Politics. Policy. Polling. Pop Culture.
Explore what America's thinking with two of the country's leading pollsters-the bipartisan team of Democrat Margie Omero and Republican Kristen Soltis Anderson. In this weekly podcast we take a fresh, friendly look at the numbers driving the week's biggest stories in news, politics, tech, entertainment and pop culture. Along with the occasional interview with pollsters, journalists, and other industry leaders, we'll lift the hood on the numbers revealing the hidden secrets of the public's mind.
Margie Omero [00:00:07]:
Hi, and welcome to the pollsters. I'm Margie Omero.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:00:10]:
And I'm Kristen Soltis Anderson.
Margie Omero [00:00:12]:
And every few years or so, we bring you the polls driving the latest news in politics, tech and pop culture. Hello. We're back.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:00:21]:
A little holiday treat. Everybody's got Thanksgiving travel coming up, and we're here for your road trips, for your flights, for whatever. We're here. We're back.
Margie Omero [00:00:33]:
Talking points for Thanksgiving, right? I think I remember when Kristen and I used to do this. I was like, you know when you get those things by email from nonprofits, and it's like talking points on how to talk to your family about top issues at Thanksgiving. And you were like, what? Get what? Like, no, it's a thing. Everybody sends one out.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:00:51]:
You're like, why is this not a Republican thing?
Margie Omero [00:00:56]:
I don't know how many people are gonna be doing these things now or if they need help. But anyway, we're here. We're still here. What has been happening? What's going on, Kristen?
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:01:06]:
Well, let's see. I was looking back to see. I knew we had done a surprise episode at some point after we wound down our regular production of the show. And I saw that it was in October of 2020. And I was like, yeah, things are a little different now for me. I've had a big four years. Let's see. I've had two children.
Margie Omero [00:01:28]:
They're very cute.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:01:29]:
They're the best. Two daughters who are hilarious and wonderful and sweet. They are. They are fantastic. And this coming year is going to be 20 years in the polling business. I am still at Echelon Insights, which is now over half of my career in polling has been at this little firm I started. Yeah. And it feels in some ways like a ton of things have happened.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:01:54]:
But I also went back and I listened to our episode in 2016, which was the episode that we taped right after the election. And this is one where I, in an extremely professional move, showed up with a beer and just drank the beer during the episode, which is shocking, honestly, when you get to minute like 45, you can hear it in my voice. You can hear it's working. And I've been thinking about that episode a lot because I remember going to the studio eight years ago, stunned out of my mind that Donald Trump had just won. And I remember taking the train from New York to D.C. and then I think I came straight from the train station to the podcast studio with you, Margie. And just everybody on the Acela was like, it was like a funeral. I Mean, everybody was freaked out and just stone faced.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:02:51]:
And this time around, I was on the exact same train back and the vibe was not the same. Not to say that people were celebrating, but it was. It just felt like a normal Wednesday morning. And I thought that was so strange that I like remembered so clearly that exact train ride eight years earlier and how the result was the same, but the reaction felt so different.
Margie Omero [00:03:12]:
Well, to be fair, the Clinton party was in New York on Tuesday night, so it's possible in 16 there were people coming home from that that you did not see a couple weeks ago. But yes, it is different because people felt sort of fluish and ill and shock in 2016. And it's not that people don't feel that way or feel truly vulnerable and concerned about what's gonna happen to them and their families and their states, but sort of bracing, like, we've done this before, we can do it again. Just bracing for impact a little bit. But when we first started the show, what made me think, like, this was a good time for us to come back together? I should say Kristen and I, we do still hang out, do projects together, we appear together, we've been on panels together. Like, this is not the first time we've seen each other since 2020, just to be clear for people who are kind of outside the D.C. world. But when we first met to talk about the podcast, I was pregnant and had this with my second kid and had this kind of pregnancy fueled, like, desire to get a bunch of stuff done immediately.
Margie Omero [00:04:20]:
And I'm like, this has to get going right this minute. You barely even knew me. And I'm like, no, this must happen right now. I realize now that that sounded crazy in hindsight, but that' that's how I felt. That kid is now nine and just I realized the other day sort of thinks of you as this sort of like this friend I have rather than having actually had a podcast together. He's like, why do you think it's like, why do you have this, this mug that you have with your friends doesn't look like the kind of mug you'd make with a friend. It's like the mug we made with like our old. It's like 10 headshots ago.
Margie Omero [00:04:56]:
You have long hair, I have no gray hair. Like, it's just so old now. And it says the pollsters on it with our little logo. And you're wearing blue, I'm wearing red. Like, it's all very cute and old timey now. And he thought it was just like we had Gone to the zoo or to Six Flags or something. I made this mug together.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:05:16]:
Like, we went to one of those things where you dress up in, like, the Old west clothes.
Margie Omero [00:05:20]:
Yeah. We were at the Renaissance Festival or whatever, and I'm like, no. Kristen and I had a show. We had a podcast. He's like, what are you talking about? How do you. Why are you just telling me this now? I'm like, I don't think that I'm just telling you this now, but I realized that this is now, like, pre history. Like, it's for. As far as that kid's concerned, this was just some, like, old news that happened.
Margie Omero [00:05:42]:
I'm like, oh, well, we should just do this again. And the other funny thing, which I had just tweeted before we started was, you know, when we watched Wednesday, which if you don't have kids, you may not have seen, but it's still fun even if you don't have kids. It's like Wednesday Addams in boarding school. And so when we were watching this, it was like, I don't know, a year or two ago. Wednesday has this. She's very dark, you know, as you'd expect her to be. And she has a roommate who is very. Is, like, cheerful and is blonde and rainbowy.
Margie Omero [00:06:12]:
And the first time they come together, my kids are like, mommy, that looks like you and your friend. That friend you apparently go to, like, festivals and, you know, the fair with on a regular basis. And obviously I have a lot of friends, but I knew which friends they meant immediately. I'm like, oh, yeah, I can see that.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:06:31]:
So I'm 100% gonna get, like, some temporary, like, ombre pink, you know, waves in my hair or something so that I can. What is the name of the character who is Wednesday's?
Margie Omero [00:06:42]:
Enid.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:06:42]:
Okay.
Margie Omero [00:06:43]:
And so she's like, you know, super cheerful, and her side of the room is, like, all rainbow and pink, and Wednesday's side is all, like, black and dreary. It's very funny. And obviously, this is, like, a very common trope in, like, women's stuff. Like the, you know, kind of dark, mouthy sidekick. And somehow it's. You know, I enjoy it every time. And every time I see whatever the new version of this, I'm like, yep, that's the plot.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:07:10]:
I like how in these. In our show outline, you also have Daria and her friend Quinn.
Margie Omero [00:07:15]:
Yes, Quinn.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:07:15]:
Yes.
Margie Omero [00:07:16]:
Right. And then, like, relatedly, because obviously, when the election goes badly, you think of these things, like, I need to turn my hair into Alex from Josie and The Pussycats, which was like the late 70s cartoon where she has this shock of gray hair. I'm like, that's what I need. I'm gonna take the gray out, like Moonstruck style all at once, and then just put in back in this very deliberate intentional shock. And then I saw Tulsi Gabbard's nomination. I'm like, oh, I have to go back to the drawing board. So I might have to go back to, like, purple, and I don't know. I have to have a new resistance haircut.
