What Americans Think Of Kamala Harris
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Wait, you beat Nathaniel last time, right? I did. It was a fluke. I was hoping you guys had forgotten. The conventional wisdom is that three is a pattern, right? This is my revenge. My chance for revenge.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. The contours of the Harris-Trump race are coming further into focus. Vice President Harris just wrapped up a week-long tour of the battleground states with her newly minted running mate. And former President Trump has been...

making his thoughts about a lot of things known on social media and in a lengthy press conference. And also new polls largely showing Harris leading not just nationally, but in key battleground states have been coming hot and heavy. And so have the unskewing attempts. The Trump campaign and others have been arguing that the polls are oversampling Democrats.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, and unlike earlier in the year, Democrats are no longer trying to discredit the polls. Now Republicans are trying to discredit the polls. Is this a good or bad use of polling? We're going to ask that question. We are also going to play Guess What Americans Think.

Hey, Galen. Hey.

Hey, Galen. Great to have you. We were just talking about how you beat Nathaniel last time we played Guess What Americans Think. So we'll see if you can keep that record going. It was a tight race, if you remember. It was. Like any tight race we're looking at. Well, that's the question, isn't it? And to that point, let's start with The New York Times' latest record.

So your polls that came out over the weekend showed Harris leading Trump by four percentage points, 50 percent to 46 percent amongst likely voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All three same margin in all three. These are amongst the few high quality polls of battleground states that we've seen since Biden dropped out of the race. And this compares with Trump and Biden being in rivalry.

roughly a dead heat in those states in May and having a slight lead there after the debate. So Ruth, the Times specifically has gone from showing some of Biden's worst polls, honestly, to now showing some of Harris's best polls. Just on a personal level, did these results surprise you? Um...

You know, yes and no. Yes, they were surprising because, as you said, we've largely been showing a very close race and Trump a little bit ahead. No, in that I think they still show a very close race. I don't think that they're fundamentally that different than what we've been showing before. All of this stuff is very close. All of it's within the margin of error. There's a little enthusiasm edge for Harris right now, and you're seeing that show up in some of our polls. But I think they still fundamentally show a very close race.

So that wasn't that surprising.

and very little movement amongst Republicans. It shows Harris's favorability up 10 percentage points almost, and it shows on a whole host of different measurements about preparedness for the job, temperament, intelligence, being a change agent, just things really turning around for Democrats.

And so I get maybe what you're saying that the top line, four percentage point lead, it's still honestly within the margin of error. But, you know, underneath it all, it seems like something quite significant is happening.

Oh, yes. To be clear, the enthusiasm is there. And we obviously see that in our poll. A 26 point jump in satisfaction with your candidate is huge. We rarely see jumps that high in polling. So in that way, I don't mean to downplay that. That is a huge gain for Harris, right? There's all of this enthusiasm. You have these Democrats that were feeling lousy about their nominee or at least feeling sort of indifferent. And now you have people who are excited about

their nominee. And that really shows up. And it's funny, because we did have that with Republicans before. Republicans were very enthusiastic about their nominee. So that has certainly turned around. But yes, my point is more about sort of the horse race, which I personally am fine if we don't overly focus on, but I know that listeners and people on the internet, that's their main focus. Yeah.

And in that, I think the race is fundamentally a little bit better for Harris than it was for Biden, but is still very much a tight race. And I think the sort of interesting thing to me is when you look at other polls, right, because like we have a polling average, you guys have a polling average, they generally are showing sort of similar numbers, a little bit better for Harris in those states and nationally. And so it's not that I don't think the bump is real. I think it is real. And we're seeing that in our polls. We're seeing that in other people's polls, too.

