E103: Election 101, Trump vs Kamala Check-In
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Steve, welcome back to the podcast. Oh, thanks.

You have me. thanks. You have me excited .

to talk about how things are looking on the ground now as we wait just a few more days before the election. But also educate uh, ourselves, our audience a little bit more on just how to think about sort of elections more broadly. So with that, when you give just a high level overview on what is your stance and wear, things are shaking out right now IT, is that a coin flip is IT impossible to tell. How reliable are indicators when you .

of yeah i'll start off by saying it's really funny how I guess i've been I feel like as a relatively close follower of know all the political trends online and on twitter, this is basically my fourth go around because I I followed the two thousand twelve election very closely. This is a dating myself and in my mid thirties. And so we remember the twelve election, twenty sixteen, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty four.

And I definitely feel like i've seen all of the same patterns unfold online in all of these as you get closer to election day. And one of those is you can look at the state of the race in terms of polls. You can look at bedding markets, and then you start getting into more and more.

I joke me. I just call IT astrology. You see this with the people analyzing the early vote trans and how it's breaking down. And you'll find a lot of people maybe reading more into IT than you can get away with.

So you'll find people online right now, pretty serious people who will say they know one hundred percent that trump is going to win because the early vote looks like this. You find people who think commonly is going to win because the early vote looks like this. I think you'll see more who argue this way who are on the republican side.

And I think that is because there are optimistic signs in the early vote, but you just can't read into IT as much as people think because in the end, we don't know how people are voting. We don't know how independence are voting, even if we can measure them. We don't know a lot of things, and we don't know what the election day vote will be so strong G, O, P, R vote could be because people who be voting on election day have moved out into, uh, early voting.

So maybe he used to be that you would have a big republican advantage on election day. Now IT could be, maybe it's more even and might even be a democrat advantage. IT could be the only people left to have voted our Young people.

They're vote on election day and they're vote for heroes. So you can find a lot of people who are, I think, aggressively over reading signs essentially because it's like lack of enough stimulus, like we're also starved for the results to come in that people grasp at anything they can. It's like when they would do criminal ology during the cold war.

You try to read all this in intent into how guys were standing during the parade in red square to see like who's who's on the ups and who's on the in the kremlin. I think it's like that with a lot of what we're seen right now, that's all a abad press to say a lot of the models make silver models. Some other places they have IT is about a fifty, fifty race.

And I think any honest assessment of how things are going is the races about fifty, fifty. And I think it's funny how if you look at prediction markets like Polly market for a while, there was a school where IT was substantially more protruding p then a lot of the professional models had IT. And now as we're getting close to election day, oh, they're converging against and our trump is about, I think, fifty six percent on Polly market as I say this and I think that's about where he is in nate silvers model.

So I think in any honest assessment, it's a close race. It's about a coin flip IT could be we could be surprised by how easily one of the candidates wins if the polls are off in a relatively systematic manner, just one or two points in either direction. But I think that's an honest assessment of how things are going right now. It's close.

And are we just like faded every election to have a close election like this? Is this sort of like the efficient theory of of politics or something where it's just the two parties and it's like fifty one, forty nine leading up to the election? Or is this not sort of like fade to be this way?

That's an interesting question because the trend, as you know, is we have overtime drifted more towards the elections, always being close. So I used to be, you could just have a total blood bath. Gold water lost really badly.

I think he lost like sixty forty in terms of popular vote. Nixon one overwhelmingly. Regan won over. Like give you a sequence of three elections in a row where region crushes Carter, crushes mindell and bush, beats to caucus pretty strongly and even clint to election.

I don't think those are really in context remembred as big landslides, but if they happen today, they would be considered a totally dramatic landslide. So used to have bigger swings. Are we faded to be that way forever? I don't know.

There's one reason I think you have IT went that way was you had the U. S. Became a more diverse country, democrats had a larger and larger pool of nonWhite voters to draw on, and especially his panics.

And black voters were so monolithic democratic that they were kind of just locked in for the democrats. And I think that kind of put a ceiling on where republicans could go. And IT was like, you only saw really heavy swings, like basically White voters were more swing voters by nature, so they could swing more than the overall electorate would in any given election.

And so if there's fewer White voters, you see less swing. And you still see that in some particular states like IOS, relatively White. And they went from voting for obama baton to voting for trump baton, new hampshire IT went from trump, lost IT by like half a percent or so, one percent maybe in twenty sixteen to, I think he losted by eleven percent or so in twenty twenty.

So kind of states that have a heavily White population can be really swing with how they go. Now what we see in this selection cycle though, is trump is somewhat cracking up that tradition. He is making IT.

So maybe his spin ics are swing demographic. Maybe even blacks are more of a know seventy five percent democrats group instead of ninety ninety five percent democrat. And if that is not a trump specific thing, if I just points to a future where every group can swing more in terms of its outcome, then I think that would be possible.

We could see bigger landslides come back into play because every group is possible, capable of swinging pretty heavily in one direction. Something that might push against that could also just be that U. S.

Politics, like we have so much more data that we can bring to the table, we can so much more easily see what the trends are, what the reaction to things. So I think IT might be IT would be harder for a party to make a really dramatic mistake in terms of how they pitched themselves to the electorate. And that might play a role in how bigger landslide could be.