Margie Omero [00:07:49]:
It can't be what Tulsi Gabbard's haircut looks like. It's gotta have something else. So that's what's happening with me. Those are my updates.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:07:58]:
Well, and GBAO is thriving.
Margie Omero [00:08:00]:
Yeah. We have, like, 30 people now. When I first started at GBAO, it had been GA, and then it was GBA, and now it's GBAO. Now we have seven additional partners in addition to the New York Times focus group that you also do that Echelon also does. We do the Wall Street Journal poll, bipartisan Wall Street Journal poll, and had all kinds of really fantastic clients, which folks can find online if they so choose. And we have a fantastic team. But when I started at what was then gba, and they're like, my partners had told the staff, like, we're going to bring somebody in. Her name is Margie O'Meara.
Margie Omero [00:08:36]:
And everybody said, oh, we all listen to the pollsters. And they were like, the what? So it is still true all these years later that if you don't want my partners to find out anything, you should put it out on Twitter. That is where they will not see it. That's where your secret should go.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:08:54]:
Well, we have a ton to talk about. Part of why we wanted to do this episode was because it's fun, it's good to catch up. But it's also, there is so much to talk about in our industry because since we started this humble podcast, the whole polling industry went from being this interesting little niche of the political consulting ecosystem to, like, one of the most controversial things on the planet, where I have been joking that for the last few years, when I, like, get in an Uber at an airport for a business trip and the driver's like, oh, what are you here for? What do you do? I no longer say, oh, God, no, that I am a pollster, because that immediately incites this whole, like, I never take polls. They're all fake. You know, it, like, always sparks a conversation that I'm like, I Just want to play mahjong on my phone. I don't. I don't want to do this right now, but I want to hear from you, Margie. I feel like this year the polls were actually okay, but yet I still feel everybody out there saying, oh my gosh, the polls are wrong again.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:10:05]:
We have to throw all the polls out. And I just feel like if you went into election night thinking that Kamala Harris was a lockdown, like, I don't know where you were getting your information, but it wasn't from the polling averages. I don't know what to tell you. So, Margie, what grade would you give the polls?
Margie Omero [00:10:24]:
I mean, I think it's a good question, right? I guess it depends. Who do we mean by the polls? Right, the poll. There are lots of polls out there, lots of pollsters. And, you know, I think by and large the polls were, you know, told you that this was gonna be a divided electorate. That would be very difficult for. It was certainly not lock for either candidate. And I think when you look at the final accounting in terms of the margin in battleground states or even the margin in the popular vote, that's still a very close race statistically in a poll. It doesn't mean that it seems close in the electoral college.
Margie Omero [00:10:58]:
I understand all of that, but it does mean that when you look at a poll, if you had a poll come back that's plus one or minus one, those polls are not really that different than plus two or minus two. All those things are very similar in terms of your poll results, even if it's is very meaningful, obviously in the election. So I would say I feel like B plus A minus in the polls. I think the polls as an industry, by and large told us what people were concerned about. I think people were concerned about the economy. They were concerned about. They wanted something new and change and were divided on which candidate really offered that. The issues of immigration and border security, that was something that polls showed were salient.
Margie Omero [00:11:45]:
The issue of abortion, the fact that it's something that people agree with Kamala Harris on, there's no mandate for national abortion ban. I think that's still true. The polls have shown that. So I feel that the polls really gave us a good sense of where the electorate was. And also not just the polls, but the focus groups, the ones that we've worked on for aarp, New York Times, other navigator, other public facing focus groups, ones that we haven't done that are still really important to listen to. Where voters are can give you a lot of that. Same sense of how people were weighing the two candidates and thinking through what their choices were. What we did at Navigator, which is a progressive group that I co lead with the folks at GSG to explore a variety of different issues.
Margie Omero [00:12:30]:
And we had some stuff before the election, and we had some stuff come out after the election. So we did a split test of public opinion researcher versus political pollster. And you probably wouldn't be surprised to see that public opinion researcher people are a lot more favorable to them than they are to pollsters, that pollsters people are more unfavorable toward. There's something about, like, rooting for pollsters to fail that I think is part of, like, the thing that people do now. But then there's also like, what were your expectations? And were your expectations on the Democratic side that Harris would win? Because, you know, again, it's not that the poll showed insurmountable lead for Harris in battleground states. It's that, you know, people were hoping that she'd win because the stakes were that high. And the folks who thought that the polls say Harris will win were more likely to say that the polls would be right before the election. Like, there was a sense of, like, I believe that the polls show Harris is going to win.
Margie Omero [00:13:27]:
I think the polls are going to be right. Trump voters in advance of the election were Mueller, and Republican voters were a little bit more divided as to whether they thought the polls said Trump would win. So they didn't have the same kind of expectation, looking at the polls that Democrats did. And I think that's part of why you see people saying, like, the polls were wrong more than the fact that the polls were wrong.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:13:51]:
And I think the other reason why people keep saying the polls are wrong is because, and I caught myself doing this too, is that there is a difference between the polls are close and the race will definitely be close. Those are not the same thing. And I even caught myself on TV a few days before the election saying something like, well, we know this race is going to be close. And then I stopped and I was like, no, no, no, we don't actually know that. We know that there is a wide range of possible outcomes because the polls are close. And like, that's, that's. It's like a hard, awkward thing to communicate. But just because the polls are close does not mean that we have certainty that that is exactly how this will go.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:14:36]:
And especially when the polls are close, a point and a half, quote unquote, miss in either direction, which isn't even really what I would call a miss per se can lead to an extremely different electoral college outcome. And so that's really what we're facing now. If you look at the, you know, the national polls, for instance, the national popular vote, I think that Donald Trump is, he's going to win the national popular vote, but not by three or four points.
Margie Omero [00:15:03]:
Right.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:15:03]:
And so does Echelon's final national poll that showed Harris up by I think one or two people will go, oh, well that's a Ms. Yeah. I mean in an ideal world I would have rather had it exactly perfect. But to me that was not a poll saying, oh, Harris is definitely going to win. I mean the range of possible outcomes around that is a Trump somewhat narrow win in the electoral or, pardon me, the popular vote to it could be a Harris blowout. And it was also possible to construct the case for why the polls would miss in either direction. The poll miss in the we have undercounted Trump voters direction like that is such well trod territory that I almost feel like people assumed, oh, there's been an overcorrection. It's kind of like what happened in the midterms where the polls did not show red wave.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:15:57]:
And yet that was like, oh well, there's probably still going to be a red wave because they're undercounting Trump votes. Like there's the mental adjustment people make to the polls. They then hold the polls accountable for like if their adjustment was wrong, which feels, feels wrong to me. But that is not to say that all of the polls were right. And so I think we need to talk about Iowa.
Margie Omero [00:16:24]:
Yeah, I mean this was something there were, there might have been a third poll, but there was a poll in Kansas that showed it very close for Trump, but still very, very close. And then there was the Iowa poll from Ann Seltzer who we had had on the show and she has been dubbed the Oracle of Iowa. And she had an interesting approach to waiting that she talked about a lot. And people have gotten so sophisticated over the years like that they not, I mean occasionally people fight over what an oversample is, but for the most part people now are thinking about like what does it mean to wait by recall like whether or not you're awaiting people who based on how they said they voted in the 2020 election. Are you waiting then are you using it as another measure? Are you looking at things like which we do and that's in the navigator stuff that we release. Look at like what percent look at the vote based on people who say that their politics is very important to their personal identity, that that's something that can help you decide what the composition of your electorate should be. Is it skewed too engaged, or are you getting enough people who are, like, less engaged in politics, which can make a difference, all those kinds of things. And Seltzer doesn't really use those measures.