We are in a little bit of a honeymoon phase. I'm kind of curious to see, is this something that will stick or will it kind of bounce back and forth given that these are such close races right now? Yeah, I think that's a fair point. We talked a little bit about some of the shifts in perception of Harris. What about the demographic shifts in terms of the why? Why are things moving in Harris's direction? What do we see in terms of who is...

either moving towards Harris or is there anybody moving away from Harris? Yeah. So it's interesting. I mean, we try to be very cautious about crosstab diving. I'm sure I've said that on this show before. These are fairly small sample sizes in our pole and any pole when we're looking at... Do it. Do it. The water is deep enough. Dive. Dive right in, Ruth.

But that was all preamble to. But we are seeing some changes. Right. And I don't want to call them shifts because it's a different race. But when we looked at Biden and Trump and we look at Harris and Trump, places that were traditional Democratic strongholds where Biden was struggling, like young voters, like black voters, like Latino voters, Harris appears to so far be doing better with those groups, more like a traditional Democrat.

And I think that's really interesting. Like I said, these are fairly small sample sizes with margins of error that are like 10 plus points. So I'm cautious to read too much into it. But I think that's really interesting. And I'll be interested to see if it holds and particularly if people do kind of subgroup specific polls on...

Latinos and Black voters, it will be very interesting to see. Well, Ruth, you may be previewing a podcast that we're going to do later this week in this exact feed. So get excited. Before we move on to our good or bad use of polling, I do want to ask

sort of broadly. And Nathaniel, I'm curious for your thoughts here. What we have now learned about this campaign in the first three weeks of it all. We have all of this data. We also have spent a week with Harris on the stump and a couple of weeks where Trump's new campaign strategy is taking shape. So what have you learned sort of when you put it all together?

I don't know. I'm hesitant to draw any conclusions at this point because it has felt like a lifetime, but it has in fact only been like, what, three weeks. And so a lot of things that we maybe think we know, like the fact that Harris is winning over a lot of voters who maybe looked like Democrats but were hesitant to vote for Biden, young people, people of color, people who are maybe going for RFK.

Also, some things that are less quantitative, like the fact that Harris looks pretty strong on the stump and she has learned lessons about campaigning from her first failed bid for president in 2019. These are things I think we may we have learned, but it's just so early that I'm not making any broad pronouncements at this point. This could all change in a month or heck, even two weeks. I mean,

I mean, I think we've learned something about the kind of campaign that Harris plans to run, which is one that significantly subscribes to the idea of median voter theory, which we've talked about on this podcast before. But I mean, you just look at her campaign events in Arizona and Nevada. And what did she do? She did exactly what Galen has been talking about for months. She got hawkish on...

the border, significantly so, cutting an ad, putting it on TV, saying unauthorized immigration is illegal. And she's framed herself as a prosecutor who has taken on issues surrounding immigration as well. Then what did she do in Nevada? She did another thing Galen has been talking about for months, stealing your opponent's popular policies. She said, oh, Trump's not going to tax tips. Guess what? I'm not going to tax tips either.

So it's two things that we've been talking about a lot on this podcast, which is effective politics is when you got an unpopular position that people actually care a lot about and you want to win an election, maybe you jettison it.

And if somebody else has a popular opinion, especially on the economy where Harris is still down compared to Trump, maybe you think of stealing it. I mean, Trump's history in the spotlight over the past nine or 10 years is a history of stealing some of Democrats' most popular policy positions, like positions on Social Security and Medicare, and also more recently, Democrats' position on abortion. Obviously not aligning with Democrats on abortion, but pivoting significantly to the center. And while...

Harris has been doing this. Trump has not been talking about policy. I mean, the kinds of stuff that we're hearing from Trump over the past week, like, I honestly think we should just mention it because it's important to say. I'll just read one example, right, where he says...

On Truth Social, what are the chances that crooked Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of the U.S., whose presidency was unconstitutionally stolen from him by Kamabala, Barack Hussein Obama, crazy Nancy Pelosi, shifty Adam Schiff, crying Chuck Schumer, and others on the lunatic left, crashes the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back

the nomination, beginning with challenging me to another debate. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. presidency, a coup, to the people in the world he hates most, and he wants it back now. I mean, WTF, mate. Yeah, I mean...

