Scandals

New Yorkers Aren’t The Only Ones Who Really Dislike George Santos

By Geoffrey Skelley

Feb. 3, 2023, at 6:00 AM

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

In one of America’s most enduring myths, President George Washington damaged his father’s cherry tree with a hatchet when he was a small child. When his father confronted him, Washington admitted to what he had done, saying “I cannot tell a lie.” 

Alas, not all Georges have followed the legendary example of our most famous founding father. Freshman Republican Rep. George Santos of New York has been in the headlines (and on the minds of pollsters) since late December, thanks to intense scrutiny over his fabrication of many parts of his background. Santos was back in the news again this week after he told fellow House Republicans that he would recuse himself from serving on his two assigned committees in the face of ongoing investigations into his personal and campaign finances. Santos’s recusal comes as poll after poll suggests he is an unusually toxic figure — both in his district and more broadly. 

Let’s start with the feelings of voters in New York’s 3rd District, Santos’s Long Island-based seat. Two January surveys found that a majority of the voters want him to resign the seat they just elected him to in November. First, Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling surveyed the district in early January on behalf of Unrig Our Economy and found that 60 percent of voters thought Santos should leave office. Then earlier this week, a poll from nonpartisan outfit Siena College on behalf of Newsday found that 78 percent of registered voters in the district wanted Santos to resign. Few polls have ever found such a large share of constituent support for the resignation of a scandalized politician. The Washington Post only found one poll that outdistanced the 78 percent calling for Santos’s resignation: An Ipsos/McClatchy survey from December 2008 that found 95 percent of Illinois adults supported the resignation of Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whom the Illinois legislature impeached and removed from office the following month.

Santos has said he won’t resign, but polling from his district suggests he’s losing support even among voters from his own party. The earlier poll from PPP found that 38 percent of Republican voters thought Santos should resign. But in the more recent survey from Siena College, 71 percent of Republican voters said the same.

We must be cautious about deciphering trends from two surveys conducted by different pollsters, but it makes sense that more Republicans (and voters overall) now want Santos to resign. The PPP survey predated a Jan. 11 news conference in which Nassau County GOP officials called for Santos to resign, a clear illustration of intraparty opposition to the freshman congressman. And additional scandals involving Santos have surfaced since that presser, including records indicating that Santos’s mother wasn’t in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 — contrary to Santos’s claim that she’d been at the World Trade Center when terrorists attacked.

Santos’s announcement that he wouldn’t serve on his committees followed a meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who must consider how Santos’s myriad problems could affect the House GOP’s image. It’s especially easy to imagine McCarthy wanting Santos to decline his committee assignments in the context of McCarthy’s ongoing efforts to block Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from taking their committee posts — none of whom face criminal charges, unlike Santos. (Republicans removed Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday afternoon.) After all, 40 percent of Americans told YouGov/The Economist in mid-January that Santos should be denied a committee post, the largest percentage among the six representatives the survey asked about.¹ And while a large share of respondents were unsure about whether to block representatives’ committee assignment, Santos was the only one of the six whom both Democrats and Republicans were more likely to say shouldn’t be able to serve on a committee than should.

Beyond the committee issue, though, there’s no doubt that Santos’s myriad problems are gaining public notice — and that Santos is unpopular everywhere, not just in his district. In mid-January, about 3 in 5 registered voters across New York state told Siena College that Santos should resign, and majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents held an unfavorable view of him. And Santos’s infamy has made him unusually well-known nationally (as well as unpopular) for a House member who’s only served a month in office. In a YouGov/The Economist survey released last week, 52 percent of Americans held an unfavorable opinion of Santos, compared with only 14 percent who had a favorable opinion, far worse numbers than those for a divisive figure like Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia in recent YouGov/The Economist polling.

It’s impossible to know if the intensely negative views of Santos will eventually precipitate his resignation. Only a two-thirds vote of the House can force him to exit, unless he decides on his own to resign. Given the GOP’s narrow House majority, such a vote is unlikely to happen anytime soon, especially considering Santos occupies a swing seat that Democrats could win in a special election. But the more the public has learned about Santos, the worse his numbers have become. And for better or worse, Santos’s decision to decline his committee assignments will almost certainly not be the last time we hear about him in 2023.

Other polling bites

• Pew Research Center recently found that Democrats are more open to compromise between President Biden and the GOP-led House. Overall, 58 percent of Democrats² wanted Biden to work with Republican congressional leaders, even if some of the outcomes disappoint Democrats, while 41 percent preferred Biden to stand up to the GOP, even if that created conflict. By comparison, 64 percent of Republicans³ wanted GOP leaders to stand up to Biden, while only 34 percent preferred they work with the president. This isn’t a new pattern, as voters from the party in the White House seem likelier to prefer compromise: Back in 2018, Pew found more Republicans wanted former President Donald Trump to work with Democrats in Congress than not, while more Democrats preferred their congressional leaders stand up to Trump.
• Biden seems increasingly likely to seek a second term as president, and a new poll of Black voters from HIT Strategies found 59 percent backed such a bid. Black voters 50 years or older were more likely to support a Biden reelection campaign (66 percent), though a majority of those under 50 (55 percent) also preferred Biden run again. Black support proved critical for Biden in winning the 2020 Democratic nomination race, and he has pushed for South Carolina, with its majority Black primary electorate, to become the lead-off state in the 2024 Democratic primary.
• Monmouth University took a look at Americans’ attitudes toward current and former U.S. officials’ possession of classified documents, a group that includes Biden, Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence. Overall, 80 percent of Americans thought Trump knew he had classified documents in his possession, whereas 58 percent believed Biden knew and 50 percent thought Pence knew. But only about 2 in 5 Americans said the documents in Trump or Biden’s homes would pose a threat to national security (1 in 5 said this of Pence’s documents). Democrats were far more likely to believe the documents in Trump’s possession would endanger national security, while Republicans were much more inclined to say the same of the files in Biden’s home.
• Life satisfaction among Americans remained relatively low at the start of 2023, according to Gallup. Across seven different aspects of U.S. society ranging from the moral and ethical climate to the size and influence of major corporations, an average of 41 percent expressed satisfaction with how things were going. This matched the 2022 average and only slightly exceeded the record low of 39 percent in 2021, the first result in this data set during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Gallup has regularly polled this question in January since 2001.) The average had since 2011 hovered around 50 percent, and had always exceeded 50 percent before the 2008 financial crisis.
• In another January poll, Pew found that a slight majority of Americans remains supportive of providing assistance to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, but an increasing share thinks the U.S. is giving Ukraine too much support. Overall, 31 percent said the U.S. was providing the right amount of support and 20 percent said not enough. But 26 percent said the U.S. was providing too much assistance to Ukraine, an uptick from 20 percent who said the same in September. A plurality of Republicans (40 percent) said the U.S. was giving Ukraine too much support, while a plurality of Democrats (40 percent) said the U.S. was providing the right amount of assistance.
• A new poll from Normington Petts on behalf of Progress Arizona, LUCHA and Replace Sinema PAC suggests independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona will face an uphill climb if she seeks reelection in 2024. In one hypothetical matchup, Sinema earned 24 percent of the vote but trailed both Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake, who each attracted 36 percent. In another test, Sinema received 27 percent, but trailed Gallego (37 percent) and former GOP Gov. Doug Ducey (31 percent). Although the poll’s sponsors oppose Sinema, she performed better in this survey than in two previous polls of the Arizona race, which each put her support in the mid-teens in a theoretical three-way contest.

Biden approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker,⁴ 41.9 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president, while 52.9 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -11.0 points). At this time last week, 42.0 percent approved and 52.4 percent disapproved (a net approval rating of -10.4 points). One month ago, Biden had an approval rating of 43.3 percent and a disapproval rating of 51.3 percent, for a net approval rating of -8.0 points.

2024 Republican Primary

How Donald Trump’s Unusual Presidential Comeback Could Go

History presents three possible paths.

“I am not a candidate.
I will not become a candidate.
I will support the nominee of my party with all the energy I have.”

With this, former President Gerald Ford announced in March 1980 that he would not make a late entrance into the Republican presidential nomination race after long teasing a potential bid. For decades, this marked the nearest any former president had come to seeking a return to the White House in the modern political era — until former President Donald Trump announced his presidential bid in November.

Trump’s comeback campaign is unprecedented since the contemporary nomination system took shape in the 1970s.⁵ Yet in the broader history of presidential elections, his comeback effort is unusual — but not unheard of. Former presidents like Martin Van Buren, Ulysses Grant, Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt each mounted serious post-presidency campaigns to return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue between 1844 and 1912. In fact, five former presidents have won at least some delegates at major-party national conventions, as the table below shows.⁶

The American political system has changed enough, at a structural level, that Trump can’t expect to retread the paths that any of these men took. And why would he want to? Only one of them successfully made it back to the White House. Still, the broad circumstances surrounding a trio of presidential comeback attempts offer three paths for Trump’s 2024 campaign. Like Grant in 1880, Trump could attract ample support for his party’s nomination but ultimately fall short after a majority of Republicans coalesce around an opponent. Alternatively, after seeking his party’s nomination, Trump could abandon the GOP and launch a third-party bid, as Roosevelt did in 1912. Or Trump could win his party’s nomination, as Cleveland did in 1892 — and maybe even reclaim the White House.

Trump’s Best-Case Scenario

Grover Cleveland

If Trump could choose to be in the same shoes as anyone come January 2025, it’d be those of Grover Cleveland, the only person ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms as president. Cleveland won the presidency in 1884, lost reelection in 1888, then won back the White House in 1892. It’s very hard to say how likely Trump is to win the GOP nomination at this early vantage point, but compared with Cleveland, Trump could have much greater trouble coalescing support from across different factions of his party.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/gop-leaders-trump-2024-fivethirtyeight-politics-podcast-96780505

Cleveland’s comeback developed thanks to a vindication of his views on economic policies. Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, narrowly lost reelection to Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888 partly because of his support for lower tariff rates, which Republicans criticized. Two years later, though, Democrats won massive majorities in the House after slamming the excesses of the “Billion Dollar Congress” and connecting rising prices to higher tariffs.⁷ Buoyed by the role his core issues played in the 1890 midterm campaign, Cleveland began a comeback bid. His main rival for the Democratic nomination would be Sen. David Hill, a fellow New Yorker who embraced a more pro-silver, inflationary approach to monetary policy — a key divide within the party — whereas Cleveland opposed weakening gold as the prime guarantor of the dollar’s value.

But Cleveland’s profile as a reformer in an era of graft and machine politics also contrasted sharply with Hill, whose reputation as a machine politician loomed as a potential weakness with general-election voters. By the time of the June national convention, Cleveland had become the front-runner, and on the convention’s first ballot, he won enough to surpass the two-thirds share necessary to win the nomination.⁸ Cleveland went on to defeat Harrison in a rematch of the previous general election, albeit with just 46 percent of the national popular vote, as Harrison led a divided GOP — he’d struggled to win renomination — and third-party efforts by the Populist and Prohibition parties combined to win 11 percent, somewhat scrambling the electoral map.

Cleveland’s successful comeback offers a precedent — and hope — for Trump’s 2024 campaign. One broad similarity between the two is that Trump, like Cleveland, has remained his party’s most high-profile leader after losing a close presidential election. Trump’s reshaping of the GOP may not win him the 2024 Republican nomination — but it’s certainly not to the detriment of his candidacy. Under and since Trump’s presidency, the Republican Party’s congressional membership has changed substantially, and its members are more aligned with Trump’s style of politics. Similarly, more than half of the Republican National Committee’s membership has changed since Trump won the GOP nod in 2016, thanks to an exodus of old-school “establishment” Republicans. Among the broader electorate, a tad less than 40 percent of Republicans have told The Economist/YouGov in most recent surveys that they identify as a “MAGA Republican,” compared with a little more than 45 percent who didn’t. While larger, that latter group may still embrace some of Trump’s anti-establishment and combative approach that other Republicans have used to great effect. 

However, Trump and Cleveland do differ in some critical respects. For one thing, Cleveland’s standing ahead of the 1892 election improved after his party’s showing in the 1890 midterms; by contrast, Trump’s image has taken a hit in the wake of the GOP’s underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterms — highlighted by the defeat of many Trump-endorsed candidates in key Senate races. Additionally, concerns about Hill’s electability in the general election also helped Cleveland build widespread support — even among pro-silver southern and western Democrats — but Trump might suffer because of worries about his general-election chances. Recent polls suggest another Republican, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, might be a stronger general-election contender against President Biden; although the value of such polls this far from November 2024 is highly suspect, donors and party activists are certainly looking at them.

At the same time, Trump has something going for him that Cleveland didn’t: the primary process. Trump doesn’t necessarily need to even win electoral majorities in presidential primaries to win a majority of his party’s delegates. In 2016, the GOP’s preference for primaries and caucuses that were “winner-take-all” — or at least “winner-take-most” — helped Trump win the Republican nomination even though he won only pluralities of the vote in most contests against a crowded field of opponents. We might be headed for a sequel if a sizable number of candidates decide to run in the 2024 Republican contest.

Falling Just Short

Ulysses Grant

It is entirely possible, on the other hand, that a majority — or larger plurality — of Republicans will coalesce around one of Trump’s opponents, an outcome that would broadly parallel Ulysses Grant’s failed bid for the GOP nomination in 1880. Given the two politicians’ factional support and critics’ concerns about electability, it is the Grant comparison that arguably looms largest for Trump among those we’re examining here.

The preeminent hero of the Civil War, Grant left the White House in 1877 after serving two terms. But his image had suffered from his administration’s myriad corruption scandals as well as his association with the turbulent Reconstruction era and a deep economic depression. Grant’s successor, Republican Rutherford Hayes, didn’t seek reelection, and favorable press coverage of Grant’s two-year world tour resuscitated his profile as the 1880 election neared. Grant had support from a faction of the GOP led by a group of political bosses, but he also faced substantial opposition within a party that had lost its once-dominant position following the Civil War. Many Republicans worried that he would struggle to unify the GOP, given his administration’s scandals and the fractures that had developed within the party during his presidency.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/whats-deal-freedom-caucus-fivethirtyeight-96551491

Like Grant, Trump remains relatively popular among those in his party: His favorability among Republicans sits in the low 70s in Civiqs’s tracking poll, while only around 15 percent have an unfavorable view of him. While he’s lost ground in recent national primary polls, Trump still leads DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence — Trump’s most-polled potential opponents — with a plurality across most surveys. And again like Grant, Trump also has received some early backing from Republican officials in Congress and around the country, a departure from Trump’s first run back in 2016.

But one potentially critical difference is that Trump could benefit from his party’s delegate rules — just as he did winning pluralities in the 2016 primaries — whereas Grant ended up losing in part because a pivotal rules decision went against him. At the 1880 Republican National Convention, the anti-Grant faction — which was larger than the pro-Grant group — defeated implementation of the “unit rule,” which would’ve required delegates to vote for the candidate preferred by most of their state’s delegation. Grant’s backers had supported the proposal, which would’ve been analogous to a winner-take-all primary in some delegate-rich states where Grant had the most support, putting him close to the majority necessary for the nomination.

