Hi everyone. Two weeks until November 3rd, and it is below freezing for Donald Trump. According to new polling this week from Reuters, Trump's approval rating is 31% — freezing being, of course, 32 degrees. Over at the New York Times also this week, Trump is scoring his lowest approval rating ever at 36%, while at the Washington Post he's at a record low of 33%.
Scoring record lows two weeks before a critical election is not where the president or his party wants to be, and so with time running out to make the case for his own party, Donald Trump is going right for the dregs at the very bottom of the barrel.
Democrats are the party of Abdul Muhammad al-Sayyad. You know, he got very upset because I called him Muhammad. I just felt like it. But I'm the president, I can call him whatever the hell I want. They want to set loose the criminals, turn your children transgender, confiscate your money, and raise up the Palestinian flag right in the middle of your wonderful state. Your son Timmy comes home five days later as Sarah, and you don't even know about it.
Transphobia, Islamophobia, phobias of all kinds — that is the closing message from the Grand Old Party. Will it work? Well, the Cook Political Report is now classifying more and more House races as likely Democrat victories and is moving more races in deep red districts in the Democrats' direction. America's polling wizard, founder of 538 and my new Crooked Media colleague Nate Silver, has now upgraded the likelihood of Democrats taking the Senate to 75%.
Not only are Republicans dealing with a disastrous war, self-created economic misery, and an unhinged president shooting his mouth off all over the country, but they also have some pretty crappy candidates. Here's Georgia's incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff publicly humiliating his Republican rival Mike Collins.
I mean, were you too cowardly to stand up for what's right, or was it just politically convenient to wait until it was going to pass anyway?
Mike, you know I voted for the bill. You're not just lying about my record. You're lying about a young woman's death, and your campaign is in collapse because the whole state knows that you're currently under federal investigation for the illegal misuse of tax dollars.
Imagine running for the US Senate while neo-Nazi propaganda is disseminated to an audience of millions from your home. That's Mike Collins. And it's not just those around him. Mike Collins himself has amplified neo-Nazi propaganda online.
And that's the problem, Mike. It's not just that you've hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office, and you have promoted neo-Nazi content online. It's that you're robbing your constituents to subsidize your donors.
So, I mean, yeah, Democrats are feeling good right now. But there's always a but. These races are still remarkably, unbelievably tight. In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown is four points ahead of Republican John Husted, but that race is still within the margin of error. In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turck is in a one-point race with his Republican rival for the Senate, Ashley Hinson. In Michigan, polls show an insanely close race between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers, and those numbers are only getting tighter.
And then there is the state of Maine, where the stress of a race that is very much within the margin of error is clearly taking its toll. Here's Democrat Troy Jackson this week in a debate with incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins after a protester interrupted the proceedings.
Two issues. Senator Collins, I'm so sorry to interrupt.
I'm sorry somebody's interrupting. We'll have our security deal with that.
Hey, I got to tell you, senators are destroying our climate. They are poisoning our water.
So, this is obviously one of Troy's supporters.
Oh, shut up. I didn't — I don't even know that kid.
On top of this, remember that in America, campaign spending is treated like free speech, and Republican groups have way more cash than Democratic ones, which they are just flooding battleground states. By Election Day of this year, the GOP is projected to have spent a total of nearly $950 million on Senate races alone, compared to roughly $630 million coming from the Democrats' purse. Democratic candidates in Texas, Ohio, and Michigan have vastly out-raised their Republican counterparts, but the coffers of James Talarico, Sherrod Brown, and Abdul El-Sayed pale in comparison to the massive war chests wielded by Republican PACs.
So, with two weeks to go, it is time to step back and take stock of where Democrats are doing well versus where they might actually win. Because if we have all learned anything from 2016 and 2024, overconfidence really [__] sucks. I'm Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, how many blue chickens should Democrats be counting right now? Are there places they might actually hatch? To get the best estimate, I'm talking to polling maestro Nate Silver, co-host of Crooked Media's newest show, Still Counting, and author of the Silver Bulletin Substack.