But yeah, for the foreseeable future, I think we'll continue to see pretty tight elections like this because you also see the polar ization of amErica in the sort of two tribes. And that polarization is still extremely strong. And I think you'd need to see signs that is going away before you'd see, I think, an ability for any party to say, win forty states in an election again .

for the listener who's unfamiliar with sort of the math of which states really matter in terms of which which states we are determining previous and current elections. When you give just a bit of a an overview to okay.

yeah so biggest picture of course is we have our fun electoral college system where you need a majority of every state has a certain number electoral boats is equal to its number of senators and representatives in congress. Um and then there's also dc. They have by amendment, they get three as well.

So there's five hundred and thirty eight electoral hoods. Easy to remember that because five thirty eight is the name of the website that they they were founded and then got fired from. Now it's with someone else, and then you need two hundred and seventy elector votes to win with a majority.

And other than a handful of exceptions, if you get the most votes in a state, you will get all of its selector al vote. So it's our fun mini game for electing the president that only exists in america. basically.

It's a big picture, I imagine, for any americans who fall in politics are pretty familiar with IT. But I can be pretty baffling to people who are looking at IT from another country. IT gets bashed a lot. I think IT has worked Better in practice than at my in theory. America's been a relatively stable democratic country for a long time, and we have the electoral college, and maybe that played a role every election we have.

The nature of IT means that instead of really campaigning on a nationwide level every single time, u tendency campaigns focus on what states they think are they most likely to be so called swing states, that as they might go for one canada or might go for the other, that changes every single election. And sometimes it's a little bit of guess work and they can even be pretty wrong about IT. So for example, in twenty twenty, you saw w gestures that like ohio was a swing state, that they should campaign and then trump actually one ohio very easily.

IT was not particularly close. And this cycle you'll see people not no one's really been campaign that hard ohio because it's assumed that will be a very safe trump state. Instead, the states that you see getting added are mostly ones that we're closed in the last one.

You also see north CarOlina, which was not considered a part IT, was not considered like a top swing state. Maybe at the start of the year, IT has moved into that. IT used to be kind of six major swing states.

The six big swing states were pensylvania ia with concern. Michigan, the rust belt ones. And then the sunbelt ones were georgia, arizona, nevada and then you started to see north CarOlina added that I think a big factor there was one IT was pretty close than twenty and twenty.

And I just didn't get as much attention because there was so much focus on the ones where all the recounts were happening and then the other things as they had. They have a cup natural candidate, mark Robinson, on the republican side, who has had a rough go of IT. He was a kind of controversial and inflammatory figure.

From start he kind of became famous for like facebook ranson stuff like that kind of how we took off. And then since he's and he got to look at governor off of that and then since then, now he's uniting for governor, more weird lord stuff has come out where he posted on porn websites and he made, they've found a lot of strange stuff about him in his past. So he's going to get massacred.

Red on tuesday, he's going to get destroyed. And I think a lot of the angst is that he's depressed. The overall G O P.

Turn out there a bit. And on the flip side, democrats on were motivated. They feel they can win IT.

So that is that was the state that was not considered super duper likely to change the election even nine months ago. And now I think you definite see a lot of republican sweating IT. You see a lot of trump attention.

I think he's hold four or five rallies there this weekend in the last three days, basically um so that that is one you could see decided and the other than that, you have the six I mentioned before. The most likely one to decide the election by general consensus is pensylvania. IT has a high number of elector votes.

IT went for trump in twenty sixteen. IT went for biden in twenty twenty. And if you do the math with the electoral college to get to two seventy, to summarize IT very aggressively, if you take the seven swing states, trump almost certainly, well, he definitely needs to win one of wisconsin in michigan or pennsylvania to be elected president. And pencil being is seen as the most likely one for that to occur. So you see a lot of energy going to that state in just the last handful of days.

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That is a debate, especially if he loses, you'll be hearing that for a long time. I think the consensus is going in the direction that SHE probably should have picked governance euro. I think that they that was who they all leaned towards in the immediate aftermath of her getting the nomination as the favorite. And I imagine a lot more details will come out about this in the months to come, especially if he loses because they'll be see, people say, like I tried to learn about this, I tried to pick a different path. You see all the recriminations bubble up.

My guess right now, just from the evidence we have seen, is I think they were leaning towards super o and then they only had a few days to pick and that they like blink, sort of that people said, oh, shapu, he know he's very very publicly uh, jewish silenus and he volunteered with the I, D, F and I member the that I think he was like a non combat role but he volunteer with the idf in the far left will just go berserk about this. They'll flip out about IT. It'll exacerbate the divides within the democrat party, over israel and gaza.

And it'll just be a big mess. You also in the last handful of days, there were some weird stories people started to bring up. I can't remember off the top my head, but I was like, there was a woman who committed suicide a decade ago, but her family believed he was murdered.

And then like this ag or this da played a role and that not being investigated further. And I was like, two degrees of separation from that to shop o he also had an a staffer who I think got me tude in a somewhat growth case, and so that would have been brought up. So I think all of that even if they were, I think it's like if that was had been a bigger deal several months ago and they had a longer picking process, they would have just gotten over IT.

They would have gotten to the bottom of all that and just picked him. I think since they had such an abbreviated VP search process that this might have flared up and made them freak out a bit and maybe back off from picking him. Of course, the public story is that shape o there's also stories that the superior like didn't mesh well or like didn't have a good interview with koala when he met her.

That might be a cover story for another reason, they wanted to picker or they want to pick someone else. And lastly, one thing that has to be a possibility is IT could be superior S A canny political Operator. He might have decided, I don't think koala is going to win.

I want to run in four years. And so I don't want to be on this ticket because if i'm on this ticket and we lose, I am unlikely be able to run in twenty eight. So that is also possibly he may have kind of intentionally sabotaged his own run for the vice presidency.