Margie Omero [00:17:41]:
She just looks at, like, the demographics. And she explained that, I think on Morning Joe and some other places like this is her clean. She, quote, unquote, called it her clean approach to, like, not putting her own assumptions of what the electorate should look like, just trusting how the data comes in. And that is, you can make a very strong case for it as an approach and some consistency to it. In the end, it wasn't correct this time, and it did cause a lot of Democrats to get pretty excited. You know, in the final week, I had a lot of people ask me about that. I was like, I don't. I'm like, I understand what she's trying to do.
Margie Omero [00:18:16]:
I hope she's right. You know, it doesn't. It seems beyond. It's like, if that would be right, it would mean that everybody else has. You know, many other people have had it wrong, and you would have a very, very large Democratic overperformance all over the country if that poll was right.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:18:33]:
Yeah, that was my take initially. Was. And I tweeted this out, and it's like the first time that I've had a tweet go maybe what you would call close to viral. I was very proud of it. If one was going to go viral, I was glad this was it. Margie, I take it you've never watched the show Battlestar Galactica?
Margie Omero [00:18:50]:
I think I might have a long time ago.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:18:53]:
Okay, so to briefly explain the premise of Battlestar Galactica, it is that the human race is at war with these robot aliens that we created. They turned on us. Now we're at war with them, and it's like, a couple decades removed from our last big war with them. And we are about to, as a society, retire. Like the last of the old battleships. And the old battleship doesn't have any of the new technology on it. It's disconnected from the network. And so when the Cylons come back and attack, it's the only ship that survives because all the other ships have, like, the new fancy technology, and the Cylons just immediately can down them.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:19:35]:
But like the Battlestar Galactica, with its, you know, not connected to the network, is the ship that survives. And it's like the last remaining bastion of humanity out in space.
Margie Omero [00:19:45]:
I see. So I see where this is going.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:19:46]:
If Ann Seltzer is right, she's the Battlestar Galactica that, like, the Cylons come, they take down all of us who are out here waiting on probabilistic model, recalled vote, blah, blah, blah, we're all the ones that are gonna get wiped out. And her, with her waiting on gender, age, and congressional district, will be the last man standing. But it was not to be. The Cylons came for the Battlestar Galactica instead. And for me, I don't like trashing somebody else in the field. We love Ann Selzer. She's been on the show. I think she's a genuine professional.
Margie Omero [00:20:22]:
Yep.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:20:23]:
But for me, when I looked at that poll, I was immediately like, there's no way. And for me, it wasn't even the really strong performance with senior women, because, Margie, you and I have seen that in our own data. And I suspect that when all is said and done and the exit polls are sifted through that Harris will actually do reasonably well among senior women. It was that the poll showed Harris tied with Trump among senior men. And that just was not a thing I had ever seen in any other survey ever, anywhere in this dimension. And so I just thought, like, you are asking me to believe something really unbelievable here. And the other thing I remembered, and Margie, I had texted you about this a few weeks earlier. I had gotten a survey back that showed Harris winning senior women not just by 8, 9, 10 points, but by, like, some cavernous margin.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:21:23]:
And I was like, margie, are you seeing stuff like this? And then I realized we actually had. We had not done an internal adjustment on, like, waiting by education.
Margie Omero [00:21:32]:
Right.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:21:32]:
And once you do that, boom, it, like, totally fixed it. And suddenly the number looked completely plausible and very much like we ultimately saw.
Margie Omero [00:21:41]:
Right. Because college educated women are, like, the most Democrat, one of the most Democratic groups.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:21:46]:
If you have a survey sample with an enormous number of grandmas with, like, the tote bag that they got from donating to NPR who are, like, on their way to the organic grocery store or whatever, hang out.
Margie Omero [00:22:00]:
No, what I do in my own time, okay? It's my.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:22:04]:
They're great. They're lovely. There's too many of them in survey samples. There's too many of. Stop taking polls.
Margie Omero [00:22:10]:
Oh, yeah.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:22:13]:
And so that, to me was like, as soon as I. I was like, oh, this is what happens when you don't wait on education. This is what happens. And then, you know, Nate Silver, I think, wrote that the whole Idea of waiting on past vote is also controversial, but wound up being somewhat vindicated in this election that it was like an experimental cure for the disease of. There's. We don't know why, but we're missing Trump voters. And there's a real risk to it because if you wait on recalled vote, a, people aren't always good at remembering who they voted for. And two, your electorate could look different.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:22:51]:
Like, there's no guarantee that you're gonna have the same number of Trump voters and the same number of Biden voters from 2020 turn out this time around. But it is an imperfect way to try to avoid things like Harris winning Iowa by a bunch of points in your poll. And so it, it narrows the potential range of outcomes your poll can show, which is why you had all of these complaints about poll herding there at the end too. Like, oh, all these polls come out look the same. Well, it's because we're all waiting on this one thing that's like identical across all of our polls. So that's probably why. But it wound up being really necessary this time around because if you didn't do it, you were missing all those unlikely voters who broke for Trump.
Margie Omero [00:23:32]:
Right, Right. So people who, you know, vote less frequently. Right. Or less engaged, less likely to participate in surveys, newer voters, younger, all these groups that are harder to get in your surveys. And if they're breaking to Trump and they're breaking late, it can cause some of the error. And so asking people how they voted or asking people how important politics is to their identity or all those other measures, looking at people who, you know, there's a record of whether or not they voted in past elections, like, keeping all those things into account. Enthusiasm and motivation is another tool that we use to make sure that we're, you know, being able to measure Democrats and Republicans on that, but also make sure our sample's not. Everybody's not 100% motivated to vote.
Margie Omero [00:24:15]:
All those things are tools to make sure we're not just reaching the most motivated voters. And they can be very different in a midterm electorate versus a presidential electorate as well.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:24:27]:
Well, let's talk a little bit then about if we are giving the polls as a whole, like a B ish kind of grade. It's also the case that not every poll was the same. And we've talked about the Ann Selzer thing, but I do think there was also. I kept getting a lot of. I kept hearing a lot about, oh, there's all of these fake Republican pollsters flooding the Zone with polls. And they're trying to use this to skew the 5 or not the 538 averages, the real Clear Politics averages I had. At one point, I cited the Real Clear Politics average in a piece that I wrote purely because I needed to compare it with polling averages from 2008. And, like, spoiler alert, 538 didn't exist back then.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:25:16]:
So for apples to apples, I used Real Clear Politics and man the number of angry. Almost always men, political science professors who are like, how dare you have some intellectual integrity. How dare you use the Real Clear Politics averages, which yet again, have proven to be, like, kind of the more accurate. I just. It, to me is. It is fascinating to me how upset people get about, oh, all these fake Republican polls were flooding the zone when, like, a company like Atlas intel, who I know nothing about, like, they did really well. And I just think we have to be okay with the idea that, like, there are gonna be people out there doing polls who we've never heard of who may not show up to apor. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they're wrong.
