From Washington: The Paths To Victory For Each Candidate
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Voting may be emotional, but the electoral map is all about the math, and each candidate has a quick path and less quick paths to 270. If Harris can't carry Pennsylvania, she probably would need to carry North Carolina plus Nevada. I'm Ryan Schmelz. The race for control of Congress goes down to the wire, and with margins this tight, anything could happen.

including a tie. The Senate has had ties before back in the 1950s. There was a tie in the late 19th century, but the Senate was a little bit of a different place then. I mean, the Senate is considered to be a body of equals. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington.

The last batch of Fox polls and our new Fox News power rankings dropped this week, just days out from the election. In the latest polls of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina among likely voters in two-way matchups, it's tied within the margin of error. Though some other data in Michigan shows Vice President Harris doing better than she had been. For example, on immigration, the former president's ahead. On abortion, she's ahead. But as Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer breaks it down... In the middle is the economy.

DONALD TRUMP OVER THE SUMMER HAD A SIGNIFICANT LEAD ON THIS, SOMETIMES IN THE POLLING AS MUCH AS DOUBLE DIGITS, ALL RIGHT? IN THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT, IN THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, HE LEADS, BUT IT IS BY TWO POINTS PLUS TWO FOR TRUMP. THIS PAST WEEK, THE FOX NEWS POWER RANKINGS PUT ARIZONA IN THE LEAN REPUBLICAN CATEGORY AND OUT OF TOSS-UP TERRITORY. AND IF THAT'S THE CASE, THEN WE ASSUME THE FORMER PRESIDENT GOES INTO ELECTION NIGHT WITH 230 ELECTORAL VOTES, VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS GOES IN WITH 226. BUT FOX NEWS'

Fox News special report anchor Brett Baer posed the possibility, based on polling, that if Arizona and North Carolina go to the former president and he were to pick up Pennsylvania, while Vice President Harris gets Michigan. That leaves Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Now, Harris would need to win all three of these states in order to get to 270, to win the presidency. But Mr. Trump...

FORMER PRESIDENT WOULD NEED TO JUST WIN ONE TO REGAIN THE WHITE HOUSE.

goes red, and then he crosses the line. Pennsylvania is the big prize with 19 electoral votes, and it is still very much a toss-up race with multiple paths to 270 for both candidates. It's back to the future. It's where we were right before Joe Biden was, shall we say, escorted from office, metaphorically. Darren Shaw is on the Fox News decision desk team, a pollster, and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. That was the main criticism. If

you recall in July was partially that he was sagging in the polls, but the attendant argument was he was sagging in the polls in such a way that he only had one pathway and it looked very implausible.

So, you know, they had already conceded basically the Sunbelt states, you know, the Rocky Mountain states and then the Atlantic Coast states. And so when the blue wall looked like it was crumbling, they dumped him. But now here and the idea was, well, Harris is a younger candidate as an African-American woman might do better in North Carolina, might do better in Georgia, might help with Latinos in Nevada and Arizona. And while she's done a little bit of that,

And it's very, very tight everywhere. It's still the case that those three blue wall states are the ones that seem to be her most plausible path. There are some others we can talk about. But what's the easiest path for Trump? Is it the reverse? Is it the Sun Belt?

Yeah, I think that's right. You know, if I were to, and no one's asked me to, but if I were to rank all the states right now, we've talked a little bit about this. And I would say that from Trumpiest to the heresy, most heresy, I'm trademarking that phrase, heresy, states, I'd probably go Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, from sort of Trump to Harris.

So, you know, in that ways, it sort of replicates what we've been talking about. But there's a little more particular detail in there, right? And the thought that North Carolina would be kind of middle of the pack is pretty striking, given what we thought coming into this year. Yeah, that was the one that Trump carried last time. It didn't seem like it was particularly complicated.

problematic, but Democrats always held out hope. And then a series of circumstances have kind of left North Carolina as maybe the one that's moved the least towards Trump over this year, right? A flawed gubernatorial candidate, some problems with the Republican Party in state, a lot of African-American voters who were not registered, that the Democrats have done a better job registering

although the overall registration numbers still favor the Republicans. You know, there was a lot of work to be done. Democrats have done some of that work, and then there have been some unforced errors by the Republicans. So I think, you know, what you hear, and I believe this is probably right, is that if Harris can't carry Pennsylvania, she probably would need to carry North Carolina plus Nevada. That's the fail-safe.