And I think we will learn more about IT in the weeks to come. So I don't want to oversell what we know. It's for now one of those interesting political questions. But definitely, I think if he loses, because pencil and you is the other way, the common sense pic will be SHE should have picked superior. SHE should have done superior, but maybe he wasn't really looking to be picked.

Yeah, that's interesting. Let's talk about the sort of state election integrity more broadly. I get a do of concerns about this election in in particular. slash. Can you illustrate the concerns for people who do?

Yeah, so election integrity stuff, obviously, i'm on the political right. You see people got very traumatized by the twenty twenty election and how specifically how IT folded. I know you've had a Richard ta nana on your show before and I think a his description of the right as like a party of T V.

Watchers is actually a very powerful one in terms of how a lot of ordinary people were related to the twenty twenty election that on twenty twenty, they went into that night thinking that trump, like the poll, said trump was weight. He was gonna a iolaus. You thought, you know, he could lose florida.

He could lose ohio. He could lose iowa. He was down by eight or nine points in was IT was looking awful.

And then everyone shocked. The results start coming in and he's doing really well, surprisingly well. They are able to call fludd for him that night.

He's destroying an ohio. Everyone is thinking, oh my gosh, the exact same thing is that happened in twenty sixteen is happening now. He gets these huge leads built up in michigan, pensylvania, georgia hee's way out in front.

And then all of people just go to about them like, okay, trumps way up now. Everyone is going to stay up till two A M. They go to bed. King trump s got IT.

I think in the prediction markets that you could enter on, like F, T, X had a presidential market that you could bet on and stuff, I think trump p peaked at like over ninety percent, maybe over ninety five percent. He got very high briefly, and then you wake up the next morning and the people are like, actually now bite in. His favorite at the leads have dropped dramatically in all of the respect states, and he's gaining.

And then over the next few days, you see mobile dubbs come in, and biden ends up flipping several states, and he gets selected president. This was a super traumatic process to a lot of people. And IT unfolded in a way that made people's like bs detectors go off that they were like, oh, trump was way up and then overnight there's all these big ballot dumps that are super duper heavily in favor of biden and suddenly he's the winter.

And you still run into those memes online where you can see it's like you can see that chart of like each vote totally going up and biden gets like a big jump. I think you see that the literal version of that, that you'll see is from wisconsin in and there is an explanation you can give for all of this. For example, in wisconsin, all the early vote, all the million votes for malloc, ky county were released all at once.

So you didn't have like bit by bit. You just had a giant like three hundred thousand vote. Nuk dropped all at once, is the most democrat colony in my in most democrat ony was and it's the early vote, which is going to be more democratic still.

So yeah, you're going to have a giant blob of these votes and it's going to be all democratic. You can explain that. But to Normal people is just who don't live in the political process, it's going to feel super duper bs.

And so you saw that really stick with people on top of that is just weird when IT takes a long time to count the votes and we have this a long gate accounting process that I think really set people off. You had a lot of viral stories that would go one, like some press were reporting that they were shutting down counting for the night in georgia. And then I turned out that, and like, I think some observers went home because of this belief.

And then I put out counting continued throughout the night. IT was just a giant narrow of things. Add on to that, that there was a lot of censorship of the news on twitter.

And twenty, twenty one hundred by and laptop was shut down. There was twenty, twenty. So there were riots everywhere where you couldn't, then you couldn't outside you to cover IT unless you were actually going outside to riot over racing justice.

There were so many things that made twenty, twenty five people nuts. So that is the environment that the right is working in that they felt this super traumatic election that felt bogus to them. And I do think that trump, for his own personal avoid bals strongly egg that on.

I don't agree with the criminal prosecutions from jack smith, like trump knew he lost, but then he lied about IT to try to overthrow democracy. I think trump is just a very supremely confident individual. And if you read his interviews, trump s seems to believe that he wins every state, if not for fraud, that the democrats use fraud for fifty percent of their votes.

Does he really believe that? I don't know. That seems in character for him. He is like that going into this election, will they think it's fraud?

D if he loses, I would be prepared for trump to make that claim. I don't want to say too much more than that. I do think there have been efforts to make this race cleaner than past ones.

But and I don't think that will be as bad overall. We don't have as much early vote as we didn't twenty, twenty. You also see some states like an arizona, for example, they've changed the law to make them count IT faster because slow counting creates suspicion.

But I just bluntly, what I would say is a lot of people were very traumatized by twenty. Twenty others got trauma tizer by twenty two. There was some wear self again in arizona, where there was like election day issues.

Uh, people are very emotionally invested in this. And if IT goes badly, they tend to cease upon rumors they sees, upon conspiracies they sees upon, you know, allegations they can make to explain why what they didn't want to happen happened, what will happen from there. I think that would depend on the scale of what occurs.

What I have said do a lot of people is, I hope whatever the result is that pretty decisive. Either way, I would rather have one of the candidates win in a bunch of states by one to two points, as opposed to having IT go down to a florida and two thousand and type situation where it's four hundred votes either way, in this decisive state. I just genuinely do worry that if that happens in amErica in its current state of polarization and political tumi IT would be hugely damaging to the country. And I don't like to contempt that, but it's possible that IT will occur.

The Peter teo said something like either is going to be a trump blow out or comment is going to win because they'll do everything in their power to fortify the election. Do you think that is too aggressive? Do you think there's some quent set?

I think he probably overselling IT a bit. I think the ability of them, they always phrased, they people always like to forecast that they will do some dramatic thing. Used to see other versions of this, even twenty years ago.