Margie Omero [00:26:01]:
I mean, I guess this is. Maybe this is a ridiculous thing to say as a pollster on a show called the Pollsters when we're talking about polls. But, like, I mean, I don't understand why people, like, get mad enough to send you a nasty gram about this. Like, it just seems ridiculous if you, you know, if you are working in this industry, then you have access to your own work. Just, like, keep doing whatever your job is, right? If you are on the sidelines, worked up into a frenzy over the election for whatever reason, go out and do something else. Like, just. I don't know, it just felt like a ridiculous waste of time for people to be mad at other strangers over polls rather than actually doing something. And I know you can argue, like, what is the role of field and knocking doors? And I think those are, you know, those are conversations people can have in good faith.
Margie Omero [00:26:51]:
But as far as, like, what you should be doing going back to the expectations piece and what you should be doing before an election where you feel uneasy or after election when you still feel uneasy, like, there are things you can and should do that are not, like, just scrolling and getting angry about polls. Like, I went and knocked on doors in three states, and I don't know if I, you know, changed the outcome of any votes in those three states, but it definitely, like, felt like, okay, this is something we can all have a. Have an impact on when most of the polling is done to feel like, you know, we're doing everything we can. And I brought neighbors, we carpooled, we did a whole, you know, I flew to other places. Like, we had a real, you know, I put a lot of work into going to a couple different places because I wanted to feel like I was doing something other than just biting my nails about it. And other folks who feel now mad, rather than talking to their friends or to strangers on the Internet about how they feel about the poll should find other things that they should do. Get involved in their community, talk to their family, reach out to friends, find some other outlet besides. Why did you use this thing? Why did you weigh by this? Why did you use this polling average? Feels like to me, again, I know this is maybe the wrong audience, a colossal waste of time.
Margie Omero [00:28:08]:
Sorry.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:28:09]:
I just feel like the total allergy to the idea of like, how dare you use this poll? That is not my poll or a poll from. It's just, it's silly to me. Different people are trying different things out there. Methodologically, that's. But you know what some of these companies that people say are, these are Republican polls just trying to flood the zone. Like, look, I still think that if I was running a polling company, oh, and I am Rasmussen's, the way they conduct themselves publicly is not exactly how I would handle it. But at the same time, there were a lot of polls out there. New York Times, Sienna, we love Nate Cohn, he's great.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:28:54]:
A Harris Plus 2 poll in Wisconsin is ultimately not gonna be a million miles off the mark. But the idea that, like, we can't have any of these outsiders coming in and doing polling, it is creating impurity in our precious averages, I just think is silly. Like, people like Nate Silver, people like they, they've created ways to address this anyways. And I, to me, that to me just seemed like the silliest way of people trying to ignore what the data was saying, which was that Donald Trump has a very legitimate chance of winning this election. And it does not make you some like right wing conspiracy theorist to go out and say this, but in 22.
Margie Omero [00:29:35]:
There were some scammy Senate polls out there, to be fair. Like, there were definitely some like, you know, fake red wave polls out there for sure. I do think, like people when they see a poll that they disagree with, try to like, impute, including Anne Seltzer. But also every other outlet, like, oh, it must be such and such, like, it's. There's some nefarious. I mean, occasionally there has been a Nefarious motive most of the time there is not. Have they made a mistake sometimes? Maybe they're just. They have a different approach.
Margie Omero [00:30:03]:
The goal is to look at them collectively rather than to assume everybody is, you know, everybody is a bad actor.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:30:09]:
Yes. So I in general feel like the polls were okay this time around. You shouldn't have been terribly surprised by the result. And in the end, in a lot of the blue wall states, the result is going to be within, you know, a point or two. And so all of these polls that people were complaining about. Here comes another Wisconsin poll showing at 48.
Margie Omero [00:30:31]:
48.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:30:31]:
Guess what? Those polls were pretty darn right. Everybody was, you know, I felt like there was just this. There's too many of these fake Republican polls and everybody's hurting. And there was so much criticism of the industry. And now in the end, we can step back and say, folks, we actually did an okay job. And credit goes to the man in the arena because a lot of those political science professors who get real spun up about real clear are not putting their names on the line with, like, I think that Wisconsin is going to be tied. Like, so anyhow, kudos to anybody who put their name out there.
Margie Omero [00:31:05]:
Well, I don't think that anybody's going to say, sorry, pollsters, we thought you were going to screw it all up. Turns out you did a perfectly decent job. Way to go. I would not expect that to happen anytime soon. I was listening to, like, a kids news program with my son. Like, it was maybe three days out from the, you know, on the other side of the election afterwards, and it was like pouring rain. So I didn't want to, like, mess with everything. I'm like, I guess we're going to listen to whatever this episode is.
Margie Omero [00:31:31]:
And it's just this, like, election coverage for kids about how the polls were all wrong. Like, there's literally nothing I want to listen to less through, like, a torrential downpour than this. I'm like, is there some, like, thing I can shout out? Like, some Siri thing I can shout out that will, like, end this and put me all out of our misery? Because this is horrible. So I don't expect, I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:31:57]:
Well, let's unpack for a little bit what happened in the election, Unless you want to talk a little bit about, like, forecasters, Betting markets. I get asked about the betting markets all the time. No, people now think with an end size of like, one or two, they're like, ah, they're, they are. They predict everything. And I still think judgment's out on that. I do think that there are creative ways that we can ask questions to better understand if the polls are going to miss in what direction they might miss. I don't doubt that, but. And you know what? For the man who made.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:32:30]:
Was it $50 million in France betting on Donald Trump? Okay, I hope you enjoy your money. But Margie, it does not seem like you are a big fan of this.
Margie Omero [00:32:39]:
I'm not interested. It just feels like to me, like, this is very serious. Like, we're having fun. This is the pollsters, we're keeping it light, but this is very serious. Like, Donald Trump is a massive threat, not just to America, but to the world. And to like, treat politics as a game, like a broey betting game, when there's serious. When there's like really serious stuff at stake. To me, just, I don't like it.
Margie Omero [00:33:04]:
Like, I don't like it.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:33:05]:
I my not a defense of it because I am skeptical that it is as perfect and oracle as people are holding it up to be. Again, because our end size here is pretty small of like, numbers of times the betting market has gotten it quote, unquote, right. But what I think could be valuable is if. I think betting markets in general can be valuable if they are ways for us to gauge information that is, I don't wanna say not public. That's not what I. But like, if there's a way to measure things that are not otherwise being measured with the polls and to incorporate them in some meaningful way, I am open to the idea that there are. There's a potential value there if it is accurately integrating other outside sources of information that are not just the polls in a way that is sensible, in the way that many of the forecasters say we are polls plus. We are polls plus economic fundamentals.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:34:03]:
They are polls plus whatever the betting markets could be. Polls plus. I think Harris's ground game is really good. Like, I do think that there could be value there, but I don't think we can just assume after like one or two elections that kind of got them, quote, unquote, right, that it's always going to be that way.
Margie Omero [00:34:20]:
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's no different from like, what handicappers do and what, you know, what other folks do where they take into account a variety of things, polls just being one of them, using, like a qualitative, you know, methodology. I think what I object to is just the gamification of something that has very serious consequences. I mean, that's just my view toward it. Maybe that's like not very modern of me, but I just feel like ultimately, you know, this is important because lives are at stake.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:34:46]:
Well, let's talk about what happened because Donald Trump has now been reelected and was elected with a bigger, bigger number of votes than he has gotten before, and he won in a more decisive way than he did in 2016. He feels like he has a mandate. He is coming back to Washington with a House that will be Republican, though, with a very small margin, and a Senate that will have a reasonable margin. Margie, what is the operating theory right now on the Democratic side in the what went wrong conversations?