But as you know, the early voting numbers from Nevada don't look particularly good. Right. Let's talk about, yeah, let's talk about this if each doesn't get Pennsylvania, right? Because that's the big dog and that's what everyone's, that seems to be the...

The big topic of conversation, right? If she doesn't get Pennsylvania, but she gets Michigan and Wisconsin, she still needs those 19 electoral votes. She would essentially need both North Carolina and Georgia. If the rankings are right, Arizona's off the table, then she would also need Nevada, too. That's only six electoral votes, right? She would need essentially a three out of four sweep of the Sunbelts.

Well, let's see if my math is right. So if you got to replace the 19 from Pennsylvania, you could go, you know, obviously Carolina plus Georgia, Carolina plus Nevada, Georgia plus Nevada. OK. Right. I think all of those work. But you notice I'm kind of assiduously avoiding Arizona. It doesn't look particularly promising out there. But but so she would need, you know, by my math, two of the four to replace Pennsylvania. Right.

Right. And with Nevada being the one that historically has been the bluest, although, as we've been sort of hinting at, the early numbers from Nevada don't look very promising. But but, yes, it's neither Georgia nor North Carolina by itself can can replace Pennsylvania. So you need a plus one. And the question is, can you get can you get one of them, let alone the plus one? And the same thing for Trump. If he doesn't win Pennsylvania, he needs.

What does he need? It would be obviously if he gets the, and he might not get Michigan, right? That seems to be the one that's drifting if there is any drift. That would mean you got to get Wisconsin. Yeah.

Right, right. Yeah. So I think the assumption is, and it's an assumption, that Trump seems like he might pick up the four we've been talking about, the Mountain West states, Nevada and Arizona, and then the Atlantic states, North Carolina and Georgia. So if he does that, it's one of the three. It's one of the blue walls. So you're right. If he doesn't get Pennsylvania, then Wisconsin. If not Wisconsin, then Michigan.

there's a correct historical point that's been you know lots of people comment on lately that those three blue wall states tend to move together but you know just from my sort of point of view that stuff's always true until it's not right

And they're so they've been so tight lately, especially Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, that the notion that it's in. No, he's really saying this, but it's impossible that Pennsylvania wouldn't go 10,000 votes for one candidate and Wisconsin wouldn't go 7000 for the other. You know, it strikes me. It's like, yeah, I could absolutely see that happening. I also think there are kind of micro trends.

in each of those states. You know, Wisconsin's a little more rural, a little more rural vote out there proportionately than in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has a Puerto Rican population that's not insignificant. And so did the MSG rally, you know, cost Trump something there? You know, there are idiosyncratic features in those states. Yes, they're upper Midwest with, you know, union voters and Catholic voters, et cetera, but they've also got some differences that could be consequential.

Let's talk about the power rankings for a second, because it took Arizona to put Arizona from toss up to lean for Trump. If if that ends up being the case on election night, that that was correct. Do we look at that the margin to see how much immigration mattered? Because our polling indicated for months, right, that Arizona for Arizona voters, immigration was more top of mind than anywhere else and was even sometimes even with the economy.

- Right, right. I think, yeah, we thought coming into this race that the constellation of issues that were out there really seemed to favor the Republicans. Now that was true in 2022 also, and it didn't necessarily result in huge gains.

because the Democrats were able to kind of triage a series of smaller issues together that kind of made them competitive. So abortion plus health care, plus climate, you know, plus smaller features that occurred in each of these different states. And they managed to do that. In some states, they've been reasonably successful doing that. In other states, not so much. One of the numbers I've been looking at just is Harris's numbers on

which candidate would do better handling the economy. And she has actually become quite competitive on that issue compared to where Joe Biden was in July, right? Biden was losing to Trump by double digit points on the economy. She's not, she's not caught him quite yet, but she's in some states within three to five points.

The states where she's seen the battleground states where she seems to be doing least well, Trump's advantages on the order, it's more like five to 10. And that's what I've seen in Arizona and Nevada.

The other thing in those states, especially Nevada, is that inflation is an issue, but unemployment is also an issue because those economies in those particular states, especially Nevada, haven't come back from the pandemic yet. Right. There's still an employment problem because Vegas in particular is particularly hard hit. So.

you know, a lot of places it's just prices. At least that's what a lot of Democrats will tell you. It's just prices. Everything else looks good. The fundamentals look good. That's much less true in Nevada and a little less true in Arizona. So I, I think that the stickiness of Trump's advantage on the economy, as well as the border, I think has to do with the reality that those voters in those two states are facing. Interesting. Talk to me about polling this time around. I understand that,

pollsters have learned some lessons and so they've waited for education differently this this time around but i've been reading some pieces that say it may or may not be enough to sort of make up for uh what's what else is missing that that reaching people is very difficult now um reaching trump supporters in particular seems difficult that they don't really want to answer polling what's your sort of sense

given what you do about any changes to polling to sort of, I guess, correct some of the issues we've seen in prior years.