It's pretty loopy stuff. And I think that we saw that Trump was a significantly more disciplined candidate when he was ahead and kind of things were controlled for him, felt like it was under control. And now things are kind of spiraling away from him. And he obviously doesn't like that. It feels a lot more like some of those past campaigns when he has been down and he's been a little less controlled, shall we say. But

At the same time, again, like, I don't think we should assume that Trump is going to be off kilter for the next two months or however much is left, three months in the campaign, and that Harris is going to be able to stay on those messages, which I agree with you, Galen, like she has a very kind of strategic agenda.

plan that she has been implementing so far but like no battle plan survives contact with the enemy for long and i just you know things the shoe could very much be on the other foot uh after the first or the next debate or you know after some october surprise on october 20th or whatever so i just think we need to here's those words again wait and see

One thing I will say, and I, like, not shockingly agree with that completely. I think we should wait and see. And I think it's very early. And also, I think with any Trump campaign, it's always this is the year, the week that he's going to get disciplined. And we haven't really seen that.

Harris, one thing from our poll that I think is really interesting that touched on what you said is about her sort of shifting positions and shifting away from the more liberal positions towards the more median positions. One thing we saw in our poll was one of Trump's attacks on her. He's trying, as we've reported in others, he's trying a lot of different lines of attack to see what lands. And one that he's trying right now is that she's too liberal. And that is something that

hold some water in our poll, right? We ask whether or not she was too liberal or progressive, not liberal or progressive enough or about right. And compared with Biden in these states,

more are saying that Harris is too liberal or progressive. And so a lot of things were very positive for her in our poll. That was one thing that was a little more negative and was a really interesting line of attack that if he keeps that up, it could work with some voters. Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right. Well, speaking of the shoe being on the other foot, that's a theme of our good or bad use of polling for today, which we're going to get to. But first, a break.

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Last weekend, CBS and YouGov released a poll showing some positive news for Democrats. Whereas in their most recent polling with Biden and Trump, Biden was trailing by five points nationally. In this new poll, Harris was leading by one point nationally. That same day, senior Trump campaign staffers hopped in to challenge that poll. They released a press statement suggesting that the poll's results were skewed in Harris's favor.

One quote from their release was, quote, margin of error shifts in the national head-to-head ballot between President Trump and Kamala Harris is entirely the result of a methodological decision allowing ideology to change significantly while maintaining weights on age, partisanship, and race to make the survey appear to not have been manipulated. Speaking more directly, the senior advisor, Brian Hughes, called it a national gaslighting campaign.

We've also heard similar arguments from folks not necessarily associated with the campaign, but who align with Trump. So last week, after a Marquette Law poll showed Harris up by six points nationally amongst likely voters, Republican pollster at Signal, Brent Buchanan,

said, quote, a heavily Democrat biased sample of voters that supported Biden by 10 points in 2020 when the national popular vote was only Biden by 4.5 BS. So two arguments here. One, that pollsters are actively manipulating their methodology to give an advantage to Harris. And two, that

pollsters are just getting a sample that is too favorable to Democrats. Is any of this a good or bad use of polling? Ruth, you've been in the mud on this recently, so we'll let you go first. Yeah, so people have said this about our poll too, right? And it's a good example because we've got the Marquette poll in Wisconsin and our poll in Wisconsin. And listen, I think it's a reasonable use of polling to interrogate these kind of things, to look at

2020 vote history and see if it's closely aligned with how people actually voted in 2020. It's not a crazy thing. We look at it in all of our polls, and they're not wrong that our poll and Marquette's poll had more Biden 2020 voters than, for example, in Wisconsin in 2020.