Margie Omero [00:35:25]:
Well, I guess judging by social media and conversations and tv, there are a lot of different operating theories. I think a lot of them are wrong. I think a lot of people are looking into whatever their pet issue is or something they thought they observed or what they saw a random person say, rather than looking at everything out there on the ground, like what campaigns were spending their money talking about on television or what people said was important to them. I think people who say the problem of this election is too many candidates talking about using the word Latinx is something that I saw made me mad about for about 10 days since that happened, because that's not something any candidate said. Or even people who say, I can't believe Kamala Harris didn't talk about the economy when it turns out she actually did talk a lot about the economy. There was an analysis of the advertising from both sides. It was in the New York Times, and they talked about all the different things that they were spending their money communicating on television in battleground states, which is really how you need to evaluate these things. And you saw that she was talking a lot more about the economy than Trump was or a podcast.
Margie Omero [00:36:39]:
And I'd be curious as to what you thought, cuz you asked about this a lot in your PUCK survey or like if she had done experiments podcast or why podcast or the role of celebrities was something that, you know, people have talked about. I don't think any of those things really were what really drove what happened here and drove the result. I think the basic core piece of what we saw is people were, you know, felt economic pressure. They felt, you know, concerned about the economy and disapproved of what they saw as Biden's record on the economy. Swing voters in particular felt that way and folks who, you know, were considering and going back and forth between, between the two candidates and not that they didn't see some advantages for Harris on the economy. And we talked. We saw this too in our AARP work, Kristen, but we've seen it in other places too, that when you kind of niche down in what you're asking about the economy, like Harris gets a larger advantage than if you have it, just who do you trust more on the economy, more big picture than Trump has the advantage. But if you have about like helping you or the cost of what you have to pay or health care costs or something more specific.
Margie Omero [00:37:41]:
Specific. Harris often has more of an advantage or for the middle class, etc. So it wasn't that there weren't opportunities there. But ultimately people saw Trump as, you know, having the advantage on some personality traits, the ability to change what they feel as a country moving in the wrong direction and change from what they saw as Biden's record on the economy, which you can argue that it's not aligned with his actual record on the economy, that's still where voters were. And I think that's just the simplest, clearest big picture driver behind what happened. And then things beyond that, for example, immigration, border security, which is just obviously a very piece of a very clear and crisp way that Trump is defined, that what folks on the left who did talk about immigration did talk about what Trump did to sink the border bill ultimately doesn't resonate. It didn't resonate as much as what Trump was able to communicate on the border. So I think the main piece was the economy.
Margie Omero [00:38:39]:
Everything else kind of comes after that. These pet theories that people like to kind of float around for fun are, I think, distracting. And I think people should stop doing them. Like this just does not seem like it's helpful to us as a party. It doesn't even seem like it doesn't have the benefit of being true either.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:38:55]:
Yeah, I mean, I think that there is an argument to be made that says incumbent governments in countries all around the world, left and right, have been biting the dust because people are mad. They're mad about inflation, which has been a global phenomenon. They are feeling frustrated with the way the world has or has not emerged from the COVID pandemic and everything related to it. And that as a result of this overall malaise, they are just backlashing against whoever is in charge. And in the US that happened to be Democrats. And I think there is some credence to it. But then, you know, people will say, well, does that mean that there was no way Democrats were ever going to win this election? And I said, I don't think that's actually true. I mean, I think that it's fair to say that if America wanted a change from the moment Joe Biden stepped out of the race, suddenly who the change candidate is was a bit of an open question for a little bit and was one that I think Democrats could have answered in a more satisfying fashion to not have been punished in the way that these incumbent parties are being punished everywhere.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:40:12]:
And I think that it led to people thinking back to Donald Trump's presidency and almost having Byers remorse for not having voted for him four years earlier, that because of their dissatisfaction with the president, they were able to imagine what would the last four years have been like if we hadn't thrown Donald Trump out of office. And in their minds, that image was more positive. And we asked people in our poll right before the election, did you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump handled his job as president? And in that poll, we found 50% of Americans said they approved of the job Donald Trump had done as president. Now, when we had asked that question at the actual end of his term four years earlier, it was not 50% job approval. I don't know that Donald Trump ever had 50% job approval. When we asked his job approval on January 20th on the, you know, his inauguration or, pardon me, Biden's Inauguration Day, this was like two weeks after January 6th, we asked voters, how do you feel about the way Donald Trump has handled his job at the end of his term? And it was like only 29% approval. And so this like, it is not as though voters loved Donald Trump when they left office, but with the four years that we have had, they are now looking back and going, you know, maybe it wasn't that bad. And that's why I think you see so many voters, especially the ones that are, you know, maybe a little more disconnected, as you all found in your navigator polling, folks that are just less focused on following political news daily, et cetera.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:41:52]:
For them, the idea of like, well, the last four years haven't been so great. So maybe we can just, maybe we get a mulligan, let's try the Trump thing again. Did seem to be pretty powerful and overrode all of the other concerns about Trump's legal entanglements and his the things that he says and does. I mean, I went back and I listened to our episode from eight years ago, and it's just so interesting to me how similar the discussion about Donald Trump is today as it was back then, about like, well, voters, you know, they know that he is X, Y and Z bad thing. But like, we just we reran it all again. It all just got rerun once again. The difference this time being that Donald Trump actually did really well with some demographic groups where that was not necessarily expected. And so I want to talk a little bit about that because the other thing that I think is so interesting about this result is it is not just the case that it's like, well, Donald Trump won by running up the numbers in rural areas or doing really great with non college educated white voters.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:42:58]:
I mean, if you look at urban counties, Donald Trump does really well in cities. If you look in counties that have very large Latino populations, he does very well in those counties. If you look in counties that have lots of young people, Donald Trump does really well in those counties. I was joking to a friend that if you had gone back in time to 10 years ago when I was putting the finishing touches on the manuscript for the selfie vote, this book about how Republicans were doomed because we were losing millennials forever, and you would say, Kristen, in 10 years, Republicans are still not going to be doing great with millennials, but they're going to do amazingly with Gen Z. There's going to be a millennial vice president. Your friend Elise is going to be UN Ambassador, Marco Rubio is going to be Secretary of State. I'd have been like, am I the president? Like, what has happened? It's like, well, no, funny story actually. You won't believe who is.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:43:55]:
But I do think this election, to me, the surprising thing was not necessarily that Donald Trump won, but that you can't actually just point to any single demographic group that did it. It was just this swing to the right amongst a lot of groups.
Margie Omero [00:44:12]:
Right. And I think, you know, I think it's important to think, and I'm curious to your thoughts, is this, did Trump do well? Whether it's with across the board or with certain groups, did he do well because of all these crazy things that he says and does or despite, you know, I would argue, I mean, there are some, of course, that are because. But I would argue that his win comes from increasing share of those who support him, despite folks who were reluctant, the folks who are in focus groups who say, you know, I wish Trump wouldn't do X, but I do think that Y was true while he was president. The folks you're talking about, I said, well, you know, I have more money in my pocket when he, I had more money in my retirement account when he was president than I do now. Or the cost of gas was lower or whatever, you know, whatever their issue was or however they recounted it not because they say, I'm so glad that somebody is finally going to surround himself with sex pests in his cabinet. Thank God somebody's gonna finally do that. That's not what I hear people say. Now.