Right. After 2016, the observation was that the national polls were pretty good. It was these statewide polls in the upper Midwest states. And the two observations, one was that there weren't very many of them. So we need to have more, more and more robust polling in states that are consequential. The second observation was, is that less well-educated voters, a key part of the Trump coalition materialized in a way that people hadn't expected. So we were, you know, too high on postgrads and too low on

on less than a high school education. But that sort of weighting difference, and by the way, at the Fox Bowl, we'd weighted by education prior to 2016. So this wasn't really an issue for us internally. But 2020, it wasn't simply education weights. There was clearly, I'm going to use a phrase that'll probably get me banned from radio forever, non-ignorable, non-response bias. Right.

All right. Now, for the five people who are still with us at this point, what that means is that, you know, the assumption of polling is that people you randomly select people to construct a representation of some population. And that works beautifully unless there's a systematic process.

difference between people who respond and people who don't. And that's what we found in 2020, was that not only were some people more likely to respond than others, that's not necessarily a problem. It was that it was consequentially correlated with voting preference. And you're right in your setup. You said Trump supporters were less likely to take the polls. That's right. I think there's a difference, right? Some people think when they talk about the shy Trump voter,

Well, that would imply that someone is taking the poll and they simply don't reveal that they're going to vote for Trump. That doesn't seem to be the problem. Right. I mean, how many shy Trump voters do you know, for instance? Right. The problem is getting them to agree to take the poll. And so we've done a couple of tests on the on the format side.

At Fox, for instance, we not only do the traditional phone sampling, cell phone dominant, but we also do a text-to-web because we found there was some evidence that Trump supporters who wouldn't do a phone interview might do a text-to-web interview.

In my role working with the National Election Studies, we've actually also gone to a paper format that we found the Trump supporters, we can get some of them because they're willing to do a paper survey as opposed to a phone. Yeah, and so we've been very open with respect to mode. And then at the back end, we ask questions. For instance, do you consider yourself a supporter of the MAGA movement?

And the idea is when we look at our Republicans in our sample, we want to make sure we've got

the quote here would be the right kinds of Republicans, right? Is our sample appropriately Trumpy? You know, we also, because we're sampling from the voter file, let's say, you know, we're coming out of the field in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina this week. Our sample is drawn from the registered voter files from those states. We can look at the people who we selected but chose not to do the interview.

And we either have party registration or we have modeled party from the voter file. So we can take a look at people who refused. Were they more likely to be Trump supporters than not? That's an indication that our poll has problems or not. So, you know, as I said, to the small number of people who hung in with us through this little discussion, there's a lot of, I think, really interesting, actually, technical stuff that we're doing here.

But the big question is, is it right? And longer term, is this just a problem with Donald Trump supporters or is this now endemic that whenever we do election polling, we're going to have to really be concerned that Republicans, you know, we've got a Democratic skew. And, you know, so the proof will be in the pudding. Right. I mean, we're like weather forecasters in that sense. Ultimately, yes.

The day shows up and it either rains or it doesn't. Right. You're in the right or you're wrong. And, you know, Tuesday will be that day, I guess. Yeah. Great analogy or metaphor or whatever that is, whatever I should call it. Let me get your thoughts on just before I let you go on on the.

last polling batch. I found it fascinating. Pennsylvania, it's basically tied, right? It's basically tied in all these states, except maybe Michigan. But this was interesting. Trump was up with independents by five points. However, slightly more Democrats are going for Harris than Republicans go for Trump, about like four points, and non-MAGA Republicans, as they are called,

are going a little bit more for for her. I mean, they're still going more for Trump than Harris, but there's like a big chunk going for Harris. Does it even out or does this look like a slight tip in Harris's favor? Man, that's a great question. And this is, you know, if people at home are trying to figure out how to handicap this race and what they ought to be looking for, you

If Harris manages to win this race, we're going to look back on her strategy of targeting these, what do you want to call them, non-MAGA Republicans or Nikki Haley Republicans or, you know, never Trump. That she's gone after these voters. Now she's done some other things as well. But we'll look at that and say, like, that was really, really smart. Whatever else she did, that was the way to go. If, on the other hand, they come home.