And unlike in modern times, the classic convention setting also gave Grant’s opponents a chance to find an alternative choice — even one who wasn’t actively seeking the presidency. After 35 ballots, as no candidate managed to overtake Grant, some delegates began turning to Ohio Rep. James Garfield, who had earlier made a strong impression when he gave a nominating speech for another candidate. Sensing things were turning toward Garfield and wanting to avoid Grant’s nomination at all costs, Grant’s main opponents called for their delegates to back Garfield on the 36th ballot. As the vote came down, Grant again captured more than 300 votes, but Garfield won 399, a majority that earned him the party’s nomination and blocked Grant’s comeback.

However, as with Grant, many current Republican leaders, donors and voters would like to turn the page on the Trump era in the face of the former president’s struggles in the 2022 midterms, as well as legal proceedings concerning his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his business interests, his personal life and his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Similarly, a majority of Republicans could rally around a Trump alternative, such as DeSantis, whose strengthening poll numbers, support from party leaders and plaudits from conservative media could make him the most likely preference for Trump opponents.

The Third-Party Option

Theodore Roosevelt

Last and definitely least likely, Trump could leave the Republican primary race and run as a third-party candidate in 2024. Such a move would undoubtedly bring to mind comparisons with another former president who opted to run outside the two-party system after losing his party’s nomination: Teddy Roosevelt, whose unsuccessful run in 1912 remains the strongest performance by a third-party presidential candidate in U.S. history.⁹

Roosevelt became president following the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, and then won four more years in 1904. But having promised not to run again, Roosevelt positioned his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, to win the Republican nomination and the presidency in 1908. Out of office, however, Roosevelt became frustrated with Taft’s more conservative governing approach, and the Republican Party’s divisions and losses in the 1910 midterms created space for a Taft opponent — one Roosevelt filled when he decided to challenge Taft in the 1912 Republican nomination race.

The ensuing campaign broke new ground as some states (13 in all) would select most of their convention delegates via a presidential primary. Roosevelt had previously expressed skepticism toward primaries, but he embraced the popular movement to create direct primaries and encouraged many states to implement them as it became apparent they were the only way he could gain more delegates than Taft, whose allies controlled the party machinery in states where delegates would be picked by local and state conventions. In an unprecedented, popular campaign for president, Roosevelt ended up dominating at the ballot box: He won the popular vote in nine of the 12 primaries that had results, garnering 52 percent to Taft’s 34 percent overall.¹⁰ However, heading into the 1912 GOP convention, Roosevelt’s primary success couldn’t win the nomination on its own: Only about 2 in 5 Republican delegates came from the primary states (in 2016, that figure was about 4 in 5). Taft’s allies also controlled the convention committees, including the credentials committee, which backed the Taft-supporting delegates on most of the numerous credentials challenges that had resulted from the contentious campaign. Taft narrowly won the nomination on the first ballot, so Roosevelt’s campaign decided to implement the third-party option.

Third-party bids usually struggle, but Roosevelt’s Progressive Party — often called the Bull Moose Party — had both serious financial support and proof of popular support demonstrated by his showing in the GOP primaries. In November, Roosevelt went on to win 27 percent of the popular vote to Taft’s 23 percent. But because Roosevelt and Taft largely split the Republican vote, Democrat Woodrow Wilson easily won the presidency with just 42 percent.

As with Cleveland and Grant, the political circumstances surrounding Trump and Roosevelt differ on many fronts. For one thing, in the 2024 campaign, Trump won’t face an incumbent from his own party like Roosevelt did. Trump will also have far more access than Roosevelt to winning support through primaries, as those contests determined only a minority of delegates at the 1912 GOP convention. But if Trump were to actually pursue a third-party bid, he’d likely have to make that choice much earlier in 2024 than Roosevelt had to in 1912, thanks to more rigorous and time-sensitive requirements for qualifying for the general-election ballot across the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

But while the idea of a Trump third-party bid is unlikely, we can’t completely laugh it off. After all, he has repeatedly raised the prospect himself, most recently in late December when he shared on his social media platform an article from a pro-Trump website advocating such a move. This is in keeping with a long-running pattern: Following the 2020 election, Trump talked of a new “Patriot Party” or “MAGA Party,” and during the 2016 cycle, Trump complained of being treated unfairly by the GOP hierarchy and suggested he might attempt an independent bid. Although this has perhaps been a bargaining tactic — a split GOP vote would all but guarantee victory for Democrats — it’s also true that a Trump third-party bid could win a significant number of votes. More plainly, Trump has often claimed that political opponents are conspiring against him. Roosevelt may have had more cause for such feelings in the face of Taft’s control of the convention in 1912, but Roosevelt famously summed up his new party’s platform as “thou shalt not steal.”

Today’s presidential primary is night and day from the smoke-filled rooms and convention politics that decided the nominations 100-plus years ago. However, one thing remains true: The rules of the nomination, and how campaigns respond to them, matter. Cleveland won because he managed to unify the party sufficiently — including support from those who disagreed with him on silver — to win the two-thirds majority required by the Democrats. Grant failed in large part because his campaign couldn’t outplay the anti-Grant faction to enact the “unit rule.” And while Roosevelt won smashing victories in the primaries, that wasn’t the main mode of delegate selection yet, and his campaign’s inability to make sufficient inroads in caucus-convention states cost him the nomination. For Trump in 2024, the party’s delegate rules necessitate winning (at least) pluralities in primaries in the early and middle part of the nomination calendar to build up a delegate lead and to push out rivals. He did it once before — it remains to be seen whether the GOP’s anti-Trump forces can outmaneuver him this time around.

Story editing by Maya Sweedler. Copy editing by Andrew Mangan. Photo research by Emily Scherer.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/140-million-americans-live-states-controlled-democrats-fivethirtyeight-95547189

2024 Election

Adam Schiff's Unlikely To Be The Last Major Democrat To Join California's U.S. Senate Race

By Geoffrey Skelley

Jan. 31, 2023, at 6:00 AM

During Donald Trump’s presidency, few U.S. House members grabbed more headlines than Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California. Schiff’s lead role in Trump’s first impeachment trial and work as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee made him a hero to many liberals and a villain to many conservatives. Now Schiff is looking to parlay his notoriety and accomplishments into a promotion: On Thursday, he announced a bid for California’s safe Democratic Senate seat, held by Sen. Dianne Feinstein since 1992. 

While Feinstein hasn’t announced her own plans, the possibility that the 89-year-old might retire has all but guaranteed that Schiff won’t be the only Democrat looking to win the solidly blue seat. Rep. Katie Porter announced her own bid earlier this month, and the field of contenders may only grow: Rep. Barbara Lee reportedly plans to run and Rep. Ro Khanna has publicly expressed interest, too. We wouldn’t normally be this interested in a federal race in a strongly blue state with an undeclared incumbent and a small field (for now), but the developing Senate race in California has a number of wrinkles that will make it pretty interesting, from the primary structure and how expensive the race will be to the state’s geographical and ideological divides.

First, California primaries are set up such that the Senate race could come down to two Democrats. Dating back to 2012, all candidates in California, regardless of party, run on the same ballot and the leading two vote-getters advance to the general election. We don’t yet know how many credible candidates will run from either party, but that could affect who advances to the November election in 2024. Historically, the most likely outcome is that one of these Democrats will meet a Republican in the general election, but that’s not a given: Over the past decade, California’s statewide primaries have sent a pair of Democrats to the general election three times. Of those, two were Senate races: In 2016, now-Vice President Kamala Harris (then California’s attorney general) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez advanced (Harris won the general), and in 2018, Feinstein and then-state Sen. Kevin de León advanced (Feinstein won).

A number of strong Democratic candidates in 2024 could possibly split up the Democratic-leaning vote and the same could fragment the GOP-leaning vote. Over the past decade, Democratic candidates have won an average of 57 percent of the top-two vote across all statewide primaries, compared with the GOP’s 36 percent,¹¹ so you could have a couple of Democratic candidates win the vast majority of the Democratic primary vote and finish above a splintered field of Republican contenders. In an indication of what’s possible, de León won a spot in the 2018 general election with only 12 percent of the vote, the lowest percentage for a second-place candidate in a statewide top-two primary.

Another factor that will undoubtedly be important is campaign fundraising. Buying television ads isn’t the end-all, be-all in our digital age, but it’s costly in California, which has the second-largest (Los Angeles), 10th-largest (Bay Area)¹² and 20th-largest (Sacramento)¹³ television markets in the country, according to Nielsen. Not to mention, California is a huge state in terms of population and geography, so building a statewide campaign won’t be cheap. 

This is an area where Schiff has an early edge: He had more than $20 million in his federal campaign account at the end of the 2022 election, thanks to his star power and an easy reelection campaign in his deep-blue seat that didn’t require him to spend most of his campaign war chest.

This isn’t to say that Schiff’s opponents — declared or potential — can’t raise beaucoup money. Porter brought in more than $25 million for her reelection campaign, second only to now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy among House candidates in the 2022 cycle. But unlike Schiff, Porter had to spend $28 million to narrowly win her competitive district last November. For his part, Khanna hasn’t raised that kind of money, but he represents much of Silicon Valley, America’s technology epicenter and home to a great deal of wealth. Lee may struggle to compete in fundraising terms, but she’s well-known in progressive circles and might be the only prominent Black candidate in the race.

Naturally, ideological divisions could play a role in this race, too. Porter, Khanna and Lee are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, while Schiff is part of the more centrist New Democratic Coalition. This is mostly reflected in voting records: Schiff falls largely in the middle of the House Democratic caucus, while Khanna and Lee both sit clearly on the left side. Porter, though, is harder to pin down. She’s drawn many eyeballs (and donations) with her withering questioning of corporate honchos in congressional hearings, and she’s campaigning as a progressive. But that profile overshadows a pretty moderate voting record, which probably speaks to the realities of representing a highly competitive district — a challenge faced by none of the other three House members. In theory, the three progressives could split the more left-leaning vote in the primary, improving Schiff’s chances of advancing to the general election. What’s more, California Democrats may be dominant, but they aren’t necessarily that progressive, which means Schiff may be playing to a larger part of the electorate to begin with.

Another wrinkle is California’s northern-southern split in Democratic circles, with the northern region’s population centered around the Bay Area and the southern’s around Los Angeles. In recent years, California’s statewide political offices have been dominated by northern Democrats, including Feinstein, longtime former Sen. Barbara Boxer, Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Gov. Jerry Brown and former Sen. Harris.¹⁴ Within this north-south dichotomy, Schiff and Porter both represent parts of Greater Los Angeles while Lee and Khanna represent the Bay Area, so whether both northerners run could matter for how the primary vote shakes out. After all, the tendency for candidates to win votes from their regionally aligned “friends and neighbors” remains a factor in primaries.

But Northern California Democrats’ edge may be diminishing, which could redound to the benefit of Schiff or Porter. After Harris became vice president, Newsom appointed Sen. Alex Padilla — the former California secretary of state and Los Angeles native — who won a full term in 2022. And if you look at the trajectory of primary votes in California, Southern California has recently cast a larger share of Democratic votes in top-two primaries. That hasn’t yet paid huge dividends for statewide candidates from the south, but it could affect the 2024 primary.

At this point, there are a lot more questions than answers about the state of play in California’s much-anticipated 2024 Senate race. But in the months to come, we will be closely monitoring key aspects of the contest.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/californias-senate-primary-doozy-fivethirtyeight-politics-podcast-96493536

Although much of our elections-related attention is already trained on 2024, there are consequential elections happening this very calendar year. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses the gubernatorial, legislative, mayoral and judicial races to watch in 2023. They also look at how the Democratic Party’s effort to rearrange its presidential primary calendar is going, and ask whether a survey of Republican National Committee members was a good or bad use of polling.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

2023 Election

Yes, 2023 Is An Election Year. Here Are The Races To Watch.

By Geoffrey Skelley

Jan. 25, 2023, at 6:00 AM

President this, Senate that. FiveThirtyEight has already expended ample digital ink looking ahead to the elections that will take place in 2024, including the nascent presidential nomination race and the fate of the Democrats’ slim majority in the U.S. Senate. We’re not going to apologize for this — and don’t pretend you’re not interested, too.

But there are also a bevy of fascinating contests on the ballot this calendar year that will affect the lives of millions of Americans. Three states will hold gubernatorial elections, four will decide the makeup of their state legislatures and two will vote for potentially critical seats on their supreme courts. Additionally, a host of large cities will cast ballots for mayor. With so much on the docket in 2023, we decided to take a look at the high-profile races you should be watching.

Governor

Three southern, Republican-leaning places are voting for governor this year. However, Democrats currently control the governorships in Kentucky and Louisiana, while the GOP holds Mississippi via Gov. Tate Reeves. Republicans are hoping to flip the other two, as Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana is term-limited and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky is likely to face a formidable Republican opponent. Victories in these gubernatorial races would give the GOP full control of state government — a “trifecta” — in Kentucky and Louisiana (and maintain it in Mississippi).

Now, Beshear does have a decent chance of bucking Kentucky’s red lean to win a second term. In the last quarter of 2022, Beshear’s 60 percent approval rating made him the most popular Democratic governor in the country, according to Morning Consult. And while Kentucky Republicans added more seats to their supermajorities in the state legislature in the 2022 election, voters didn’t back conservative positions at every turn: They rejected a constitutional amendment that would’ve denied the possibility of constitutional protection for abortion rights, 52 percent to 48 percent. The referendum result mirrored in part some of Beshear’s success in 2019, when he defeated unpopular Republican Gov. Matt Bevin by less than 0.4 percentage points.

But Beshear is far from a shoo-in considering Kentucky ranks as the reddest state in the country with a Democratic governor, based on the 2020 presidential vote. And an array of Republican candidates are champing at the bit to take him on. Of those, the leading contenders are probably state Attorney General Daniel Cameron and former U.N. ambassador Kelly Craft, a high-profile GOP donor who served under former President Donald Trump. Cameron, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has Trump’s endorsement and would be Kentucky’s first Black governor, while Craft has led the way in fundraising. The only primary polling we’ve seen comes from Cameron’s campaign, which found him ahead of Craft and other notable contenders.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/californias-senate-primary-doozy-fivethirtyeight-politics-podcast-96493536

By comparison, Republicans have a clearer shot of capturing a Democratic-held governorship in Louisiana, where Edwards is leaving office after two terms. The candidate field remains in flux — the filing deadline isn’t until August — but the early GOP front-runners appear to be state Attorney General Jeff Landry, state Senate Majority Leader Sharon Hewitt and Treasurer John Schroder. Landry has a conservative reputation and, controversially, received the state party’s early endorsement, so he should attract ample GOP support. In many red states, that might be enough in a primary — but not necessarily in Louisiana, which uses a “jungle primary” system in which all candidates regardless of party run together and, if no candidate wins a majority in the first round, ends in a runoff between the two leading vote-getters. One of Landry’s political rivals, Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, had signaled he would challenge Landry, likely by running to the center. But then Nungesser surprisingly chose to seek reelection, which created an opening that Hewitt and Schroder have jumped into. They may have more company: Republican Rep. Garrett Graves is also considering a bid.

