Pollster Andrew Wilson on the GOP Crack-Up and Harris’s Surge
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especially in the weeks since Joe Biden has left the race and Vice President Harris has become the Democratic nominee. So, Andrew, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on today. I wanted to start with, give me your overview of where the polling has shifted since Vice President Harris has become the Democratic nominee. So I think two big things have happened. I would say overall, we've moved to a Harris plus one environment. But to be clear, that still is electorally favorable towards Trump.

It's still going to be a very tight race and a serious fight in the states that we already recognize as battle around states. Everything that we've seen so far in the public polling is still within the margin of error. So.

We are unsure about Harris's lead at this point, but it's looking a lot more promising, especially when you factor in her approval rating, which has been climbing exponentially since Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her. It's pretty much turned on its head.

Right. Before, when she was just running as his vice presidential nominee. So she was in the 30s, basically, in the mid to high 30s on approvals. And now, where are we at now? It's up into the mid 40s, right? Mid 40s, I would say. 40s on average. Right. I'm not sure in historical terms what the change might be, but it's very significant. Yeah.

Was, I mean, in your opinion, and I don't know if we have the numbers to prove this, was a lot of it just that she was burdened by the whole Biden age situation? Like, it was just a reflection of her particularly? And that as America has gotten to know her, she's going up in the assessment that they're making? That may be. It may also reflect, it might reflect a few things. One, Democrats might be more willing to answer polls right now. So there could be a bump on that.

I wouldn't necessarily categorize that as a significant bump, but there could be some of that in there. I also think that Kamala Harris's winning coalition is different from Biden's. Talk to me about that. I'm curious to know that. So I think what we've been seeing in some of the public polling has been she's been losing some of the older, whiter voters that Biden was a little more consistent with and picking up with younger voters and voters of color. Right.

this is one of the things like the polling averages are, have changed a lot and forecasts like five 38 have changed a lot. But the reason is they base their forecasts. They weigh fundamentals of the race pretty seriously. And by that, I mean things that are beyond the polling and things that, you know, factory and turnout and things like that. Sure. So with those fundamentals completely different, they have changed significantly.

so far beyond what Joe Biden could have hoped to do. Their averages are going to take some time to catch up and the polling is going to take some time to catch up, but the fundamentals are totally different and we still don't know the landscape. And there was a lot of chess playing going on about picking a VP. There was a lot of calculations back and forth like does Shapiro help more than Kelly or da-da-da. Waltz doesn't come from a state that they need to win. We're going to win Minnesota. So it's not...

Bright blue, but it's pretty damn blue. Talk to me about what you think Walls does for the ticket in Wisconsin, Michigan, maybe even Pennsylvania and Ohio. Well, I mean, to go back to the point about not picking Shapiro, the evidence that a vice presidential pick is going to do something for your

for your numbers in whatever state. It's a mixed bag. It's kind of thin. At most, we could say she could garner half a point, which could be significant in the long run, but it may not mean as much. I think Waltz has other advantages. They're philosophically two very different picks. Sure. Waltz is sort of more of that cable news attack dog, which was the thing that Pete Buttigieg had

as his big pro, he's a good communicator, but Waltz has both the qualification of being a Democratic governor and a great communicator. I think the principle of picking a vice president is do no harm. Great thing. He doesn't piss off the base. He doesn't

I can't imagine that he's necessarily off-putting to your average voter. Right. He doesn't have that, like, don't you think he's hard to caricature? Because, look, the Trump campaign is a bit like, he's a desperate liberal, like a San Francisco. It's real hard to put Waltz in that box of radical leftist communists from the Eastern elite. Well, this is the thing that they're going to struggle with. This ticket is defining both of them.