2020, there are a couple of things about this that are really challenging. One, we don't know if the electorate in this election is going to look like the electorate in 2020 in any state. Different people vote, as we've talked about. There could be new voters that come out because of enthusiasm. So that's always a kind of a challenging thing. But the other thing I'll say is if you take our Wisconsin poll as an example,

We have for a little while been showing too many Biden 2020 voters in our last Wisconsin poll that was very close and favored Donald Trump. So that alone is...

isn't enough to say that things are necessarily wrong. It may be this kind of like enthusiasm and growth in Biden voters that are coming out. We also, with past vote, it's a very flawed measure how people tell us they voted in 2020. They always over-report voting for the winner, though this is obviously a little bit more. But like I said, not out of line with our other Wisconsin polls that showed a different result. So I understand why people are doing it. I don't know that they're necessarily right.

And what we're talking about here in terms of sort of recalled past vote and how you voted in 2020 is different from what people are talking about in terms of response rates and more Democrats responding to a poll or more Republicans responding to a poll. So earlier this year, we had an example where more Republicans responded to a poll than Democrats. We tried to keep those numbers fairly even, and we reported that out when we talked about the poll. This time, we were curious because we had such strong numbers for Democrats and high enthusiasm for Democrats.

if we were going to have this same kind of what we call differential non-response, where we have more Democrats responding to the poll than Republicans. We actually didn't see it this time, but we are on the lookout to make sure in case that's happening. And we do try to publicly report that whenever we see it.

Well, one second. So one argument here is that the sample is too favorable to Democrats. And that's from Ben Buchanan, who is a serious pollster. But the other is from the Trump campaign, which is that pollsters have engaged in a, quote, national gaslighting campaign, unquote. I think you said you like equivocated a little bit on whether the the first use of polling from Buchanan was a good use of polling. What about from the Trump campaign?

Yeah, obviously not a good use of polling. We are not engaging in national gaslighting. We are not putting our thumbs on the scale in any way. Just to make that crystal clear, our main goal is to find the truth in what voters think, and we do best when we are closest to the actual final results.

So obviously, no, that is not happening and isn't a grace of polling to suggest it. Right. Folks, you'd be shocked to hear how unpleasant it is to be in the space when the polling is wrong. Yeah. We'd much rather be right. Even if you don't like the polls, we'd much rather be right than put out a poll you like and be wrong. Nathaniel, get in here. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this does happen all the time and it's predictable as daylight that the candidates

campaign that is losing in the polls, tries to nitpick the polls and says there's something wrong with the polls. I think I agree certainly that the Trump campaign statement went way farther and crossed a line that Brett Buchanan didn't. But, you know, either way, you know, whether your intentions are good or whether they are nefarious and trying to undermine a, you know, honest,

Speaking of quantitative truth that we are all trying to do here, you're trying to make things look better for your side. And people will try to nitpick, dive into the crosstabs and say, oh, you know, this sample is doesn't have enough black voters, which is something that you saw a lot with Trump.

Democrats when they were complaining about the polls being skewed toward Republicans before, you know, when Biden was still in running in the race during the before times and and now and as well as back in 2020 and 2016, obviously.

generally speaking, over the last several years, the polls have been better for Democrats. You know, there really hasn't been a time that Democrats were trailing in pre-election polling in a presidential race since 2004. So there have been a lot of opportunities for Republicans to engage in poll denialism more so than Democrats. But I think Democrats are, you know, as we saw earlier this year, are also prone to this. Yeah, basically, if you are arguing about the polls, you are losing. So to that point,

Nathaniel, we discussed this idea of a poll denialism indicator, which is if your party or your campaign or whatever is engaged in poll denialism, that is some indication that you are losing. Is that, Ruth, a good or bad use of polling? Yeah.

That's amazing. I'm not sure it's a good use of polling, but I like it as a potential indicator. And you could use my inbox as an example, right? Like earlier this year when Biden was trailing, I was getting a lot of emails from Democrats saying exactly what you're talking about. And I don't mean to draw false equivalents because what you just talked about that we're hearing from Republicans is much more serious than what Democrats were saying to me, but they are certainly diving into the crosstabs and looking for ways to nitpick the poll.