While Republicans have many high-profile names, no major Democrat has yet entered. But that could soon change: Earlier this week, state Democratic Party chair Katie Bernhardt grabbed headlines with an ad run by an allied political action committee that featured her wielding a shotgun. Another Democrat who might run is Louisiana Secretary of Transportation Shawn Wilson, who serves under Edwards. But given Louisiana’s Republican lean, Democrats will need some things to go their way if they want to replicate Edwards’s success.

Lastly, Reeves is somewhat favored in Mississippi, although he’s received mixed ratings for his performance as governor. Only 49 percent of the state’s registered voters approved of Reeves in the last quarter of 2022, according to Morning Consult, while an early January survey from Siena College/Mississippi Today found his approval rating at 48 percent. The state has faced a growing scandal over the misuse of federal welfare funds during the previous governorship, which could damage Reeves, who served as lieutenant governor at the time.

In fact, Reeves could face both a serious primary challenge and just about the strongest potential candidate the Democrats could have in the general election. Back in 2019, Reeves won a competitive primary runoff against former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr., who ran as a more moderate option and may decide to take on Reeves again. If Reeves gets past his primary, he’ll face Public Commissioner Brandon Presley, a longtime state official and distant relative of Elvis Presley who declared his candidacy earlier this month. The Siena College/Mississippi Today poll found Reeves ahead of Presley by 4 points, 43 percent to 39 percent. But considering Reeves fended off a popular statewide-elected Democrat in 2019, it will still be a tall order for Democrats to win this race.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/unions-weaker-popular-fivethirtyeight-politics-podcast-96623725

State legislature

Four states have elections for their state legislatures this year, with Louisiana and Mississippi holding them in tandem with their gubernatorial elections, and New Jersey and Virginia holding legislative midterms. The dominant party in three of those states — Republicans in Louisiana and Mississippi, Democrats in New Jersey — are likely to retain full control, though there’s a question of whether the GOP can hold onto or win veto-proof majorities in Louisiana and Mississippi, in case a Democrat manages to win either governorship.

As a result, only Virginia looks set to see much drama on this front. That’s because it’s one of the only states where each party controls one legislative chamber. And with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in office, the results will determine whether Republicans can capture full control of state government.

Thanks to redistricting, Virginia’s elections will take place on new maps, which should produce a number of highly competitive races — although each party may have a slim edge in the chamber it already controls.¹⁵ The November environment is difficult to know, but Democrats did claim a pivotal 2-point victory in a Jan. 10 special election for a Senate district that Youngkin had carried by 4 points, in a race that centered largely on the future of abortion rights in Virginia.

State supreme court

We’ve covered the executive and legislative branches, but two states — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — also have elections for state supreme court in 2023. Wisconsin hosts what is undoubtedly the key judicial election this year. Retiring Justice Patience Roggensack is part of the court’s 4-3 conservative majority, so a liberal victory would flip control of the court. The state’s high court has made many major rulings in recent years, including on redistricting and election-related matters, and could soon hear a case challenging the state’s 1849 ban on abortion. This election will determine which side has control until at least 2025.

Four candidates are running, two from each side of the ideological divide: on the right, Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow and former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, and on the left, Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz. The top-two finishers in next month’s primary will advance to the April general election; because the race is technically nonpartisan, two conservatives or two liberals could advance out of the primary, although one of each is most likely to move on. But other issues could help drive voters to the polls, including two ballot measures added by the GOP-controlled state legislature: a constitutional amendment that would require judges to consider a defendant’s risk to public safety when setting bail, and an advisory referendum asking voters if they believe that able-bodied, childless welfare recipients should be required to seek work.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats had a 5-2 edge on the state’s high court prior to last fall, when Chief Justice Max Baer died. Baer, a Democrat, was set to retire, so the election this year is for his old seat, which, while important, won’t alter partisan control of the court.

Mayor

Last but definitely not least, 12 of the nation’s 25 largest cities by population have mayoral elections this year. Most of these cities employ a “strong mayor” form of government — where the mayor is the city’s chief executive and can veto actions by the city council — so these elections could have major repercussions for millions of Americans. Democrats or left-leaning politicians tend to run most of these cities,¹⁶ so municipal elections can also reveal divisions on the left on matters such as crime, police reform and housing.

There are too many contests to cover in depth here, but Chicago’s race is probably the headliner. There, Mayor Lori Lightfoot faces a difficult reelection battle amid high crime rates, and she has also faced potentially sexist criticism over her combative personal style. Democratic Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia decided to challenge her, and Lightfoot’s list of opponents has grown to also include Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson and former city budget director Paul Vallas. Recent surveys suggest Lightfoot might not just struggle to win the officially nonpartisan race; she might not even make it to the April runoff, assuming no candidate wins a majority in the initial election.

Outside of Chicago, big candidate fields have emerged in cities where incumbents won’t be on the ballot. In Philadelphia, at least 10 candidates (mostly Democrats) look set to run in the race to succeed outgoing Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney, while in Houston, eight candidates have filed so far in the hopes of taking the place of term-limited Mayor Sylvester Turner. And in Denver, at least 14 candidates have qualified in the officially nonpartisan race to succeed term-limited Mayor Michael Hancock. Meanwhile, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry is one of the only Republicans leading a big city, but he’s leaving office, and seven candidates have entered the race to succeed him.

We know 2024 election activities will pick up steam as 2023 progresses, but as you can see, there’s plenty going on in 2023 itself! We’ll be keeping a close eye on all of it in the weeks and months to come.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/debt-ceiling-countdown-begins-fivethirtyeight-politics-podcast-96623875

2024 Election

When Might Other Republicans Challenge Trump For The 2024 Nomination?

By Geoffrey Skelley

Dec. 23, 2022, at 6:00 AM

Last month, former President Donald Trump announced his campaign to return to the White House, more than a year before the start of the 2024 presidential primary process. So far, Trump is the only major Republican candidate who’s launched a bid.¹⁷ While his entry may deter some opponents from running, it’s unlikely Trump will have the GOP primary entirely to himself. 

But just how long will we have to wait until someone decides to take on Trump? We took a look at open presidential primaries between 1980 and 2020 (meaning they didn’t feature an incumbent) and noted when every candidate either filed with the Federal Election Commission or announced their candidacy, whichever came first.¹⁸  (Trump did both on Nov. 15.) Using this data, we compared how far in advance of the Iowa caucuses — the long-running first electoral stop — these candidates formally began their campaigns. 

About 3 in 4 primary candidates in this period launched their bids between 210 and 420 days before Iowa, with about 2 in 5 starting between 300 and 390 days (roughly 10 to 13 months) before voting began. To put that in context, Republicans plan for Iowa to lead off their 2024 nomination calendar — unlike Democrats — and as the caucuses have traditionally taken place between early January and mid-February, we are now roughly 375 to 425 days away from them. Based on the 210- to 420-day range, then, we might expect most of Trump’s eventual opponents to enter the race sometime between just after New Year’s and June 2023.

While we’ve tried to comprehensively examine when candidates most commonly launch presidential bids, it’s worth pointing out that registering the exact date a campaign begins is far murkier than the date of an FEC filing or a formal announcement. In reality, prospective candidates take steps toward running well before making anything official, such as gathering a stable of potential donors, identifying campaign staff and engaging in public activities that can signal a run, such as visiting early-voting states like Iowa, publishing a book about themselves or campaigning on behalf of candidates in other elections. Presidential aspirants sometimes form an “exploratory committee” to test the waters before taking more official steps. But candidates don’t have to register or report this activity to the FEC until they formally become a candidate, so sometimes we initially learn of an exploratory committee’s formation only because the candidate reveals it, a move that can garner a splash of media attention before the candidate later makes an official announcement. And more recently, some candidates like Jeb Bush have had allied super PACs raise gobs of money months before the candidate officially enters the race, blurring the lines of what even counts as “exploratory.”

Among the 15 primary candidates who eventually won the open-nomination races between 1980 and 2020, all but one began their formal campaigns at some point in that 210- to 420-day range. In 2016, for instance, Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator 230 days prior to Iowa’s caucuses.¹⁹ In 2012, Mitt Romney announced 215 days beforehand, while in 2008 John McCain filed with the FEC 413 days ahead of caucus voting. Only Bill Clinton entered a primary less than 210 days out: He filed for the 1992 contest just 178 days before Iowa, emblematic of that cycle’s late-developing campaign due to the expectation that the then-popular President George H.W. Bush would be difficult to defeat. 

But the Clinton example shows how each cycle’s individual conditions can influence candidates’ decisions to launch. For instance, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick entered the 2020 Democratic contest less than 90 days before the Iowa caucuses, seeking to capitalize on concerns about front-runner Biden’s strength as a candidate.

Alternatively, an especially early entry is usually the mark of a relatively unknown contender looking to maximize their time to raise money and attract attention. Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney declared for the 2020 Democratic race 920 days before Iowa — the record for the years we looked at — but he and most others who entered more than 420 days before voting began wound up winning very little support. That’s not always the case for early announcers — former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (598 days) was once a leading contender in the 2004 Democratic race.

To this point, we can see how the 2024 cycle’s circumstances likely encouraged Trump to announce on the earlier side. His launch date will likely be more than 400 days ahead of Iowa’s vote, depending on the caucuses’ actual date. On the one hand, Trump’s situation is unprecedented in modern times: Since the current presidential primary system took shape in the 1970s, no former president has run again.²⁰ But by getting in early, Trump not only made real an unofficial campaign that arguably dated back to his departure from the White House, but he also reportedly did so to deter possible primary opponents and gain support from Republican leaders, who’ve fallen in line behind him in the past. (Trump may have also wanted to become an active candidate before state or federal officials potentially filed criminal charges against him in cases regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, improperly retaining classified documents and interfering in Georgia’s 2020 electoral process.)

Whether this approach will successfully discourage primary challengers remains to be seen. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has dismissed questions about his presidential aspirations, but between his upcoming autobiography, his continued fundraising and the post-midterm primary polling that’s found him running ahead of Trump, it’d be surprising if he didn’t end up running. Still, DeSantis may postpone his entry until after Florida’s legislative session ends in early May, which would be roughly 240 to 290 days before Iowa. By waiting, DeSantis can open his campaign by trumpeting his conservative policy achievements, including any additional ones passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature in the upcoming session. But more fundamentally, DeSantis may want the Legislature to act before he runs to make it less costly for him to seek the presidency: Under Florida’s “resign to run” law, state officeholders must resign their office if they run for federal office, but Republican legislative leaders are considering changes to ease DeSantis’s potential presidential bid. 

Regardless of DeSantis’s motivations for waiting, it wouldn’t be weird for a sitting governor to wait for the end of a state’s legislative session, at least before holding a public announcement. For instance, in 1999, George W. Bush didn’t formally declare his candidacy until June, following the end of Texas’s state-legislative session, although he did file with the FEC in March 1999 (reflected in the chart). In 2015, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal also waited for the state-legislative session to conclude, officially launching his campaign for the 2016 Republican primary about two weeks after the state Legislature adjourned (he filed with the FEC two days after announcing).

As for other potential Trump opponents, the former president’s long shadow might push some aspirants to embrace a wait-and-see attitude. Former Vice President Mike Pence and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan have been positioning themselves for possible runs, but assuming Hogan doesn’t announce a bid before he leaves office on Jan. 18, neither of them will have official duties that might influence their timing. Former U.N. Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tried to cozy up to Trump after opposing him in 2016, so they may be wary of challenging him, although Haley recently walked back a pledge to support Trump in the 2024 primary. Others who may be looking to run, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, could be influenced by the timing of their state-legislative sessions.

Still, from the data we’ve examined here, we can see that the timing of Trump’s entry into the 2024 presidential race was fairly early compared with past presidential cycles, though by no means an obvious outlier. And once the new year rolls around, we should be on guard for further candidate announcements at any time. We have reason to suspect that DeSantis, Trump’s clearest potential rival, may wait until the late spring to announce, but that doesn’t mean some other possible contenders won’t enter in the meantime.

2024 Election

A Very Merry 2024 Republican Presidential Primary Draft

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Dec. 20, 2022, at 6:00 AM

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): I don’t want to alarm anyone, but the first nominating contest of the 2024 Republican presidential primary is likely just about a year away, and one candidate — you may have heard of him — has already announced his campaign. 

So it’s no longer way too early for us to hold a fantasy-baseball-style draft of who we think the GOP will nominate! Everyone got their draft boards ready to go?

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, senior elections analyst): Yeah, I just hope I’m not picking third or fourth. Kind of a clear top-two here, don’t you think?

alex (Alex Samuels, politics reporter): Nobody better steal my picks!

santul.nerkar (Santul Nerkar, editor): It’s a two-player draft!

alex: Hahaha

santul.nerkar: But I am very curious to see how things shake out after picks No. 1 and 2.

alex: Best of luck to whoever gets pick No. 3!

nrakich: OK, here are the rules. We are drafting the candidates we think are most likely to win the GOP nomination — regardless of their chances in the general election. As usual, we will do a draft, where the person with the final selection in one round picks first in the next round. Now let me completely randomly choose the order for the first round …

1. Santul
2. Alex
3. Nathaniel
4. Geoffrey

OK, Santul, looks like you have the first pick! And, for the first time in forever, you actually have an interesting choice here!

santul.nerkar: [Cues up NBA draft music in my head]

To make things potentially in the early going here, I’m going to go with someone other than former President Donald Trump, the face of the GOP for the last six-plus years. My pick is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

nrakich: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

santul.nerkar: My reasoning is fairly simple: Unlike in 2016, the last time the GOP primary had more than one viable candidate, it does appear that the GOP rank and file has coalesced around DeSantis as a non-Trump alternative. Poll after poll in the early going has found that, while Republicans aren’t exactly abandoning the former president and Trumpism, they do seem enthused by the idea of a candidate who stands for many of the things Trump does — without being Trump.

alex: I think this is a super smart pick, Santul! But I wonder if DeSantis flops, in part because he’s not really known for his personal appeal in the same way that Trump is?

Hmm … I guess now that I think about it, I’m not sure if that’ll help or hurt him.

geoffrey.skelley: Let’s see what happens when DeSantis and Trump get on the debate stage together, but DeSantis is clearly the main alternative to Trump at this very early point. He’s attracted an unusually high level support in early polls for a governor who has never run nationally before. You don’t often see someone like that hitting 30 percent in national polls this early.

santul.nerkar: Yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at. He already enjoys high favorability ratings among GOP voters, despite never having run a national campaign.

nrakich: So this is obviously a very voguish pick right now, with DeSantis leading several early primary polls, but I personally think Trump is still the more likely nominee. Take a closer look at the polls that show DeSantis ahead: They’re almost all head-to-head polls between him and Trump. But I’m skeptical that the GOP primaries will actually be head-to-head races. Plenty of other candidates have shown interest in running, and it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy: If Trump looks weak enough to beat, that will encourage more candidates to jump into the race, which in turn increases the odds that Trump wins. Because when you look at polls between Trump, DeSantis, and a handful of other Republicans, Trump is usually ahead.