There's a Midwest thing about the guy that I just find incredibly appealing. And that is an area where you've got a guy who's been an enlisted guy in the Army, a high school football coach, a teacher. He comes from...

you know, humble background. He understands agriculture. I think there's a lot here where you can mosaic out into some of these counties and places where he does help in ways that I think we, I don't even think we've calculated them all out quite yet. We don't think we know how deep that's going to run. We in, in 2020, just looking at the, the Midwest calculus,

But you can sort of see that the way Wisconsin goes, Michigan is going to go this way. So it's it's more like a center of gravity. It's, you know, the moon affecting the tides on the earth. Right. Like the right. Right. A certain environment, a certain political environment that.

those states will trend similarly. So Andrew, you're also, aside from your work in the political side of Lincoln Project, you're also an outside advisor to the Lincoln Democracy Institute, R501C4, where you do a lot of analytical work looking at polling and data on how these candidates will be defined for the coming race. Talk to us a little bit about what you're seeing in that information so that people understand how the messaging needs to work going into 2024. Right.

Right. So a lot of what LDI does is beyond sort of the horse race stuff that you're at most polls. Right. So we're focused on what people think of the health democracy in the long term. We're trying to understand extremism and where that comes from and embrace these sort of ideas. And we're also trying to facilitate conversations with families about political issues, because that's where a lot of this starts.

So, you know, we've identified a number of voters who in their families, the Dobbs decision has really driven a wedge in those communities. It's difficult to talk about, but LDI is looking at ways to make those conversations easier and to make them more productive and better for democracy overall.

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Yes, there's been a political reaction to Dobbs. There's also like a social and a family dynamic with Dobbs where men who on paper look very Republican, Dobbs has changed their brains, especially if they have daughters, right? I think that...

I keep trying to properly articulate how much Dobbs has affected the political landscape in the country since it happened. I think it clashes with their view that the Republican Party has for a long time been the mind your own business party. And that's what they like. They liked low taxes. They liked not having government involved in their lives every day.

And this is a little too close for comfort. I remember growing up in the Obama years and hearing over and over again, keep the government out of my doctor's office. And if you, you know, one of the things that we found with our data is that it's not necessarily how old you are.

That determines where you're going to fall on the spectrum. It's when you came into political maturity. So a lot of these people came into political maturity during the 2000s and 2010s. They have at least now. And they remember the Republican Party that was more like Bush, more like Reagan. Yeah, me. You know? So the other area that you guys have picked up on is this

schism inside of the part of the Republican Party that used to be very pro-democracy, very anti-Soviet Union, anti-communist. Talk to us about that schism with what we're calling those Red Dawn conservatives who can't quite figure out where the world should be. They have one set of beliefs about Russia and Trump thinks Vladimir Putin is the greatest thing since prepared muster.

Right. Yeah. I think that they have a very strong association with Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. It's very great that association because those were, they remember those times. They were in their 30s, you know, roughly during the 80s. And, you know, it's the best America they can remember. That's how they would describe it. That behavior inside today's GOP that is

more pro-authoritarian, more pro-Putin, more pro-autocratic sort of feeling. How do you communicate with those people that this isn't a fight about imaginary communism that they hear on Fox News? How do you communicate with those people that what the stakes really are in a world where, you know, I think we all agree democracy is under siege around the world. Right.

We need to point at the failures of the Trump administration. He, as president, was both corrupt and incompetent. That would be the that would be if you wanted to, you know, they remember a Republican Party. They remember a Republican Party that was serious. Right. That took itself seriously and took governing seriously.

I think that every time, I think, you know, for the most part, Republicans are sabotaging themselves because these people, a lot of these folks are still voting for them. About two thirds of what we have coined red, non-conservatives voted for Trump in 2020. Now we managed to peel some of them off. Yeah, we did in 2020. So let me ask you this question. Let me change the subject a little bit. We've got this, this sense in the country that,

And I have come to believe a lot of it was bound up in Biden's, in the construct of Biden's age, the question of Biden's age. There's a lot of economic pessimism. There's been a lot of wrong direction polling in the last couple of years. Do you see that changing in time for the election? I'm not sure, I'm not sure, I'm sure it's going to kind of flip on its head, but do you see that changing in time to influence the election coming up? And how do you communicate with voters today

To get them outside that bubble where they're told on Fox News every night, the world is an economic hellscape where the living envy the dead, all that stuff. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is this is about producing cognitive dissonance. The the other thing that I think that that it's important for pro-democracy people to touch on and to be enthusiastic about is the fact that.

