The midterms preview

* The races that will decide control in Washington

* Closing arguments from both sides

* Swing voters

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Speaker 1 [00:00:00] The Economist

Charlotte Howard [00:00:06] I'm Charlotte Howard and this is Checks and Balance from The Economist. Each week we take one big theme shaping American politics and explore it in depth. Today, will discontent with Donald Trump bring Democrats victory in the midterm elections? The president's approval rating is abysmal, with voters angry about the effects of tariffs and the war in Iran. States long considered Republican strongholds are now in play. But will profound dissatisfaction with Donald Trump actually bring a landslide for Democrats in the House and let them eke out a victory in the Senate? With only a few days to go, we're going to look at the races and voters that will decide who holds power in Washington and consider why these midterms matter. With me today are James Bennett here in New York and Shashank Joshi in Washington. James, you're just back from Iowa, where have you been?

James Bennet [00:01:29] Several days just rambling around to various political events in Iowa.

Charlotte Howard [00:01:32] It's really no more fun thing than that, honestly.

James Bennet [00:01:35] I know. It is a terrible, terrible generalization, I know, but it really is true that everybody is so nice and interesting in Iowa. It's just great to be there.

Charlotte Howard [00:01:45] I have met at least two Iowa jerks, I want to say, for the record, yes.

Speaker 4 [00:01:49] Alright.

Charlotte Howard [00:01:49] But I think generally, you are absolutely correct. The other thing about Iowa is that because of the caucus system and being an early state in primaries, people are so engaged and they take their civic responsibility so seriously there, which is always a joy, I think, to see. Shashank, how have you been?

Shashank Joshi [00:02:06] I'm very well, Charlotte. It's great to see you as well, James. I drove my family up to Pennsylvania last weekend, and it was not a reporting trip, it was a pleasure trip, but I took them up to the Hershey Chocolate Factory. I'm afraid it was fairly dreadful chocolate, if you're accustomed to Capri's dairy milk, but great factory, great place. But it's interesting, just driving along, you're sort of immersed in the politics of the place because you see sign after sign. And just by observing the yard signs, the campaign ads, you kind of get a flavor of the place. And again, what strikes me is all the interesting local stuff that just pops up. So there's obviously all the national concerns around cost of living, around sort of gas prices, but then also small things like little signs complaining about the loss of skill machines, these type of slot machines and how that causes kind of certain groups of people to be very angry. So it was a great political education, even though it was family road trip.

Charlotte Howard [00:03:03] I guess I'll let your comment on Hershey Chocolate's slide. I'm not that devoted to Hershey chocolate, but it's not worse than Cadbury, I don't think. Anyway, so I have been spending a lot of time in the past few days speaking with our colleagues, Dan Rosenhecken, Owen Winter, who are two data gurus who work for The Economist. Dan is in charge of our forecast model, which is the prediction model that we have to determine what we think may be the outcome of the race for the House and the race for the Senate. So I began by asking him this week what the model is saying now.

Dan Rosenheck [00:03:38] At the time of recording, we have the Democrats at, drum roll, 95% to flip the House of Representatives and 55% to also take control of the Senate. I would flag that although that number is above 50, that's actually a tick or three below where other prediction models and the betting markets are on Democrats for the Senate, where with a low mount on that.

Charlotte Howard [00:04:10] Interesting. And as we learned in prior elections, people hear something like a 95% chance of taking the House and they can interpret that as a certainty that Democrats will win the House and there is still that 5% chance. So just reminding our listeners how these probabilities work. So is there anything in there that's been surprising to you and why do you think in particular the Senate forecast is a bit more conservative for Democrats than what we've seen from some other. Models.

Dan Rosenheck [00:04:41] I think there's one technical reason, I couldn't really speak for other models, but why we're lower than the betting market on Democrats for the Senate, which is one specific race in Alaska, where they have a rank choice voting system with a kind of jungle primary. So you kind of do a first run of the general election in August, that's sort of a warm for the real thing. And in that primary, Mary Peltola, the Democrat, finished comfortably ahead of Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, and was very close to the 50% mark. Our model intentionally does not use that primary. It would have led you very badly astray two years ago when Peltala got over 51% in the primary for her House seat and then lost. We see Alaska Senate as like, a coin flip with Peltola only the narrowest of favorites and the markets have it as with her like 76% or something. But we're also low on Democrats in all the red states relative to consensus. I think we probably just place a bit more weight on the fact that these places are Republican.