Margie Omero [00:45:20]:
I talk to persuadable voters. I talk less often in focus groups to the hardcore. Right. Because those are the folks that are up for grabs. But ultimately that when you have an election like this, this is not because of the because folks, but because of the despite folks.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:45:37]:
I do think that there are certain things that Donald Trump has done since his win that people are saying, oh, my gosh, this is controversial, or this is crazy, that I actually think do make a lot of sense given the coalition that he put together to win the Matt Gaetz nomination. Not so much. But just for listeners, we are recording this mere hours after that situation resolved itself for the moment. And he, Matt Gaetz has removed himself from contention for Attorney general. But you have things like Tulsi Gabbard, for instance, where I hear a lot of hand wringing about that, even from folks on the Republican side who are a little more hawkish, and they're like, I can't believe this, what's going on? But I think there are pieces of the message that Donald Trump ran on and the ways in which he has changed the Republican Party that if you joined the Republican Party in, I don't know, 2002 because you liked cutting taxes and killing terrorists, I don't know who could I possibly be talking about? But if you're one of those people, you're probably looking at this party and you're like, well, this is a little different. But I also cannot deny the fact that part of the reason why I think Donald Trump was able to do better with, say, younger voters was by embracing a little bit more of, like, an isolationist type foreign policy. We heard this in some of our New York Times focus groups with voters in Michigan that from their perspective, they don't want US Tax dollars going to countries overseas to fight their wars. They want it staying at home.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:47:16]:
And like, these were not. These were not like Turning Point USA young people either, Right? Like, these were just sort of median young Michigan voters who were taking a much more isolationist view of the world. And so does someone like a Tulsi Gabbard, who's very different than Republicans, normal foreign policy person. Like, does that make sense in that context? Yeah, that probably was a piece of why some young voters felt more open to Trump. And so this is to the point you made at the Beginning about, like, you can kind of point to anything and say, oh, well, this is the reason why Democrats lost. They lost because of identity politics. They lost because of Gaza. They lost because of Biden.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:47:54]:
Biden stayed in too long. They lost because Harris wasn't a good candidate or whatever.
Margie Omero [00:47:57]:
Speaking roles at the speaking slots at the convention was one of my other favorites. Favorite hot takes.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:48:04]:
No, that's not it. That's not it. That's not it. But I just think on the one hand, yeah, you could say, oh, well, none of this other stuff matters. But I do think that in addition to the economy being bad, Donald Trump was able to build a bigger coalition by being unconventional in ways that are not just the things that you noted that I know you find repellent, but that did allow him to bring in people who wanted nothing to do with a Republican Party of yesteryear.
Margie Omero [00:48:35]:
Yeah, I don't know if people voted for him because they were excited about his, like, his potential Cabinet picks being, by traditional standards, not up for the job. And, you know, I think that Donald Trump is not thinking about, like, his coalition. He's thinking about rewarding people who have supported him, who've been loyal, and he does not really that concerned over what they'll do in those positions because he's not really that concerned about policy. So, you know, I see it really much more from that rather than some strategic, like, I gotta make sure I have the Tulsi Gabbard Republicans, you know, and, you know, with the RFK Republicans, like, I think he's like, okay, who have I seen on TV that I like that I feel will do whatever I say and not, you know, tell me no and be, you know, a cabinet of yes men and yes women. And we'll see how Republicans in the Senate will rise. Will they rise to the occasion or not? I have some hypotheses and we'll see what happens.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:49:29]:
Well, I also think that it is useful to talk about what could then happen in the midterm, because this is the thing where I have been trying to be very Zen lately about all of this. Any time a Cabinet pick gets named that I have a strong reaction to one way or another, I just try to tell myself that's the story of the boy and the horse, which is, I believe, of like, ancient Eastern philosophy, but also notably from Charlie Wilson's War and or the sign episode of Bluey. But it's where it's the story of there's a young boy who gets a horse and everybody in the town says, oh, that's so wonderful for the young boy. And the Zen master in town says, we'll see. And then the boy falls off the horse and breaks his leg. And everybody in town goes, oh, my gosh, that's so terrible. And the Zen master goes, we'll see. And then a war breaks out, and the little boy, his leg is still broken, and so he can't be shipped off to war with everybody else.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:50:26]:
Everybody goes, oh, that's so wonderful. And so the Zen master says, we'll see. And it's that kind of thing where, like, in the moment you feel like, this is terrible. How can this possibly be happening? And we'll see. There could always be something good that comes out of it, or vice versa. Don't get too excited if your size has just won by a ton, because you don't know what Pandora's box you could be unleashing with that. And I feel like Republicans right now are completely not thinking about, like, a midterm election in 2026 and what overreach could do. I think they're very much in a mindset of, we're in charge.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:50:59]:
Let's just do as much stuff as we want to do. Let's make it as permanent as we possibly can be, even knowing that two year, this might just be a two year run. But do you find that Democrats are, I'm assuming that the mood's not great, but, like, what are people's thoughts and feelings about what a 2026 midterm might look like?
Margie Omero [00:51:18]:
I mean, I think we should expect, because we can see in the polls and we've already, you know, I've already talked about this, like, there isn't a mandate for some of these things that Trump wants to do. I mean, Trump may have won. That doesn't mean that people are gonna be okay with tariffs leading to the cost of everything they buy going up. You know, the abortion, you know, abortion bans, it's not something that people have signed up for. The use of the military to deport millions of people is not something that people are gonna have signed up for. So I think the Democrats that I talk to are trying to, are really focused on keeping strong and continuing to work. Right. Because we have a lot of work to do and make sure that everybody's nice and rested for what's ahead.
Margie Omero [00:52:00]:
And I think that's like, that's the mood that I hear. And because, you know, there's. It's very clear that what Trump wants to do, just like what he did in his first term, is not something that's going to be popular.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:52:11]:
I think the mood on the Republican side right now, as you might imagine, is pretty jubilant, pretty excited, totally different than it was eight years ago where Republicans were like befuddled, slash kind of worried that, oh, no, this means that, like, we've, we bought the ticket, we're taking the ride with this Trump guy for at least four years and who knows how much longer. I really think, like, at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, everybody was pretty unified. Like, it felt religious, tent, revivally. It was coming just in the wake of Donald Trump getting shot in the year at that rally in Pennsylvania. And I think it's carried through. I mean, I feel like the Trump resistant Republican is just not as much of a thing anymore. Like, those folks have fled the party already. They're gone.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:53:03]:
They're going to Kamala Harris rallies with Liz Cheney. But I think that for all those folks that left, what Republicans have now come to realize is that Donald Trump, perhaps only Donald Trump and his whole thing, are able to bring in voters who would just absolutely not have shown up for a Mitt Romney or a Jeb Bush. People who candidly have been my flavor of Republican all along. And that's like, that's kind of a tough pill to swallow, but it is the reality that that is. And so I think for me, that my big thing that Republicans may be missing is, I don't know how much, you know, you asked was this win about people supporting Trump or was it despite Trump? And what I wonder is, is it because they liked Trump or is it because they liked Republicans?
Margie Omero [00:53:54]:
Right.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:53:54]:
That to me, is still an open question. And I don't think those two things are the same. And that, to me, is why the 2026 midterms already have me nervous for Republicans.