I remember democrat claiming, you know, bush was going to fake a terrorist attack or fake a potential terrorist attack in order to cancel the election or rig the vote in his favor. You see a lot of there's not a lot of weight behind these conspiracies. It's sort of just a generalized distrust of the enemy.

There is a people are sort of waiting for some sort of painful thing to happen in reality. I think, you know, I have some friends who've interacted with democrats and a lot of them, they often sound like they have sometimes they run around like chicken s with their heads cut off. I had a friend who met with a lot of dc democrats last spring when trump was ramping towards the nomination, and he said one thing that stood out him as they just didn't seem to have a plan.

They didn't have a plan for what was going to happen with trump. They were just hoping something would happen with even with the assassination. There's a lot of theories that someone knew, someone engineer that I suspect that not the case.

I think IT was just knew a random netball decided to go after trump. There's a lot of random nut balls, and a lot of them don't like trump. So when IT comes to this election, obviously, if IT ends up being super close, you'll see the left go all out to contest everything they can.

And there will be structural advantages they all have. So let's say this selection comes down to a thousand votes in michigan. Well, michigan n's governor is a democrats, michigan's secretary of state as a democrats, michigan's attorney general is a democrat.

And the fact that the case and they're also pretty capable and aggressive democrats who like have a track record of trying to use the law for political and so for example, a prosecuted trump electors in michigan because they thought that was a useful thing to the trump l electors in twenty twenty who tried to sign his thing that he would want. So what that does mean, and that also about extension, means they have a left lean supreme court at this point. So what that means is, yeah, they have an apparatus that will, on any contested issue, likely be able to rule in their favor.

Now is that the same as actual fraud? I don't think so. You'll see democrats who would think that two thousand in florida was like that because in two thousand in florida, the republicans benefited from having a state government that's mostly on their side.

That's just one of the things about politics is if you have an advantage in a local political jurisdiction, you can sort of make IT so you win every tie break er that will feel like bs to some people and often does involve bs. It's not the same as organize systematic fraud. So what I say is I think in certain areas, democrats will have the ability to maybe they can, on the margins, make IT.

So a few votes go there away or a few votes that would be against some don't get large for trump. I don't think they have the ability to, you know, if the results are coming in and trump is up by a full percent in michigan, I don't think they can gin up eighty thousand votes to flip IT. I don't think there is much evidence that, that is within their tooit, and I think you would see them be a lot less freaked out then they visibly are both online and in their private circles.

So I think trump could win a close selection. There's also speculation democrats will consider something like they will convene their legislature and try to retract certifications, do some of the stuff that trump had suggested doing in twenty, twenty and twenty. I don't want to rule that out, but I don't think it's super likely.

I think there's a lot of obstacles to that. Similarly, you will hear people say democrats in the house, I just refused to certify a trump win and try to do something there. I don't think that's likely again.

Do you have several democrat who have gone on the record who have said, if trump wins, I am going to vote to certify there? Some might not commit to IT, but enough have that IT would come to pass. Is the sort of maybe this is sacri sounding, but there are a lot of lawmakers who genuinely believe in the american system and would consider IT going too far to to blow IT up.

And that's then we saw in twenty twenty as well that a big reason trumps h efforts to overturn the election didn't go as far as they potentially could have as you had the governor of arizona, you had the governor of George sand. No, this is ridiculous. We're not going to enable IT and some of those people. I've been replaced by more trumpet and republicans, but not all of them, including especially in georgia, where you still have the same governor, you stop the same circuitry of state.

How much on the voter I D concerns should actually be a concern? Slash is the critique that is really, you know, just there as a method to enable more sort of chaos, variance or potential sort of medical. Is that synthetics equity? Well.

voter ID concerns are definitely real in the sense that there are like, could you cast a fraudulent ent vote in this election and get away with IT? Yeah, I think you very easily. Could we saw there is a guy, this chinese student in michigan, cast in the legal ballot, or he just he went in and he filled out the form and he said he was a citizen in castoon lot.

And he seems to maybe done this by accident. He's now getting charged. I have no idea if that will result in punishment.

They might and they might just play IT down. They might drop IT eventually because IT seems like I might have been an accident or something. But zoom out in big picture and there's a lot of potential to have a lot of votes that are not legitimate.

Like you're not allowed to check if someone is a citizen before they registered. They can just sign a form promising that they are and that's good enough for federal purposes. And there's not an easy way to check that because there's not a federal database of who is a citizen.

There is actually surprising how not clear that can be. And what that means is there is a ton of potential for people who just aren't legally allowed to vote. There is also a stuff you can do on the edges like you.

You could vote in multiple states, and that might you might be able to catch that if you if you had to check for a specific person, did this person vote in multiple states? You could probably catch them, but you'd have to note to check. And if you're not actively looking for that, I could easily happen that someone just votes in multiple states and nothing stops them.

And there could even be additional things that make IT harder to catch you. Let's say a woman got married and change her name, but he still has her old name as a registration that's available and he moved to a new state, let's say. So you can have maybe they could vote under her old name and her old state and then vote under her new married name in her new state.

There's a lot of things you can do to cast in a legal ballot. Now what you can add to that is, is I don't know that is super easy to systematically organize that, and I don't know that it's very easy to apply IT at scale. But if you were to just decide, for example, if you're the democrats and you think OK well on the margins, a person who votes illegally as an on citizen is more likely to vote for us than not if you just make IT.

So it's easier for that to happen. IT will passively occur. And I might get you a few thousand, a few thousand votes you would not otherwise i've gotten. And then you're benefiting from that without having essentially organized IT.