then, you know, that strategy will look in retrospect like, boy, was that a smart move? Was there ever a chance those voters were actually going to break ranks and vote for the Democratic candidate, right? That's the gamble, the Harris campaign. Trump seems to be doubling down. I don't know that we've seen a lot of outreach efforts

from Trump to the non-MAGA Republicans. I mean, you know, the sort of tango with Nikki Haley, but she didn't, you know, she wasn't there. She sort of endorsed Republicans, but not necessarily Trump. Does the former president think, well, I'm doing better with minority groups than Republicans have historically done? So that's my, that's his version of an outreach. Right.

You're right. You're right. And so I mentioned non-mega Republicans on the other side of the ledger. Can Donald Trump peel off a sufficient number of Latino voters and African-American voters and younger voters? Those are the three groups on that side, or I guess kind of swingy groups that have traditionally been Democratic that in this election –

have been, I mean, you know, and to put numbers to it, the question is, can Trump get close to 15% with African Americans? Can Trump get close to 45% with Latinos? Can Trump get close to 45% with voters under 30? If he's hitting those numbers, man, the math looks very difficult for Kamala Harris. Okay. Michigan.

briefly, in a two-way matchup, the two are about even. But when you add third-party folks into the mix, it looks like the Fox poll finds her ahead by four points. That's just outside the margin of error. And in Michigan, independents are going for her by nine points. 21% of non-MAGA Republicans go for Harris. Is that a...

She looks like she's down with Black voters compared to where Biden was by about 12 points. But she's still far ahead with Black voters than, of course, former President Trump. Is Michigan drifting kind of like the way Arizona is drifting to Trump? There's some whiff of that in those numbers. Exactly. You're exactly on top of the correct numbers. I would even say the Harris number with African-Americans is lagging Biden's.

But look at Trump's number. Trump's number is only a little better than he did last time. I think he was at 12%. I could be wrong on that with respect to African-American voters in Michigan. We break the state into urban, suburban, small town, and rural. She's actually winning small towns. Trump usually wins the rural vote and the small town vote. She's actually winning the small town vote. Small towns in Michigan aren't like small towns in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. They're a little more democratic, more

And she's capitalizing on that. You know, it seems that she's consolidated the vote a little better. And you're right, she's winning independence. And

I don't want to bury the lead. The lead does seem to be RFK is drawing and he's going to be on the ballot in that state. If he weren't, that vote would almost certainly go to Trump. But he is. And it's going to Kennedy. And I'll be interested in the last few days if there's a concerted effort in Michigan to get Kennedy supporters to vote for Trump.

Because I think it might be worth a point or two, and that could make that race. Right now, I do think it's got a Harris tilt, but if they can pry those voters off of Kennedy, it might be enough to bring it back into a toss-up category.

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When then-Senator Kamala Harris left the Senate to become vice president, it was more of a see you later rather than a goodbye. That's because she would still be a frequent visitor, making multiple trips back to the chamber to cast the tie-breaking votes on a number of key bills. On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50.

the Senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative, and the concurrent resolution as amended is adopted. The vice president would break the 50-50 tie 33 times and counting, a record for a vice president.

Her boss, President Biden, never broke a tie when he was vice president. With the race for the Senate coming down to the wire, a 50-50 tie is certainly a possibility. It's not the only wild scenario facing the balance of power. With a slim margin also separating the House, Alaska's at-large Republican candidate Nick Begich

is just one of many West Coast candidates expecting a long and drawn-out nail-biter. At least in Alaska, we have to wait for all of the ballots to come in before the Division of Elections is going to tally the votes.

The ranked choice results. So unless somebody is a clear favorite on election night and there's not expected to be sufficient additional returns coming in to change that result, it could be a couple of weeks before the Division of Elections declares a winner in Alaska.

But with both Republican leadership elections set for November 13th, could there be a scenario where we don't even know which party will control Congress by then? If it's a tiebreaker in the Senate, you know, we've had ties in the Senate before a couple of times just in the 21st century here.