As Geoffrey alluded to, I also don’t think DeSantis is fully vetted yet. I think he’s become a bit of an avatar for folks who want to move beyond Trump, but what if he’s not a good debater, or has skeletons in the closet?

Finally, although I’m like 90 percent sure that DeSantis will run, he’s not actually in the race yet. Trump is. That counts for something.

alex: If only you had the No. 2 pick, Nathaniel!

geoffrey.skelley: Nathaniel, I do think that’s right, in the sense that people don’t think about the actual rules of the GOP primary. Most primaries and caucuses on the Republican side are “winner-take-all” — or at least “winner-take-most” — meaning that all a candidate has to do is finish first in a state in order to win all or most of its delegates. Trump won in 2016 in part because he won pluralities in those races against a crowded field and captured most of the delegates. 

nrakich: Exactly. We could see a repeat of 2016 where a divided field allows Trump to rack up delegates with like 40 percent of the vote in each state.

We know a solid chunk of the Republican electorate is loyal to him. And they don’t have to constitute a majority of the party for him to win.

What’s more, I’m not sure DeSantis’s lead in head-to-head polls will last. I feel like we’re in a particular moment where Republicans are unhappy with Trump because candidates aligned with him did so poorly in the midterms. But there have been past moments where it seemed like the GOP could be poised to abandon Trump — e.g., a lot of Republican politicians criticized him after the Jan. 6 riot — but then they closed ranks around him again. What do you guys think?

alex: I personally don’t think this will last. Trump isn’t really in the public eye right now, and we’re still a ways away from 2024. I think there’s plenty of time for current members of the party who aren’t over the moon about his presidential announcement to warm to him. Plus, as Nathaniel said before, DeSantis could struggle and Trump could become the GOP’s only viable option. Or, DeSantis could sit this one out because Trump already threw his hat in the ring.

geoffrey.skelley: Eh, I think DeSantis running is all but certain. He’s just likely going to wait until the end of Florida’s legislative session in the spring before officially launching his campaign.

alex: I personally disagree, but that’s what chats are for!

santul.nerkar: Man, I’m already feeling buyer’s remorse for my pick!

nrakich: Alex, it sounds like you have a name in mind for pick No. 2, then??

alex: I do, Nathaniel! I’d be a fool if I didn’t pick Trump No. 2! In short, the GOP currently is still largely the party of Trump. Yes, there were a few grumbles from fellow Republicans about his 2024 run, but most prominent leaders in the party have been largely silent over some of his most recent controversies. This all suggests to me that Republican lawmakers continue to feel uneasy challenging the former president because they know they still need his base to win elections.

Moreover, even though our average of Trump’s favorability rating among all Americans is at an all-time low, another poll from Quinnipiac University, which was released in November, found that when offered a choice between Trump, DeSantis or “someone else,” Republican voters were evenly split over who they prefer win the GOP presidential nomination (44 percent preferred DeSantis; 44 percent backed Trump; 11 percent didn’t offer an opinion). And, as we’ve discussed before, there are plenty of examples of Republicans appearing to break with Trump — only to fall back in line later. 

nrakich: Yeah, I think you got good value with Trump at No. 2, Alex (obviously, considering my DeSantis skepticism).

geoffrey.skelley: Trump could still definitely win the nomination. It’s been easy to say “DeSantis this, DeSantis that,” but he’s untested. A lot of Republicans still falsely believe Trump lost illegitimately in 2020, and his favorability among Republicans remains high, although it has gone down a little since the 2022 elections. But there’s no question the opportunity is there for Trump to win a comeback campaign.

nrakich: One thing that Trump has this cycle that he didn’t have in 2016 is a lot of elite support. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville has endorsed him, along with several House members. There’s been a lot of talk about how many Republican members of Congress haven’t endorsed him yet (probably because they are worried he’s electoral poison), but not as much about all the support that he does have. And elite support can matter.

santul.nerkar: To play devil’s advocate to my own DeSantis pick, it’s also still very early. Around this time eight years ago — during the cycle Trump would eventually run in and win — none other than Jeb! Bush was leading in GOP polls. So while the field appears to be more clearly defined this time around, at this point in the cycle, the fact that DeSantis leads Trump in some early polls isn’t a guarantee of anything.

alex: As I alluded to earlier, I do think Trump’s candidacy will clear the field of all other serious candidates (other than, perhaps, an anti-Trump candidate or two). But it seems pretty clear to me that Republicans are scared to go up against Trump lest his loyal followers turn on them.

Just ask the 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of his impeachment! Only two will be returning to Congress next year.

geoffrey.skelley: It is true, however, that DeSantis gives Republicans who don’t want Trump a better opportunity to coordinate and rally to one candidate. Anti-Trump Republicans faced a coordination problem in 2016, as there were a bunch of GOP alternatives, no one was sure how seriously to take Trump at first, and they couldn’t coalesce around one candidate when it became abundantly clear Trump was the front-runner for the nomination. Once the voting got going, the alternatives eventually became Sen. Ted Cruz or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, which also worked out well for Trump because there were parts of each candidate’s constituency who might’ve backed Trump before the other non-Trump candidate. 

santul.nerkar: Republicans have also either lost ground or underperformed in three consecutive election cycles, and Trump’s favorability seems to be slipping relative to DeSantis’s. So I think voters could view DeSantis as a fresher, more “electable” face than they view Trump.

nrakich: Yeah, there was a Suffolk University/USA Today poll the other day that asked about two hypothetical general elections: In one, President Biden beat Trump 47 percent to 40 percent among all voters, but in the other, DeSantis beat Biden 47 percent to 43 percent. Of course, it’s way too early to put much stock in general-election polls, but polls like that may nevertheless create a narrative.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, DeSantis would be wise to push the electability argument along with his Trump-ish approach on issues. “Look, I just won the swing state of Florida by almost 20 points, I’m polling better than Trump against Biden and I’m pushing the issues you care about, GOP primary voters.” That’s a pretty lethal combination — potentially anyway.

nrakich: I’m just not convinced that Republicans care as much about electability, though. Poll after poll in the 2020 presidential primaries showed that Democrats really prioritized it when picking their nominee, but if recent GOP primaries are any indication, Republicans care more about ideological purity.

geoffrey.skelley: Sure, Nathaniel, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that DeSantis seems to be doing better in polls that have narrower sample populations — his margins versus Trump are superior in surveys of registered voters compared with ones of adults, or among likely voters compared with registered voters. This suggests that more engaged voters, who tend to also be more ideological, are more likely to prefer him. That could be due to both electability (“Trump might lose, let’s find someone else”) and ideology.

alex: I must ask … What is the difference between a DeSantis voter and a Trump voter? I don’t think they’d push vastly different policies if elected, so what’s really differentiating the two besides maybe personality? I also don’t get the vibe that anti-Trump Republicans would suddenly be gung-ho about returning to the party with DeSantis at the helm.

santul.nerkar: It’s interesting you mention that, Alex. I’ll emphasize again that we should take  these early polls with a gigantic helping of salt, but the Suffolk University/USA Today poll Nathaniel mentioned found that DeSantis actually leads Trump among voters who identified as “conservative” or “very conservative.” It’s pretty remarkable that DeSantis has emerged as the most viable potential Trump challenger, not by positioning himself as a never-Trumper, but rather by leaning into a lot of the rhetoric and policy positions that made Trump who he is.

geoffrey.skelley: Alex, that they would attract many of the same voters seems like a feature, not a bug, for DeSantis. As Santul said, he’s a fresh face who can bring much of the same approach but in a more electorally appealing form. I’m not sure it’s so much about electability on its own, but DeSantis can offer a combination of electoral success with policy successes as Florida’s governor that conservatives find appealing.

alex: I guess, since they’re very similar, it’s possible that Republican elites end up unhappy with both candidates.

But if Trump is truly a weakened candidate — so much so that DeSantis decides to challenge him — then I don’t think the Florida governor will be the only Republican taking on the former president.

nrakich: Speaking of other potential candidates … With the third pick of the draft, I’m going to choose Ted Cruz. This is a bit of a bank shot: In those polls of Trump, DeSantis, and several other Republicans, Cruz isn’t polling in third; he usually clocks only 2-3 percent nationally. But in a world where DeSantis doesn’t run for some reason, I think Cruz is the most natural not-Trump Trumpist candidate. He’s well known in the party thanks to his 2016 presidential campaign, in which he finished second — and, historically, Republicans like to nominate the “next candidate in line.” Think John McCain in 2008 after he finished second to George W. Bush in 2000.

geoffrey.skelley: Whoa, hello.

santul.nerkar: Wowwww.

alex: Nathaniel, you REALLY want a Cruz 2024 run, don’t you? 

Readers, this is not the first time Nathaniel has selected Cruz as his first-round pick!

nrakich: I’m nothing if not consistent!

geoffrey.skelley: This pick is certainly reasonable to me if the goal is to pick someone who is most likely to be the GOP nominee. Cruz wants the job and essentially finished second in 2016, which to Nathaniel’s point has historically been a pathway to future success in Republican nomination contests. Besides McCain, there are Ronald Reagan (ran in 1976, won in 1980), George H.W. Bush (ran in 1980, won in 1988) and Bob Dole (ran in 1988, won in 1996).

But after initially pushing back against Trump — remember his 2016 convention speech? — Cruz caught a lot of flak and then became strongly supportive of Trump. So I think Cruz is less likely to run if Trump remains in the field.

nrakich: Yeah, he’s in a tricky spot. He was kind of outflanked by DeSantis in the “position yourself to run against Trump but don’t be anti-Trump” invisible primary. Now his best bet might be rooting for Trump in this primary, then running himself in 2028.

alex: Nathaniel, I’ll ask you now what I asked you back in March 2021: How can Cruz win considering how disliked he is in GOP circles? 

nrakich: Haha, Alex, I’ll tell you what I told you then too: Among GOP voters, Cruz isn’t disliked! According to a recent Morning Consult poll, 61 percent of potential Republican primary voters had a favorable opinion of him, while only 20 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

alex: But he barely won his own Senate race in 2018 against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke! In fact, his approval rating is still underwater in his home state. 

santul.nerkar: I’m surprised by this pick because — like you said, Nathaniel — Cruz probably isn’t entering a race that Trump is already in, he’s not a more moderate alternative to Trump, and there’s already a strong conservative challenger to Trump right now in DeSantis. So Cruz doesn’t check the box of a never-Trumper, nor is he the most obvious right-wing alternative to the former president.

nrakich: I mean, look. Like we said at the beginning, I’m not sure anyone other than Trump or DeSantis has more than, like, a 10 percent chance of winning the nomination. But I think Cruz is more likely than a certain former vice president.

Speaking of which … Geoffrey, your turn.

geoffrey.skelley: I get not one but two picks here back to back. So with the first one, I’m going to take the straightforward pick of former Vice President Mike Pence. No, I don’t think it’s especially likely that he wins the nomination, but he’s a former vice president, and that’s been a pretty surefire way to get yourself close to winning in past primaries. He maintains at least some support among the donor class and has been making moves that portend a presidential bid.

nrakich: Yes, he is the candidate I alluded to earlier who’s consistently polling in third place.

Albeit usually around 7-8 percent of the vote.

alex: Hm, I wonder if he’s consistently polling third due largely to name recognition?

nrakich: Yeah, I think that’s part of it, Alex. And as Geoffrey wrote back in 2019, having high name recognition but low polling numbers is not a good place to be.

santul.nerkar: Mike Pence is the De’Andre Hunter of this two-player draft.

But yeah, I think that’s decent value for a No. 4 pick. In the unlikely scenario that Trump drops out — perhaps because of the host of legal troubles he’s facing right now — I think Pence’s chances go up significantly, especially next to a comparatively untested figure like DeSantis.

geoffrey.skelley: Hey, the Virginia grad here says respect De’Andre. But comparisons aside, that’s my attitude, too, Santul. Pence is there, he’s going to be able to put together a credible campaign, and who knows how DeSantis and Trump work out.

Anyway, to kick off the second round with my next pick, I’m going to go with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

santul.nerkar: Strong Texan representation here!

alex: … Do you and Nathaniel know something about Texas that I don’t?

nrakich: It’s a great factory for Republican politicians! It has produced two recent(ish) GOP presidents, and it’s obviously the largest red state. In other words, there’s a deep bench of Republican candidates there, and the ones who rise to the top are inevitably talented politicians.

alex: I do think this poll — in which Republican voters in the Lone Star State said they preferred DeSantis over Trump by more than 10 percentage points — is telling, though. And, perhaps most notably, the survey didn’t ask about either Cruz or Abbott. 

geoffrey.skelley: I don’t know that Abbott will run (in fact, Cruz is probably more likely to run than Abbott). But what I do know is that the man can raise a ton of money and that he has a conservative track record that would surely appeal in a primary. If we’re talking about people who could actually win a long primary campaign, Abbott has much more potential than many of the other names on my list. 

Simply put, a lot of names out there are VP material. And Abbott is not one of them.

nrakich: Wait, he’s not VP material? Why?

geoffrey.skelley: I don’t think he’d take it. Dude is the governor of Texas. President or bust.

What I’m saying is that some other potential candidates we could name are people who would happily take the VP job and would be running for president with an eye on that in the first place.

nrakich: OK, I’m up next, and I’m going with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. He’s a rising star within the party (he had a prime speaking slot at the 2020 Republican National Convention), and he’s managed the extremely impressive feat of staying on the good side of both the Trumpist and non-Trumpist wings of the party. That might be difficult to maintain if he, uh, runs for president against Trump, but I think he might be a better politician than DeSantis and could fill that “fresh face” role nicely if DeSantis stumbles. 

alex: Smart pick! I was semi-surprised his win on Election Day wasn’t more of a conversation-starter. It seemed like all eyes were on DeSantis’s performance, but Scott racked up an even more decisive win — defeating his opponent by 26 points. Yes, I know South Carolina is redder than Florida and Democrats never seriously targeted it, but still!

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, I seriously considered picking Scott earlier. He had a very strong midterm performance, got rave reviews for his 2020 convention speech and may be considering a run.  

alex: For all the chatter about Republicans wanting a more diverse voting base, I wonder if Scott offers a broader appeal as a Black man?

nrakich: Yeah, Alex, I think nominating a Black man would be appealing to a lot of Republican voters who want to defuse Democratic attacks that the party is racist.

OK, we’re starting to run out of time, so we’re going to have to make this the last round! Alex, who’s your second and final pick?

alex: I appreciate you all for not stealing my No. 7 pick: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin!