And I think that is where a lot of conservatives make a mistake, is they find IT more appealing to imagine a very organized conspiracy that they like to imagine. Trump is up by one hundred thousand votes on election night. The democrat freak out.

They fire up the printing press in the basement of the dnc, and they print out a hundred thousand votes. They drop IT in some suspicious way. And wow, I don't win.

Or they like to imagine this wild espionage gy conspiracy from sydney power, where venezuela, the secret computer program that eventually trated the federal government with, and they're changing the votes to the voting machines or the CIA, has their computer called hammer and their program called score card. And that's changing the both that's kind of more appealing to people because I think it's simple and straightforward and IT makes their opponents maximum evil. I don't think there's any evidence that, that stuff takes place.

And I think the people who have pushed have often found themselves quite embarrassed as a result. But I don't want to say that. I think that the focus on that obscures what is the reality, which is we don't have a lot of really robust election security measures at the intake level because even the stuff I mentioned, you know, someone votes twice, or if someone votes who is not a citizen, all you can do is punni shed them after the fact we we have a secret ballot.

If they get their piece of paper into the box, you can have them on vote with our current set up. And so like that guy I mentioned, the chinese student in michigan, he cast a ballot. He got caught. He's getting prosecuted. His voters going to count his vote made IT into the box like that is getting counted.

And so if you have a system where a bunch of illegals can vote and or non citizens and illegal merits of variable to cast ballots, there's not a lot you can do to stop IT from potentially flipping an election result other than like ordering a new election where if we don't change the rules, that could still happen again. And I think the fact that we just have this system persist where you can vote without proving your ID, you can vote without without proving your citizen IT, creates vulnerabilities. And it's very understandable that people view IT with suspicion.

I'd also add one. One particularly dark thing is with this system IT incentivizes go like letting that happen more, because if ten people illegally vote, you can find an l prosecute them and warn people off. But you know, biden let in, like, what? Six, seven, eight million illegal immigrants cycle, let's say, just by making IT.

So no one's doing any protections and maybe you have a few more underhanded Operatives who are kind of suddenly ly encouraging you people who the people who aren't citizens to register and vote and they're not really emphasizing to them that they're not allowing to do this. If you get one hundred thousand non citizens to vote, or five hundred thousand for them to vote, what are you going to do? You can't criminally prosecute all those people in core.

It's too many people. And can you deport all of them when people will freak out about that too? So we do have a system where the more people who break the rules, the harder red is to meaningfully stop them.

Yeah, you expect that to to change going forward or or not really like in .

future elections? Well, for now, it's hard to say IT seems like democrats have kind of put themselves into a ideological situation where any form of voter I D, any form like robust check on whether person can vote, is not something they'll really tolerate. And their judges have got in the message.

So theyll say any attempt to do this is like a return of jim crow. Obviously, elections are conducting the state levels so you can get a lot more robust stuff in place at in red states. But like I said, one of the things is that you can register for federal elections through like a federal form and you're just not allowed to confirm that someone is a citizen with those.

So there is always way right for now you need to change the federal law and for now, it's like impossible to change federal law on anything because we have pretty extreme your gridlock on any politically contentious topic in the us. Now if IT turns out that immigrant voters are not leaning democrats as much as they use, to which some polls do suggest that his spanning s will be much more, maybe like asian immigrants, also more protruding p IT could be that democrat will get more on board with this because someone you'll say, hey, the perception that we need lots of, like voter fraud, dwan is hurting us. Maybe then IT starts to take off.

But I would remain skeptical that anything major is going to change IT does seem that you'd need consensus to change IT. And right now, at least half the political spectrum has sort of calculated that not having a lot of robust protections is not worth IT for them. And they started him to say that most of them know that this is causing fraud.

I think for a lot of democrats, they genuinely, they are parents about republicans, and they think republicans are always plotting to make IT so black can't vote, make IT so none White can't vote, just make IT. So anyone who's like a fringe voter has a harder time because they see them as more likely to vote democrats. I'm sure that's how a lot of them see IT. And i'm sure there's also a few who are sensor and ducky that there are other advantages, but I don't think they see an advantage of changing the system. And until that changes, you're not likely to see any big nationwide shift.

What what do you think you think we're going to find out you know this week who wins? Or do you do you think it's going to take a well.

I think so I could ask that a lot. I usually say i'm like sixty five, seventy percent that will know night of who wins because so many for one, so many of the states are close, nate silvers said. This is the closest selections and has ever seen.

And IT feels that way to meet you. You have seven major swiming states that are basically all pulling dead even with each other. And that doesn't an a lot of them are close. But what IT also means is if the polls are systematically off, but in any direction, that it'll be kind of a bloodbath for one candidate. So if the polls if there's even a one point polling error in trump's favor versus what the see little polls are saying, he's going to win all seven of them.

He'll be up significantly all seven of them, and it'll just be kind of clearly over and that sort of what we saw twenty sixteen, if you remember, in twenty sixteen, trump didn't win the key states by that much. But he also, they were able to call all those states that night because yeah, he maybe only one them by point seven five percent. But point seven five percent is still many tens of thousands of votes.

And so a recount was not really going to change the result. And I think that's actually a fairly likely outcome. Another thing that's gona matter here is because you don't have as much early vote and because republicans are more okay with early vote this time, you won't see the absolutely insane splits between the types of voting.

And that's what made twenty twenty so wild, was that trump had these huge leads that seemed interminable, but then the left surmounted them because the male in late arriving vote was so enormously in their favor. Now it's going to be more even you're going to see both the election day and early vote are going to be more baLanced, ed. And so if one of the candidates has a big lead, it's going to be a lot less likely that, that big lead can be overcome.