And nowhere is it written down on a stone tablet that the party of the vice president gets the majority. Fox's senior congressional correspondent, Chad Pergram, helps break all the scenarios down. The Senate has had ties before back in the 1950s. There was a tie in the late 19th century, but the Senate was a little bit of a different place then. I mean, the Senate is considered to be a body of equals. So what happened in the contemporary modern Senate is in 2001,

There was a 50-50 tie between the Democrats and the Republicans. Well, President George W. Bush had won. And so there was a power sharing agreement, you know, hammered out by Trent Lott, who was the senator from Mississippi, the majority leader, Republican, and Tom Daschle, the minority leader, the Democrat from South Dakota, that basically said, OK, the Republicans are really kind of in control here.

The reason is that Vice President Cheney at the time could break ties in the Senate. But what we will do is we will populate the committees at an even level. Republicans will be in the majority. But if at any point either party gets a clear majority during this Congress, all this goes out the window.

Well, sure enough, about five months later, Jim Jeffords, who was a Republican senator from Vermont, he became an independent and decided to caucus with the Democrats. And so the Democrats became the majority party. They had a 51-49 majority. And Tom Daschle kind of matriculated from being the minority leader to the majority leader. Well, this happened again in 2020.

We didn't find out really until January of 2021 that the Democrats had control of the Senate. That's because they won these two runoffs in Georgia. And Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, he insisted that they approve a similar power sharing agreement because otherwise Republicans will get completely shut out there. And so Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, agreed to that. And again, this is a resolution that has to be adopted by the Senate. This isn't a handshake agreement.

All senators agreed to this, and that's the way they ran the show for two years. So, again, you have a very real possibility of a 50-50 Senate.

unclear what that means. We're in a more toxified political environment right now because, you know, would somebody say, OK, you know, we're the Republicans, we think we should be in the majority, but we're not going to sign on to something with those Democrats or vice versa. You have another wild card, which would probably actually prevent a tie in the Senate, and that's of Dan Osborne, this independent senator or Senate candidate, I should say, from Nebraska who

upsets Deb Fischer, the Republican senator from Nebraska. He has said that he will not caucus with either party. Now, I don't know what that means as to where they would place his desk.

I don't know what that means as to how they would assign him to committees, but that would probably eliminate the possibility of a tie because you have an odd number then, obviously. But that's how it would work out, at least in recent history. But again, I want to underscore the fact that this is not written down somewhere that just because the party of the vice president, they dictate the Senate majority. That's not necessarily the case, Ryan.

And I think this is not really unfamiliar territory to people, even those who don't follow politics very often, because you had a scenario during the first two years of the Biden administration where the vice president was somebody who would break the ties if there was a tiebreaker in the Senate. And quite often she was used, I believe at a record rate, Vice President Harris was the tiebreaker for some pretty stiff legislation that was going down from Democrats. So

I don't think this is really unfamiliar territory where the vice president plays a key role here. No, it's not, at least in recent history. You're right about Vice President Harris breaking these ties. Vice President Pence certainly did that because, again, you had a close Senate there. You know, so we've seen this more and more in an equally divided branch of government. But again, it just depends on the comity of the place and the leaders and the willingness of members to do this.

Some people might ask, well, why does the vice president get to break ties? In the Constitution, it says that the vice president is the president of the Senate. And I should point out something very important here, that while that sounds like you have a lot of power in the Senate, you really don't when it comes to breaking those ties. Part of the reason is because you can only break ties effectively in the affirmative. Let's just say for argument's sake here, as I always say, it's about the math, that let's say you have a vote that's 49-49. Maybe two people were absent that day.

49-49. And maybe the party of the president wants the issue before the Senate to actually go down to defeat. So why would the vice president vote then? Because by rule, a tie loses in the Senate. So then you would make it 49 yeas to 50 nays. It was going to lose anyway, so why pile on? I have seen situations.

where you've had the vice president presiding over a vote and then not vote. And some people say, well, why didn't they vote? I'm like, well, because the issue went the way that they wanted it to go.

Or you have had situations where, say, it's 49-49 or 50-50. That's when the issue is not going in the direction because that tie vote would lose. And so the administration or the party or the president, they want it to go the other way. So they cast their vote in the affirmative. So effectively, the vice president can only vote in the affirmative in the Senate.

And, you know, it doesn't seem like the Senate's going to be the only one that has this just big question mark looming over it, whether or not we're in a tight race or not. You know, I think you put out earlier today an email saying that we could be going into January not knowing who actually controls the House. And also we've been reporting throughout this week that, you know, GOP elections, both Senate and House, are scheduled for November 13th, pretty early in the cycle and not long after Election Day. And

There could be people voting in those elections who don't know if they're going to be returning to Congress or not. Yeah. How long you got on this, Ryan? Because this gets pretty interesting here, but I'll run you through the rabbit hole here. Again, you will have leadership elections in the Senate. The question in the Senate is whether or not the Democrats are in the majority or the Republicans. And if it's the Republicans, you know, they are going to elect a new Republican leader, majority or minority, to succeed Mitch McConnell, who is sticking around as a senator.