And it is an indication of whether or not they're behind. So maybe not a good time.

Maybe not a good use of polling, but maybe not a bad thing to do. Yeah. And I do want to put a little bit of a caveat, which is the flip side of this, which is like, if your site is doing well to be like, oh yeah, the polls are perfect. Everything is hunky dory. Like that's not great either. Like it is good to think critically about the polls and to be aware, obviously, that they can be wrong. And this is how you can get situations where, you know, if the polling says one thing and then there is a complete

Yeah.

Those things, you know, we don't like that either, obviously, because obviously, you know, polling and vote counting are generally speaking, reliable things that we believe in in doing very much here at FiveThirtyEight and at The Times.

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Oh, and it's free. No strings attached. Don't miss out. Download now and start your solitaire Grand Harvest adventure. Available on Google Play and the App Store. All right, let's move on to our game, which is going to get us talking a little bit more about what Americans think of all of this. Between the coconut trees, the camo hats, the childless cat ladies, analyses of the word weird, the

The American voter has had a lot to consider over the past three weeks. And so we are going to play Guess What Americans Think in order to dive into it. Just to refresh folks' memories, I am going to ask about the result of a polling question. Nathaniel and Ruth, you are going to write down your answer and show it to me at the same time. Price is right rules do not apply. If you overshoot, if you undershoot, whoever is closest wins the

the point. Grab your pen and paper and let's begin. So that Marquette poll that I mentioned earlier that showed Harris leading Trump nationally by six percentage points. According to that poll, what was the margin by which Trump led Harris on the issue of immigration? Hmm.

Good question. Yeah, good question. Let's do the economy next because that actually narrowed in our poll and I thought that was really interesting. Well, you're never going to believe it, Ruth, but that is literally the next question. Oh my goodness. I did not know that. I swear. Okay. Three, two, one, reveal. Trump by eight. Trump by 15.

And we have Trump by 18 percentage points. So in a poll with Harris leading by six points nationally, Trump still overperforms by 18 points on the issue of immigration. Now let's do the economy. According to that same poll, by what margin did Trump lead Harris on the economy? Three, two, one, reveal. Trump plus five. Plus 10. And Ruth gets it again. You had 10 points.

The margin was 12 percentage points. Wow. I'll tell you why, Nathaniel. It was plus eight for us in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, but in Arizona, Nevada, other swing states and nationally, he's doing a little better on the economy. Those were states where he was always doing a little worse on the economy, so that was my prior for my guess. Okay. Now, the last in this trio of issue questions is,

By what margin does Harris lead Trump on abortion policy? That's in the same Marquette poll that we've been discussing. All right. I'm going big. All right. Three, two, one. Reveal.

15. 20. And Ruth says 20. Ruth, you got it again. All right. It's 23 points. Harris leads Trump on abortion policy by 23 points. And Ruth, you are now leading Nathaniel by three points. Dominating. To be fair, I literally just did a battery of these questions. Granted, it wasn't nationally. It was in between states, but I feel like I'm fine. It's by an action number.

There was that's like that's some pretty stark. I generally viewed more toward like the equilibrium point. Right. Like those are some pretty big differences. I think what's really notable about that is voters are complex and more complex than I think a lot of media coverage gives them credit for. Like this is a poll where Harris leads by six. But that means that there's going to be a lot of people who are going to vote for Harris who think Trump is better on the economy or on immigration. And.

people who will vote for Trump who think Harris is better on abortion.

Especially on abortion. And I've written a couple of stories about this because I think it really is surprising to people just how many people want abortion to be completely legal, like very much aligned with the Democratic perspective, but still intend to vote for Trump because abortion just isn't the most important issue to them, even if they feel more aligned with Democrats on it. Right. I mean, it's also just a reflection of the fact that voters don't go down the issue scorecard and check off which candidate they think is better and then go with the candidate who is better on more issues. Right.