So I think it's fairly likely will know on election night, and I think it's almost certain will know by like friday. And I think the only way you would I mean, you could definitely get the case where it's over, but maybe you know maybe trump s is not conceding or maybe if other people are right and the democrats aren't planning to concede, maybe they won't be conceding. But I think by the standards we saw applied and say, twenty sixteen, I think we'll know the outcome sooner rather than later.

Is IT true that peanut squirl .

secures the election .

for for trump? Nn, is the october surprise?

Ah yes, yes. IT is. Actually all of this was just a laborat song and dancing in my part. If you check the polls like IT wasn't highlighted, but in a lot of swing state polls, I think I think the new york times cna polls have this.

They would be like, what are your top issues? And IT was not really remarkably, but like the number two or number three issues in both parties was that people were worried about anti school of violence. And IT seems like this is the beginning.

Okay, joking aside, joking aside, ah it's a fun viral story. I don't imagine that will have any impact on the race. There's a lot of there are a lot of stories that will go very viral in unlike the online right.

And they're entertaining, they're funny, they give energy. But I don't think they will meaningfully sway the outcome because I mean, especially because it's I like cumulated this the government of the state of new york, which is not a swing state and is not cma. So it's a funny story and you can see this with some other things as well there.

There was initially late in just the past few weeks that some people thought would like totally tip the outcome. But it's sort of thing that there's a lot of issues that really only resonate with people who are one hundred percent going to vote on your side anyway. And so their impacts will be limited.

If you want a story that I do think might have impacted IT. I wouldn't be surprised if the north korean, a hurricane, potentially arrested a potential trump loss in that state. We'll see all predictions wrong, your money back. But I think even setting aside allegations that fema was slow rolling aid because they didn't like the deplorable les or whatever, I think that there was definitely me and probably in red parts of the appellation area that got hit.

I think IT went very viral that, for example, the David x odd clip where he was same like, oh, I think the people in asia will vote, but the people who aren't nash feel like they have more going on and they might not get to the polls. That went insanely viral. And I have to imagine that was even more viral with people who still live in that area, who, yeah, they have a lot of problems, but they saw a cellphones, and I bet they ve got cellphone reception back pretty soon.

They'll all all see that. I ouldn't be surprised if turnout is very high there, and perhaps that really motivates people to make sure that they get their vote in in that race. So that would probably be like the viral story that could tilt the election in the last month that really come into play.

Oh, and now remember the biden calling people garbage thing. I don't think that's likely to like tip a swing vote. Maybe IT take it's the necessary nudge that will on the margins take some mega supporter and caused them to actually cast ballot because I can say having been around in this for a while, you would be amazed at the number of extremely protrusion t people who who don't vote for Donald d trump.

You would be astonished. I was talking to someone who was doing door to door outreach, and they were knocking on doors of registered republicans who were who had not cast ballots in recent elections. And they went to an address, and that person, the address, they went up and they, they knocked on the door, the person open, and they said, sorry, no, we might have an out of date address here because this person had a giant trump flag waving from, like, a thirty foot flag pole, big trump flag waving.

But the data said that this person had not voted in any of the past four elections. And IT turns out that was correct. The person had not voted.

They were huge. Trump s supporters had gone to Alice, had never voted for trump. And I talk to people who've done voter registration at trump reales.

An astonishing number of people who attend trump rallies are not registered to vote. And so maybe the garbage thing is the thing that tips the marginal voter over in a few dozen, a few thousand, a few thousand cases. So maybe little matter, but I doubt it's a huge deal.

Yeah is interesting when you talk about the likely stories on both sides if their candidate losses, like what happens there, how they bounce back.

Well, let me think on that for a second. I also with Harris. So I think that is the one i'll I admit to this like sick, obviously OK. I'm on the political I want here is to this regardless.

But one of the bonus things is I do really have the desire to read the finger pointing and recriminations, and like all the dirt that is going to come up if SHE loses, because much more so than with trump, the decision to run Harris was like, IT was like a calculated up by senior people in the democratic party who had people opposing them. In fact, I was one of the most unusual things i've ever seen. Usually, when you see that the media and the left kind of come to a conclusion on something, you can see IT, where the momentum is always entirely in one direction.

And this is builds and builds and builds and builds momentum. And once you see that momentum start, it's very obvious how it's going to end. And what was so funny with them forcing by IT and out was IT was the only case i've really ever seen where there was really aggressive back and forth repeatedly on like an an internal dispute within the left that you had the big surge of people in the press sae band has to drop out.

And then biden comes out and says, i'm not dropping out. Deal with IT I in the canada. And so they see they go back a bit and then he does the interview.

He still look shaky. They come back and now a few more democrats amount, he's got to step aside. But then buying comes out again and says, no, i'm not step inside.

Deal with IT receives a bit and then here's George colony. He's got ten up bed and you have a few more democrat and you have them bringing the pressure. They have the donor say, and they're not doing.

And I went back and forth like this. If you check the prediction markets, IT went up and down like from you know twenty percent biden and becomes president to byzantines to eighty percent by insano ini. And I would lash like less back and forth.

And so what you had that going on there is one of the key arguments was we can't switch because if we switch, it'll almost certainly have to be a commoner. And koala is terrible. And once camera became the omi, you saw this intentionally inflicted mass amnesia about all these things.

They had said they suddenly had. We had the bad vibes. We had all this pro comella coverage, and they're there's been cracks in this, but they're kind of try to sustain this hope I am ever since.