John Thune, the current whip, John Cornyn, the former majority whip, and Rick Scott are the announced candidates. But some people think that maybe if you have a president-elect Trump coming in, that that could dictate who becomes the Republican leader in the Senate or maybe somebody else, frankly. That's a possibility as to. Now, things in the House of Representatives get much more complicated.

If the Democrats are in the majority or in the minority, frankly, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat from New York, he is going to be the Democratic leader or he's going to be the Speaker of the House. That's pretty clear. For the Republicans, though, there are multiple permutations where this gets really dicey. As you point out, they start to bring in the members elect for an orientation in Washington.

mid-November. The leadership election is the 13th. But you have a number of people who always come to this orientation, who are invited by the House Administration Committee that runs this, that say, OK, your race has not been called, but they invite the Democrat and the Republican, and they go through the orientation. And once the race is settled, then the other person goes home. They don't want to put somebody behind the eight ball.

But under the Republican conference rules, somebody who has been invited to that conference can vote. Now, you could have a scenario where if Republicans are in the minority, yes, there might be an effort to try to kick out Mike Johnson as being the new minority leader. But it's actually easier for him to survive if the Republicans are in the minority because you need a lot fewer votes.

In other words, let's just say Republicans are barely in the minority. It's 217 votes. They need half of that, you know, to be the minority leader because that vote does not go to the floor. So, you know, 217, you know, you miss the majority by one. You only need 109 people in the conference to vote for you. OK, easy peasy, right?

However, let's say the Republicans are in the majority and let's just say they have a slim majority. Let's just make it a little bit bigger for the sake of argument. Let's say they have 220. Well, you need a minimum of 111 votes in the conference vote. This is a private vote. But then to win on the floor, you need an outright majority of all 435 members voting for a candidate by name.

So, in other words, if they vote for someone by name, all 435 members of the House, you need 218. Well, that's a long way from that number in the low 100s. So you see where Mike Johnson now, if he has the blessing of, say, a president elect Trump, that probably helps him significantly. But there's anywhere from about three to 10 House Republicans who are probably just against Mike Johnson no matter what.

So if he has a really slim majority, regardless of what a potential president-elect Trump says, he might still have problems being elected on the floor. This is what happened to Kevin McCarthy in January of early last year. This is why they burned through these leadership elections on the House floor day after day. October of last year, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan finally landed on Mike Johnson.

That's the problem for the Republicans. And the doomsday scenario here is if it took five days to elect a speaker in 2023 to start the Congress before they elected Kevin McCarthy and 22 days to elect Mike Johnson, you suddenly get into a problem where you can't start the House of Representatives because you have to start certifying the Electoral College on the 6th of January.

So they didn't elect Kevin McCarthy last time until January 7th. It wasn't a problem because it was a midterm election. There was no electoral vote to certify. So the House, you say, well, why can't they just go ahead and start doing that on the side? You can't. The reason is the House has not been constituted. The House cannot do anything. I cannot say this loudly enough. The House cannot do anything until you have elected a speaker.

End. Fiend. 30. That's it. You can't swear on the members. You can't do anything. So that could potentially delay the certification of the Electoral College if there's this, you know, machinations going on back and forth here about the speaker. Now, here's the other problem. Mike Johnson has to fund the government.

I should note that he doesn't have to fund the government, but generally he has demonstrated a willingness to do that since he's been in the speakership because he has passed and put on the floor a number of interim spending bills which were not something that conservatives wanted. And that's exactly part of the reason that Kevin McCarthy is no longer the Speaker of the House. So Johnson finally agreed to a big omnibus spending bill, also a separate bill funding for Ukraine. A lot of conservatives did not like that.

swore it would be different in the future. It wasn't really in September. So here we are on an interim spending bill through December 20th. So if Mike Johnson sees, and this is all predicated on the idea that Republicans might be in the majority, so if Mike Johnson sees this problem that he might have trouble getting elected speaker on the floor, what decision does he make about funding the government? And if Democrats...

say, all right, we've lost the House, we've lost the Senate, we've lost the presidency. We have helped Republicans on every major bill to fund the government or the debt ceiling or anything over the past two years. They've not been able to pass any of these things on their own, something that would become law. You know what? Peace out. Thanks for playing. They will not help. So you could start all of this with a government shutdown. So the absolute beer goggles worst scenario is a fight over the speakership

in the middle of a government shutdown with a delayed certification of the Electoral College amid a contested presidency.