In his 2021 campaign, Youngkin ran with the image of an inoffensive suburban dad and businessman. He kept Trump out of the state and didn’t appear with him at the tele-town hall event Trump hosted right before the election — but Youngkin was smart in that he also played into some of the same issues Trump voters care about. (He even falsely claimed that the Department of Justice was trying to “silence parents.”) So Youngkin did everything he could to walk that line — not to look or sound like Trump, while also not offending his base and still accepting Trump’s endorsement. 

And, at least so far, tying Youngkin to Trump hasn’t been a death knell for his candidacy and political aspirations. According to a Washington Post-Schar School poll that came out a few days before the election, a majority of voters (roughly 7 in 10) thought Youngkin’s ideas and policies were similar to Trump. He won anyway. 

geoffrey.skelley: Youngkin might want to do what former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie didn’t do in 2012 and start running for president roughly a year and a half into his gubernatorial term. When the iron is hot, you gotta strike. If you wait, you might find yourself suddenly more unpopular or facing a scandal or something that weakens your chances in a presidential primary, as happened with Christie.

nrakich: Yeah, Alex, he could make an electability argument too: He won the governorship of Virginia by 2 points just one year after Biden carried the state by 10.

santul.nerkar: Youngkin also made key inroads with groups like Latino voters in that 2021 gubernatorial election, suggesting he could put together a relatively more diverse coalition than other contenders.

nrakich: At the same time, though, I feel like Youngkin could be too boring/establishment for GOP primary voters. They want a fighter, not sweater vests.

alex: I, personally, want to see more politicians in sweater vests, Nathaniel.

nrakich: Haha.

All right, Santul, bring us home with the last pick!

santul.nerkar:

geoffrey.skelley: Mike Pompeo is asking for your vote.

santul.nerkar: And he shall not get it!

nrakich: No one has picked the only Republican (other than Trump) who is actually running for president so far: former Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton.

santul.nerkar: I think Chris Stapleton might have better odds than Corey.

For my second and final pick, I’m going with another South Carolinian: former Gov. and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver made the point when we did our last GOP primary draft, all the way back in 2021, that Republicans might very well be tempted to back a “safer” candidate like Haley if the party suffered a worse-than-expected 2022 midterm performance because Trumpy candidates lost winnable races.

Well, that scenario has now come to pass, and Republicans might find themselves having to make such a decision. If voters are too turned off by Trump’s baggage and DeSantis has a bad debate or two in the early going, I could see the GOP rank and file potentially coalescing around a different candidate. And Haley has the conservative bona fides, name recognition and favorability among her own party to give her a fighting chance in such an environment. (Also, how many times is she going to be named as a potential candidate before actually running?)

nrakich: Haley did recently backtrack on her previous promise not to run if Trump did. She’s reportedly going to take the holidays to consider. 

geoffrey.skelley: Everything Haley has done points toward a run. After criticizing Trump in 2016, she joined his administration as U.N. Ambassador to amp up her foreign affairs profile on top of her governing experience. So she certainly has the resume.

alex: Interesting choice! Haley campaigned with Trump-backed U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia ahead of the December runoff election, so I’m wondering if that says anything about her being team Trump?

nrakich: I actually think she is the opposite of Scott in that she has managed to get on the bad side of both the Trumpist and non-Trumpist wings of the party. As you said, Alex, she has mostly aligned herself with Trump since joining his administration, but she was one of the Republicans who criticized him after Jan. 6 only to walk it back later. But I’m not sure voters — or Trump — have forgotten.

I also think sexism will hold her back. Research shows that female Republican candidates are perceived as more moderate, and moderate historically hasn’t been what GOP primary voters are looking for.

santul.nerkar: That perception has played out in really ugly ways, too, Nathaniel. Haley faced backlash from her own party in 2015 for signing a bill to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House after a white supremacist murdered nine people at a Black church in Charleston, and she’s since walked that back, saying that the perpetrator “hijacked” the Confederate flag.

alex: Interesting that Haley was the only woman we selected in this draft. I think our draft back in 2021 was slightly more diverse (though that one also went to four rounds). 

nrakich: Yeah, I’m sorry we didn’t have time for more rounds, readers! We didn’t give Asa Hutchinson, Chris Sununu, Larry Hogan, Kristi Noem or John Bolton their moment in the sun. 

Then again, GOP primary voters might not either.

2022 Election

The Voters Who Helped Democrats Keep the Senate

How Democrats broadened Biden’s 2020 coalition in key states.

Coming into the 2022 midterm elections, the Democratic Party wasn’t sure what to do with its standard-bearer. With his poor approval rating, President Biden wasn’t a hot commodity on the campaign trail, as Democrats — facing an electoral environment that history suggested would be unfavorable — feared losing both chambers of Congress.

But after all the votes were tallied, Democrats retained control of the Senate by winning the chamber’s four most important races, holding onto seats in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada and picking up an open seat in Pennsylvania. The candidates who won these races didn’t do so by remaking the Democratic coalition in their states. In fact, county-level data suggests that their performances mostly tracked along Biden’s performance in the 2020 presidential election, which saw him carry all four states by narrow margins.

Where these Democratic candidates did gain ground suggests that they largely replicated Biden’s coalition while also making some small but specific inroads. In Pennsylvania counties with lots of white voters without a college degree, in some heavily Hispanic parts of Arizona, in the Atlanta metropolitan area in Georgia — Democrats won Senate seats by exceeding the margins Biden used to win each state in 2020. And even in Nevada, where Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s margin of victory was smaller than Biden’s, her performance in more affluent areas with larger numbers of white voters with a college degree suggests that she made up enough ground to offset her slightly smaller margins in lower-turnout and more racially diverse areas.

To examine how these various trends played out in each state, we took a look at the county-level results and how the Democratic winners’ margins compared to Biden’s in 2020. We also dug into how these changes related to demographic and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau.²¹ County-level data can’t always provide a clear picture of how different groups voted, so we also spent some time looking beneath the county level — at congressional district- or precinct-level results — to explore some of the key factors that propelled Democrats to victory.

This pattern proved vital to the result because white voters without a college degree make up a big chunk of the Keystone State’s electorate. Three in four Pennsylvanians are white, putting the state in the top half of the whitest states in the country, and almost two in three of them do not have a bachelor’s degree. Former President Trump won the state in 2016, in part due to gains among voters in this group, and came just shy of defeating Biden there in 2020.

But Fetterman’s improvement wasn’t an accident, as his campaign spent a lot of time and effort appealing to blue-collar white voters in places where Democrats have lost ground in recent years. In counties with a population that’s at least 60 percent white without a college degree — which together produced about 36 percent of the state’s 2022 vote — Fetterman’s margin was 7 points better than Biden’s, on average, compared with just 3 points better elsewhere. It’s hard to know how much Oz’s profile as a Hollywood-connected television celebrity also played into these results. Fact is, Oz may have been an especially weak candidate when it came to appealing to less affluent voters in more rural areas, where Fetterman made some of his most sizable gains compared to Biden. But overall, Fetterman’s improvement in farther-flung places mattered because it reduced the GOP’s ability to run up massive margins outside the state’s two major metropolitan areas, which Republicans need in order to have a path to victory in Pennsylvania.

This focus coupled successfully with Fetterman’s profile as a former mayor of a struggling post-industrial town in the Pittsburgh area, which produced especially strong results for Fetterman in the western part of the state. Not only is western Pennsylvania whiter than the eastern part of the state, but parts beyond Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) were once more Democratic-leaning before becoming much redder in recent years. Thanks to his campaign and background, Fetterman’s margin was 8.5 points better than Biden’s across the entire Pittsburgh metropolitan statistical area, including double-digit overperformances in some of the area’s more peripheral and red-leaning counties.²³ Now, Fetterman didn’t flip any of these counties, but he significantly reduced the Republican margin across most parts of the state’s western half. For instance, Greene County in the state’s southwest corner still went for Oz by 30 points, but Trump won it by 43 points in 2020.

At the same time, Fetterman’s winning performance didn’t necessarily involve massive engagement from every part of the Biden coalition. Fetterman ran about even with Biden’s 2020 showing in the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area, which was partly due to reduced turnout among Black voters. Philadelphia proper saw notably lower participation compared with 2018, the previous midterm, whereas the total number of votes cast was up almost everywhere else in the state. Nevertheless, Fetterman also did almost 5 points better than Biden in areas of the state outside of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas, showing the wide breadth of his outperformance.

Similar to Fetterman, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona won his race by holding together most of Biden’s coalition while also making small gains elsewhere. His 5-point victory over Republican Blake Masters came in part because he won a high level of support among Latino voters, a Democratic-leaning group that shifted somewhat toward Republicans in the 2020 presidential election — a trend the GOP had hoped to build on in 2022. As the chart below shows, Kelly improved on Biden’s margins most everywhere, but there was no relationship between the share of a county’s Latino population and how much Kelly outperformed Biden.²⁴ Take the two counties that have majority-Hispanic populations: Kelly performed 3 points better than Biden in Santa Cruz (which is 83 percent Hispanic) and ran about even with Biden in Yuma (65 percent).

But about three-fourths of the state’s voters live in Maricopa County (Phoenix) and Pima County (Tucson), so the topline numbers in those counties may not tell us much about the Latino vote specifically (the counties are 32 and 38 percent Latino, respectively). So we have to look within those counties to get a clearer understanding of how the state’s Latino population voted. For instance, in the Maricopa-based 3rd Congressional District — Arizona’s most heavily Latino seat (58 percent by voting-age population) — Kelly did about 4 points better than Biden did in 2020, according to Daily Kos Elections. This suggests that, at the very least, Kelly probably didn’t lose much — if any — ground among Latino voters.

This takeaway is confirmed by Equis Research, a Latino-focused political firm that compared their modeled race and ethnicity voter data to precinct-level results in Maricopa. Equis found that as the share of the Latino population in a precinct grew, Kelly’s performance improved at about the same rate as Biden’s had in 2020. And across majority Latino precincts in Maricopa, Equis calculated that Kelly did about 1 point better than Biden.

Kelly also made further inroads in competitive or red-leaning areas in Phoenix with larger white populations. Within Maricopa County, Kelly did 5 to 7 points better than Biden in the 1st, 4th, 5th and 8th congressional districts (all but the 5th are entirely in Maricopa). These districts vary quite a bit in terms of partisanship, too, as the 1st and 4th are both highly competitive and the 5th and 8th districts are both solidly red. Considering registered Republicans in Maricopa turned out at a slightly higher rate than registered Democrats, Kelly’s performance suggests he may have won over some right-leaning (or formerly right-leaning) voters to outperform Biden’s 2020 showing.

Staying in the Southwest, Nevada also provided another key hold for Democrats in the Senate. Unlike the Democratic winners in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, Cortez Masto didn’t outperform Biden’s 2020 numbers statewide, but she did just enough to come out on top against Republican Adam Laxalt by 0.8 points statewide after Biden carried the state by 2.4 points in 2020. She did this by holding onto similar levels of support in places with large Latino populations and by performing on par (or slightly better) in areas with more college-educated white voters, who have been moving toward Democrats nationally.

But as always, Nevada came down to the vote tallies in Clark County (Las Vegas) and Washoe County (Reno), and in the end, Cortez Masto managed to lose a little ground in the former while staying even with Biden in the latter. And because Clark and Washoe contributed the vast majority of the statewide vote, Cortez Masto didn’t benefit much — but also didn’t hurt her chances — by running a tad better than Biden in the rest of the state.

Nevada has very few counties with sizable populations, so analyzing the state’s vote means moving below the county level to some extent. The three largest cities in Nevada — Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas — are all based in Clark County, and using precinct-level data, we can see that Cortez Masto did a tad better than Biden in wealthier and whiter Henderson while losing a little ground in the more racially and ethnically diverse Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. While she lost Henderson, a more well-educated GOP-leaning city that’s 60 percent white, Cortez Masto actually did 1 point better than Biden. And though she easily carried Las Vegas (42 percent white) and North Las Vegas (just 24 percent), Cortez Masto’s margin of victory was 1 point lower than Biden in the former and 2 points lower in the latter.

These are small differences, to be sure, but given the closeness of the race, every little shift mattered. Moreover, Cortez Masto performed almost identically to Biden in Washoe County as a whole, which looks similar to Henderson, another sign that whiter, wealthier and more educated areas in the two major metropolitan centers of the state didn’t break for the GOP but instead helped Cortez Masto stay in office. Turnout was also part of the story, however, as Clark had the sharpest drop in vote share amongst all Nevada counties compared with 2020’s vote totals, and more diverse places like Las Vegas and North Las Vegas saw steeper declines than whiter and more affluent areas like Henderson. 

Still, this doesn’t mean Latino voters, who make up close to 30 percent of the state’s population, weren’t vital to Cortez Masto’s reelection. Equis Research examined the precinct-level vote in Clark and found that, crucially, Cortez Masto’s support in heavily Latino precincts was almost identical to Biden’s backing in the same places. As we saw throughout the country in 2020, Biden underperformed 2018 and 2016 Democratic numbers among Hispanics in Clark, but Cortez Masto avoided letting things slip further, which could have cost her reelection.

In Georgia’s Dec. 6 runoff, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican Herschel Walker by nearly 3 points after neither candidate won an outright majority in November. While the urban and suburban counties in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania were crucial to the Democratic wins in those states, Georgia may have provided the best demonstration for how a Democratic candidate’s strong performance in such places led to victory. 

Using FiveThirtyEight’s urbanization index,²⁵ we can see that the more densely populated a county, the better Warnock tended to do compared to Biden’s 2020 margin. Most notably, Warnock increased Democratic vote share across the Atlanta metro area, including running up margins in the city’s increasingly diverse suburbs — a national trend we’ve seen in major population centers and one that helped Biden win the presidency two years ago.

Warnock’s improvement speaks to the proliferation of parts of the Democratic coalition in the Atlanta area, including a growing base of Black voters and a shift among white college-educated voters toward the party, but also meaningfully large Latino and Asian communities in parts of the region, too. The results also demonstrate how increased diversity in formerly lily-white suburban counties like Cobb and Fayette has changed the politics of such places dramatically.

Warnock’s most impressive showing was in the 11 counties of the Atlanta Regional Commission, which constituted almost half of Georgia’s vote in the 2022 runoff. Warnock won this region by almost 34 points, a 6-point improvement on Biden’s performance. Most of the region’s vote came from four principal counties: DeKalb and Fulton, which contain the city of Atlanta, and Cobb and Gwinnett, which are big suburban counties that sit north of Atlanta. Warnock outperformed Biden’s marks in each county by 5 to 7 points, despite a fair bit of variation in the racial and ethnic makeup of these places: DeKalb and Fulton have majority and plurality Black populations, respectively; Gwinnett’s population is roughly one-third white, one-quarter Black and one-fifth Latino; and Cobb’s population is half white and a quarter Black. 

But his improvement over Biden showed up elsewhere in the Atlanta metro area, too. This included strong performances in two fairly different counties just south of the city: Warnock outperformed Biden by 7 points in Clayton County, which is 69 percent Black, but he also outdid Biden by 6 points in Fayette, a majority white and increasingly competitive county next door.

