Thankful for Swing Voters (with Amy Walter)

However, everybody, and welcome to the Focus Group Podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, Publisher of The Bullwork. And this week, we’re doing our twenty twenty two election wrap up with a bit of a focus group retrospective. Going into election day, much of the conventional pendant wisdom crescendoed into prognostications of a big, red wave. But if you were listening to the Focus Group podcast, you weren’t that surprised by the Little Red trickle we ended up getting.

We’re gonna talk about why so many of the races we have been following all year ended up breaking the way they did, and we’re going to revisit past episodes that were signs of things to come just like when, you know, sitcoms used to do that thing where they’d cut together all the best clips. That’s basically what we’re gonna do today. And my guest today is a three Peter, Amy Walter, editor in chief of the Cook political report. Amy, my friend, thank you for being here. Is this the first three Peter?

Do I get a jacket? You are. You are. You’re always leading the

pack. I am so proud to be in that club. Thank you so much. And, yes, I’ll be waiting for my embroidered

jacket in the I do love swag. So listen, you’re on the record as a listener of this show, very much. And sometimes, you hear me shout you out because you’re one of my favorite people like, thinks about politics. I appreciate you. Yes.

And you’ve watched a bunch of these focus groups in a bit on the show. So I just wanna start by saying, like, in terms of how the election went, Were you, like, shocked? Like, everybody else was? Or did you feel like, yeah, this is kind of what I thought. Mix baggage.

Right. Mix baggage definitely,

especially the senate side, which I know this is where the focus group spent so much time. And what I really love was listening to these voters really have to deal with their cognitive dissonance. Right? They could both be unhappy about the economy and inflation but also not really crazy about these Republican candidates that were being offered to them. And so you heard them wrestle through that.

On the house side, I was expecting Republicans to do a little bit better in that you could see as we were coming into election day that so many of these republican candidates were within the margin. Maybe they were down a point Maybe they were tied. And, Sarah, you know, as well as I do. When you go into sort of a traditional midterm election, the undecided voters break disproportionately for the party that’s out of power. Right?

The change party. But in this case, that didn’t happen. And I think it was surprising to see some of these candidates really hold on despite the fact that both sides saw polling that showed these races were leaning, if not, toward Republicans, we’re likely to break that way. But overall, I don’t think anybody should have been surprised that Republicans, they win the House, not by as big of margin as they’d like to see. But as you and I have talked about from the very beginning, candidates matters in statewide races when those states happen to be purple toss-up states.

It didn’t matter as much in the big dark red states or the dark blue states. It matters immensely in purple states. And that’s where the focus group comes

in. That is where these swing voters were listening to what they were telling us. They were telling us all kinds of things were wrong. They were frustrated with Joe Biden. They were frustrated with the economy.

But, man, when it came down to just vote choice — Right. — these candidates, in a lot of ways, they couldn’t get there. But obviously, one of the big things that kinda overhangs this election, we’ll get into a bunch of state specific stuff in a second, but I wanted to go back to a group of suburban women who voted for Trump in sixteen and then Biden in twenty, and this group happened two weeks after the Dobbs’ opinion was leaked. And I think the woman you’re about to hear was the start of a long trend in the focus groups. Let’s listen.

Very concerned about Roe v Wade. I’m Catholic. I consider myself pro life, but I do also agree that there are time in place where our board meetings are necessary and

the

idea that the Republicans are kinda pushing that shit through just scares making something that’s that’s been precedent for fifty years or however long it’s been or longer than I’ve been alive. And that just makes me really nervous. And not even necessarily just that, but you know what I’ve heard about, like, how that condemino effect into other areas, like same sex marriage and things like that. And so our elections are tomorrow. It’s So looking at candidates, I you know, it’s hard for me to with that new knowledge so quickly trying to look at candidates and say, like, who who’s gonna be able to do something?

Because I I do consider myself more of a fiscal conservative and more, you know, moderate to left leaning in terms of social issues. I think maybe, Fred, along this time, I’ve just sort of done the Republican ticket because I kinda had my blinders on and said, wow, you know, fiscal conservative. That’s, you know, that’s kind of what I feel like the Republicans are more so But now I think those social issues are becoming more important for me to consider when I’m voting.

So we’re gonna talk about abortion a lot in the context of other races, but we just heard this over and over again, the abortion thing where it wasn’t the thing that was front of mind or dominating. They did care about the economy. But when you get to vote choice, the vote choice, it was one of the big things that people put out there for why the candidates were too extreme. And so how do you think abortion ultimately ended up affecting things? I do think that it had the impact

of one, it really did engage or maybe reengage the Democratic electorate or the Democratic coalition however we wanna frame it. You know, think back to where we were in twenty twenty one in November. The president’s job approval ratings were pretty much where they were an election day in the mid forties, and yet his party loses the governor’s race in Virginia, state he won by ten points. And abortion was an issue that was used by the Democratic candidate, Tara McColliff, to try to call out Glenn Youngkin as being too extreme. Even having him on tape saying, don’t worry when the election’s over.

We’ll be able to do more on this issue. I just can’t talk about it publicly. It didn’t seem to move the needle because it was a theoretical conversation. By the time jobs happens, It’s now, oh, this isn’t theoretical anymore. This is reality.