Margie Omero [00:54:07]:
Right? Because Republican candidates who tried to be like Trump, like, didn't do as well as he did in those states. Right. And so what's going to happen in 2026? Are you going to have more of those types of candidates run for office? I mean, certainly that seems likely because that's who still wants to do this typically. Like, I talk to a Republican consultant recently, and he said, you know, the types of people that I like to work with don't want to do this anymore because they don't want to, you know, they don't want to support Trump and neither do I. And, you know, that's, that leaves a ton of candidates sort of of the Mark Robinson type who don't do as well, just simply kind of declaring Yourself, like Trump, like is not an automatic path to success and to doing as. Even if you're in a Republican, you don't do. You still underperform him. So that's, I think, something that we'll sort of see what happens down the road.
Margie Omero [00:55:01]:
By the way, the Liz Cheney is another take I don't like. Like, the reason Democrats didn't do well is because Liz Cheney was, you know, did some events with Kamala Harris. That's another that also gets thrown on the reject pile by me.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:55:16]:
But I, so let me, I will not say that that was like the reason anybody lost, but I do think that in the closing days of the campaign, one thing that I was constantly getting asked about on TV was this ad that I forget which super PAC had run it, but it was this notion that there were like tons of women out there who were secretly like, and this ad had a woman who walks in, she's got like a rhinestone Republican elephant hat, and she walks in with her husband. But then she like winks at the woman. And I was like, margie, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. It was the most cringe worthy thing I had ever seen. I know women who have the rhinestone Republican hat, they're not secretly wanting to vote for Kamala Harris. If you have that hat, you like Donald Trump like, but.
Margie Omero [00:56:07]:
And I retired to Boca and there are lots of Democratic rhinestone hat wearing ladies who are, who voted for Kamala Harris. But that's a different kind of race.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:56:16]:
No, but it was like a republic. It was an elephant. The rhinestones were in the shape of an elephant, like something you'd wear to the rnc. And that's why I was just, I watched the ad and I was just like, no. And I said like, I still feel like the more likely group of people that exists are not the woman who secretly is gonna vote for Harris, but is telling her MAGA husband she's voting for Trump, but instead it's the woman whose friends are all going phone banking for Kamala Harris. But she's like, ah, kind of thought Trump was better on the economy, or I think RFK is kind of right about chemicals and foods. And she's like, go have fun phone banking. I'm busy next weekend.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:56:56]:
I've got to wash my hair. And she votes for Trump. And like, I just think there's more of the latter. And Trump won. White suburban women. Like, to me, that was one of those like pre election pundit things that I was just like, I don't know what data Are Democrats seeing that they think this is like a real thing? Because I don't see it.
Margie Omero [00:57:16]:
So I do. I mean, I think a couple things I'm not gonna. Here's what I think about that. One is when people talk about some of these things that become kind of news, how much television was behind, how many points were behind that?
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:57:29]:
Oh, probably nothing. It was probably just viral on the Internet.
Margie Omero [00:57:32]:
Right. So it became a thing on television and on. Did that actually move voters enough voters who were persuadable ever see it to have a reaction and say, now I feel blah, blah, blah about Harris or Trump. And I think the answer to that is probably no to even see it one way or the other. Two, I would say, and this is true for all these different things that people are talking about podcasts and going on this show or talking to this person or this ad or what have you, this celebrity, celebrities, for every different type of person is, you know, with a race that people felt, you know, looking at all the polls that weren't sure which way it was going to go, you're going to throw everything you got at it. And some people are going to respond to Liz Cheney, some people are going to respond to Taylor Swift, some people are going to respond to Joe Rogan, what have you. And, you know, maybe something speaks to you from this list of different people or venues or platforms. And I think that ad was part of, like a throw everything at the wall, leave no stone unturned approach, rather than like, we have it.
Margie Omero [00:58:32]:
This is the big answer. It's the secret shy, you know, the shy Harris voter. I'm curious because in your survey for Puck, you asked this question, which I liked, because people often want to ask this question of like, do most of your friends support Trump? Do most of your friends feel X, Y and Z and your friends and family? And I never really a fan of that question because friends and family is like just this big blob of all kinds of people. Like, who knows what people are thinking of when they answer the friends and family. Like, I don't feel that that's a proxy for how you feel. Like, I just think there's just too much unknown in that. But you asked, are you shy?
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:59:09]:
Right?
Margie Omero [00:59:09]:
Isn't that the question? Are you shy about talking about with others how you feel in the presidential race? Right. Isn't that the question you asked? I'm looking for it right now.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:59:16]:
Yeah. So we asked a couple of questions along these lines. I mean, one we did ask was like, did you feel pressure to vote in A certain way from. And we disaggregate. We didn't just say friends and family. We said from your friends, from your family, from your spouse. Because we wanted to really tease out to what extent are people like, oh, yeah, my spouse. And actually, I think spouse was like the lowest on that list.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [00:59:48]:
Yeah. It said, I felt like they were pressuring me too much. Yes, they tried to influence me, but I did not feel like they were pressuring me too much or no, they were not trying to influence me. And friends. It was like 18% said, oh, they're trying. Yes, they were trying to influence me, and it felt like they were pressuring me too much. And then another 29% said, yeah, they were trying to influence me, but it didn't feel like it was too much. And then almost half said, like, no, you know, but then for spouse, like, spouse, and my religious community and neighbors, like, that was.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:00:15]:
Those were the highest of, no, they are not trying to pressure. I mean, more people seem to indicate that they were getting pressured by family generally. But when you specifically asked about a spouse, the no answer was like a majority. Very. And very few said that they felt like they were getting pressured and it was too much. And we also asked, how much pressure or influence did you feel from people around you to vote in a certain way during the recent presidential election? And only 18% said they felt like a great deal of pressure or some pressure to vote a certain way. We also asked. Some people are reluctant to tell their friends and neighbors which presidential candidate they voted for.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:00:54]:
While this is not a problem for other people, were you reluctant to tell your friends and neighbors who you were voting for? And again, most people did not fall into that camp, right? 75%, but 21% did. And that's enough.
Margie Omero [01:01:07]:
That's a huge. I mean, if you look at a race like that, I mean, obviously 21%, you say, well, it's not that many, but it's actually a lot. If you can change any half of those people, that makes a huge difference.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:01:18]:
Yeah. And when we look at that result broken out by, who'd you vote for? The shy number? I mean, it's like a little bit higher for Trump, but only a little bit. It's not hugely different. And so to me, that's. I just think the idea that, like, oh, there was this massive shy group, right? Especially to me, the idea that there was a massive shy Harris voter, I just. It never seemed to pop up in data for me. I never for found it super credible. And I was like, there's Gotta be.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:01:49]:
Somebody on the Democratic side must have done a poll or a focus group, and they found that, like, this was the thing. Cause I keep getting asked about it all the time, and, like, I'm not seeing it.
Margie Omero [01:01:59]:
Yeah, I mean, I think there is. Well, I mean, the ad aside, just the concept of, like, are there women or folks who feel like I'm in an area where. Or I'm around people who are mostly one way and do I feel something different, or can I, you know, be encouraged to express my point of view and with other people who feel sort of similarly? And do we come to a different conclusion than if I go with the flow with the folks I, you know, in the conversation that I'm usually a part of? And I think there's something to that. I think it is a little bit different than sort of expecting everybody to, you know, wink at each other in the polling booth. But. So I do understand what the ad was trying to do, but I can also understand why it seemed like, you know, it was trying to say that, you know, all women are in these, you know, relationships where they're scared to say how they feel to their husbands. I could see how that. I could see how that lands.