And there, if SHE loses, you will see everyone abruptly. Remember, wait a minute. Back in june, we knew koala was terrible, that he was the vice president that biden couldn't find a role for.

SHE was not really liked, but he was the least popular vice president in a long time. He had all these issues. There was, like, no particular reason to think he would be a strong candidate.

And that will, of course, be the narrative. They are basically, I think they will fist almost all of the blame on camera. And then then there will be a lot of fingerpointing about who is to blame for making us have to do camera.

They might maybe put some blame on, like pelosi, for example, who was kind of an easy person to hate on because she's very old, so sh'll be out of the picture. A brave person might point a finger at obama to the extent he was maybe involved in this, but obama is a much more formidable political figure. So I suspect you will probably come away less damaged by IT.

But yeah, i'll put A. Blame on camera as we'll just say, well, we ran this terrible canada. We should have done the like rapid primary to pick a stronger person.

Or some people who say we should have stuck with joe. He was super old, but he was weirdly popular, and he could have just resigned after the election. As an alternative, you might also see some people go bigger picture and say, like, why was commons still on the ticket? They would.

They could have maybe promised some. You put on the supreme quarter some bs, and you put in a new vice president such as superior, anyone else, and then biden could have stepped aside for a much more like organically popular candidate that you'll see. I think, yes, a big picture.

Everyone will just put the blame camera was a terrible nomine SHE couldn't do any interviews SHE couldn't really say her own policy SHE had to like rely on everyone else that will be and then they'll just kind of dump er sh'll vanish from the public consciousness a lot. I don't think there's a lot of constitute and see for keeping cma as a major figure. If SHE happens to lose this race, should will be like, do caucus or something you never really saw? Do caucus after that? And then for trump.

So for trump, if trump losers, well, obviously IT matters how he loses. I think so if it's close, if it's a close when ray losses again, I really don't even want to think about IT because I will be very unpleasant because I think I think obviously, he will claim it's fraught, ed again. I think a very large share of people will believe him if you claims that will go along with IT.

And at that point, what happens to the right? IT could be very unpredictable and IT would be so chaotic. I don't really think I could give much beyond let's say trump loses bad, let's say the polling was off, you know, a couple points in trumps favor.

And as a result, kala wins all of the swing states by one to two percent and IT looks bad. In that case, I think you'll see more people you'll definitely see more people aggressively criticize, like try to make escape goats. Will they be brave enough to go after trump himself? Some might try.

It's very dangerous to do this. No one really kind of attacks trump and comes away on scared. You'll see definitely people try to put the blame on others. And trump himself would eventually do this. He would try to.

I think you'd see a lot of blame, you see this already, a lot of people are pretty blaming, has get out the vote effort because trump has a relatively weaker get out the vote Operation that in terms of being created by the campaign itself or by the R N. C. itself.

Instead, you have elon must donated a lot of money towards get out the vote stuff turning point USA or will turning point action there, their political ARM, they've done some stuff. So you see people, they might blame them as a result. Now would that be entirely fair?

I don't think so because i've seen some of these Operas, seen some of the Operations. You can't paint with a broad brush. There are people who are more competent than others.

But if trump has just a big systematic failure to win, I think the blame will say we had all the momentum and I got screwed up because we had like no property get out the vote Operation because like they blew up the R, N, C, and put a trump in charge of IT stuff like that. You'll also see, of course, political fingerpointing. Just like there was in twenty twelve, romney lost.

And you had people trying to say IT was because he alienated his spanx by being critical of immigration. He, you know, we have to moderate on this or that. I think in this one, you would probably, if you were to lose bad. I think the biggest political losers would be abortion opponents, because democrats, they have clearly tried to turn this election into a nationwide abortion referendum. And if trump losers, and especially if trump losers, and it's like, oh, women all voted against him, that will be the narrative.

They will be trump at this ulterior ble election where he was ahead on every single issue and then he was down on one issue IT was abortion any lost? What would come of that is not easy for me to say, because a lot of people on the right are just genuinely opposed to abortion. And it's a lot of very active and a aggressive people and aggressive, not the right way people.

A lot of like grass roots people care a lot about that issue. And if you just throw them out in like after blaming them for losing election, I think that could be IT could cause a lot of drama within the party. But that was definitely a narrative I would see.

People would attempt to do this. They would put the blame on them. Obviously, you'd also have the why didn't take of just why did we run trump again? He lost in twenty, twenty.

Why I have, we had to be the candidate, three elections in a row. We should have run the scientists. We should have run hay.

We should have run this with that person. There are definitely people making that claim. I don't think that would cut much with the top base.

Trump has just such a sort of spiritual. He is a very strong bond with the republican base as IT currently exists. And I don't think any of I don't think a large share that would ever be inclined to like blame trump for why he lost.

They would want to find some other person to blame for the shortcomings that just in the nature of things. Now the way that could change is if trump does something very self destructive after the election, maybe they change their attitude as a result. That how I would see you go, and I think you would see probably the most plain would go on bad, get out the vote Operation, which would be they'd find someone to blame who's that trump, or they would probably blame the anti abortion movement. And they would say, like what we got to moderate on this and full disclosure, I am a poor life person. I would find that very unfortunate, but I would understand why IT would take .

place in that. Yes, that's a great to review. In terms of both sides lost, who would you expect is like the the favorite candidate or the person in the lead? Obviously, years before you have to think about IT, but would trump be most likely the canada twenty twenty eight? Even if he lost.

I think he would. He probably say he plans to run again. I don't know.