Outside of Atlanta and its environs, Warnock’s improvement over Biden was spottier, but he still tended to do better in counties surrounding other smaller cities in the state, such as Augusta, Columbus, Macon and Savannah, which are also comparatively more urban or suburban than much of the state. For his part, Walker did better than Trump in many places, but as the chart conveys, most of them were rural and less populous, which together couldn’t remotely make up for Walker’s losses in the more populous parts of the state.

The political environment will shift and change before we get to the 2024 election, but these performances show how Democrats can win if they maintain backing from the party base, gain support in increasingly diverse suburbs and campaign even in more rural and whiter places that have moved toward the GOP. It’s of course not all up to Democrats, as Republicans will need to pick stronger statewide candidates who can challenge Democrats’ ability to make inroads among more GOP-leaning constituencies. But at least in 2022, these four Democrats largely retained most of Biden’s coalition and at times added to it, which ensured Democrats continued control of the Senate in the next Congress.

2022 Election

We Asked Americans To Explain Their 2022 Votes — And How They’re Thinking About 2024

By Geoffrey Skelley and Holly Fuong and Geoffrey Skelley and Holly Fuong

Graphics by Humera Lodhi

Dec. 12, 2022, at 6:00 AM

This article is part of our America's Issues series.

The 2022 midterms are now in the rearview mirror, but Americans have only begun to process the ramifications on politics and government. Although Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, Democrats avoided the sizable losses the president’s party tends to suffer in midterm House elections and even gained a seat in the Senate. Now, a closely divided Congress and President Biden will have to work together, a trying task in our hyperpartisan political environment — perhaps made harder by the specter of the 2024 election.

With all of that in mind, we’re wrapping up our FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos panel survey by looking at which issues drove Americans’ votes in the midterm election as well as their broader attitudes toward politics following the results. This marked the seventh and final wave of our polling collaboration using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, and this time we asked the same 2,000 Americans how they felt about the election, what policies the next Congress should pursue and their early views of the potential 2024 presidential candidates. 

Throughout our polling series, we’ve asked Americans what issues they viewed as most pressing for the nation. And just like in each of our six preelection polls, respondents ranked “inflation or increasing costs” as the most important issue facing the country (62 percent) in the days following the election.²⁶ “Political extremism or polarization” (33 percent) and “crime or gun violence” (28 percent) continued to rank second and third, respectively. 

This time around, we also asked voters to pick the one issue, if any, that most impacted their vote choice in the midterms.²⁷ Inflation or increasing costs (29 percent) and political polarization or extremism (19 percent) were top of mind again, while abortion ranked third (12 percent). Abortion was an especially big issue for Democratic voters, as 20 percent said it was their top voting issue, placing it behind only political extremism (29 percent). In contrast, half of Republican voters named inflation or increasing costs (50 percent) as their top voting issue, far ahead of any other concerns. Independent voters, as they often do, fell somewhere between Democrats and Republicans on their top voting issues, as the chart below shows.²⁸

Of course, while it’s easy to focus on just voters and the voting process, we were also interested in why many people didn’t participate in the election. Among Americans who did not vote this year, 34 percent stated that they never vote in elections²⁹ — a reminder that while turnout was high in 2022 (for a midterm) and record-setting in 2020 (for a modern presidential race), a large swath of potential voters is consistently uninvolved. Meanwhile, about 1 in 4 nonvoters felt that “none of the candidates were good options,” and another 1 in 4 “did not have enough information about the candidates and/or ballot initiatives.”

Yet, regardless of whether they voted, Americans were marginally optimistic about the state of democracy after the 2022 midterm elections. Overall, 43 percent said they were “very” or “somewhat” optimistic, compared with 33 percent who were pessimistic (the other respondents mostly didn’t know). Unlike after the 2020 election, when former President Donald Trump’s claims about election fraud ran rampant on the right, such calls don’t seem as frequent this time around (at least so far), and it showed in public opinion. While almost half of Americans agreed that they were surprised by the outcome of the 2022 midterm election (44 percent), this didn’t necessarily breed mistrust.³⁰ In fact, 69 percent of Americans agreed that they trusted the results of the midterms, compared with only 16 percent who disagreed. Democrats were more likely to say they trusted the results (88 percent), but a healthy majority of Republicans (65 percent) said the same — a change from what we saw two years ago.

Americans were more divided, though, over what actions they would like to see the next Congress take. In fact, there was only one topic with broad bipartisan agreement: reducing inflation.³¹ Overall, 57 percent of Americans said fighting against increased costs should be one of the leading issues that Congress should focus on, with majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents naming it as a top priority.

Regarding other issues, Americans’ desires largely rested on which party they belonged to. Unsurprisingly, Democrats were far more likely to prioritize enshrining in federal law the right to an abortion, while Republicans were much more inclined to prefer Congress focus on stopping immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. On fiscal issues, Democrats much preferred Congress raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, whereas Republicans wanted cuts to federal spending. 

These partisan splits also showed up when we asked Americans whether they supported different policy ideas that Congress could address.³² When asked if they supported up to $10,000 in student loan forgiveness for Americans making under $125,000, 4 in 5 Democrats supported the proposal, compared with only 1 in 5 Republicans. Conversely, 3 in 5 Republicans supported impeaching Biden, which only 1 in 20 Democrats backed. Still, one proposal with potential bipartisan support was pardoning those with prior federal convictions for marijuana possession: Fifty-nine percent backed the idea, including 75 percent of Democrats, 55 percent of independents and 50 percent of Republicans. 

But as Congress and the White House address — or don’t address — these issues and proposals, they will be awash in speculation about the 2024 presidential race. We asked respondents whether they were likely to vote in the Democratic or Republican presidential primary, and which potential contender they might prefer. And 2022 midterm voters were remarkably cool on both Biden and Trump, with the former having not yet made his 2024 intentions clear and the latter having declared his candidacy while the poll was in the field.

Among midterm voters, 44 percent planned to vote in the GOP presidential primary,³³ and in keeping with many post-midterm polls, they didn’t firmly line up behind Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led with 42 percent among these respondents, followed by Trump with 24 percent and former Vice President Mike Pence with 5 percent.³⁴ No other candidate cleared 5 percent, and 15 percent said they didn’t know who they would support. But at this early vantage point, this survey adds further fuel to the fire that we could be on our way to a Trump-DeSantis clash in 2024.

Meanwhile, 40 percent of midterm voters anticipated participating in the Democratic presidential primary. Despite his incumbency, Biden held a notably lackluster edge: He led with 14 percent, followed by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg with 12 percent, Vice President Kamala Harris with 9 percent and California Gov. Gavin Newsom with 7 percent.³⁵ For their part, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez each had around 5 percent. A whopping 26 percent weren’t sure who they’d support, which may reflect the broader uncertainty over whether Biden runs for reelection.

Over the past seven months, we’ve learned that rising costs and major events — such as the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade —  heavily weighed on the minds of Americans ahead of the November elections. And while this is the final entry in our polling series, there’s little question that the public’s views will continue to shift in response to their top concerns and the actions of elected officials in Washington.

Art direction by Dan Dao. Copy editing by Andrew Mangan. Story editing by Santul Nerkar.

Senate

Why Kyrsten Sinema Left The Democratic Party

By Geoffrey Skelley

Dec. 9, 2022, at 6:01 PM

Remember when Georgia’s runoff gave Democrats 51 seats in the U.S. Senate? Well, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said not so fast, my friend: This morning, Sinema announced she would change her party registration to independent and no longer identify as a Democrat moving forward. On paper, then, the next Senate’s makeup will be 49 Republicans, 48 Democrats and three independents.

Still, Sinema’s switch doesn’t necessarily change the Senate’s voting math. Sinema told the Arizona Republic she intends to mostly align with the Democrats and keep her committee assignments from that party (which Majority Leader Chuck Schumer confirmed he had agreed to honor). Alongside fellow independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, she appears set to give the party 51 seats when it comes to organizational questions, allowing them to hold majorities on committees. Considering that she may not alter her legislative habits, why did Sinema make this decision? Her reelection outlook in 2024 may help explain her move, although her centrist attitudes likely played some role.

To some, Sinema’s party switch might not come as a surprise considering her moderate reputation. After all, she has the second-most conservative voting record in the Senate among Democrats,³⁶ according to roll-call data from Voteview.com, with only West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin coming in to her right. Since joining the Senate, she’s taken public stances against Democratic efforts to abolish the filibuster and, along with Manchin, pushed her party to sharply reduce the outlays in budgetary legislation. Her positions have infuriated many Arizona Democrats, and the state party formally censured her over her 2022 vote to retain the filibuster, which helped block Democratic efforts to pass voting rights legislation.

Yet Sinema’s tendency to split from her party probably doesn’t explain her decision by itself. If that were the case, we might expect Manchin to have switched parties as well. In his study of party switchers from 1950 to 2014, political scientist Antoine Yoshinaka found that a member of Congress’s voting record didn’t do a good job of predicting party switchers on its own, even though party switchers were more likely to be out of sync with their party ideologically. He found that ideological disagreement usually had to occur alongside a desire to run for higher office or to gain a more valuable committee post to produce a greater likelihood of changing parties. Sinema, however, is already in a high office as senator — a presidential bid as a centrist independent seems unlikely, though we shouldn’t rule that out — and if she votes similarly to how she has previously, it won’t be as if she made a full-on party switch to the GOP and received a plum committee assignment as part of the deal.

But there’s a solid chance Sinema’s 2024 electoral outlook played into her decision-making process. Sinema hasn’t said whether she plans to run for reelection, but there’s little question that her tendency to break with her former party has outraged much of the Democratic base that helped put her in the Senate in the first place. A Suffolk University/Arizona Republic poll of the state in September found that Democratic likely voters viewed her quite negatively, with 49 percent holding an unfavorable opinion and 30 percent a favorable one. Facing a potential primary challenge on her left from Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, Sinema stood a real chance of losing renomination if she sought reelection as a Democrat (she might’ve been in trouble against a more center-left Democrat, too, like Rep. Greg Stanton). Tellingly, Yoshinaka’s study found the prospect of facing a highly competitive primary in one’s own party can play into leaving that party.

Still, if Sinema’s chances of winning a Democratic primary were mediocre at best, it’s unclear how much stronger her path would be as an independent. It’s hard to imagine Republicans deciding not to field a major candidate against Sinema even if she’s an independent, but it’s possible she is hoping that the potential complications of a three-way race discourage a high-profile Democrat like Gallego from running. In that scenario, perhaps Democrats line up behind her in a head-to-head race against a Republican. 

However, Gallego has already responded to Sinema’s switch by sending out fundraising texts that say he’s considering a Senate run. Now, Sinema might be able to put together a mishmash coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents to win a three-way contest. After all, that Suffolk poll found that Republican likely voters also had a slightly more positive view of her than Democrats (35 percent favorable, 40 percent unfavorable), while independent likely voters had net-positive attitudes (42 percent favorable, 27 percent unfavorable). And she could attract plurality support if Democrats and Republicans nominate candidates who are viewed as too far left or right. That’s a possibility, too, as Gallego is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Arizona Republicans just nominated far-right contenders Blake Masters and Kari Lake in the 2022 Senate and gubernatorial races, respectively.

But Sinema could certainly also find herself running in last place. Yoshinaka’s study found party switchers suffer an electoral penalty in their first general election after switching, with an average decline of 4 to 9 percentage points in vote share. Having upset Democrats, Sinema might lose most of their support to the Democratic pick, and there’s no guarantee that many Republicans back her over their party’s nominee, even if that candidate is highly problematic. While Arizona does have 1.4 million registered voters who aren’t registered as Republicans (1.4 million voters) or Democrats (1.3 million), we also know that most self-identified independents lean toward one party or the other. So getting voters to eschew the major-party candidates won’t be easy, especially if Sinema isn’t overwhelmingly popular (the Suffolk poll put her overall favorability at 36 percent favorable, 38 percent unfavorable).

The difficulties Sinema is likely to encounter speak to why senators rarely switch parties, and why it’s even more unusual for them to become — and stay — independent. Sinema is just the 10th senator since 1951 to formally switch parties while in office, according to the U.S. Senate, as the table below shows:

Of this group, Sinema is the sixth to become an independent at some point, but only three prior to her actually stuck with identifying that way. Of those, Sen. Harry Byrd Jr. of Virginia might make the most interesting comparison to Sinema: A conservative Democrat, he refused to take an oath saying he would back the party’s nominee for president in 1972, ahead of his 1970 reelection campaign. He instead ran as an independent, thereby avoiding a primary challenge, and won a majority of the vote over Democratic and Republican opposition (he’d win in 1976 as well, although throughout that time he still caucused with the Democrats). Sinema, it seems, will be aiming to pull off the same trick in 2024 — that is, should she choose to run again.

That lead could grow slightly as the tallying is finalized, but, while it was a competitive race, it was not ultimately a nail biter. The crew takes a look at how this election compares with the one in November and past runoffs. They also discuss what it can tell us about Georgia’s politics going forward and what it means for Trump’s influence in the Republican party.

The 2022 midterms have come to an end with Sen. Raphael Warnock beating Herschel Walker in the Senate runoff in Georgia. At the time of recording this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast on Wednesday morning, Warnock had an almost 3-point lead.

That lead could grow slightly as the tallying is finalized, but, while it was a competitive race, it was not ultimately a nail biter. The crew takes a look at how this election compares with the one in November and past runoffs. They also discuss what it can tell us about Georgia’s politics going forward and what it means for Trump’s influence in the Republican party.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

2024 Election

Republicans Still Have A Clear Path To Retaking The Senate In 2024

Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia provides a small buffer for Democrats, but they still have a ton of vulnerable seats.

By Geoffrey Skelley

Dec. 7, 2022, at 11:18 AM

In a bit of electoral déjà vu, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won Georgia’s runoff on Tuesday, almost two years after he won a special election runoff to help hand Democrats a narrow 50-50 majority in the Senate via Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote. This time around, Warnock topped Republican Herschel Walker to earn a full six-year term, which will have major ramifications for how the new Senate will conduct business in January. Warnock’s win gives Democrats 51 seats — including independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — so the Democratic caucus will no longer have to constantly rely on Harris to break ties. Democrats will also now have majorities on each committee and will be able to more easily confirm President Biden’s judicial appointments.

Yet if we look even further into the future, it turns out the Georgia outcome could also play a role in deciding which party controls the Senate after the next election. The good news for Democrats is that they will have 51 seats instead of 50, which gives them a chance to maintain control even if they lose one seat, depending on whether the next vice president is a Democrat or Republican. The good news for Republicans, however, is that the 2024 Senate map puts them in a better position to take control of the chamber than it does for Democrats to hold onto it.

Democrats have more than twice as many Senate seats to defend in 2024 as Republicans, an imbalance that gives the GOP a clear path to capturing the Senate — even if the Georgia result has given Democrats a little breathing room. At present, 34 Senate seats will be up for election,³⁷ and of those, Democrats (including the independent senators who caucus with them) hold 23 to the GOP’s 11, as the table below shows.