Well, you have the wrong polling error for Democrats in the wrong places. I mean, certainly we're not going to be at a point where anyone should be feeling confident about anything until the votes are counted.
But first, we're getting up close and personal in the state of Maine, where incumbent Susan Collins and her challenger Troy Jackson are neck and neck. Can Collins split her image from Trump's and win re-election in a blue state? Has Jackson successfully harnessed the momentum of Grand Old Party's disastrous campaign? And also, what do Mainers actually want? To find out, I'm talking to Alex Seitz-Wald, deputy editor of Maine's Midcoast Villager newspaper and a former senior political reporter at NBC News. Here's our conversation.
Alex Seitz-Wald, thank you for joining Runaway Country. It's great to have you on the show.
My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Alex.
I've been very eager to get your thoughts on what exactly is happening in that state ahead of the midterms. So, just first, let's start big picture. What is the temperature in the state of Maine? And I mean that both literally and figuratively.
Well, they're related, actually. It's chilly. It's getting chilly. It's like in the 40s in the mornings. The leaves are peak beautiful foliage, but that means they'll be gone soon and we'll be fully into stick season, as Noah Kahan calls it. And that also means that it's time for people to fill up their heating oil tanks for the winter, which are $700 extra to fill up a standard tank this year — $1,800 a pop. And this is something that people can fill up multiple, you know, several weeks is all it will last you. So it's a huge deal in Maine.
And because of the Iran war, it's one of the big things weighing on Susan Collins right now. And you know, I go back and forth between Susan Collins, Troy Jackson, and who's going to win day by day, but I do feel like the last week or two or three with the heating oil prices coming up, it's really tough for her to overcome.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's 70 — the prices are 70% higher than they were last year. That is just a phenomenal increase.
It gets worse by the hour. I mean, this is something where there have been sort of subsidies to help people afford home heating oil, which Trump is trying to cut or has cut. You can fill me in on this. What is Collins' position? Like, is she out there trying to convince people that she's really breaking with the Republican Party on something like this? And I want to get to the more question more broadly about her "independence" from the administration.
It's actually kind of a perfect example of both Susan Collins' case and the argument against her. So yeah, Maine is the number one state relying on home heating oil. It's kind of an old-fashioned way of heating homes, but still 50% of our homes use it. At my house, we use home heating oil. And Trump has tried to eliminate this program, LIHEAP, Low Income Heating Assistance Program, six times in his official budget proposal. He's called for just completely zeroing it out. And he says instead — you can go look on the White House website right now and find it — he says instead he'll lower energy costs and give you America First policies. So, you know, how's that going for you? I can't fill my oil tank with America First policies. And fuel is more expensive.
Just gotten more expensive, too, right? That's America First energy policies. It's going to get rid of your subsidies for home heating oil and drive up your diesel and gas prices. Seems like a questionable bargain. I mean, so where's Collins positioning herself on what could be like a deciding issue heading into the first couple days of November?
So, she is saying that she obviously disagrees with Trump on LIHEAP, as she disagrees with Trump on everything, but she's saying that because you have me, you have a Republican who he will listen to, who can, you know, pull the levers of power in the Republican caucus, that she's been able to get more of that money released earlier, ahead of schedule. And then, just this morning, the administration announced that they're going to release a third of the Northeast Home Heating Fuel Reserve, which will, you know, maybe help bring down costs, although experts seem kind of divided on that. So she can point to these specific things where she has, you know, worked with the administration or worked with the Republicans in Congress to get some relief.
But Troy Jackson is like, well, hold on, like zoom out, you know, if it weren't for Trump and the Iran war, none of this — we wouldn't be talking about home heating oil prices. And this little bit of extra help that you're getting is, you know, nice and better to not have it, but it's nothing in comparison to the cost that Trump has imposed on Maine. And that's kind of the whole race in a nutshell, because Collins' entire campaign is about the money that she brings back to Maine, what she does to help Maine. And Troy Jackson's like, that's just nothing in comparison to what Trump has cost us.