Margie Omero [01:02:52]:
I can understand it.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:02:53]:
I'm just shaking my head at Margie. Like, I'm, like, reliving the ad to myself, like, oh, my God.
Margie Omero [01:02:58]:
But it did lead. It did lead. I mean, the fact that it provoked people into saying, like, pretty crazy sexist things, I mean, is also, I think, important and revelatory. And you had people saying on major networks, like, you know, this is like a, you know, an affair or cheating. If my wife didn't vote the same way I did. I mean, like, that's a sign that, like, okay, well, maybe. Maybe there is something to this conversation.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:03:24]:
I am just still fascinated to know the, like, the thought process, the focus group testing, whatever led to that ad. I'm here for, like, the oral history of when that gets written. Well, so the last but not least, I mean, I think, you know, we've now unpacked what happened in the last election, and now maybe we look ahead. So we at Echelon Insights are a bunch of crazy people. And we asked a 20, 28 primary ballot question. You're welcome, world. On the Democratic side, Kamala Harris comes in first place among the Democrats in our poll. She.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:04:02]:
If there was a Democratic primary held today, she would win with 41%. Everybody else is kind of hovering there in the single digits. Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg. We tested Everyone, they're all in small single digits. The Republican side also has a pretty dominant figure. JD Vance coming in at 37%. The second tier is Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley as well as Ron DeSantis. But DeSantis look comes in at 8%, which is a pretty big fall from where he was just, you know, a year ago when we were having these conversations in the lead up to the Iowa caucuses.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:04:40]:
Margie, what do you think? Is Kamala Harris going to be the Democrats nominee in four years?
Margie Omero [01:04:44]:
I think it's all too early to tell. I mean, I. It's fun to look at these things, but I think fun is such a.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:04:50]:
Special word to use.
Margie Omero [01:04:52]:
We should stay focused on them.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:04:53]:
You can say we're a bunch of sickos. That's.
Margie Omero [01:04:55]:
I would not. I am not interested. How about this? I am not interested in a Democratic primary ballot right now.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:05:03]:
Okay, that's fair. I will merely say on the Republican side that I find that to be. I understand that it is way too early. And I think whether the Trump administration is ultimately seen as a success or failure will matter if we get to the end of four years. And this is viewed in kind of the way that Republicans were feeling about the George W. Bush administration at the end of his second term with the aftermath of Katrina and Iraq and the financial crisis and all of it, and just saying, oh, we need to turn the page. If that is how this Trump presidency ends, then this will be an open conversation. But I think if the Trump presidency goes, is even like replacement level Republican administration or is reasonably okay, I think J.D.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:05:49]:
vance is absolutely in the front runner seat for this if he wants it. Do not underestimate the extent to which Republicans love him. Loved his debate performances against walls. Loved his combative interviews on news. I think that he is someone who, for all that, he said a lot of things that got a lot of people really upset and has some controversial positions that he had taken in the past, I think that Republicans at this point are very all in for him and it would be very surprising.
Margie Omero [01:06:21]:
He's a shitposter who supports an abortion ban, but, you know, other than that, he's great.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:06:26]:
Oh, Margie, I'll see you back here in four years.
Margie Omero [01:06:30]:
Sorry. Like, I mean, okay, but I mean, I don't know. It'll be hard for DeSantis to like, get another ticket back. I think that seems probably likely. That's, you know, that may be where he is now, but for all these things, it's also like hard ID and. And that's what the function of these things are.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:06:48]:
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, I have so enjoyed breaking down this wild election season with you. Four years is maybe too long. Maybe we should do this a little more often than once every four years.
Margie Omero [01:07:01]:
I know, I know. It was nice. I mean, we had, I mean, we've been talking for over an hour and we have stuff that we didn't even get to.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:07:06]:
Oh, there's tons of stuff in this outline that we have. Not even.
Margie Omero [01:07:09]:
What about Taylor Swift? I had so much to say about Taylor Swift, you know.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:07:12]:
So you went to the, you went to the concert?
Margie Omero [01:07:14]:
I did. I did. I went to the concert. I was like, when I planned it in the summer, I'm like, it's going to be great. Or it's going to be like, really? What? I need to go with my daughter. It was on her 13th birthday, so it's just the two of us. And I kind of felt like, I mean, I still feel too old for a Taylor Swift concert. I'm like, this is not for me.
Margie Omero [01:07:33]:
And then it's just like a sea of Enids, you know, going back to, you know, Wednesday versus Enid, it's just 60,000 Enids, basically, like all just happy and joyful. And it just made me think, you know, we talk about like the. One of the messages from the election is like, why, you know, maybe we don't understand Democrats don't understand guys more like we need to reach out to young guys and get, figure out what mixed guys think. And poor guys, they don't get enough, you know, attention and power and influence. We need to give them more of all those things. And. And then I felt like I was in this trap of feeling like Taylor Swift is ridiculous and fine, but not serious. I'm a serious person.
Margie Omero [01:08:17]:
Maybe we should be understanding how to make this world, this Taylor Swift world, more palatable to more people. Because this is just joyful goodness and kindness and inclusivity and people just being friendly to each other. Even if again, I still felt, you know, it's not quite edgy or seasoned enough for me. But still I, you know, I understood the appeal and certainly I understood the appeal for my 13 year old. So anyway, I was just left with that feeling like, I wish that more people could find these values and try to understand how to make these values, you know, more palatable to everybody than to figure out how to make like, you know, screamy rallies and like elections nihilism more appealing, though more people.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:09:04]:
I don't think screamy rallies and election Denialism are why Donald Trump won. I would. I would argue that that is not necessarily the mandate that he got, that it was on other different set of issues, and whether or not he delivers on those will determine whether J.D. vance is our president in four years. I was waiting. I was like, let's just wait for Margie to respond. Nope, nope, nope. She's not loving that one.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:09:30]:
Okay.
Margie Omero [01:09:31]:
No, it's okay. It's okay.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:09:32]:
It's okay.
Margie Omero [01:09:33]:
Well, you know what?
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:09:34]:
In this podcast, we have a safe space.
Margie Omero [01:09:37]:
Yeah.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:09:37]:
This is a podcast where we get to talk about the stuff we love, which is the polls. And now we pollsters, do we go underground like cicadas, waiting for the next election to roll around? No, we do not. We will still be here. I am still on Twitter. Margie, are you on Twitter or have you evacuated to Blue Sky?
Margie Omero [01:09:56]:
I'm on both. You know, it's so weird because I like blue. People are going crazy over to Blue Sky. I must get, like, I get dozens, dozens of new followers, like, every hour, but no likes to my, like, seven posts. Anyway, that's where. That's what's happening to me. Blue Sky. It's great.
Kristen Soltis Anderson [01:10:14]:
Well, you can find us on the social media platform of your choice. I am not on Blue sky at the moment, but you can still find me on Twitter, where I still post pictures of my dog Wally pretty regularly as my way to try to bring some lightness into the dark. And you can follow Margie and I in our focus groups that we do for the New York Times. We alternate months, and hopefully that'll continue into the new year, as well as all of the fun bipartisan projects that we get to work on. So stay tuned. Even if this podcast will only appear in your feed once in a blue moon, when the spirit moves us, you can still find us plenty of places throughout the year.
Margie Omero [01:10:54]:
Bye. Thanks, Topica.