That Democrats have so many seats to defend in 2024 is a byproduct of past electoral success. Each class of Senate seats is up every six years,³⁸ so the group of seats up in 2024 was previously up in 2018 and each six-year mark prior to that. In 1994, Republicans enjoyed a wave election in which they gained eight Senate seats. But ever since, Democrats have developed a sizable advantage among this batch of seats: In 2000, Democrats gained four seats amid a razor-tight presidential election; in 2006, they gained six seats thanks to a midterm Democratic wave;³⁹ in 2012, Democrats gained two more thanks to upset wins in North Dakota and Indiana; and in 2018, they lost two net seats but managed to pick up a seat in increasingly competitive Arizona while avoiding more sizable losses by holding onto seats in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/americans-voted-protect-abortion-rights-midterms-fivethirtyeight-94370127

But as a result, Democrats now must defend the now red-leaning seats of Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. All three won reelection in 2018, but those elections took place in a heavily Democratic-leaning environment that they can’t count on having again in 2024. In addition to those three redder seats, Republicans will surely also target swing-state seats in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Though Republicans have ample pickup opportunities, Democrats can realistically hope to flip only two GOP-held seats in 2024: Florida and Texas. Still, given the strong Republican showings in Florida recently and the inability of Texas Democrats to break through statewide, even as the state has become a lighter shade of red, the GOP incumbents will likely start as favorites in these seats in a way that isn’t true for Brown, Manchin and Tester.

Looming over each of these Senate contests is the presidential race that will undoubtedly influence down-ballot outcomes. In recent years, the party that carries a state in the presidential contest has usually won its Senate race. In 2020, just one of 35 Senate races went for a different party from the one that carried the state in the presidential election (Maine), while in 2016 all 34 Senate elections went for the same party that carried the state at the presidential level, as the chart below shows.

In fact, in the next Congress, just five senators⁴⁰ out of 100 will occupy seats in states that the other party’s presidential candidate carried in 2020 — and three of them are the red-state Democratic trio up in 2024. In other words, Republicans stand to benefit if the party’s presidential nominee can persuade some voters not to split their ticket in 2024 and vote for a GOP senator as well. Considering how red West Virginia and Montana are today, such a shift could be enough for Republicans to flip those two seats and win the Senate even if the GOP loses the presidency, should the pool of split-ticket voters shrink even further.

With Georgia’s runoff in the rearview mirror, the 2024 election cycle can truly begin. And while the Democrats’ victory in the Peach State has helped give them a bit of wiggle room in the Senate, the overall map remains favorable to Republicans. To hold onto the Senate, Democrats need a lot of things to go right in 2024. While the 2022 midterm result showed how that can happen, Democrats will probably have to retain at least a couple of seats that are redder than any they had to defend this year — a difficult task in a world with fewer split-ticket outcomes between presidential and Senate voting.

It is Election Day once again in Georgia. While this year’s Senate runoff will not determine control of the Senate, it will still decide the state’s representation in Washington for the next six years. It will also be another high profile test of a candidate — Herschel Walker — handpicked by former President Trump.

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Galen Druke speaks with Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters Tia Mitchell and Greg Bluestein about how things have looked on the ground in the final stretch of the campaign.

Later in the show, ABC News reporter Brittany Shepherd describes the internal debate within the Democratic Party over what a new presidential primary calendar might look like in 2024.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

2022 World Cup

How Americans Feel About Qatar Hosting The World Cup

By Geoffrey Skelley

Dec. 2, 2022, at 6:00 AM

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

On Tuesday, the U.S. men’s national team defeated Iran 1-0 in a grueling soccer match to advance to the 2022 World Cup’s round of 16. Next up, the team will face the Netherlands on Saturday in a win-or-go-home game in which the U.S. will be the underdog — but not a total longshot.

Yet while the U.S. team’s on-field performance has surely pleased Americans, a substantial chunk of the country remains skeptical of the decision to hold the tournament in Qatar. The host country has drawn scrutiny for not only the allegedly corrupt manner in which it won hosting rights, but also for its human rights practices, including discrimination against women and LGBTQ people, and the mistreatment of migrant workers, who suffered from labor abuses such as wage theft, injury or death while building the gleaming infrastructure used for the World Cup. Still, such wariness has not notably dissuaded Americans from tuning in to watch the tournament.

Americans may have actually become more critical of the decision to have Qatar host the World Cup since it began. In late October, before the event kicked off, YouGov surveyed attitudes in six Western nations, including the U.S., and found Americans didn’t notably favor or oppose Qatar hosting. Asked if it was acceptable or unacceptable for Qatar to hold international sporting events, 31 percent of Americans (which included a mix of self-identified soccer fans and non-fans) said it was acceptable compared with 22 percent who said it was unacceptable. Forty-seven percent said they weren’t sure. By contrast, most other Western nations didn’t think Qatar hosting a major athletic event was acceptable: Majorities of respondents (which again included a mix of fans and non-fans) in France, Germany, Spain and the U.K. said it was unacceptable, though 46 percent of Italians said it was acceptable.

But subsequent polling from YouGov/The Economist found a greater share of Americans viewed it as wrong for Qatar to host the World Cup specifically. In mid-November, just before the event started, 36 percent of Americans said it was wrong for Qatar to host in light of the criticisms over the country’s “human rights record and stance on LGBTQ+ rights,” while 23 percent thought it was right for Qatar to host (41 percent weren’t sure). But two weeks later, 45 percent said it was wrong for Qatar to host, while 18 percent said it was right (37 percent weren’t sure).⁴¹ Many Americans don’t have an opinion, but the increase in net opposition to Qatar’s host status (from +13 to +27) suggests a large section of the public is critical.

Americans also seem favorably disposed toward addressing human rights concerns in Qatar. Another YouGov poll, conducted in August and September on behalf of Amnesty International, found 54 percent of Americans agreed that U.S. soccer officials should speak out on human rights issues associated with Qatar, while 56 percent supported FIFA using some of the money generated by the tournament to compensate migrant workers who have suffered while preparing the country for the event. Now, Americans were comparatively less supportive of both prompts than most of the other 14 countries polled, but the U.S. also had a larger share of people who weren’t sure.

However, controversy surrounding aspects of this World Cup hasn’t necessarily made Americans want the U.S. team to pull out of the tournament. The most recent poll from YouGov/The Economist found that 32 percent said the U.S. team should have boycotted the World Cup while 31 percent opposed the idea (37 percent weren’t sure), which means a notably smaller share favored this more aggressive action than the share that said it was wrong for Qatar to host.

And it turns out plenty of Americans have been watching. Headed into the tournament, polls from Morning Consult, Ipsos and YouGov/Amnesty International found that around a quarter of Americans were likely to watch at least some of the event. It’s true that the internationally focused Reuters and YouGov/Amnesty International surveys put the U.S. well toward the bottom of countries polled when it came to the population share who planned to follow the World Cup. Yet this isn’t that surprising, considering soccer usually ranks behind other team sports like (American) football, basketball, baseball and (sometimes) hockey in terms of Americans’ level of general interest, whereas soccer is the most popular sport in most other nations. Despite this, Americans are still tuning in: Nearly 20 million watched the U.S. team’s second group match — against England — which Fox Sports said was the most-watched men’s soccer game in U.S. history.

Even as this World Cup moves into the “knockout” stage, we can look ahead a bit to 2026, when the U.S. will co-host the next World Cup with Canada and Mexico. So we’ll be hearing plenty about international soccer in the coming months and years, no matter what happens against the Dutch.

Other polling bites

• Led by a conservative majority, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently released decisions that favor conservative religious values and groups, including overturning the constitutional right to an abortion and refusing to allow states to exclude private religious schools from certain public funding programs. As a result, the Pew Research Center recently found that 35 percent of Americans viewed the court as “friendly” toward religion, up from 18 percent in 2019. By comparison, 51 percent considered the court “neutral” toward religion, down from 69 percent in 2019, while an equivalent share (11 percent) said it was “unfriendly” in 2019 and 2022. Americans across most demographic and religious groups increasingly viewed the court as friendly toward religion, with some of the largest shifts coming among Democrats (52 percent said the court was friendly, up from 25 percent in 2019), the religiously unaffiliated (51 percent, up from 26 percent) and those with a four-year college degree (48 percent, up from 23 percent).
• As society enters a potentially volatile period for social media, Harris/Grid conducted a poll to examine social media usage among American adults. Facebook remained dominant as 75 percent of Americans reported using it in the past six months, while YouTube was close behind at 71 percent. About half (51 percent) said they used Instagram, but only 34 percent said the same of Twitter and TikTok. But there were sizable generational differences, as the youngest Americans in the poll (Gen Z) were far more likely to use YouTube, Instagram and TikTok than older Americans.
• In its post-midterm survey, the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service Battleground Civility Poll found that 75 percent of Americans agreed that “democracy is under attack,” while only 24 percent disagreed. Americans of all political stripes mostly agreed, including 80 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of independents. Most people agreed, regardless of their party affiliation, that biased news coverage, decreasing respect and civility, social media self-reinforcing users’ views and an increasing amount of violent behavior were extremely or very serious threats to democracy. But Democrats and Republicans strongly disagreed about other issues, with Republicans far more likely to say that “voter fraud causing stolen elections” and “woke culture imposing out of touch liberal values” were extremely or very serious threats, while Democrats were much more inclined to say this regarding “voter suppression and intimidation efforts.”
• Morning Consult found a slight decline in the share of Americans who plan to get a COVID-19 booster sometime in the next year. In mid-November, 53 percent of U.S. adults said they would “definitely” or “probably” get a booster, down from 58 percent in September. When respondents who were already vaccinated but not boosted were asked for “major” or “minor” reasons why they weren’t getting a booster shot, 45 percent said they didn’t see the point and 40 percent said they weren’t worried about getting COVID-19.
• COVID-19 is still on some Americans’ minds as they start to make holiday plans, though, according to a Harris/Time survey. Overall, there’s evidence that concerns about COVID-19 may be ebbing, since 72 percent of American adults planned to celebrate with at least one person outside their household, down from 81 percent in 2019 but up from 66 percent from 2021. But traveling for the holidays may still be more limited than it was before the pandemic, as 45 percent said they planned to go somewhere for the holidays, up only slightly from 42 percent in 2021 and down from 58 percent in 2019. And 55 percent said concerns about COVID-19 will affect their holiday plans, with around one-third specifically planning to limit the size of their gatherings.
• Now that it’s early December, Americans are ready to be bombarded with holiday advertising. A Morning Consult survey in mid-November found that about half of Americans said that mid-November or late November were “just right” for brands to begin holiday marketing campaigns. In fact, 53 percent said early December was “somewhat” or “way” too late for brands to start advertising. But an overwhelming 66 percent thought that starting holiday advertising in mid-October was somewhat or way too early. One thing is for sure: Americans like holiday ads. The survey found that 70 percent said they were at least somewhat enjoyable while only 24 percent said they were somewhat or mostly annoying.

Biden approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker,⁴² 41.4 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president, while 53.2 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -11.7 points). At this time last week, 41.8 percent approved and 52.9 percent disapproved (a net approval rating of -11.1 points). One month ago, Biden had an approval rating of 42.4 percent and a disapproval rating of 53.7 percent, for a net approval rating of -11.4 points.

2022 Election

Few Midterm Voters Backed Different Parties For Senate And Governor

But they were consequential for some key results.

By Geoffrey Skelley

Nov. 28, 2022, at 2:00 PM

Heading into the 2022 election, one big question was just how many voters would be willing to vote for one party’s candidate for U.S. Senate and the opposing party’s candidate for governor. We’ve known for a while that this voting behavior, known as “split-ticket” voting, has been on the decline in U.S. elections, thanks to forces such as polarization and negative partisanship that influence voters to consistently back one party. But while FiveThirtyEight’s forecast projected a further downtick in split-ticket voting this year, we didn’t know just how things would play out from state to state.

With most results in now, we can safely say that split-ticket voting decreased in 2022 — for the most part. And yet, the few voters who did split their tickets mattered a lot for the outcomes in many states, especially where one party won the Senate race and the other party won the governorship.

Overall, we were able to look at 25 pairs of Senate and gubernatorial elections in 24 of the 26 states with such pairs on the ballot in 2022.⁴³ Of those, five states elected senators and governors from different parties, with one more — Georgia — possibly joining them, depending on the outcome of a Dec. 6 runoff election. A few states saw sizable differences, especially deep-blue Vermont, where popular Republican Gov. Phil Scott won reelection by a whopping 47 percentage points, while in the Senate contest, Democratic Rep. Peter Welch won by a massive 40 points. But Vermont’s 87-point spread was a clear outlier: Only eight of the other 24 pairs of races had double-digit differences, including three of the five pairings that saw candidates from different parties elected. Broadly speaking, there wasn’t that much variation in many states, as the median difference was 7.8 points, found in New York, which ranked as the smallest in any midterm dating back to 1990.

Still, split-ticket voters wielded significant power — even if they weren’t sizable in number — especially in three closely fought states. Most striking was Nevada, where Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won reelection by only about 1 point while Republican Joe Lombardo bested Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak by a little over 1 point at the same time. Similarly, the handful of Wisconsin voters who backed both Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers helped both win narrow reelection victories. And while Georgia’s Senate race is headed for a runoff, that happened partly because a small group of voters who backed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp also voted for Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in the latter’s race against Republican Herschel Walker. That kept Walker below 50 percent and gave Warnock about a 1-point edge, although he too fell short of a majority.

Now, a few states besides Vermont had fairly sizable differences that highlighted how the parties split the two races — or at the very least how one race was far more competitive than the other. New Hampshire reelected Republican Gov. Chris Sununu by 15 points while simultaneously giving Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan another six-year term by 9 points. In Kansas, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly overcame the state’s strong GOP lean to win reelection by about 2 points even as Republican Sen. Jerry Moran handily won by 23 points. And while candidates from the same party won both races in Hawaii, Ohio and Oregon, each state saw a comfortable win for an incumbent in one contest while the open-seat election for the other office was much more competitive. That these incumbents would win more easily isn’t terribly surprising, as they tend to gain at least some advantage from already holding office. 

All in all, though, the results in these Senate and gubernatorial contests suggest that split-ticket voting has continued to decline. The median difference of about 8 points proved to be a new low in Senate-governor results in midterm elections from 1990 to 2022, as the chart below shows:

Still, even with the diminished rate of split-ticket voting, about a quarter of the Senate-governor pairs we looked at had split-ticket outcomes. That share was roughly in line with midterms dating back to 2010, when between about 1-in-6 and 1-in-4 states saw different parties win their Senate and governor contests. In other words, split-ticket voting isn’t so rare — at least today, anyway — that the actual governing outcomes of these votes produce no split results.

However, it’s not hard to imagine us moving further in that direction in the years to come. In 2020, just one state (Maine) voted for different parties for president and Senate, while no state in 2016 produced a split-ticket result in those two races. It’s true that midterms may remain more inclined to lead to split-ticket outcomes between top-tier races like governor and Senate because elections for governor still aren’t as nationalized as races for federal office. That has led some voters to back a party they don’t normally support in elections for a state’s chief executive. But even then, we’re seeing increasingly nationalized gubernatorial elections, which could further reduce the rate of split-ticket voting in midterm years, too.