Right. I think like for those of us in the other 49 states, the narrative is Susan Collins touting her independence from Trump. But as I understand it, and you can fill this in much — you can articulate this and disagree with me too. But it sounds like actually the argument is, I'm Susan Collins, I've been in the Senate for a long ass time, I'm the chair of the Appropriations Committee, and I bring the cash back home. Like, forget the independence, she just gets money for the state of Maine, and that's the thing.
That's actually her best argument — not that she's concerned about a lot of stuff that the administration does, but that she actually can basically issue carve-outs for the state of Maine or, you know, get special treatment for the state that Troy Jackson wouldn't necessarily be able to get because he won't immediately shoot to the head of the most influential committee on the Senate as a freshman senator.
Bingo. Yeah, you're spot on, Alex, and you're right, it is very different in Maine versus what you know you hear about Susan Collins in the rest of the country, as I know from having, you know, covered her in national politics for a long time.
And there are real tangible benefits that you can point to. You can go on her website and she has a map of all the projects that she's helped fund. And, you know, you can pick pretty much any town or any corner of the state and she's brought money. And these are valuable projects that everyone would support, you know, fire stations, libraries, historical societies, that kind of thing, that otherwise are going to come from property taxes, which are going up and everyone hates their property taxes, or donations, and everyone's already getting squeezed for donations. So, it's like manna from heaven when this federal government comes and, you know, fixes the town's fire station or Bath Iron Works, just down the road from us, big shipbuilder, she just secured another destroyer. You know, that's thousands of jobs, that's one of the biggest employers in the state.
So, her campaign is not about Trump, it's not about really any national issues, it's this very old-school, kind of like Ted Stevens in Alaska back in the day, almost, you know, patronage, transactional politics, like I bring home the bacon to Maine. You need my seniority, you need my experience, I know how to pull the levers. That's why you send me back, and I can be a check on Trump where I need to, I can be a check on Democrats where I need to.
But a lot of that argument she's not really making anymore, and she's just kind of depending on the goodwill of decades of experience with her and this long line of politicians that she comes from, of like Olympia Snowe and Margaret Chase Smith, going back decades of moderate Yankee Republicans,
the kind of like dominant thread in Maine politics, and, you know, has really faded out. And a lot of people who have voted for her in the past, a lot of Democrats who have voted for Susan Collins in the past, liked her when they thought she was more in line with that kind of independent Yankee Republican, and now feel like she's just getting pushed too hard into the Trump direction.
Yeah, I mean, and also the sort of bargain that Mainers have made thus far, but is more, I think, the price on the other side is steeper these days, is like putting the good of Maine, the good of a local economy and local institutions ahead of the national welfare. I mean, right? Like to look upon what Trump is doing to the country nationally and say, 'Okay, that is really [__] up. That goes against the ideals and values of this blue state, but we have someone in the Republican Party who, if we reelect, is going to bring home the bacon to us.'
Like, the rest of the other 49 states may get screwed, but we in Maine are going to be okay, right? So, that's like the proposition maybe that has been — or that's the agreement that's been made and is being argued again. But then you couple things like home heating prices and gas prices and tariff wars with Canada, which disproportionately affect Maine, and it's like, 'Well, wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second. The bridge is getting built, but I still can't afford hamburger meat.' Like, so now the national sort of malaise has come home to roost really acutely in Maine, and the bargain isn't necessarily even as good as it once was.
Exactly. You can't escape national politics. You can't escape these big forces. That in our beautiful quaint little towns, it's so easy to, you know, forget what decade it is and maybe just only worry about your local library getting funded, but then you go to fill up your oil tank, and all of a sudden it's going to break your budget if you're, you know, retiring on a fixed income, which we have a ton of here, oldest state in the...
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Let's talk about Troy Jackson for a little bit. There was a debate in the recent days, final debate last Thursday night between Troy Jackson and Susan Collins, and things got, I guess the word is, heated after a Sunrise Movement protester interrupted the goings-on. Let's just take a listen to one of the more contentious moments of that debate.