And you thought Halloween just came and went, right, Ryan? It doesn't look like it's going anywhere, especially if that's the scenario we're looking at. But I think, Chad, too, Speaker Johnson, he might be facing more pressure than anybody else in this election cycle outside of the two presidential candidates. Because, I mean, I feel like his speakership or his position as the top Republican, it's really riding on this election in many ways.

Yeah, and that's where some people, you know, they just don't know where the votes lie. Is he that much different than Kevin McCarthy? There are some of these conservatives who don't think that there was enough of a break from what Kevin McCarthy was putting up, and I just laid out chapter and verse why. But the question is, who else would be out there in the background?

Well, naturally, you have Steve Scalise, who's the number two. There's always been a lot of goodwill for Scalise after the shooting a few years ago. But remember, he could not win on the floor, which is why his bid for the speakership last October, you know, went away after just a couple of days.

So there's that. I'll note that somebody has been running around the country campaigning and raising money, something he didn't used to do, Jim Jordan of Ohio, who's the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. And Jordan is somebody else who couldn't get enough votes during that long, drawn-out process last October as well. So can either of those candidates, if it's not Mike Johnson, become the speaker? This was always the thing when they talked about with Nancy Pelosi.

You know, there were these kind of half-hearted bids to unseat her. You certainly had the case with the former congressman from Ohio, Tim Ryan. You had Heath Shuler, the former congressman from North Carolina, but neither of them got anywhere within striking distance of Nancy Pelosi.

John Boehner faced a different situation. He was starting to have some of the same problems that we're talking about now that visited Kevin McCarthy and might visit Mike Johnson. This has been a problem with Republicans with that majority is that, you know, it's almost like, you know, they want the you know, the perfect is the enemy of the good. And so they're never going to settle on somebody. And again, it comes down to the math, because, as I said at this reading, the

There's at least three to 10 Republicans who probably would not support Mike Johnson. Now, if he gets a big majority, which frankly, we really do not think is going to be the case, but can't rule anything out.

Then he's probably in a better situation and he gets a boost, certainly if former President Trump is elected. But again, if he's in the minority, it is so much easier for Mike Johnson because of the process I laid out where you just need a fraction of what you need to win on the floor. That probably helps him tremendously. It might be better for Mike Johnson politically and easier politically to become the minority leader.

And we should also point out, too, Chad, that Jim Jordan has actually been campaigning and fundraising with some of the members who protested him becoming speaker on the floor and voted against him. So that's probably one other thing to note on that part there. I think one other thing we can touch on, Chad, real quick is

We're hearing a lot about the races we can watch early on election night that could give us a good indication of how things are going to go. I think a lot of eyes are going to be on Virginia, where if Hung Kau in the Senate has a strong showing there, potentially wins or just comes close to beating Tim Kaine, that could be an indication of where things are going to go. But I was actually talking to Morgan Griffiths, the Republican congressman. He's in a safe district, but...

You know, they've got two swing districts in Virginia. They're one of the first polls to close. They count their ballots relatively quick. And he was saying that the two swing districts there, if Republicans win both, they're in very good shape. If they win just one, they're in good shape. But if they lose both of those races, then that could be a long night for Republicans.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. That is one place to certainly look at. You know, you have Elaine Luria, who was the former congresswoman who was defeated by Jen Kiggins, a Republican. The district flipped from blue to red last cycle. Kiggins has a little bit of a race this time. I wouldn't put it right at the tippy top.

The better race, and this is the seat that has been vacated by Abigail Spanberger, who is now going to run for governor next year, the moderate Democrat. You have Eugene Vindman in that race. And I'll tell you, if Republicans are able to win that race right there, Derek Anderson, that's probably a good sign. But again, if they win one of those, you know, Kiggins is in better shape.

But, you know, the one I would look at in the early going here, and we don't know how quickly the returns will come in, is Maine. You have Jared Golden up against Austin Terrio there. And that's a district, you know, that that is close. He's a moderate Democrat. Also look for how the electoral vote goes in that district. I would look early at New York, although, you know, the polls don't close in New York State till nine o'clock at night.