But the thing to me, Sarah, that was really perplexed thing was how differently the issue played in different states. Right? So Texas passes a six week ban and there’s frustration about it on the left and within the abortion rights community. But it doesn’t seem to have any impact at all. In the governor’s race or even as a top of mind issue, or Georgia, a swing state, where again, they passed a law that was very restrictive, wasn’t playing a starring role as much as it was in Pennsylvania.

Or Michigan or even Wisconsin. So where it mattered, it mattered a lot, I think it did in some of these suburban districts that Democrats won in twenty eighteen, those former Republican districts filled with a lot of women who sounded like that focus group woman. I’m a Republican because I’m a fiscal conservative. I consider myself pro life, but I don’t consider myself in favor of government restrictions. Right?

And so those are the voters, I think, that were very much in play. And it was, you’re right, it was hard to understand how significant that was gonna be in their vote. And what we saw were voters who both said, I don’t think the economy is doing well, I don’t really like Joe Biden that much, but I’m gonna vote for a Democrat.

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So we’re gonna work our way from east to west as we talk about the states. And I wanna start in my home state, Pennsylvania.

And I can tell you there is no candidate more reviled in these focused groups this year than Doug Mastriano. I mean, we could, like, basically, not find a swing motor who’s running for Doug Mastriano. Makes sense. Dude got crushed by fifteen points. But the thing that was interesting to me actually from the Pennsylvania focus groups was that the voters actually liked Josh Shapiro.

And I just wanna play a couple of clips from swing voters who foretold this sort of absolutely crushing Shapiro victory.

Mastriano

scares the crap out of me. It’s terrifying.

He’s he terrifies me. He terrifies me.

Yeah. I

have a friend who lost two babies. And if he gets in office, what he wants to do is she would have had to carry those babies to term and

suffer through it. That’s ridiculous.

I

always like Josh DePiro. And I thought that he would make a good governor. When he announced his candidacy, I knew that he would make a good candidate because he’s helped a lot of people, like

I mean,

I’ve had problems, like, with something that he helped with I had a contractor do something to me, and Joshua Peer was instrumental in helping me get back my money. So, I mean, it’s not just that, but I feel like he’s a man of his word.

This is

just not always the case. Like, you can get a lot of negative polarization where people are voting for the lesser of two evils. But I think what really just jumped out of me was how much a lot of the swing voters actively liked Josh Peyro. Mhmm. Were you watching him?

Like, do you think he’s got he can’t hear you to do such a hack question. Does he have a future? During the future, you think this

guy could be, like, a twenty four, twenty eight candidate? What do you think? That he’s absolutely gonna be in the mix. And it is somewhat unfortunate to your point that a lot of people are gonna look at that race and say, well, of course, he won. He was running against a guy that every swing voter ever interviewed said he scares me.

Right? So how hard could it be? But part of the reason I think he came into the race with pretty good favorable rating and a good base is that he spent his time as attorney general doing the thing that somebody like Mora Healy who will probably hear a lot about two, the new governor in Massachusetts in terms of her future going after big pharma going after corporate actors that played badly, the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church, and the sex abuse scandals there. So both of them taking on big powerful institutions, the fact that she is able to, and Josh Shapiro, able to sell something more than just Look, I’m the Democrat. You like me because I’m gonna be good on all of the touchstones and cultural issues, but instead to say, Actually, I’ve shown that I can deliver for you and I’m willing to take on even the biggest, most powerful institutions that has an appeal that goes beyond partisanship.

All these new governors, Sarah, don’t you think we’re gonna hear a lot about these new Democratic governors? I do.

I mean, look, I think things I’ve said to Democrats, you know, you guys don’t have a lot of a bench here, and they didn’t seem to have a lot of good surrogates. And part of their messaging problem is not their message is much as their messengers. And I think that’s the problem with these big fields of candidates on both sides is like people get sort of overexposed as presidential candidates and then people start looking around, like, ugh, I don’t want Elizabeth Warren again and, like, ugh, no Bernie Sanders. You know? And it’s like, okay.

Well, like, who are the new people? And I think that Whitmer you know, winning by ten points, I think, Shapiro. I just think it gives the demos a few more stars people to look at and contemplate. And even know, some people to give some lessons on, hey, how do you win in some of these purpler states? Right.

Just shout out to more Healy as part of the lesbian tsunami that — That’s what did. — all

two all two of them. I mean,

two more than ever. Two more than ever. Hey, you know, I gotta sit sit a pretty decent out of what? Fifty. It’s a decent representation for the lesbians.

There we go.

We’ll get them

all. Yeah. Alright. So let’s talk about Pennsylvania senate. So this race was called for Federman on election night.

The final margin is about like four and a half points, which is really, really solid. So, Federman outperformed Joe Biden in a lot of key places like Lackawanna County, which is Scranton, Erie County, And if you compare the Oz Federman map to the Trump Biden map, you’ll see a lot of rural red counties that break seventy six percent for Trump, but only seventy percent for us. And we had talked to some of the Trump Biden voters, the swing voters in the suburbs, who are really squeamish about Federman. And this was what was interesting to me, is I think our typical swing voters that were the Trump to Biden voters actually a lot of them started to come around to us because they were kind of these college educated suburban folks that were like, I don’t know about Federman. But even back in May, when we were talking to just Trump voters, the straight up sort of Trump voters in the more oral areas, We found real openness to Federman and some real mistrust of ours.

Let’s listen.

He did

go around and have all these town halls all over the state, which at least he heard those sides of the issue. I have to give him that I he’s like his dad said he was running doing the primary. I’ve seen some of those. But apparently, they’re not true from what I’m hearing, but I would consider him, but I would have to research it a little bit more. Oh,

I’d slam on, but for him and, you know,

Right.

Reational marijuana. I mean, again, if no, what’s the issue? You know, it’s definitely not the same as alcohol and high spoke. So I know. I’ve been spoken for a long time.

But, I mean, yeah, I’m totally for that.

I think from obviously a medical standpoint, he’s brilliant. From a political standpoint, I think he’s put on a front, quite honestly. You know, I think he’s trying to follow what he thinks Trump did. Which is I’ve got a good TV show, I’ve got a lot of money, and I’ve got friends everywhere you look. So I think he’s thinking, well, Trump did it, I can do it too.

And then he got the endorsement of Trump. So he’s like, well, if Trump thinks I could do it, then I really can do it. So for me, like, stick with what you’re good at. These

are all Trump voters, just through and through Trump voters, sixteen, twenty, and they never liked us. This group of people. And so what do you make of Federman? And do you think that running people like him is something Democrats will try to ate now going forward and trying to pick up more of these sort of white working

class voters in these swing states. Right? It works and some places and it doesn’t work in others. Right? We had a real life experiment in twenty twenty two.

Tim Ryan, he was essentially running a similar campaign as John Federman. He just happens to be running it in Ohio, a state that is much redder than Pennsylvania. But I remember so well, Sarah, listening to that podcast and thinking, that’s really interesting. But by the time we get to the fall, Republicans will have basically taken the bark off of Federman and exposed him as he’s a burning liberal, he’s soft on crime, And now you go back and you listen to those folks and it was pretty clear that that was going to be a harder message to sell than we believed or certainly I believed at first because they had this image of him as just a regular guy who wants to decriminalize marijuana, who looks genuine compared to as that one woman put it. The guy who’s been on TV forever and thinks how hard can it be to run for office.

So that authenticity gap was so important. And to me, I just keep going back to the summer right after the primary. So June, July, odds kinda disappeared totally. And there was this vacuum there that the Federman campaign brilliantly filled. And they made this race of, I’m the regular guy.

He’s the outsider. He’s the New Jersey guy. He’s the Huckster. He’s a fraud. I’m the real deal.

And by the time the OZ campaign got up and Republicans got up on the air with the crime and that he’s too liberal piece. It did some damage to him, but you’re right. It wasn’t enough to convince probably some of those voters in your focus group that he was too risky of a pick. Right? Which is the bigger risk going with Federman are going with us.

And they just I think we’re ready to say, you know, Federman may end up being a liberal Democrat, but at least he’s like the real deal. As opposed to this guy doesn’t even seem like he knows anything about what he’s talking about. These are the

places where you’ll do focus groups with Trump voters who like also like Bernie. Like, there just is — Right. — that sort of core of voters that kinda hate the establishment and they want the authenticity. And they’re really kinda hate the, like, slick political performance stuff. And I think that what was showing up in the polling as Oscar closing the gap because he was closing at the crime stuff was really landing with the suburban voters.

Like, it just was. Like, a lot of the swing voters we were talking to, This is one of the races I got kinda weak need on. Even though I knew how intensely people love Federman, it was all over the groups. It was just all over the groups, how much people love Federman But I was like, I don’t know, man, the suburban voters, the crime stuff, was working. And it it stuck to certain people like Mandela Barnes, and Federman more they have a record on it.

They do. I

mean, this isn’t a big shapero who has a very

different record on it. Right? Right. And so it was sticking to them with those suburban voters who didn’t wanna see crime coming out of the cities and into their suburbs. But for those rural voters, the Trump voters are just the redder areas, like, they didn’t watch Federman’s debate.

They didn’t care about Federman’s debate. They just thought he was a fine dude out out there in Pittsburgh. They were like, this guy’s good. Who is doctor Oz? He’s dude’s not even from here, which was basically Federman’s message.

And I think there’s was a lot of advantage to your point about odds being gone, to some of these Democrats who, like, did they did this with two or Dixon too, where they spent a lot of money and defined these candidates early, Tudor Dixon was defined by her comments around, you know, if a twelve year old raped, she should have to carry the baby to term. And Federman defined Oz as an outsider and, like, even the crimes if none of it could overcome it. I’m supportive of some of this idea of setting the narrative early and trying to lock people in because I think that worked.

Yeah. But Federman had the other advantage, which was a very non competitive primary show and call it. So,

Connor Lamb

didn’t lay a glove on him. And meanwhile, Republicans are beating themselves. Silly over all kinds of stuff. And, you know, we did. We all assumed that Republicans would eventually come home, which you’re right.

They did, but they came home inconsistently. Mhmm. You know what I would like to do? I haven’t done this yet, but is to put the map of Federman and then say like a Bob Casey. Or maybe even in the long ago days, like the early two thousands or the nineties where Democrats would do much better.

In Lakawana County would do much better in those working class areas around Pittsburgh than they would in the suburbs of Philadelphia. You know, he didn’t put that entire coalition back together because it’s never gonna look like that again. But being able to do both of those things. Right? Do well enough in the suburbs and hold on to some of that old coalition.

In Scranton and Pittsburgh. That is a good model. But again, it has to be the right candidate, it has to be the right state. And so to me that one of the stories of this election was candidates mattered a lot but not everywhere.

Yep. Alright. Let’s go to Michigan, where governor Gretchen Whitmer beat Tudor Dixon by about ten points. And there was also a bold initiative to add the right to reproductive freedom to the state constitution, which passed by about thirteen points. Now, this is one of those races where people were wigging out right at the end.

They’re like Oh my god. Whitmer was in trouble. I never thought Whitmer was in trouble because our Michigan swing voter groups, even though they had kind of mixed reviews of Whitmer, Dickson was like a non starter. Let’s listen.

I think

Whitmer did a pretty good job with the pandemic. And I think she did a pretty good job with everything except fixing the roads. But, I mean, we’ve had a lot of their candidates promise more than that and not come through with as much. So but I really don’t like touter Dixon because of the abortion thing as well as her being a Trump

supporter.

So I said I was on the fence, but I’m leaning more towards Gretchen. You know, she

locked the state down early, but then kinda the restrictions kinda just went away and there was really no explanation, you know. Opening up or while we’re shut down for so long. And over time, I’ve now seen different ad and campaigns for Twitter, Dixon. You know, I kinda disagree with our stance on abortion and things like that. So that’s where I’m kinda, like, in the middle, like, which another candidate would stand out.

But right now, that’s probably not two choices I’m leaning more towards direction.

So we did a bunch

of swing motor groups in Michigan and people are mad about the roads. Gretchen Whitmer if you’re listening, you have to do something about the roads. People are very upset about them. And they were also they had lots of COVID complaints. But like ten points — Right.

— that is a big impressive victory. And so it’s weird because I felt like from the focus groups that they were doing a lesser of two evils thing, like they just did not like Tudor, Dixon. But I don’t know. In a swing state like Michigan, like Trump, one Michigan in twenty sixteen, like, what do

you make of a ten point victory for Whitmer? I do think this is where an issue, like abortion, and Isn’t this another secretary of state moon spec?

Rambo. Okay. Christina Kicksham. Yeah. Total in that case.

Okay.

Because I know you’ve talked about her and the many other secretary of state election demands. So the energy was all on the Democratic side, right, with that ballot initiative, Tudor Dixon, the Secretary of State’s race, two competitive house races, and by the way, they both over performed too. Elizabeth Lock and and Dale Kilsey, in districts that are really tough. And the exit polls, right, take it with a grain of salt, etcetera, but This was one state where the abortion issue, it was something like forty plus percent of voters said that was their top issue. I mean, it blew away inflation as a top issue.

And that’s what’s fascinating about these governor’s races. Right? If we had this conversation in February of twenty twenty one and we said, what do you think the governor’s races are gonna about next year, we would say, oh, COVID, yeah, their

reaction to

COVID. And then, of course, we watch November twenty one and the schools and parents, and absolutely, it’s gonna be about COVID. Wasn’t Matt COVID at all? Right? And I remember listening to this podcast with Tim Alberta.

You know, he makes a very good case for why her pandemic behavior, both personal, as well as the rules for the state rubbed people the wrong way, and it could be a liability. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t anything like that. Yeah. I mean, I

gotta say though, when I watched her debate, I was like, you’re actually good. You’re good. I think you’re impressive. Yeah. There’s no way you can bounce out of a swing

state like Michigan with that kind of a margin and not start getting some real energy behind you. Oh, there is no doubt about that pressure that is gonna be on her or on the others in the Democratic Party. To be pushing her I don’t know. Is it twenty four? Is it twenty eight?

Whatever it is, she is on absolutely on the She’s on shortlist.

Yeah. Alright. Let’s head to Nevada. So secret normie Joe Lombardo eked out a win in the governor’s race over Democratic governor Steve Sislak We had only one person receptive to him in our group of disadvantaged Nevada Democrats. I actually like this group.

This is a different kind of group for us. You know, we knew that in Nevada, the thing that everybody was worried about was that all these Democrats who were mad were gonna vote against Cis elect for the governor and then Cortez Masto, who is, like, the most endangered member of the Senate. That’s the one republicans really thought they could pick up because they just thought these, like, independents and sort of soft democrats were gonna come their way. But interestingly, because we did detect a lot of people being upset with the Slack. But was interested in Adam laxalt, who ended up losing to Katherine Cortez Masto.

And there was a major reason why. Let’s listen. I love

Cortez Massto. I think she does her best to serve the Nevada. She’s doing great with health care. Lowering the cost of medications. And, I mean, she’s working with law enforcement.

She’s doing a great job in

my opinion. Takes

she’s, you know, doing okay. I wouldn’t say great, but it seems like she kinda goes to bed for Nevada. You know, I’m not saying, you know, I was laying on their side, but I

think we could do worse for sure. Hammond

decided I just know that he ran for governor while ago and lost. And

previous you

I mean, I know that he’s

pro life and it’s kind of extreme. With the pro life, but it’s not just that. It’s with no exceptions for rate. It says or to save the mother’s life if needed? Right.

That’s uh-uh. That’s a definite note for me no matter what. So

this was one of those groups where they did the thing, where nobody talked to abortion at the top, nobody said it was a key issue. But then as soon as it came to candidate choice between Cortez Masto and laxalt, abortion and like the extremism overall, became the thing. And I had Ralston on. Ralston watched a couple of groups to me. Ultimately, he predicted and he man.

He was he out on a limb on this. He predicted that Syslak was gonna lose and Cortez Masto was gonna hang on. And and I think I know. I know. Because he came on right before the election that part of was thinking was watching groups like this because people were mad at Syslek over some of his COVID stuff.

But with Cortez Master, they’re like, yeah, she’s okay, but more they were also like, laxal, it’s a crazy man.

Right?

And

this is another place where the funding issue mattered. I don’t know when Cortez Massto first went up. I’d have to go look at the logs from ad impact, but she was up on the airwaves very early with ads that focused almost exclusively on how she had helped Nevada come back from the pandemic. And obviously, this is a state where the pandemic hit, not just hit incredibly hard because this is a state that needs tourists and conventions, etcetera, to thrive. But it also hasn’t bounced back as quickly as other parts of the country.

So people still struggling here. And so she had to make the case that even though things hadn’t really gotten a hundred percent back to normal, she was doing all that she could to get resources back. To folks who were hurting. And so I think that’s what you heard from that very first voter, right, which was look, she’s doing her best. She’s trying hard.

She’s helping us with healthcare. So those ads clearly were having an impact And then, you know, this is something that John Ralston said to us too from the very beginning. And I know on your podcast, which was, Laxalt wasn’t a very good candidate. He looked good in comparison to the other people that we’ve been talking about, Sarah. But in terms of quality in a swing state, Lombardo was he was a much stronger candidate.

In fact, if you had flipped the tables, put Lombardo in the senate race, I’d be very curious to see what would have happened in that instance because Lombardo was from Clark County and too understood then what it means to have to win in a swing state and made the economy, the issue, which, again, when we’re talking about the governor’s race, and the impact that COVID restrictions had on people’s livelihoods, it was a more compelling message and one that I think resonated more with voters.

Yeah. We call him a secret normie in our shop because he started out in the primaries kinda junky. But he was doing some of the election denial stuff, but, like, he never went very hard on it, and his soon as he was in the general. He pivoted hard to the economy and, like, never really looked back. Well, and then who

had that story about how Trump learned that he didn’t say he was a great president during the debate, and Trump was mad and let him know it and so at that last Trump rally in Nevada, he made sure to say he was a great president while he was on the rally stage, but then didn’t really mention him again. So you’re right. It is very junky, where you’re able to appease the Trump wing of the party without alienating enough of the independent voters. And it’s hard to do. And in fact, he’s the only Republican to defeat a sitting Democratic incumbent.

Yeah. Because voters pulled it out there in Wisconsin. That’s right. Okay.

Let’s go to Arizona. So Mark Kelly defeated Blake Masters by about five points in the senate race. Yeah. And I thought this race was really driven by personalities and, you know, you and I talked about fives. The two candidates gave off.

Mainly, the people thought, master’s was weirdo. So McConnell allies Stephen Law reportedly said the Blade Masters was the worst testing candidate in focus groups he’d ever seen, which sounded very familiar to me. So let’s just know what our focus groups thought of the candidates starting from masters. Anne

impression

of the blank masters is that he could be as dangerous to Arizona as Trump was till the end of his term. And of course, Trump supports him, so figure it out. He is not my choice at

all. I just think he can’t be trusted. I think he is just like Trump in some cases. So, no, I’m not a

fan. Some

of this is due to the TV ads you see with all these quotes and everything. And you you know, I I I just sit there and I’m like, okay. We’ve reached double digits on very questionable things he said. He did make the comment about his strong own abortion one way of no except and then when he realizes that it doesn’t work both for his campaign, he goes back and white washes his website of everything, his comments about the UN bomber, his comments about, you know, the military leadership? Privatizing social or social security.

But it’s just one thing after another and it’s like, at what point is like, you know, this guy is he’s shady. There’s something about him that shady. He’s young too. He’s only, like, thirty five years old that, you know, I’m older than the

guy.

I think we need the Republican vote in the Senate, the Blake Masters. It’s not the Republican vote that I want there. At least he’s not the guy with the Republican vote that I want there. So he falls back on, I gotta go with Kelly. I don’t like Kelly for a lot of reasons.

He’s anti gun and so on for obvious reasons. Sure. But he’s the lesser of the rubles here and how to go with them. He seemed more of the the diplomatic type. Blake Masters doesn’t strike me as the diplomatic type.

Masters

just was, like, unlikable. Like, he was an unlikable guy and the voters didn’t like him. And even when they were, like, not that hot on Kelly and Kelly was getting tied to Biden a little bit. They were still like, but he’s fine. He’s fine.

I remember early in this cycle talking to a Republican strategist who said, you know, the best thing for the master’s campaign would be to not run ads with him

in them. That’s what they

need to do. But he kept going to camera. Right? All the ads were to camera. You know, what I love about not just

these

focus groups, but just campaigns in general. We assume that, oh, gosh, voters don’t pay attention, and they don’t really care, and you can just run millions and millions of dollars worth of ads and win that way because these are big states, big media markets. Voters can sniff out people really quickly and immediately go, don’t like that person, don’t trust her. Oh, that person seems like they’re authentic. That person is totally faking it.

Right? They do it instantly. And I think that was pretty clear from the beginning that masters only hope here in winning this race was that Biden would just totally collapse and bring Kelly with him in that Kelly was just gonna get caught up in the depressed Democratic base But what we saw in every one of these races, and this is why your trunk to Biden voters and your swing voters mattered so much because How did they all win these races? Somebody like Mark Kelly. Somebody like Cortez Masto.

They’re winning independent voters. By either double digits or high single digits. That’s not supposed to happen in a midterm election. The out party wins the independent voters. Right?

Those are the folks, the ones who say I don’t really like Biden. They’re still voting for the Democrat. I’m somewhat disapproving of the economy. They voted overwhelmingly for the Democrat. So to not be able to sell your candidate at a time when people don’t feel great about the incumbent party

is pretty remarkable. Dude, and you were onto this. This is something I remember reading from you early on, which was like the decoupling of these candidates from Biden and

how, like, just unusual that is. It’s so unusual. I mean, I looked at the group of voters who called themselves somewhat disapprovers. Mhmm. Right?

So they didn’t hate Biden, but they also didn’t think he was doing a very good job. And in all these different polls, they were voting for Democratic candidate with huge undecided. And so talking to posters and other campaign folks, it was like, okay, these are really interesting group of voters, but I bet they’re just not gonna end up voting. They probably sit this out. They’re younger.

They’re probably less motivated. Well, it turns out they did show up. And they voted for Democrats by four points. Just as a point of reference, in twenty eighteen, those somewhat disagreements of Trump they voted for democrats by thirty points. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, like, that just doesn’t happen. Right? This was supposed to be an election about the economy.

And yet, the candidates, and we’ll go back to the first issue, the issue of abortion, make this much more of a choice election than one just about the economy. In the same way, Sarah, that twenty eighteen wasn’t about the economy. Remember, Republicans were like, this will be fine. The economy’s awesome. People are really happy with their four zero one k, and Trump has actual positive approval ratings on the economy?

Yeah, voters were like, yeah, the economy is doing well. I’m not voting for a Republican. You’d be kidding me.

I hate Trump. I’m not voting for them. I’m gonna actually, I’m gonna loop back around us of this, so I wanna dig in at the end to talk a little bit about Trump and and other things that were informing these decisions but I wanna just finish with I I think it’s the race I was just the most scared about. Just the governor’s race in Arizona. Because Katie Hobbs, which is clearly the weaker candidate.

Like, she was a weaker candidate than Kelly. Kelly Lake was a stronger candidate than Masters in a lot of ways. And yet Hobbs was able to hang on. Let’s hear what voters thought of Hobbs and Lake starting with

Hobbs. I don’t

think she’ll hurt us. Too much. I don’t think she’s gonna do anything good for the border. I don’t like the idea of supporting sanctuary cities, things like that, but I don’t know if she can accomplish that anyway. So yeah.

It’s just the extreme other side is what scares me

more, I think. And

we probably will still have a Republican state pledge you know, government. So other than the governor. So I don’t know

what what she can get done. Carriela does a much job. That’s what’s really

big. He’s a right

of right. I don’t think she’s in touch

with anybody that

is even close to even conservative, let alone moderate. I mean, she is so far to

the right that, I

mean, I

think she

will destroy her zona if she had the opportunity. And, unfortunately, our legislature will feed right into her politics. So

she’s there’s the

hell out of me. And I hope that there’s a chance that she will not win. But unfortunately, right now, polling is

looking like

she is leading from what I see.

So in the focus groups,

and we did a bunch in Arizona. Obviously, it was a really important state. We’ve had a big governor, secretary of state race, and also a senate race. Sweet. We went in there a lot.

I did find swing voters mostly going for Hobbs, but in this group, I remember there were at least two guys who were gonna vote for Lake. It was funny because one was a Lake Kelly voter. Yeah. How do you

how did they sort of rational. He was mad at house for not

debating. He thought it was just a weak sauce move. And, you know, I’ve seen people subsequently sort of try to retcon the Hobbs decision not to debate and say, like, see, it was the right thing to do. I continue to disagree with that. I think she should have.

However, there’s no denying she won she won by less than twenty thousand votes, but that’s a bigger margin than twenty twenty. And I wanna run a theory by you, which is different state to state, as you’ve noted, and I completely agree. Like, states are just so different. But, like, there’s a shifting that’s going on in the political coalitions and there’s, like, some political realignment where you these college educated suburban voters moving more to the Democrats because they hate this chunky brand of Republican politics, and Republicans picking up more of these working class voters, not just white working class, but working class voters in general. And, normally, I argue that Democrats are getting the worst of that alignment because there’s just more working class voters than there are college educated voters.

However, in a midterm election, These college educated suburban voters are more likely to turn out. And I think that that was just a big help in a state like Arizona. What do you think? I

think that’s exactly right. And look, when we have the final numbers for this election, I’m very curious to see that because I think what we saw in many of these competitive races in suburban areas, more white than not. You had really pretty significant turnout. But in places in California, Florida and New Jersey safe Democratic districts

that

are majority minority districts very low turnout. Mhmm. And where the Democrat is winning by fifteen points in districts that Biden carried by thirty. And so that’s really the question, Sarah, which is what happens when you get a sort of, quote unquote, traditional turnout? And Carlos Odeo who is an analyst with the equities group on the progressive side working on issues with Latino voters and his analysis thus far in Arizona was that in Maricopa County, in those Latino heavy precincts, It’s not that Hobbs and Kelly did better than

to

say the twenty eighteen cinema. Mhmm. Showing, but they didn’t do worse than twenty twenty. Right? So they basically held steady, which is that ultimately, the kinds of voters they needed to win in those Latino, you know, precincts did continue to vote for Democrats and the coalition that has succeeded in electing Cinema, Kelly, Biden, and now Hobbs is suburban, Phoenix — Mhmm.

— and Latinos. Right? It’s still there. This to me is the whole thing about the twenty twenty two senate races. And governors too.

But you go, alright, where is the battleground for control of the Senate and governorships? Okay. Mostly in states that Biden narrowly carried in twenty twenty. Alright. So what kind of candidates should Republicans put forward in these states?

Should they put forward candidates that look a lot like the candidate who lost there in the twenty twenty election or a candidate that maybe could win there. You know what? Let’s go with the candidate who lost. Right? Let’s just let’s just have more cowbell.

Right? Like a Trump like candidate in a state that Trump lost in twenty twenty did not ever seem like a great idea. However, if a a Democrat looking at this election, I wouldn’t feel great overall about the percent of the vote that moved to the right. I mean, part of the reason Republicans did not do as well in the House is that they underperformed in those districts that bind in one by like one to seven or so points. But what happens when you get a general election electorate that especially when it comes to Trump he turns out people that we just cannot find.

They don’t come out at other times. And so I always worry about spending too much time looking at a midterm electorate and assuming it’s going to translate over to the next presidential. But I think you’re right in that you say, well, who is more likely to turn out in a midterm election and why has that traditionally helped Republicans up until the sort of Trump era? Well, because it’s white, more educated, and wealthier voters that tend to turn out consistently, and that would help Republicans win in a lot of those districts. But now, Democrats have those tests.

That’s right. Hey, just as like a way to

wrap up, your baseball analogy was one of my favorite things that I saw — Oh, Twitter. Thank you. — I would like to give my own sort of like, here’s what I think happened just as a kind of a wrap up. But why don’t you do the baseball thing and, like, give your here’s what I think happened, like, succinctly. Right.

Exactly. So if

we think about it in baseball terms, part of my first restration with the way that many people cover politics is that they cover it basically just in the night thinning. And so if somebody hits a home run, and the game’s over to walk off home runny say, oh, well, so and so won the game. But there are a whole lot of other innings that led to that moment things that did or didn’t happen that allowed that home run to be decisive. And so if I think about the twenty twenty two election in that term, We start off the first couple of innings. Democrats start off a little bit in a hole, only in that we know historically, it’s hard for the party and power.

To win in a midterm election. So let’s say Republicans may be started with a man on base, but where Democrats got a good two, three innings because the Biden administration was following through on the promise made in the campaign. We’re gonna get past COVID and the economy was gonna come back. And that worked until about June, July of twenty twenty one when it all kinda came crashing down with delta and inflation. And then, of course, Afghanistan and then the infighting in Washington.

And that’s basically innings four, five or so, where it comes, oh my gosh, this is looking like a traditional midterm election blow out, especially after the results in Virginia and New Jersey. But we get into the spring, I guess. So we’re now in, like, the sixth inning ourselves. Things are still looking pretty dire for Democrats. But then we get into well, let’s call it six six and seven, and that’s the summer of twenty twenty two.

That was sort of the turning point in this game. Where we have the Dobbs decision, we have success legislatively for Democrats, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act, Republicans are fighting amongst themselves. Democrats are kind of united. And then, of course, Donald Trump taking up all the oxygen for most of the summer, whether it was Mar a Lago or January sixth, or his rallies and his attacks on Republican candidates. And it kind of puts the game into a very different place where it looks like now this game is tied up.

But then I think it really was the last couple of innings where it’s true that momentum was shifting. You could see it in the polling. It was tightening up that lead that Democrats had in the sixth and seventh inning was starting to fade. And so that’s what gets us to the ninth inning where it’s a tied game. And in some of these races, I would again, my gears of following politics would tell me that, alright, in a tide anything, the tide goes to the runner, which in this case would be the Republican Party, but in this case, that wasn’t what happened.

It’s actually the tie went to the democrats because in the swing states, independent voters, swing voters said, you know what? It’s like that person in the Arizona focus group. You know, maybe I don’t really like what Democrats are doing, but I don’t know that they’re gonna do as much harm. I’m less worried about the damage or the risk a voting for this Democrat than voting for a Republican who seems way out of step. And so I think that’s the way to think about how this whole series of vets came to get to this very close night.

Yeah. And then, of course, extra innings and Extra innings. Of course, extra innings.

Georgia. Well, they call that free baseball. Free baseball. So because you and I talked a lot over the past, you know, year and a half and you sat in some focus groups. And I’ll just say, if you and I go back to that phase of Delta, Afghanistan, one of the things that I was saying about the focus groups at the time was just like, how wild the enthusiasm gap was.

Yes. Right? Like Republicans were still in, like, this was stolen from us mode. They wanna devote for any living breathing Republican, didn’t care who that showed up at the Virginia races. McCallough was making it a referendum on Trump.

Which was not working there. And there was this pent up energy around the grassroots republicans in Virginia. And then you saw the independence break over a lot of local issues, that COVID, schools, things like

that. What

dobs did, what I always try to say to people is like, what I saw a mob’s doing is is it evened out the enthusiasm gap. That was so disproportionate in favor of the Republicans. And I don’t think it was like the kind of cosmic game changer. You know, you don’t see people in the streets and it didn’t create a massive blue wave or like a wild rejection. Like you said, it was sort of state to state, but it did even out the enthusiasm gap in a bunch of places where it really mattered.

And probably overall. But then also, there is a real sense from people, so I I do a lot in the democracy community, whatever that means. But, you know, people who who were concerned about all these election deniers as I was, especially those running for governors and secretaries of state who were gonna be in a position to certify elections. And it was a struggle for me because I could tell from all the focus groups that democracy was not something that people would say to take matters to them. I don’t think there’s ever been a swing focus group where someone’s been like, oh, gas prices, the economy, crime, inflation, and democracy.

Like, just never happens. And yet, I do think the January sixth committee mattered some in helping to raise the saliance of some of the sort of election denialism. And just like crime fell on certain candidates in some ways. I also felt like the democracy stuff had hit these election and ours Mark Finchham, secretary of state candidate in Arizona, hit Doug Mastriano, like people who were at January six, bus people to January six, ran on election denialism platforms, which ended up being a lot of the Republican candidates in these swing states, Gary Lake, for example. And so I actually think that democracy did kind of matter.

There’s also this thin diagram of people who, like, are an extreme election denier is like a perfect circle with people who are extreme on abortion. And so that kind of came together to create a picture of a candidate that voters just thought was too crazy. That these swing voters and these independents just could not get there on because they were like these people or not. And it wasn’t because they had this like deep enduring sense of democracy, but person was there in my opinion. It was on the ballot.

And sort of once the enthusiasm gap had been sort of evened out by abortion and jobs basically had a dogfight for these independent voters, a dogfight that Democrats won because of how bad the candidates were. Right? Yes. And so without dobs, And I would say to your point without Trump and

January six, etcetera, in the mix, it would have probably looked a lot like November of twenty twenty one, like the Virginia governor’s race, where he just didn’t have as much enthusiasm on the Democratic side, and independence are more Republican leaning independents. Is that what you are saying?

Yeah. That’s that’s exactly what I’m saying. But I guess my question for you, my kind of closing question is, like, Where does this leave us? You know, like, is abortion something that is going to make a difference in enthusiasm and turnout for cycles to COME, ARE REPUBLICANS GOING TO RECALIBATE AWAY FROM THESE CRACY CANDIDATES, KNOWING THAT WHILE THEY ARE POISENT TO INDEPENDENT VOTERS and swing voters, they all got through their primaries, part because Trump pulled them there, but also because base voters want them. And so where does this leave us now?

So I have been thinking about this a lot,

and I think we’re going to get kind of a preview of it in twenty twenty three because the folks here in Virginia where I am, we have off year elections and their legislative elections in twenty twenty three. You have in Glenn Youngkin, governor who is talking about, we’ll see what sort of abortion laws, etcetera, how that plays here. Right? So even though dobs happened, everybody’s moving forward. We know that so many of these states still have to go and either adjust the laws that are already on the books or perhaps put ballot initiative on for voters to vote on in twenty twenty four.

So I do think this debate is gonna continue. The other thing, Sarah, that I think a lot about is a great observation made by political scientist, John Sides, who’s at Vanderbilt and his colleagues wrote a book called The Bitter End, which is review of the twenty twenty election. And their point is we are now so deeply polarized that we’ve become completely calcified. The braces that moved in this election were once that were already right on the edge. Right?

So the purple states and the presidential or they were purple districts in the last election. So those were the only places that moved from red to blue or blue to red. Everything else stayed exactly the same. The reds maybe got a little redder. The blues maybe got a little less blue because of turnout, but the bottom line is, this is now not a bug, but a feature that we’ve now had what twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty two, the fight for control of the house and the senate coming down to and the presidency, of course, ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, forty thousand votes in just a handful of states, and a handful of districts.

So we’re fighting over this very small pie, which would seem to make our politics more predictable because it’s not as if we’re seeing these big sea changes. Right? Oh, my gosh. I mean, we do have sometimes a surprise. Lauren Beaubert could lose.

But other than that, nothing is surprising, but everything’s surprising. Because all it takes is three senate seats moving toward democrats at the end. Boom. There

we go.

Democrats now have control of the senate, and you’re right, the job’s decision helping to motivate democrats. But as we said, it didn’t help Tim Ryan in Ohio, didn’t help Sherry Beasley in North Carolina. So It is still those states that we’re talking about, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Michigan, they are all that we’re gonna be talking about from now on. We didn’t even

get to split ticket voters, which is another thing you and I five minutes. Like, I’m sorry. We’ll get to it. You know, we’ve got plenty of time.

We kept plenty of time. As my friend

JBL would say, good show, long show, Amy Walter, Thank you so much for coming back for the third time, the Focus Group podcast. It’s so great to have you and talk through all of this. And thank you to all of you who have been with us all cycle, we are going to do one more episode. We’re gonna go down to Georgia one last time for this Georgia runoff. That will likely be our final episode of the season.

So we’re gonna be back here next week. We’re gonna do this again. See you there.