All right. Next question. Continuing with that Marquette national poll. What percentage of Americans see Harris as very liberal? The options being very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, somewhat liberal or very liberal. OK. All right. Three, two, one. Reveal. Twenty seven percent. Forty percent. It's 41 percent. Nice. I have not looked at this Marquette poll, just to be clear.

And I'll tell you why. Because, okay, so one, you've got this large share of Democrats who...

Think very liberal is a good thing. And they're using that label positively. But then you also have a lot of Republicans who are using the label negatively. And since that's been an attack on Trump, they're kind of leveraging that to frame her as very liberal. So. All right. It's four to zero. Let's get you on the board, Nathaniel. It's OK. Don't pity me. What percentage of Americans see Trump as very conservative?

Three, two, one. Reveal. 30%. 41%. Same as Harris. And Nathaniel's on the board. Nice. It is. 48% of Americans view Trump as very conservative. Indeed. More view him as very conservative than view her as very liberal. That's fascinating. And to round out that set of data...

10% view Trump as moderate and 19% view Harris as moderate. And this comes back to what I was talking about a little bit earlier on the campaign, but

There is certainly an attack line to say that Harris is too liberal. And I think, you know, Republicans who know about how to wage campaigns have been trying to get Trump to focus on that. But in this intervening period, Harris is doing a lot of work to try to prevent herself from being viewed as too liberal. And in some ways, in this race to define Harris between the Democrats and Republicans and Tim Walz, to a lesser degree, it seems like Democrats are winning that race in terms of

how quickly they are messaging and how aggressively they're pivoting to the median voter while Trump is talking about fanfic at the Democratic National Convention. All right, next question from a UMass poll. What percentage of Americans agree, either strongly or somewhat, that America is ready for its first African-American female president? And the options are strongly disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree.

And we're looking for strongly agree or just agree? We're talking about agree. So either somewhat or strongly. This is very interesting because there are a lot of kind of conflicting polls here because you could think...

Republicans would probably want to believe America is, I mean, everybody wants to believe America is ready for that, but they may be viewing the question specifically as about Harris and a fair number of Democrats probably hope that the country is ready, but maybe doubt that it is because they think a lot of Republicans are racist. Right, exactly. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about is like people who are cross answering, like think the country's not ready, even if that's something that they want. Three.

Two, one, reveal. 63%. 60. Ooh, this is like a Price is Right 60. Yeah, Ruth Price is righted you. And that means that Ruth gets it. It is 50% agree. Wow, okay. That America is ready. But 26% neither agree nor disagree. Right. They said, I'm not engaging, I guess.

So with that, the tally is Ruth 5, Nathaniel 1. Moving on to a somewhat similar question. What percentage of Americans say they agree that Harris is the Democratic nominee, either strongly or somewhat agree, for president due to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts? So this has been an attack from Republicans that she is a, quote, DEI candidate. What percentage of Americans say they agree in some form or another, either somewhat or strongly? Three.

Two, one, reveal. 40%. 39%, damn. Wow. And Ruth had 40. Y'all, we try to prevent you all from prices rating each other, but you're doing it anyway. All right, all right, all right. So Ruth did get it. It was 41%. But I mean, spiritually, you both got it. We're all winners. Exactly. That was pretty good from all of us. Truly, we had the same...

As we know with polling margin of error, the result might be three points higher or lower. So we're both in the realm of the correct. Oh, wow. Truly the most nerdy millennial argument for everyone being a winner ever.

But then let me ask you, because you both were extremely close to the answer, you know, I'll just read out the rest. So 27% said strongly disagree. 24% said neither agree nor disagree. 8% said somewhat disagree. And then 17% somewhat agree. 24% strongly agree. And that's where you get your 41 from adding those together. But you were both very close. So why were you so close on this? You know, I think, I mean...