Two issues. Senator Collins, I'm so sorry to interrupt.
I'm sorry somebody's interrupting. We'll have our security deal with that.
And I daily centers are destroying our climate. They are poisoning our water.
So this is obviously one of Troy's supporters.
Oh, shut up. I didn't — I don't even know that kid.
Okay, just [clears throat] if you didn't hear it, there's some crosstalk. Susan Collins asserts that the protester is one of Troy Jackson's supporters and he says, 'Oh, shut up. I don't even know that kid.' What's been the fallout from that exchange? I mean, it's unusual to hear one candidate say to another, 'Shut up.' It's also a pretty baseless-seeming assertion right there that she makes. So, how's it playing with Mainers?
Yeah, and I have to say I love that the heckler starts by saying, 'I'm sorry to interrupt, Senator Collins, but...' which is just like very Maine. I feel like, you know, he's like, 'I know I'm breaching protocol here, but I need to apologize.' Maine protester, amazing.
Yeah, yeah, but I'm still going to go ahead and interrupt this debate.
Yeah, so she made a flip comment and he made a flip comment in response. It's definitely gotten some play. Republicans have, you know, tried to make an issue of it and they've tried to tie it to this allegedly long line of Troy Jackson losing his temper at women. It's pretty thin gruel.
They just don't have a lot on him really. So like there's this one incident that has been repeated many times, and I have a stack of mailers on my desk that like a third of them mention this, where he threw a plastic water bottle at the ground in the middle of a debate with a female legislator. But from people in the Maine House and Senate that I've talked to who have worked with Troy Jackson, they're like, he's just a grumpy guy who, you know, yeah, he's lost his temper at every kind of person. He's maybe not the best hang in the world, but they don't see any kind of like particular beef with women.
But it's just, you know, some way to turn the narrative on him because otherwise the last few weeks have been the ProPublica story about alleged corruption involving Susan Collins, home heating oil prices, Donald Trump's collapsing approval numbers, the war in Iran, all these negative things that have been on the Collins side. So they're just looking for something to throw back at Jackson.
I got to say also, I mean Mary Peltola had a very negative profile in the New York Times and she's a Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska and it did literally nothing to stop her momentum. If anything, we're just in this moment of incredibly crude partisan battle, and I would argue that the tactics of the right — and I'm thinking of like what's happening in Ohio with Vivek Ramaswamy, the like depths to which they're stooping — like I think Democrats almost kind of want an aggressor. They want someone who's going to be a brawler. That doesn't mean like mistreat people necessarily, but I wonder if there's not just some kind of like quiet cheering that Democrats are doing when they hear a Democrat say dismissively, 'Oh, shut up.' Like, just enough, you know? I don't know. I can't get inside of the mind of Maine voters.
I just, I guess I wonder how much there's even a desire for this kind of above-it-all politics anymore. And to that end, I got to ask you that Joe Manchin is heading to the state to stump for, wait for it, Susan Collins, to help burnish or highlight her bipartisan credentials. First of all, Alex, like do people in Maine give a [__] about what Joe Manchin is doing up there? Like, does this help Susan Collins?
I think it probably helps her as much as any national endorsement could help Susan Collins, but that really speaks more to what an island Susan Collins has found herself on. I mean, a colleague asked me, you know, what national Republican could come for Collins and help her? And it's hard to think of anyone, you know, who would be beneficial to her. So, at least with Joe Manchin, not that he's necessarily a big name or that people feel, you know, any particular attachment to him, but he has a D next to his name — he used to have a D next to his name — and he can say, 'I worked with Susan Collins in the Senate. I, you know, she's bipartisan. She does what's best for Maine.' So, it's something, but it's just so tough. She has no, you know, movement to align herself with.
The rest of the Maine Republican Party looks nothing like Susan Collins. The guy running for governor is a, you know, MAGA social media influencer, basically. The guy running for Congress is Paul LePage, the former governor who called himself Trump before Trump was Trump. And once Susan Collins goes, whether it's this election or down the road, there's no one coming up behind her to kind of take that mantle. So, she's looking around for someone to come, you know, be on her team, and Joe Manchin is kind of all there is.
Wow. Okay, so what I'm hearing, like I guess the big picture is like, it feels like what you're telling me is this election is probably more of a referendum on Trump than it is a popularity contest focused on Susan Collins v. Troy Jackson, right? Like I just feel like national politics, the national climate, national — I mean this is my inclusion, but national sentiments have like come home to roost in Maine, and that would seem to portend to be good news for Troy Jackson just because Trump's approval rating is in the toilet and his policies, when made real, really negatively affect the lived reality of state residents.
Totally. And to your point earlier, Alex, it's like if this election — if Maine voters go into the polling booth or fill out their vote-by-mail ballot thinking what is best for Maine, I think Susan Collins wins because she has won on that same argument time and time again, and there's almost like muscle memory for support for her. But increasingly voters can't think that way, and if they're thinking what's best for the country or what's best for Maine in the rest of the country, I think Troy Jackson wins because this is a blue state, it's a Democratic state, and it's just impossible to miss that kind of stuff.
And yeah, the one thing that I always say to people when they ask me, 'How does she keep winning? Like don't they know that she, you know, voted for Kavanaugh, got rid of Roe v. Wade, and that she's a Republican?' Yes, they know all that stuff, but you have to understand that her ceiling was so high. She was getting two-thirds of the vote in big Democratic wave years. So, there are already a ton of Democrats who have abandoned her, and it's just this little segment of Democrats, one in 10 according to recent polls, and independents who are still sticking with her because they think she's good for Maine, they respect her, they have some personal connection to her. But every day that goes by with the war going on, with Trump's approval ratings as bad as they are, with oil prices as high as they are, it gets harder and harder, I think, for them to justify voting for her again.
Yeah, I mean I think, you know, that the conceit that what's best for Maine is different than what's best for the country, that gap is closing because you're seeing in Maine that it's all bad. Like there is no separating Maine from the rest of the country when you have ice killing people in Biddeford, you have home heating oil prices skyrocketing, you have a tariff war that's affecting Mainers. Like you can't set Maine aside anymore. Maine is at the center of all the disastrous national policies enacted by Republicans and the president. So therefore, that proposition that you can kind of separate it off and hold your nose or not hold your nose, vote for Susan Collins becomes diminishing. That deal becomes ever diminishing with each passing drop in degrees of temperature, right?
Like the home heating oil thing being an issue on October 21st, which is the day we're recording this, and it's only going to get colder in the next two weeks, would seem to be Mother Nature doing a solid, I guess. Not that depriving people of home heating is a good thing, but putting, you know, her muscle behind the opposition party.
Alex, how are you going to watch this race? Like I mean, are you looking — for those of us who are on the outside of Maine, we don't have access to the blueberries and goodwill and wood-paneled sheds from which to podcast. Like how should we think about this race on election night? Like how should we think about it in the closing days? Like is there something you're looking at that we should be looking at?
Yeah, I mean I would say embrace the uncertainty and remember — I'm sorry, I wish I had something better to say, but remember that the last time Susan Collins was up for re-election, 2020, Joe Biden carried Maine by nine percentage points. We went into the election day with every single poll showing the Democrat ahead, and Susan Collins won by nine points. So, you know, that's not to say that the polls will definitely miss, or that the same issues that were present in 2020, which was COVID, there was all kinds of weird stuff going on, but it just like makes me feel like I'm watching the polls, but they're all basically the same directionally that this is a super tight race. Jackson is slightly ahead, but certainly within the margin of error of the past races.
And there is the sort of quiet Susan phenomenon of people who support or vote for her, but might not talk about it because they'll otherwise vote Democratic. So, I'm just not going to count anything out until I see the votes. I'm sorry, I wish I had better news for you.
Embrace uncertainty, dude. I guess that's all we can do. Like, who can know anything? I know where the trend lines seem to be going, but what does it mean until November 3rd is anyone's guess. Alex Seitz-Wald, deputy editor of the Midcoast Villager, you're doing such great reporting. If you want more, especially on the home heating oil issue and how that's affecting Mainers and maybe shaping this race, you should check out their coverage. It's been — it's just exemplary, and as well as, you know, go support local journalism. Like, that's what makes democracy work. Alex, thanks for your time. It's great to see you. It's great to hear from you. Enjoy the blueberry pie for the rest of us.
Thank you, Alex. And midcoastvillager.com, I'll put that plug in.
You got it. After the break, putting this all into context with Still Counting's Nate Silver. But first, if you're interested in supporting the media and a free press, please do. Pick up a copy of my new book, The Steal: Four Right-Wing Hardliners, One Republican Presidency, and The Raid on America's Courts. It is all about the shadowy right-wing plot to take the courts, which is ever more interesting and urgent than ever as we barrel towards what might be a contested election. And the book is out now.
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Welcome Nate Silver. What a thrill to have you for your first appearance on Runaway Country. You are our in-house resident polling guru as the host of the indispensable new podcast Still Counting. I'm really — I truly am excited to have you on the show, so thank you for making time from your busy, busy and important work of helping us understand where this country is headed.
I've not just been thinking about Democrats' chances, Republicans' chances in the midterms. We've been all, I think, getting a little meta on the polls themselves and like the accuracy of the polls, and there's been a lot of hand-wringing, theorizing that the polls, while looking uniformly pretty good for Democrats, may somehow all be plagued by structural concerns that would cause all of these polls to return inaccurate results and, you know, overly rosy predictions for the left. Where do you stand on that? Like are you worried that somehow everything could be slightly off?
Well, it's kind of my job to worry about that kind of thing, and I don't know how you could have witnessed the last, you know, three or four or five elections and not be almost expecting that, I suppose [clears throat], right? But how much of that is like superstition versus the science of it, so-called, it's a little bit harder to say. So, a couple things to point out. One, I think your viewers, listeners know this, right?
When there's a systematic polling error, that's systematic because it means that the polls could all be off in the same direction in several states or at least geographically compact units like the Midwest, for example. So I think you should always go through the exercise of saying, let's say we subtract three points from Democrats' numbers in every state, or add three points — we'll talk about that too — and then what's that map look like, right? In the House, Democrats could absorb a three-point polling error. It would be a slightly disappointing night relative to where the polls and models are right now, but they'd have to really, really lose a lot of steam to fail to pick up the House. They only have to win four or five seats.
In the Senate, you have a three-point polling error, and all of a sudden, you know, Talarico's been leading almost every poll in Texas, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Peltola in Alaska,
Roy Cooper — Cooper would probably consume — I mean, he's been up seven or eight or nine points, right? Him and Ossoff would be fine. But those other states would be very competitive. So, it might be a very long night. Keep in mind, by the way, that one of the most important states is Alaska, which won't finish counting its vote for several days, and there's ranked-choice voting, and they have to get some ballots in with dog sleds and things like that.
Yeah, there's an Iditarod, I believe, right before, right, to get the ballots back on Alaska.
It's worth keeping in mind, though, that in the past two midterms, 2018, 2022, we didn't really have a systematic polling error. In 2022, in some races, for example, in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman had had a stroke. The poll showed Mehmet Oz gaining and maybe pulling ahead by a point or so, and then Fetterman wound up winning by four or five points.
2018, the polls were pretty good. And in elections since 2024, so New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats considerably beat their polls. So, we'd always say, consider both types of polling error, as well as funkier stuff, right? Maybe Democrats underperform in the Midwest, but they still have some winning maps, right? If they won Alaska, Texas, Maine, and North Carolina, none of those are Midwestern states. I guess Texas is Midwest adjacent, kind of.
And that would suffice to get them to 51 seats. And so, you know, will you have the wrong polling error for Democrats in the wrong places? I mean, certainly we're not going to be at a point where anyone should be feeling confident about anything until the votes are counted.
Of course. At the start of your answer, you said, you know, like bundle in, if you would, a three-point deficit. Let's assume the polls are off by three points in Republicans' favor. You'd still — some of these states would still be proofed for Democrats. Some of them would become toss-ups. But you said recently, I think is it this week, on Monday? Your latest forecast has Democrats winning the Senate — winning control of the Senate at 75% and winning the House at 93.6%? Is that — that's — I'm assuming you're the numbers guy. That's accounting for potential structural concerns.
Yeah, exactly. The reason why we have these probabilities is because we're looking historically, empirically at how wrong the polls can be and in what direction they can be wrong. Meaning looking at correlated — was the term we'd use — mistakes in the Midwest, for example. If you just take the polls at face value and say if you're ahead by one point in the polling average you win, then Democrats would win 54 seats, right? In the polling average they're ahead by a point in Iowa, ahead by a point in Kansas, ahead by two points in Alaska, ahead by three or four in Ohio. So, you know, so we're hedging relative to that, right?
But you know, I mean 75 — look, I wish — I kind of always root for the forecast to be either 50/50 or 100/0, right?
That's when you can't [laughter] get yourself in trouble. At 75/25 is maximum pain, right? You'll be wrong a lot. When you're wrong, you'll fairly or not be blamed for it. But yeah, that's, you know, that's two coin flips coming up heads in a row. That's the odds of a 50-yard field goal being made in the NFL.
Yeah, 25% chance is a very real chance. You would pack an umbrella or make alternate — if you had a wedding scheduled and there's 25% chance of a rainstorm, then you make sure you had some indoor facilities to handle your guests.
The weather metaphor is great. If I see 25% chance of rain, I'm bringing an umbrella. And in the way that Senate Democrats — Senate Republicans have a 25% chance of holding on to the upper chamber, that's legit. That's a very important caveat, or not even caveat, just note as we look at those numbers.
You know, I've read this as well that just overall, another reason people should have confidence in these polls is that it sounds like midterm election polling is generally more accurate in terms of predicting turnout and who's voting than presidential year polling. Is that right?
It may not be as accurate in individual races. Remember Susan Collins in 2020 beat her polls by eight or nine points or something, right? Because you don't have the same race on the ballot in every state, then sometimes the errors can cancel out a bit more, right? A race like Alaska is interesting. Alaska's a very different kind of state. Mary Peltola's a different kind of candidate. You have ranked-choice voting in Alaska. That state might not tell you that much about what happens in Texas or Iowa or whatnot. So yeah, there is some chance for the errors to cancel out. It's not quite like a presidential race.
But like part of what happens too is like — so when Republicans say that polls are 'undersampling Republicans,' there is definitely a grain of truth in that, right? Where, you know, Democratic respondents tend to have higher socioeconomic status, right? They tend to be more socially trusting, and so they're more likely to answer a phone or a text when they're asked to take a public opinion poll, right? Pollsters are very aware of that, but I don't know which other analogies. Okay, I'll do another dumb analogy, right? It's a little bit like where you run like a Thai or an Indian spicy restaurant, right? And [clears throat] the guests complain it's too spicy, and now you're trying to like tamp down the spice. You know, it's a little bit like you're kind of fighting water with fire or vice versa or something like that.
So that's — but pollsters are very aware of that. They're very aware of what happened in 2016, 2020, 2024. The polling error was again directionally underestimated Trump. Less bad. 24 was a toss-up in all the polls, and but still Trump beat his polls by two and three points in the swing states. The other thing is that whichever party's voters are more enthusiastic tend to respond to polls more.
You're talking about voter enthusiasm, Nate, and I kind of want to get into this stat that Pew released earlier this month that only 36% of Trump voters who view the Republican Party unfavorably say the elections next month really matter.