And you have to, you know, it takes a little bit of time to get some of the votes in there, but you've got anywhere from five to six seats in play right there. That could be a very revealing race. Another one, Ohio, and I'm from Ohio. Ohio historically gets the returns in fairly quickly. There are two seats there that I would look at. You have Marcy Kaptur, who is the most senior woman ever to serve in the House.

And she is vulnerable, but she usually pulls it out. She's not the one everybody should be concerned about. But Amelia Sykes, who has I mentioned Tim Ryan a few minutes ago, has that district in the Mahoning County, Mahoning Valley area there of eastern Ohio, northeastern Ohio. That's pure Trump country right there. And so that could be a signal that could tell you how things are going. And also, if Sykes loses, maybe which direction the Senate contest between Sherrod Brown, the incumbent,

and the Republican challenger Bernie Moreno are going. But there's a lot of onesies and twosies. I mean, even if Democrats don't do really well in New York...

In other words, if they don't come, they don't have to sweep the table, but if they don't come pretty close there, you know, we noticed that the New York Yankees did not get swept by the Dodgers here. But the Democrats in New York, they need pretty much a close sweep here to do well, because then the other places that could be in play, there's five to seven seats, depending on the way you crunch it in California.

Guess who's from California? Kamala Harris, Democratic bastion. There's a couple of seats that popped up on the board there in Biden districts and over its districts that President Biden carried in 2020. I would also look at Marionette Miller Meeks, who's in Iowa. She won in 2020 by literally about a handful of votes. And that is not an exaggeration. And I would look at some districts in Texas.

Does this fear over Latin Americans and what was said about Puerto Rico at the Madison Square Garden rally a few days ago, does that impact some of the races? You have a Democrat, Tony Vicente Gonzalez in Texas, has a competitive race. Tony Gonzalez, a Republican with a competitive race. You have Democrat Henry Cuellar, who's under indictment.

So, you know, things like that in the closing moments could tell you a lot. I'll tell you a district to look at. And this is the swingiest district in the country right now. There used to be a district in southeast Indiana. There used to be a district in New Hampshire. The swingiest district in the U.S. right now is southern New Mexico.

Gabe Vasquez is a freshman Democrat, won by a couple of thousand votes, flipped it from red to blue. And let me just give you the legislative history with this district. So it was held by Steve Pierce, who was Republican, ran for governor unsuccessfully.

So, Xochitl Torres-Small, a Democrat, won that district in 18. And I said, if Democrats win that seat, they have the House. Well, guess who won? Xochitl Torres-Small. And guess who had control of the House? It was the Democrats. Well, in 2020, it was a Republican year, quote-unquote, the fact that Trump gets people to the polls. So, Yvette Harrell was a Republican. She beat Torres-Small. And then in 2022, without Trump on the ballot...

You had Vasquez beat Harrell. So you have Harrell versus Vasquez. Again, that will tell you a lot, even though it's not determinative at the at the presidential level in New Mexico. Another race that might be very hard for the Democrats to hold, and it's because of this Trump factor on the ballot sometimes here is Mary Peltola in Alaska. So Don Young is a was the Republican congressman from Alaska from 1973 until he died in 2022. Forty nine years ago.

Alaska is a Republican state. Mary Peltola won a special election. She's a Democrat and then won the midterms in 2022. Well, she has not been on the ballot when Trump has been on the ballot. And Trump carried Alaska by 10 points last time.

So that could be a loss there. And again, if it comes down to onesies or twosies, that's why it might be either a really late night or early morning, if not several days. Because, I mean, you could have if the house is within hours.

you know, five, six seats, and you've got anywhere from maybe eight or nine, maybe more, frankly, House races that are out that might be decided ultimately by a couple thousand votes or less. I mean, this is why this could take a while. I mean, it took until the middle of November last time to know, you know, which party had control of the House. It was very interesting in 2020 because, you

It was announced and predicted by Fox and others that Democrats would control the House in 2020, retain the House. But until you got all the returns in in December and all the races called, the Democrats almost lost the House that year. But we didn't know that until December. So you see, and this is why I come back to this thing about the leadership elections and why this is such a fraught period here over the next, say, six to seven weeks.

I think we're in for a long night, Chad, and it's going to be very hard to see us knowing what's going to happen. I mean, yeah, like you said, we could be sitting here for a number of days, even weeks and maybe even over a month until we know who exactly wins control of the House. So get ready for the West Coast to play a big part here. And thank you, Chad, as always. Absolutely. Thank you.

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