Trump's at 62% nationally, but of his voters, uh, uh,
there's something like about 30%, maybe close to 40%. It was somewhere between 30 and 40% said they're open to voting for somebody else. So if you do the math on that, then that gets him basically down to like 44%. In other words, it's where we started this conversation, which is he's got this very high floor, but it doesn't take much to, you know, to drop him from 55 to 45. Right.
The question is, can anybody else get to 50 or get to 48 or 47? And right now, you're not seeing that happen. And I think this will be really fascinating to watch as the results of Iowa come out.
Even a 10-point win, that's pretty impressive. And whoever is in second and third, if they continue to split the rest of that 50% or another person gets 55%, it's enough for him to win. So that's where you just kind of go...
It will have to be something so dramatic in order to really change the trajectory of this race, is that either Trump comes very, very close to losing but squeaks it out. And yes, this race does become more competitive as those maybe Trump voters lose.
and start to see one candidate as an okay alternative. I'm listening to you and I'm beginning to think of that dumb and dumber meme where Jim Carrey looks and says, but you're saying there's a chance. There's a chance. There's a chance we might be able to do this. It's hard to see that right now because there's, right? We've had a debate. We've had
We've had money spent. We've had attention on these candidates. And yet the race really hasn't moved at all.
at all since the spring. And if anything, the only movement there has been, to your point, the only movement that there has been is really DeSantis going down. But what we're not seeing is DeSantis going down, Trump going down, and then somebody else swooping up that core of votes. Instead, it's just DeSantis going down and some of those single-digit candidates picking up a
just it's it's all on the fringes well amy where can my listeners read or follow more of your work well thank you henry um you can go it's the cook political report with amy walter you can go to cookpolitical.com you can uh follow us at cook political on on the twitter i know we have an instagram account i don't know how to use instagram i'm not on it but i'm
We do have, for those who are Instagram people, it's very robust, I'm told. So there you go. And you personally are on. Oh, and I personally at Amy E. Walter, still on the Twitter slash X page.
You know, I can't do a whole lot of other social media. It's the one social media I do. Yeah, no, I'm the same way. And with respect to Twitter.exe, it's kind of like the Republican race. Everyone is predicting its demise and none of the challengers get any traction. Right. Very good point. Well, Amy, thank you very much for joining me on Beyond the Polls. Thank you, Henry. Thank you.
Well, for this week's ad of the week, we have to go far west. We're going out to the state of Montana. And no, we're not looking at a campaign ad for John Dutton for governor. We're looking at a campaign ad attacking Senator John Tester, the Democratic senator representing this very Republican state. Let's take a listen. John Tester in his own words. Joe's the right guy for this country.
He's the right guy for president. After that, Testers voted with Biden 91% of the time, giving a sky-high inflation, soaring interest rates, higher gas prices, and open borders. Even after all that, Jon Tester's still standing by Joe's side. Joe Biden, he's absolutely 100% with it, and he's doing a good job. Tell Jon Tester, stop standing up for Joe Biden and start fighting for Montana.
Well, there's a few reasons why I've got this as my ad of the week. First of all, think about the target audience. The reason Jon Tester can win is he gets people who don't like Democrats to vote for him, even though he's a Democrat. So what this ad does is remind people that, oh, yeah, he's not only a Democrat, but he's a Democrat who endorses the very unpopular in Montana, Joe Biden.
And they do this not just in the voiceover, which you can hear, but they do it visually. They have Jon Tester's name and picture up with every time they're doing this. They have the quotes that say that Joe Biden is a great president or would make a great president on the screen. You can't miss it. You look at it, you get the message.
You hear it. You get the message. And then when they're talking about Joe Biden, they have pictures of Joe Biden and Jon Tester on the screen together. Again, whether you're listening or whether you're watching or both, ideally, you're getting the message. What do you have to do to win in Montana? What you have to do is drive Jon Tester's support among people who dislike Joe Biden below 10 to 20 percent.
If Jon Tester can get 20% of the people who dislike Joe Biden, most of whom are Republican-leaning independents, then he might be able to squeak out a victory like he did in 2018 or like he did in 2012. But you knock that down so that if you don't like Joe Biden, you also don't like Jon Tester, well, you've got yourself a Republican senator from Montana.
The other thing I like about this is the ads, the issues that the ad mentions. And that is when you talk about what it is that Joe Biden has done wrong, they could have focused on Republican based sorts of things, things like wokeness or things like using the word socialism.
But remember, the person they're trying to talk to is the person who isn't the base. It's the person who usually votes Republican but is open to voting for a Democrat. So they talk about these sorts of issues that polls show these people are interested in. Inflation, gas prices, and immigration. All issues where Joe Biden's ratings are in the tank. In some cases, lower than his overall already low job approval ratings. So visually...
This is not an arresting ad, but it is an effective ad. Verbally, it is an effective ad and they reinforce one another. The target audience is clearly in mind throughout and they don't create deviations or irrelevant side questions that would cause the target audience to wonder or get sidetracked. No, this from 30 seconds from start to finish is a laser-focused ad.
that effectively targets the audience that they need in order to switch over to Republicans to pick up the seat. And that's why it's this week's Out of the Week. That's all for this episode. I'll be back in two weeks with another deep lineup of all-star guests. Until then, let's reach for the stars together and venture beyond the polls.