I don't think I think at this point, I would have to say I don't think that would happened because trump is, he's old. He will be well, he already eighty. Let me trump IT can't remember these things now.

He's not a, he's seventy years old, so he seventy eight. He would eighty two running to go until his eighty six. And lets be honest, trump is clearly older than he was a decade ago.

Trump is also like clearly older than he was four years ago. He is a guy who is aging. He is a guy who is slowing down, and IT would be worse in four years. Now he is a very confident guy. I wouldn't rule out that he would attempt to run. Would he get the nomination? Well, one, if he loses, they'll be back with the whole I threw him in prison thing that I feel if they go through with that, that might actually make that actually, that's actually how what could happen free split bowling off the coffee.

Or but actually now that I think about IT, if he loses and they throw trump in jail and then trump says i'm still running anyway, that would probably be a great way for him to get on the ballot because IT allows trump to exist entirely as a symbol of like the anger of his supporters. Just in that, I could easily see that happening. That said, he is really old.

And I would know I feel like if he loses, there's also just excEllent if he loses and goes to jail and there's excEllent possibility he just dies. He's an old guy. He's an old guy and he's a little bit heavy.

He has shown remarkable energy and very whatever word you want to use. But he's an old guy yeah. If we set trump aside favorite in twenty twenty, if he loses two fully, I don't know.

I would very much depend on how like the debate hashes out afterwards, I think it's very clear that you know a vake would want to run again. How popular would he be in this world where trump lost? I don't know.

Uh, you also already see. I think even like the vae with his latest book and with some of his speeches, you see people setting up like, oh, what could be possible divisions within the maga movement. And IT might be sort of people who are a little bit more sound like pre global ism, but like you'll see people who are less and more populist on economics, I think is a split that you could see.

You can see vance run, although I think if they lose, one of the takes will be that vance was a bad VP pick and that could hurt him, but he might still be around, I don't know, anytime a ticket losses you always see like, oh, the vice president is like a guy who will be like a future standard bear. And IT, for the most part, has not come to pass. Paul ryan ended up being very unpopular in the top.

Tim can known cares. John Edwards did run again, even made a credible showing, but he was totally eclipsed by obama. Yeah, I just I don't see an obvious I don't see an obvious favorite in four years. And you might even see, let's say, ROM dies.

You might see don junior try to run as like a successor of his I don't think anyone else in the trump family has nearly the same overall magnetism as Donald trump who is like a clearly like a world historical figure in this regard. But trump name is big and maybe without, you know dad around IT would be enough for him to be know to make a credible play for IT. But I think the field would be wide open.

Yeah on the democrats side, like I said, I don't if commons loses, she's just totally out there be like this was a disaster. SHE will keep all the blame up, plan herself beneath her. You still have the problem that the democrats don't have a huge roster of up incoming national figures.

Superior, of course. The fact that the consensus will be comalong was terrible and also he should have picked superior if they lose pensylvania. If he remains a popular up incoming figure, I would very much expect him to make a place.

He's clearly a guy who wants to do that. And he has built up this obama kind of copy cat political style to do IT. I think you'd see him run honestly.

One of the biggest opposition to him would be like, does the whole israeli gaza thing continue on the left that become a major problem in the democratic party in the future? Excuse me, we will become a major problem in the future. Impossible to say, because like this war will probably be over by then.

But will there be another one? Will I have grown for some other reason other than him? I don't know if. One thing is we've seen repeatedly is political stars can rise and fall very, very quickly and even before years from now, there might be some other democratic politician who know becomes a rising star because they oppose something the second trump term does.

There could be some shock office winner who wins a house seat, wins a senate seat, wins the governors race, and they like instantly volt to presidential consideration. Yeah, I guess I would say the only one who comes to mind is like an immediate, obvious potential favorite st super o but I think I would have a weak attachment to that. I think he could be shot. Decide very easily.

That makes sense. Is there we're nearing at about an hour here. Is there anything we haven't discussed as a relates to election or relates the topic that we have that we've been discussing that you want to make sure to discuss before we wrap up? Or should we close here.

you know, thinking on that more, I guess another thing I should have mentioned as potential candidates on either side is I was thinking in a conventional framework of, well, who are other politicians or people have been in politics, you could run. But one thing that we've especially seen is down trump himself, of course, at the model that you can just be a celebrity and run for president.

But also, I think the eight examples is going to be interesting and that the the gram swami is a Younger guy under forty who just ran for president as a total non famous person. I like ran know, did the podcasting circuit, did the, you know, really put himself out there circuit any basically managed to make himself a household name who was on the shorter that considered device presidential contender. And if trump ins, he'll probably get some sort of job in his cabinet or immediately be able to run for like senate and ohio.

Maybe he replace spans. And I think now you have this time plate of, if you are like, I think you might seem more like business people who are open to trying to to make the same play for themselves. There's often a joke that like mark cuban, for example, sees themselves also running for president.

I don't think he would succeed if he did, but the fact that he would want to try shows the appeal of IT. So another thing I should just say is I can't really need any specific person, but I could just be in four years, maybe you'll see a guy out of silicon valley just try to run as a technocrat either on the left or on the right. In you've seen the field opens up where IT sort of is like if you're particularly charismatic and capable speaker and individual who can frame the issue as well, why would you need to do the slow climb up through being governor, being senator? Just go for the whole thing right off the top. And maybe you will see more people attempt to that and we'll see more political talent emerge that way.

Yeah, yeah. That's a good note to wrap on steep. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and discussing the election with us.

of course. Thank you. Had me.

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