We don't the this side, our side does not have a dark vision for America. I mean, Trump's Trump's darkness and the way he speaks reportedly how dark he can get is very outputting to the people that we we speak to. They they don't view the world in those terms.

Now, they do feel that the economy has been punishing, that inflation has been punishing. But I think one of Harris's advantages is that she's not necessarily saddled with that. It seems to be just, I mean, if you look at the difference between her approval rating and Joe Biden's, really something different.

There's clearly something about his record and perception that people are turned off by that they aren't turned off by with Harris. Do you think it was just like three years of the Republicans and Fox and that whole media apparatus saying,

terrible economy. Joe Biden's economy sucks. It's blah, blah, blah, blah. And they didn't, they didn't remember to stick Harris on the, on the, in the messaging queue. I mean, is it sometimes I think it's just as simple as that. Like there's not a, like it may be overly complex answer to it. They just hit Biden too many times and didn't spread the spread the hate. Right. Yeah. They didn't, it didn't seem that they were prepared for Harris to be leading the ticket. I, I,

In the long run, I think that they will try to say the same things about Biden that they say. They'll try to say the same things about Harris that they say now about Biden. Right. Which, you know, we can obviously already see. But I it doesn't seem to be sticking.

You know, I want to go back for a second on that very negative frame that Trump and a lot of the MAGA folks put on America. And Vance has been incredibly negative as a VP candidate so far. Like, really dark. In the conversations you guys are trying to get started out there,

The idea that America is exceptional, the idea that America for all its flaws is still a great nation, a truly unique place in the world, that patriotism doesn't have to mean that you wear a red hat and ride around and do boat parades.

Is there a chance for this ticket and for the pro-democracy side to really hang that around Trump's neck in this campaign more than he'll – he's going to do a lot of the work for us. Talk to us about where you see that going. Is there a chance to really like reframe what the parties mean and what the movements mean? Yes. I think right now the iron is hot.

Um, the, there, there is a lot of pessimism in the electorate, uh, in 2023 when we did our big national survey, people are, are very pessimistic and they are distressed about politics. They don't want to think about it. Uh, especially I think when you put politics in terms of, you know, gladiatorial combat, it's for, for one side, it is, you know,

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I think that sense of like happy warrior optimism is something that I think we've been missing it as a country. Yeah. I feel like we've been missing it and it hasn't been present for a long time. Right. It's a different kind of pro-democracy message than Joe Biden carry, right? Right. Joe Biden was carrying a...

Now, I think we would see it as an antiquated message about what it means to be pro-democracy and how to do that. I think that turning things over to Harris really is sort of a Cincinnati moment. I mean, sure, he's giving something up in a way that a George Washington would have done. It's very, I think he is embodying this new idea

the new, the new pro-democracy movement. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think there's a chance that, that we look back on this in 20 years or so as a remarkable, um, decision that saved us from, because as much as you and I've talked about this a million times about Trump having no real ideas except power and glory and money, um,

I think it gives the pro-democracy side a beat and an opportunity to recalibrate on what really matters and to get away from that frame of he's very old and Biden is old and also ancient and also old. And did we mention he's old? Because I think that was, even though he and Trump are the same age, I think that was weighing down

That sense of innate optimism that the pro-democracy movement should have. It was baked in so much with a lot of the people that we spoke to that Joe Biden is too old. Right. Their concerns about Joe Biden went beyond, you know, because he had a healthy body. Their concerns were because he had a healthy mind. And when that person, when somebody you see as maybe having an unhealthy mindset,

memory, for example, that person is charged with your protection. And it can be really scary for people to think about that. Now, we have...