We look a lot at the partisan results of things. And so it's easy to think about national results. It's sort of rolling up how partisans think about things. And so you've got a large share of Republicans who think about this. And I think think think that this is correct. And then you also have like a decent number of Democrats who think that this is correct. And so that's where you get closer to that, like 40 or 50 percent range. And so I was debating like 40 versus 45.

Partially because this is a very openly held Republican view, but also among some Democrats and independents, this is also something that they believe and talk about. You know, this is a conversation that's ongoing. All right. This is related. And I found this set of questions from Blueprint polling to be pretty interesting. So they ran a series of questions asking which lines of attack were most and least effective against Harris.

And thematically, the arguments were DEI, basically, you know, Harris is a DEI candidate. And this is this is Democrats who are pulling this. So they're trying to figure out what her vulnerabilities are to maybe shore those up. So it was DEI, San Francisco liberal, the family argument, which is basically J.D. Vance's childless cat lady argument, the economy liberal.

Basically, not good stewards of the economy under the Biden-Harris administration and immigration. So those are the options. Which do you think was the most effective attack against Harris? DEI, San Francisco liberal, family, economy, immigration. How did they measure effectiveness? How much respondents agreed with the attacks. Oh, I feel like that's easy then. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think it probably depends, particularly on the last two, on what on the economy and immigration they were. The specific message was. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm probably going to say I think immigration. Right. Yeah. That seems like this is a trick question. Three, two, one. Reveal. Reveal. Yeah. Sorry. Immigration. Immigration.

All right. You both get a point. So on all of those things. And it's it's a big gap. Right. Immigration and the economy are in the 60s. San Francisco liberal. Fifty seven. So close. Oh, sorry. They also asked about legitimacy. The whole is she a constitutionally, you know, legitimate nominee? That was middling. Forty six. D.I.

ineffective, 28, and family, the childless cat lady thing, 17 was the score. So some of those attacks that we've heard, honestly, the most are some of the least effective. And again, more evidence as to why Republicans are

getting upset with how Trump is running his campaign in this moment. Okay. There's a lot more here. So we're going to have to do another guess what Americans think soon, but I want to end on this because it has been part of the milieu for a minute. Now, what percentage of adults say that liberals liberals are either very weird or somewhat weird? Yeah.

I saw this poll. This is a YouGov poll, right? It is. It is. Oh, I did not see this. But, I mean, a lot of liberals, like, want to call themselves weird. Like, this can be something that they wear as a badge of pride. Like, keep Austin weird? Kind of weird? Exactly. Yes. I mean, the answer is yes. People do that. And it wasn't... That's why it wasn't a, like...

great use of polling either because obviously the there's yeah the word weird has many different things to different people exactly they're weird can be endearing and weird can be off-putting

All right. Three, two, one. Reveal. 50%. Sorry, I wasn't ready. Oh, Nathaniel can't cheat now. All right. My first instinct was 40. So let's go with 40. It was, in fact, 46%. So Ruth gets it, but just barely. But again, we both had the same instinct. That's eight to two. Final question here is for conservatives. What percentage of Americans said conservatives are weird? It was 46 for liberals.

Three, two, one, reveal. 39. Recycling one of my old answers. Interesting. 47% say conservatives are weird. Americans think y'all are weird. Basically, whether you're a liberal or a conservative. Well, no, that's a minority in both cases. Equally likely to think both groups are weird. Right. But I think it's probably a plurality because YouGov allows people to say they don't know. That whole the whole weird discourse is weird.

It is weird. Yeah. Ruth, you won. Congratulations, Ruth. The second time in a row now. Nathaniel, you got to be on watch because, as we said, three times is a trend. Yes, it is. Be careful. Thank you for helping us have a both fun and informed discussion about how Americans are processing the first three weeks of this newly formed presidential campaign. So thanks a lot, Ruth and Nathaniel.

Thanks, Galen. Thanks for having me. My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon.