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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Hey, there. It's Shumita here. This weekend, we're bringing you an episode from our special series all about the midterm elections. It's hosted by my colleague, Gideon Resnick. So, enjoy it and remember, go out and vote.
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Gideon Resnick, Narrating: I'm Gideon Resnick and this is our final special episode all about the 2022 midterm elections. So, we are just days away from Election Day, and already tens of millions of people have cast their ballots. According to the latest polls, Republicans are heavily favored to gain a majority in the House of Representatives, while the Senate is looking more like a toss-up. So, for final thoughts in this home stretch, I sat down with a roundtable of guests who have all been closely following the ins and outs of the campaign. Amy Walter is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the "Cook Political Report."
Amy Walter: Our politics has become much more existential, both sides believing that every election is literally like a matter of life and death. If the other side wins, [CHUCKLES] America as we know it is gonna end.
Errin Haines is an editor-at-large for "The 19th," a journalism organization focused on gender, politics and policy.
Errin Haines: Well, I say this every cycle, but I think it's going to be true this cycle too, that women are the deciders of the election.
And lastly, Mike Madrid, a GOP consultant and one of the hosts of "The Latino Vote" podcast.
Mike Madrid: There is not a single… not a single competitive Senate race where the Hispanic vote isn't going to be a very large factor in the outcome of the race.
I asked each of them what they're watching in these final days. Amy kicked us off.
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Walter: Well, we've had two major theories over the course of this midterm. One was that it would be like the midterms that we've become used to for at least the past, oh, I don't know, 14, 15, 16 years, which is the party that controls Washington, the party that has the House, the Senate, the White House, are at a tremendous disadvantage in that first midterm election. Their party just isn't invested. Their voters aren't quite as interested in showing up and voting. And we'll see a flip of the House, the Senate, or both. The other theory coming into the campaign is that, well, things have changed, right? Our politics is different, especially in the era of Trump. But as we're getting closer here to election day, what seems to be happening is we're going to the former thesis, the one where things look a little bit more sort of traditional, where the focus now, instead of being on issues like abortion or Donald Trump, or the things that really motivate and anger the in-party, get them excited about turning out to vote, are not as front and center as the issues that motivate both partisan Republicans, but also independent Republicans. The economy, frustrations about the way that the Democratic party has handled the issue of inflation, disappointment with President Biden, his approval ratings now pretty much in line with where previous presidents going into those midterm elections I've talked about, in '06 and '10 and '14 and '18, that's where he sits right now. So, the bigger challenge now for Democrats is to prove that they can indeed not just turn out their voters, but get those independent-leaning voters to be focused much more on the issues they wanna be talking about than on the issues that seem to be front and center right now, which is inflation, Biden, the economy.
Resnick: Yeah, and Errin and Mike, I'm curious, do you see the dynamic in that similar way? And if so, what are gonna be some of the most important factors in these final days?
Haines: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I agree with so much of what Amy said. At this point, this really does come down to a turnout game. It is a ground game. We are talking about math. The poll that is gonna count the most is the poll that happens on Election Day. And so I think campaigns and candidates are just so, so focused on making sure not just that they're turning out their base, but that they're turning out those independents, that they're looking for, you know, these [LAUGHS] rare undecided voters who still kind of are… are trying to make up their minds a week out and and are factoring in multiple issues. You know, I think we focus so much, especially in polling, on kind of what the top issue is for voters, but, you know, the single issue voter is pretty rare, and so you've got people that are considering things like the economy alongside threats to democracy, abortion, gun violence, you name it, you know, crime, education. And so I think there are certainly a lot of voters of all stripes, Democrat, Republican, Independent, who say that they are concerned about the direction of the country. They think the country is headed in the wrong direction, but what specifically that means, and to the extent that candidates can really tap into responding to those fears and concerns, I think is also going to help kind of galvanize and mobilize people in these final days.
Resnick: Mike, how about you?
Madrid: The fundamentals of this race, you know, I think historically and… would suggest that this is going to be a moderately good year for the Republican party, largely because the party is out of power. There's enough data at this point, noise as we call it, to show evidence in both directions. Literally this same week, you have headlines in half the major papers in the country saying "Republicans are surging, they're coming back," the other half saying "No, there's a Democratic wave swelling." It really depends on how you read the leaves, the tea leaves. As somebody, again, who… who has to make decisions in the middle of this environment that are gonna affect campaign outcomes, we try to focus on those fundamentals. And those fundamentals really do suggest that we're looking at a probably rather predictable trajectory for a party out of power for the Republicans. I think they will pick up a majority in the House. I think it will be much more modest than most people have been anticipating. I don't think that's a particularly bold prediction. I think that's probably where most folks are at. And I think it'll probably be a very close to parity split in the Senate, with possibly either party picking up one, maybe two seats majority, either direction. So, we are in an era, I think, of sustained high turnout as people are very deeply concerned about the stability and the direction of the country. But even in an environment like that, most of the fundamentals that guide campaign dynamics are still very much in play.
Resnick: There's an interesting theme that you all are mentioning, which is sort of this notion of a vote in an election feeling sort of like an existential moment and a response to keeping the other party from power, in a sense. So Amy, because you initially brought up that idea, I'm… I'm curious, do you think voters are casting their ballots more based on party loyalty or on certain issues at this point?
Walter: Well, this is… [CHUCKLES] It's so funny, we're having these conversations about what we're looking for in these last five days, for me, actually, my favorite day is the days after the election. And I think what we're gonna be doing for the couple of weeks afterwards is answering a lot of these questions, right? Some of it will be through the exit polling, right? People will be asked that very question: "Are you coming and showing up primarily as a vote for or against Joe Biden?" Or for or against the Republican candidate. So, we'll have some answers to that. We'll also get a sense too, when it comes down to the kinds of issues that independent voters said were really moving them. I was with a group that went door-to-door door-knocking in suburban Philadelphia, and we got a little bit of everything from voters. We had one guy who said "We have a lot of women in this house and we're protecting the right to choose." I had another woman open the door who said "Well, all I know is I'm voting against that Nazi." I don't know which one was the Nazi. I'm… So… [LAUGHS] But it was like everybody had a version of why they were going to the polls. But you're right, very little of it was "I'm going to the polls because, man, do I love this person. I think they're awesome." It was here's what I'm fighting against or here's what I'm trying to send a message about.
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It's an old and tired trope at this point, but it does still hold true: close races really do come down to turnout. And as our panelists have told us, that sometimes just means who is more fired up to vote. A recent survey does not hold great signs for Democrats in that regard. In an "NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist Poll" that came out just under a week before Election Day, typically Republican-leaning voting groups indicated that they were more enthusiastic to vote, groups like Trump voters, white Evangelicals, and rural voters. By contrast, typically Democratic-leaning groups, like young voters and voters of color, indicated a lot less excitement. So I asked Mike, who focuses in part on Latino voters, what the polls are telling us about how they feel at the moment.
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Madrid: Most data over a five, ten, fifteen-year trend line would suggest that there is this movement away from the Democratic Party. The question is how much, and most observers of the Latino vote, myself included, would never suggest that this is a competitive environment for Republicans. They're not gonna get 50% of the Latino vote, but they don't need to. And that's what's really important for listeners to take away, is it's not that they need to get half of the vote. If they're making significant incursions, even marginal incursions in some places, you're going to see dramatic, dramatic movements in the representation in the Senate and in the gubernatorial mansions of the… of the country, as well as in the House of Representatives. And for many, many decades now, we've been talking about this sleeping giant and this ethnic demographic that was gonna kind of start impacting races, well, for the first time in my 30-year career of studying this, I'm saying definitively 2022 is going to be that year. There is not a single… not a single competitive Senate race, possibly exception of New Hampshire, I just don't think New Hampshire's that competitive, where the Hispanic vote isn't going to be a very large factor in the outcome of the race, whether it's Florida, whether it's Texas, the standard ones, Arizona, Nevada. But Wisconsin, there are more Latino voters in Wisconsin than there are Black voters now. Pennsylvania, no question that the number of Latino voters will be significantly outsized… outside of the margin of these very competitive races for governor and Senate. North Carolina. Everywhere you go, there's not a state that isn't impacted by the size and the dramatic growth of Latino voters. And so, it's not really… The old way of looking at it, as to whether or not Latinos would stay with the Democrat 75-25, or shifting to 50%-50% between the two parties, is not really the right way to understand it or to look at it, it's to look at a changing American electorate and understand that even if this Hispanic vote becomes more Republican by 2-3% every election cycle, the representation of who is sitting in the halls of power are going to be tectonic. We're gonna have to see how that plays out, not only in the next couple of weeks, but over the next couple of decades.
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Another key demographic group is women. And in that same poll I mentioned earlier, white, college-educated women are among the most enthusiastic to vote.
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Haines: Well, I say this every cycle, but I think it's going to be true this cycle too, that women are the deciders of the election. And I think that's gonna be true this cycle. You certainly had increased voter registration in a place like Pennsylvania. But with women being more than half the population and more than half the electorate and being pretty energized to cast ballots this cycle, it'll be really interesting to see kind of what the numbers are in terms of the gender breakdown coming out of both of those states. And then, frankly, Ohio I think too, where you did see a pretty significant increase in women registering. I think that that may be part of why that race remains so close, and that Senate contest. And so I'd be interested, again, to see what the gender breakdown is in that race as well.
Resnick: I want to start talking about some of the specific races here. Amy, what are some of the ones that you are really paying attention to?
Walter: [SIGHS] Well… [LAUGHS] That's… That's a good question.
Resnick: [CHUCKLES] Big question.
Walter: It is a big question. And… And look, part of the challenge we have is when we look at the Senate races, they get the most attention for good reason, right? These are statewide contests. We're now seeing more money being spent on these Senate races than we've ever seen in history, hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into these contests. We've had control of the Senate, the House and the White House come down to 20,000, 30,000 votes spread across a handful of states, right, in those last few years. It is quite possible that, once again, Georgia is going to be the decider of Senate control. I do think we're gonna spend a lot of time, because Georgia and Arizona are states that are not only having competitive Senate races, governors' races, Secretary of State races, but also we know they're gonna be critical in 2024, that those are the places I think we're gonna be spending an inordinate amount of time analyzing, thinking about, looking at, trying to find trend lines that tell us something about how these states are going to perform in the upcoming elections, not just the current election. But for the House, what's been really interesting to watch over these last few weeks, my colleague David Wasserman has picked this up pretty early on, is the concern Democrats are having in states that you would think they would be the most comfortable, blue states like Oregon or Washington or California or Virginia where there's growing concern that incumbents there, New York, that incumbent… Democratic incumbents there are running behind or underperforming. I mean, the most high profile, and to me the most interesting, is Oregon, a state that hasn't elected a Republican governor for 40 years. And there is a three-way contest right now. There's an independent candidate who was a Democrat but is also getting support from some high profile Republican-leaning doters. Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, is one of her biggest supporters. But it's a place where, you know, because one party's been in charge for so long, the frustration with the status quo gets put onto that one party. And the question in my mind, and this is what's been fascinating as we're watching President Biden's schedule, where he's choosing to go, New York, New Mexico, Maryland, Oregon, going to places that have been traditionally very blue and trying to remind voters… in some ways, I think, trying to nationalize this race instead of allowing it to be localized. If New York and Oregon races are localized, right, what are you the most worried about? Are you frustrated with the status quo? Do you think Democrats have let us down? The answer to that would be "yes". But if the question is, well, do you worry voters… voters who have been voting Democrat for many years, do you worry that if we allow Republicans in power, that it's like a, you know, the camel nose under the tent, and once they get a little bit of power, they're gonna take away all these things that we have come to count on? They're all part of the Trump party, and you must stand against that.
Resnick: Mike and Errin, what races are you specifically paying attention to right now?
Madrid: The race I'm most interested in is actually the Senate race in Nevada, largely because I think… one is it's obviously gonna be one of the closer contests that may also, like Georgia as Amy mentioned, you know, determine the balance of power on the Senate side. But I think most importantly, the Latino vote in Clark County has been a really big focus of, you know, national pundits saying, you know, is this vote gonna show up in the numbers that it needs to for Cortez Masto, the incumbent, the first Latino U.S. Senator, or is Laxalt gonna make an incursion, the Republican candidate? And the answer to that is really going to, I think, define a huge variation in the Latino vote amongst Mexican Americans, which is significant. That will determine whether or not Latinos in Nevada will start to vote more like California Mexican Americans or more like Texas Mexican Americans. And that distinction, it sounds a little bit abstract, but it's really that. The answer to that question is going to really determine, I think, the balance of power not just on the Senate side, but more importantly in the House of Representatives over the course of the next four or five election cycles, right through this census cycle. And then that's something that I'm looking at, again, a little bit esoteric, but I… I think it's gonna be actually extremely predictive of what's going to happen with a lot of the Mexican American vote in most of these contested House seats over the course of the next decade, and that's why I'm watching the Nevada Senate race so closely.
Resnick: Errin, how about you? What do you think?
Haines: Yeah, I think I'd say probably the state that I'm from, Georgia. The Senate race there, gubernatorial contest there, and also the state where I live now, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where certainly the governor's race and the U.S. Senate race are in the spotlight. I'm also looking at Florida and North Carolina, the U.S. Senate races, because as we know there's, as we sit here today, no Black women serving in the Senate since Kamala Harris was elevated to the vice presidency. And so, does this midterm cycle produce another Black woman senator? I think it'll be really interesting to see kind of what the numbers end up being there, that North Carolina race. Cheri Beasley is looking like she maybe has a chance, and Val Demings is certainly giving Senator Marco Rubio a run for his money. So, we'll see how that one turns out.
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So as the panelists have pointed out, Republicans were expecting significant wins this election cycle based on historical precedent, President Biden's unpopularity, and historic inflation. The party's forecasted wins are expected to be pretty big, but maybe not as big as the party was hoping. Democrats, meanwhile, made up a lot of ground this summer, but haven't quite been able to cement those inroads with voters. So, I asked all of our guests if they were to look back on the course of the campaign thus far, where they would say each party had gone wrong. Here's Errin…
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Haines: Where Democrats maybe went wrong was in not trying to balance enough kind of empathizing with voters about the state of the economy while also talking about the other issues that they may be concerned about, really focusing on economy as the top issue but not realizing that that wasn't the only issue for voters. I think we've seen that more kind of in the home stretch, but in the beginning that wasn't necessarily the conversation. And honestly, I think Republicans probably, in the wake of Dobbs, did not understand. You had local Republicans and national Republicans not really on the same page in terms of where things went kind of in a post-Dobbs reality and… and some Republican voters were not necessarily on board with the idea of going even further and taking steps that a lot of voters looked at their elected officials and said "No, no, no, I think that's actually too extreme. That maybe is going too far." And so you saw candidates having to walk back some of their positions as the primary kind of transitioned into the general election.
Resnick: Okay, Mike, how about you?
Madrid: Yeah, look, I'll answer it this way, I'm not exactly sure either of them have made significant mistakes, they're just dealing with dynamics that have largely been out of their control. For the Democrats, for example, the issues matrix facing the Democrats heading into the summer were… were really quite bad. We were actually not talking about whether or not there would be a red wave, but how big that would… red wave would be. That changed a little bit with two… I would argue two and a half things. The first was the Uvalde shooting, really put Republicans on their heels, and they were reacting to the gun control pressures that they were facing, especially in places like Texas, even for example, where Beto O'Rourke really started to get some early number surges and started to define the narrative of the campaign very early on. The second, of course, was the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade. Both of these were external forces that the campaigns never could have, you know, put in play or put into motion, but they really revived the Democrats' chances of keeping this midterms competitive. Until then, again, it was gonna be really a blowout. Joe Biden's numbers were really, really bad, I can't underscore that enough. That has changed. Both of those have changed. The generic ballot for the Democrats has been in a remarkably competitive position ever since that time, ever since early summer, and you have seen especially young people get more motivated, in large part because of these two issues. The one issue I think… the half I mentioned was the January 6th hearings I actually do believe were having much more impact than most people were suggesting that they were. They were really defining the Republican Party as the extremist party. What has really been definitive in American politics since the mid-1990s is which party is viewed as the party that is most extreme, and we are heading into a midterms where the Republicans, curiously, by about a factor of eight, are viewed as the extreme party, even though they do not control the White House, they do not control the House of Representatives or the Senate. That's a fascinating achievement, [LAUGHS] I guess you could say, to still be viewed as the extreme party, because that negative partisanship does come back into play. It is driving Democrats who may not feel great about their president, who may not feel good about the economic conditions of the country, but are now realizing "Hey, if I don't show up and vote, my reproductive rights are a threat here, democracy is in danger, and I've got a real question to ask which is 'Am I more concerned about the future of democracy or am I more concerned about the price of gas?'" And for enough of the right voters, enough of the right voters, not all voters, but enough of the right voters that Democrats need, the answer to that question is gonna determine whether or not they're gonna be in a competitive position after the November elections coming up, or if it could, you know, end up being a significant loss, or at least that was the question that was shaping up before the Dobbs decision heading into the midterms.
Resnick: Amy, what do you think about this?
Walter: I would agree with Mike's premise here that, you know what, a lot of times in politics you have to deal with the hand that you're dealt, right? Or you just gotta… [LAUGHS] you're gonna get a whole bunch of stuff that you can't control for. How do you respond to it? And I think if you had talked to Democrats early in the year, let's say early in 2021, what they really believed was that the extra stimulus that they pumped into the economy, that that was gonna be a defining issue in the upcoming election, that COVID was gonna be a defining issue. Think about where we started 2021, right? [LAUGHS] That we started 2021 with the promise from the new president that he was gonna do two things: get us to move beyond COVID and, you know, have that in the rearview mirror, and get the economy back on track and get us back to normal. And so on two of those three things, I mean, we could say "Well, we're no longer talking about COVID," which is true, but the cost of that, which was spending a lot of money, which Republicans did not support, did also set in motion some of the stuff we're talking about today, especially on higher levels of inflation. And we don't hear Democrats talking about "Hey, remember us? We're the people that gave you the child tax credit. We're the people that gave you the stimulus money. We're the people that allowed your business to stay open." So month to month, you know, moment to moment, the issues in which we thought were going to dominate, or benefiting one party or the other, changed. What hasn't changed is this idea that voters, especially those who identify as partisans, that they just, even when things are going well, won't give the other party credit, and when things are going badly, won't admit that their party's to blame. And so I think one thing that I'm very curious to see is, you know, will the fact that we are sort of as calcified in our partisanship as we are today as voters help to mitigate what should be, on paper, a very, very bad election for Democrats? But that, as Mike and Errin have both pointed out, there are other issues out there that make those voters who may… can hold two thoughts at the same time: "I'm unhappy with the current situation in this country, but I don't trust the other party, in this case the Republicans, to do any better, or that they'll make it worse."
Resnick: I don't wanna get anybody into any trouble for making predictions, which we should never do, but I do wanna ask each of you: what would you be most surprised by on election night or election week or, you know, the course of counting?
Walter: I guess that I'm not gonna be surprised if we don't have the answer on election night, so I think we need to be preparing Americans once again for that. I think the most surprising thing would be to see that, you know, we get some of these races called early. Like if Pennsylvania gets called early for the Democrat, to me, that would suggest "Wow, this is gonna be a much better night for Democrats than we had been expecting." The other thing that would surprise me is if in New Hampshire, a place where right now it looks as if the Democrat, at least in polling, is ahead by enough to… It's not that she's safe, but safer than many of the other Democratic incumbents. I would say that if she either loses or it's really, really close, like it takes a long time to call that race, that's a sign early on that this is gonna be a much worse night, even in the Senate, for Democrats, good night for Republicans.
Resnick: Errin, how about you? What would surprise you?
Haines: First of all, damn Amy, you took mine because it was definitely…
Walter: Sorry. Sorry, that's why I went first.
Haines: Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. But like seriously, conditioning the American people to understand that we are in election season, right, so there is no such thing anymore as Election Day, and there also really is no such thing as election night in terms of us having actual results necessarily in some of these races. So I think yes, I would be surprised if we actually had a lot of results on election night, because that just really does not tend to be the case. And we want to certainly make sure that we are continuing to conduct the fairest and freest and safest Democratic elections in the world. So, I echo Amy with that. Sorry to go second but I think, yeah… I mean the other thing, I am really gonna be curious to see if one or both of the contests in Georgia, the gubernatorial or the U.S. Senate races, ends up going to a runoff. I have to say, I mean, the polling has been pretty consistent, especially around the gubernatorial race with now-incumbent Governor Kent being outside of the margin of error in terms of his lead over Stacy Abrams. If she manages to force a runoff, that would be really interesting. And I think, you know, Senator Warnock, certainly this would not be his first time in a runoff situation and maybe that will be the case again, as Herschel Walker just kind of continues to be within striking distance in that race as well.
Madrid: Yeah, I mean, not to underscore… [CHUCKLES] Not to be the third person in the… Adding my voice to the choir here, but…
Haines: Can't say it enough.
Resnick: No, you can underscore. Go ahead. [CHUCKLES]
Madrid: I know. Well, you know, as a Californian, you know, we have this peculiar characteristic where we allow people to vote basically any way you want to over the largest window of time than most states. Well, I think that's personally a great thing. The problem that comes is it takes an exceptionally long time to vote, so in a state where there's probably four or five of these really contested House races that will be determined by Californians, it may take three weeks to know what the outcomes of those races, especially in Los Angeles and Orange County, are going to be. Finally, what I would say too is, yeah, I mean, look, I am surprised at the resilience of the Democratic base to this point. I mean, I really can't underscore enough, against major headwinds, against a historical trend line, against a… very bad economic indicators, at least from the mood of the… of the electorate, the Democrats are holding in there, and they… they largely have been, on both the Senate and the House side anyway, for the better part of this year at a time when you really would not expect that. So I don't know if it would be a surprise to me, but I certainly would, you know, have to take a, you know, a couple quick looks back at the numbers coming in. But if… if the Democrats were able to capitalize on this environment and actually hold onto the House or pick up seats in the House and the Senate, I'm not gonna say it's not a possibility, I think it's remote, I'd say it's probably a 15%-20% chance, but I wouldn't be… you know, I wouldn't… it wouldn't be the strangest thing that I've seen in politics.
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Resnick: Amy, Errin, Mike, thank you all so, so much for joining. I really appreciate it.
Haines: Thanks for having us.
Walter: Thank you.
Madrid: Thanks for having us.
You can find voting resources in the Apple News app. There are state-by-state guides for casting your vote, plus much more. And we'll have full coverage of the results as they come in. If you haven't yet, make a plan to vote, and Shumita will be back with the news on Monday.
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