Somebody who is vibrant and somebody who comes across as having high energy. And, and as much as the Trump people spent a few days last week trying to make fun of the fact that she laughs and dances. It's like, it's like they, it's weird how they're back in the frame, how they've stuck themselves in the frame that they built for Joe Biden. They can't seem to make a message stick for two reasons. I think one,

One is that they're really off track. They don't know what to do. They can't figure her out. The race attack did not work. It blew up in their face. She laughs and she dances attack blew up in their face. She's Joe Biden part two blew up in their face. Barack Obama hates her, blew up in their face. All this stuff, they keep pulling the wrong trigger on all these attacks, but they're

Don't you think it's also partly that she's not responding the way that other campaigns would respond to Trump? Isn't that a part of it? Like the polling dynamic in this country fed on for a long time. Trump does outrageous shit. Democrats act predictably. I mean, I thought her response to his remarks at the National Association of Black Journalists was...

pretty brilliant. I mean, she entirely sidestepped having to have an argument about her own identity and instead made it about how divisive Donald Trump is. And that's a word that, that's a word that is starting to cut in the polling. People are exhausted by the game, by the division, by the, by the, by the things that are corrosive to democracy. I mean, we, we, we see this in our, in our national polling, right? Like,

The steps toward extremism involve a lot of distress. Right. People who accept extreme ideas are themselves very distressed, mostly by politics and other things in their lives. But it comes to a point where it is psychologically very burdensome to...

carry on and I'm only speculating but I think that people who support Donald Trump they're probably getting pretty sick and tired of it. Yeah, I think we're seeing some of that anecdotally. We're seeing some of that from Republican elected officials who are sort of like

Can you just stop fighting us and try to win? And it's his campaign handlers have let him off the leash. I like to call them caregivers now. They, I mean, I said this, I said this months ago, he has a, he has a limited pool of discipline. Yep. And eventually as the race, as we near November, uh,

he will drop the act over and over again to the point where he, at this point, there's no act. There's no Trump 2.0. There's no cleaner Trump. There's no new town. Nope. It's all the same as it's been since 2016. Are you shocked at how little impact the assassination attempt had on the polling? Yes. But other candidates look at the 1970s. Yeah. There are losing candidates who had assassination attempts before.

um yeah on their lives so i don't know yeah it just it struck me because i i mean every republican in the world was walking around the next day like it's over the race is over it's over he's going to win now and it just hasn't it didn't sound that's an utterly silly thing to say because this is i think one of the most important lessons about any polling

you don't know what the median voters reaction to something like that is going to be. And you can't guess. Right. It really comes down to, and one of the things we look at is media ecosystems. Sure. It's down to what they turn on at night. I mean, what they look at in the moments after. And fortunately for us, a lot of these folks who are still on the fence, the people that we consider swing voters are,

And that includes the Bannon line, which makes up a large portion of swing voters in the electorate now. Those people are not stuck in the Fox News, in the deep right-wing ecosystem. They might have some Fox News, but they also mix in NBC and CNBC in there and other news networks. So they're not lost yet. Right.

Right. It's, it's, it's not just one silo that they're stuck in. They're still, they're still listening to, to more than, um, more than, than, than the Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram. Uh, I'd say they don't listen to those things. Um,

They have a wide media diet. Interesting. That's good news, actually. I mean, I think a wide media diet is a healthy part of being an active member of a society and an active member of a republic. The founders certainly grew up in a media environment where there were dozens of newspapers in every city that had a million different perspectives on a million different things. Right.

You know, when this is all over, we're going to look at this race, I think, in a weird way, kind of like Bush and Dukakis, where George H.W. Bush went into the summer, and believe me, when I was working for him, that was a shitty fucking summer. We were 17 points down. And after the convention, even with Quayle and the convention, it reset, and it just started materially ticking along as there was a more optimistic vision of

And I think that's something we got to keep an eye on too, is like where people see the country. If they start seeing that feeling more optimistic, I think that's really good for Harris and really bad news for Trump. He's a dark candidate. So, well, Andrew, I know you are swamped with Lincoln project work, LDI work, and your beautiful wife is about to have a grandchild in a very few days. Our due date is in one week and six days. Woo! Woo!

Well, thank you for coming on today, Andrew. We will have you back again to talk more polling as we get closer to the election. All right. Good night and good luck.