2022 Election

What Can The 2022 Midterms Tell Us About 2024?

A FiveThirtyEight Chat

Nov. 28, 2022, at 6:00 AM

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): The 2022 midterms just ended a couple weeks ago,⁴⁴ but the 2024 election has already begun: Just a week after Election Day, former President Donald Trump announced he would run for president again. Given how little of a break we’re getting between the two campaigns, it raises the question: How could the results of the 2022 election influence the results of 2024’s?

To answer that, I’ve convened a meeting of FiveThirtyEight’s brightest political minds. How’s everyone feeling about the campaign whiplash??

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, senior elections analyst): The permanent campaign is more permanent than ever.  

alex (Alex Samuels, politics reporter): Haha, our jobs are never boring — that’s for sure!

kaleigh (Kaleigh Rogers, technology and politics reporter): People often comment that my job is only busy every other year and I laugh and laugh.

Monica Potts (Monica Potts, senior politics reporter): It seemed like Trump was forever promising an announcement “tomorrow,” so by the time it happened it felt like it had already happened. But yes, it is a never-ending campaign season.

nrakich: OK, let’s get one thing out of the way. Democrats had a surprisingly strong showing in 2022, especially by historical standards: They kept the Senate, and they lost fewer than 10 seats in the House despite the president’s party losing over two dozen House seats in the typical midterm. Is this reason for Democrats to be optimistic about 2024 as well?

alex: I’m hesitant to make sweeping generalizations about 2024 based off Democrats’ performance in 2022. Sure, Democratic victories give President Biden something to brag about in the meantime, but historically, we haven’t been able to predict presidential results based on midterm elections. And I don’t see why this year would be the exception.

geoffrey.skelley: I mean, they might take it as a reason to be optimistic. But as Alex said, historically, there’s been little relationship between the result in a midterm election and the result of the next presidential contest. So what happened in November 2022 probably has little bearing on how November 2024 will pan out, at least in terms of votes. 

And that’s understandable: We don’t know who the candidates will be in 2024, we don’t know what the political environment will be like and the electorate will be different! Right now, the U.S. Election Project’s preliminary turnout figure for this year is around 46 percent of the voting-eligible population. With California still counting a lot of ballots, that’ll probably hit 47 percent. But in 2020, almost 67 percent of the VEP cast a ballot for president! So a lot of people who didn’t participate in 2022 will probably participate in 2024.

kaleigh: Yeah, I mean midterms generally have very little correlation with presidential elections. In addition to the changes in the electorate, people just think differently about voting for president compared to voting for governor or senator. It’s the highest office, and so much depends on what happens in the months leading up to the actual election. I wouldn’t use the midterms to make any predictions about 2024, personally, other than perhaps who else might run. 

Monica Potts: Two of the biggest issues motivating voters this year seemed to be inflation/the economy and abortion rights, and it’s just so hard to say what conditions will be like in two years. I can see red states continuing to push abortion bans or enforce the ones that already exist, but I can also see purple states moderating and blue states working to protect abortion rights. Who knows what the economy will do, but I think it’s safe to say it won’t be in the same place. I think so much depends on those conditions, who’s at the top of the tickets and what happens in the swing states where Democrats won this year, like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

alex: And the issues that motivated voters this fall could be way different than the issues that motivate voters in presidential election years. You might also see, for example, a Democratic backlash toward Trump if he ends up being the GOP’s presidential nominee, similar to what we saw in 2020.

nrakich: Great points all!

Yeah, for every midterm-presidential pairing like 2018-20 (when Democrats had a great midterm and then defeated Trump), there’s one like 2010-12 (when Republicans had a great midterm and then failed to unseat then-President Barack Obama).

geoffrey.skelley: Seriously, Nathaniel. Speaking of whiplash, one of the best examples is 1946-48, when Republicans swamped Democrats in the 1946 midterms to take back the Senate and House, but then former President Harry Truman surprised by winning reelection in 1948, bringing with him sweeping majorities for Democrats in the Senate and House.

nrakich: In fairness, though, 2022 is a different case — the rare example of a midterm where the president’s party did relatively well. What has happened in presidential elections after those midterms?

kaleigh: Ooh, that’s a good question … for Geoff!

(My brain holds very different esoteric knowledge.)

geoffrey.skelley: Nathaniel, a couple examples that come to mind are 1970-72 and 1998-2000. In 1970, Republicans actually gained a seat in the Senate and lost only nine seats in the House, but Democrats retained clear majorities in both chambers. Then in 1972, then-President Richard Nixon won one of the greatest landslide reelections in U.S. history. 

In 1998, Democrats gained five seats in the House and preserved the status quo in the Senate amid a backlash over GOP attempts to impeach then-President Bill Clinton, but then Republican George W. Bush captured the White House in 2000. 

Obviously these are two fairly different circumstances when it comes to an incumbent president running or not, which candidates were running (George McGovern was not the strongest contender for Democrats in ’72), and the events surrounding the election. But that speaks to how hard it is to know what’ll happen next!

nrakich: Yeah, and there’s also 2002-04, when Republicans had a good midterm in the wake of Sept. 11 and then Bush won a narrow reelection. But of course, we’re dealing with a very small sample size here.

Kaleigh, you mentioned that the midterms could influence who jumps into the race for president. Do you guys think the midterms change Biden’s reelection calculus at all?

kaleigh: I don’t know about change, but certainly influence. Biden has a lot of factors to consider and recently said he was going to discuss with family over the holidays. But he’s got to be feeling emboldened after such a strong showing in the midterms. 

Another influential factor has to be Trump’s announcement. Biden won against Trump once before, so there’s this underlying narrative of “he beat him once, he could beat him again,” if Trump wins the nomination.

alex: If Democrats had succumbed to the midterm curse that’s typical for the party in the White House, Biden may have faced outsized pressure to not run in 2024 (as he did before the midterms). But I think, to Kaleigh’s point, you could make the argument that the results of this year’s races, coupled with Trump’s presidential announcement, clear up any doubts over whether Biden is running for reelection.

geoffrey.skelley: Kaleigh, I think that’s right. I’ve said before that Biden’s chances of running again depended in part on whether Trump would run again, and now Trump is running. So I do think Biden may be somewhat more likely to run. 

At the same time, it’s also possible that Biden could decide this is a moment where the Democratic bench of potential candidates is stronger after the success of many big names in the midterms, especially governors of potentially competitive states like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or Jared Polis of Colorado.

Monica Potts: I still think it’s worth remembering that Biden remains pretty unpopular (his approval rating is currently below 42 percent), and voters chose their Democratic candidates in House and Senate races for many reasons. I think it would be reading too much into the results to say it boosts Biden’s chances. 

nrakich: Geoffrey, that’s a great point about Whitmer and Polis. Both have been talked about as future presidential contenders, and both absolutely crushed it in their reelection bids: Whitmer won by 11 percentage points, and Polis won by 19! I don’t think they would ever primary Biden, but if Biden doesn’t run, their theories of the case seem stronger than ever, especially if Democratic primary voters are concerned about electability again.

alex: Do we really think Whitmer or Polis stands a chance against Trump, though?

I think winning statewide office is one thing, but winning a presidential election against Trump is another story entirely. Biden already proved that he can beat him in 2020 and can campaign on Democrats’ success during the midterm elections, so I don’t see why he wouldn’t be seen as the strongest Democratic presidential contender (at least at this point in time). 

And if Whitmer thought Biden was a particularly weak president, she wouldn’t have campaigned with him earlier this year.

Monica Potts: Right, I think the really big question for Democrats is who should they nominate if not Biden? A rising star like Whitmer could be risky. Voters don’t really have a favorable opinion of Vice President Kamala Harris, for lots of reasons that include sexism and racism, but she hasn’t been a super visible VP. I’m having flashbacks to the crowded Democratic field in the 2020 presidential election, which didn’t have a clear favorite until House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn endorsed Biden. 

kaleigh: I think Whitmer or Polis could absolutely beat Trump. I think a lot of Biden’s win in 2020 was simply based on him being the “not Trump” candidate. Trump is basically just as unpopular now as he was before the 2020 election, and even some of his supporters are saying they don’t want him to run. There are many capable Democrats who could fill the “not Trump” role and defeat him in 2024 if Biden were to opt against running.

geoffrey.skelley: As Nathaniel said, I don’t think these candidates run if Biden does. But if he doesn’t seek reelection, they’d certainly have a decent shot of defeating Trump in a general election. For one thing, both Whitmer and Polis have put together impressive electoral track records in states that are either real swingy or at least not deep blue. Whitmer could make abortion a major issue, as she did in her reelection campaign, while Polis has a bit of a libertarian streak in him that could expand his appeal in a general election context. Plus, Trump is one of the great unifiers in history — for Democrats, anyway. So that would help the eventual Democratic nominee to some extent. Moreover, the country is starkly divided and close presidential elections are just sort of a matter of course these days, so barring a real catastrophe for one party, we should expect another highly competitive contest in 2024.

Monica Potts: Yes, I think so much depends on whether Trump is the nominee.

alex: I’m not totally convinced by the “not Trump” argument, Kaleigh. I think most of the Democratic field in 2020 campaigned on being the “not Trump” or “I’m best positioned to beat Trump” candidate. But there’s a reason why Biden was the victor in the end.

But I largely agree with your point, Geoff. I think Biden running will stop other Democrats from jumping in, so there’s not a split Democratic field. The flip side, though, is that I don’t think a Trump announcement will stop other prominent Republicans from throwing their hat in the ring.

kaleigh: The name on everybody’s lips is gonna be … Ronny!

nrakich: Haha, indeed, Kaleigh. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was another governor who turned in a really impressive reelection performance earlier this month. He won by 19 points in a state that, until recently at least, was considered the quintessential swing state! Do we think this strengthens his hand ahead of his widely expected presidential bid?

alex: That’s a good point, Nathaniel! With his landslide election in Florida, DeSantis was easily the biggest GOP storyline to come out of the 2022 election. I won’t cite exit poll data directly, but reporting suggests that he performed well with Latino voters and flipped Miami-Dade County, which is historically Democratic. I think his performance this year might convince Republicans that he’s the strongest alternative to Trump — if they’re looking for one. Plus, DeSantis has long been viewed as a rising star within the GOP, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he takes on the challenge.

kaleigh: There’s no doubt: The results in Florida solidified DeSantis’s role as a popular Republican rising star, and at least some polls are now showing him ahead of Trump. An Economist/YouGov poll conducted just after the election found 46 percent of Republicans said they’d prefer to see DeSantis as the GOP nominee in 2024, compared to 39 percent who said they’d prefer Trump. 

And while a majority — 60 percent — of Republicans said they wanted to see Trump run in 2024 when asked before the election, just 47 percent did when asked after the election (but before Trump announced his candidacy).

nrakich: I’d be careful about those polls, though, Kaleigh. We often warn people to wait a while to interpret polls after major news events like debates, and the midterms definitely qualify.

kaleigh: That’s true! We’ll have to wait to see if any of these turn into actual trends.

Monica Potts: I can absolutely see Republican party leaders coalescing around DeSantis because they know Trump motivates Democrats to vote against them. DeSantis’s policies and positions are very similar to Trump’s, and he plays to the base on issues like immigration, education and voter fraud (which, as we know, is not a significant concern). Republican voters seem to like him — even before the midterms, 64 percent of registered Republican voters told Morning Consult they had a favorable opinion of him. And this is anecdotal, but Republican voters where I live seem to know who he is and also like him. 

In 2016, Trump didn’t really have any opponents who could get enough support to really challenge him. Many voters thought of him as a businessman and what he would do as a politician was unknown. Now he’s a known quantity, his successful run is six years in the past and there are alternatives like DeSantis. 

geoffrey.skelley: DeSantis might be in a position to make himself almost a co-favorite, assuming he does what everyone expects and runs. Granted, Trump has been ahead in pretty much all national polls that aren’t testing him and DeSantis head-to-head. 

And remember, if other candidates get into the field, they won’t be going mano-a-mano, at least not initially. The size of the eventual field is not a minor consideration either, considering Trump won with just a plurality in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. It remains to be seen if the many bigwig donors and influencers within the GOP who oppose Trump will rally behind one candidate or not. And it's not like Trump had their backing early in 2016, so even if they are unified, that isn't certain to stop him either.

nrakich: Trump has not emerged from the midterms covered in glory, though. Many of the candidates he endorsed in the primary lost the general election; in fact, The New York Times and Washington Post both calculated they performed 5 points worse than expected. And his intervention may have directly cost the GOP multiple seats. For example, he endorsed far-right Republican Joe Kent in the primary for Washington’s 3rd District over incumbent Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler because Herrera Beutler voted to impeach him. Kent won the primary but ended up losing the general election — which was a big shock, because this seat is pretty red. Now, many Republican elites are grumbling about him costing the party seats, or at least not embracing his presidential campaign. 

On the other hand, recent history is littered with examples of Republicans appearing to break with Trump, only to fall back in line later. Do you guys think that will happen again, or is this time really different?

geoffrey.skelley: I tend to see this as half a 2016 circumstance, if you will. Many party elites don’t want to get behind Trump and will look to DeSantis as a principal alternative. But depending on the contours of the GOP presidential primary, they could definitely come flooding back to Trump if DeSantis struggles against him for some reason. And Trump will start out with far more institutional support than he had previously. You already see various Republicans announcing their support for him, like Sen.-elect J.D. Vance. 

alex: Agreed, Geoff. I think if voters largely continue to back Trump, it’ll be hard for the party to step in and knock him down. To be honest, Trumpism is so ingrained within the GOP today that I almost forgot about all the intraparty grumbling during his 2016 run! 

Monica Potts: Yes, this is tricky because people underestimated Trump in 2016 and then kept declaring his campaign over — but it never was. But I do think this time is really different. Jan. 6 was a real turning point people haven’t forgotten. And as Kaleigh has written, the election denial that drove the insurrection did not win seats for Republican newcomers this cycle. Voters often have short memories, but I think voters remember that and want to move away from that. 

geoffrey.skelley: Monica, I think Jan. 6 might make Trump a weaker general election nominee, but how much it hurts him in the presidential primary on the GOP side is less clear. After all, for months, even years now, a consistent 60-ish percent of Republicans have said in polling that Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election. If Trump didn’t lose in their eyes, they’re not necessarily going to view him as weaker.

Monica Potts: Geoffrey, that’s fair. I just wonder how much this year’s midterms quieted down those beliefs. I was prepared to see losing candidates claiming election fraud or refusing to concede, and that didn’t really happen. I just wonder if the midterm results might weaken those beliefs in all but the true believers, as voters move on to other issues.

kaleigh: There are Republican voters who love Trump but fear he can’t win, and they want the White House more than they want Trump to be the nominee. The question is how big of a contingent those voters are.