Charlotte Howard [00:05:55] One of the interesting things that we've been reporting on are Democrats in these red states that have been doing very well, relatively, right? I mean, they have no business competing in some of these states. Kansas hasn't had a Democratic senator since 1932. Alaska has had a senator, a Democratic Senator more recently, but hasn't elected a Democratic president since LBJ. Texas, Kansas, all these places where Democrats seem to be doing pretty well, according to the polls. So why are you more cautious on those? On those surveys, on those polls coming out of those states.

Dan Rosenheck [00:06:26] So, yeah, you mentioned our colleague's work. Owen found a really striking pattern that honestly I should have been aware of years ago, but wasn't, and I will try to build into the model explicitly for 2028, which is that it is not just a Trump era pattern that polls systematically for congressional races underestimate the dominant party in states that are either deep red or deep blue. He ran the study all the way back to 1998, and in every single election cycle for each chamber, without exception, the biggest polling errors benefiting Democrats were in blue states and the biggest pulling errors benefiting Republicans were in red states like clockwork. So that has no effect on states that are close to the middle of the electorate. But this year, the Senate is being fought in very red territory. And so Just based on that alone, even before you do any sort of blending with fundamentals as our model does, you'd want to knock a point or three of margin off the expected democratic share in these double digit Trump states. Our model does not yet do that explicitly, but it does get a lot of the way there by waiting in addition to polls, states voting histories and. Candidate-elected experience and everything else that goes into the soup. And I mean, any other good model would do the same thing. We - I don't know if we just weight those - the fundamentals in those red states a bit more heavily, or I think another factor that might distinguish us and might explain why we probably have a lower average forecast on the Democrats than other competing predictions do is the way we handle fundraising. Where although fundraising plays an extremely big role in our model, I've tested this extensively and Democrats, particularly in the Senate, they are crushing Republicans in the type of fundraising that the model looks at, which is individual contributions. So not donations from Elon Musk, donations from normal voters capped at 3,500 bucks a candidate from within their own states. In that category, Democrats are crushing Republicans for the Senate this year, and they also did so in 2024, 22, 2018. And that was not at all associated with Democrats like consistently outperforming generic ballot polling in those years. So the way our model handles it is it does not let fundraising affect its prediction of the national vote. It only lets fundraising sort of move votes or move a fixed pie of Democratic votes around from one state to another. And you see it elsewhere in these red states where I suspect that models that don't do this are gonna see people like Peltola in Alaska or James Tallarico in Texas, you know, out raising their opponents four to one, five to one six to one whatever it is and giving them a big boost for that. And our model takes a lot of the air out of that.

Charlotte Howard [00:09:47] Shashank, we're just a few days away from the election, of course, and we have spent so much time thinking about the candidates and looking at the data and watching how numbers are moving in some of these states. And one of the things that I take away from listening to Dan is just how many surprises we could have, actually, on election night.

Shashank Joshi [00:10:07] Absolutely. I mean, well, first of all, what's striking is the models are not in the same place. And I know just before we spoke, I looked at Nate Silver's model, which is well regarded, widely read, and that gives the Democrats, I think, a 76% chance of taking the Senate. Now, in contrast to ours, which, as you just heard, barely above 50%. And that's changed because a couple of weeks ago, we were giving the Democrats a three in five chance. So I think as you get closer to election day, whilst there still optimism on the democratic side. They're also scarred by previous experience, right, with correlated polling errors and sort of blue waves just disappearing and ebbing on election day. And therefore, I think there's a real sense of caution about being over-optimistic about the magnitude of the wave that we'd see next week. Thank you.

Charlotte Howard [00:10:57] James, you've been on the campaign trail. I mean, sometimes when I've been following on candidates of both parties, there is a way in which the energy of those candidates for me can be sort of captivating and there is sense that wow, this election could bring something that feels momentous. On the other hand, a lot of people may just stay home and that may have a big impact. We heard turnout in midterms is not huge usually, right? So what was the vibe in Iowa?

James Bennet [00:11:26] Yeah, we're sort of at the stage of the campaign where the only thing anybody can say is, it's gonna depend on turnout and what the makeup of the electorate looks like. And for all the efforts to reduce this to a science, it's not, you know, and we really don't know what's gonna happen. It is, I went to Iowa because to me, it is a kind of canary in the coal mine for how this thing might go, or bellwether to use different cliche. And just it's a fascinating political year in Iowa win or lose in the end. The dynamic is super interesting on the downside I should say which nobody is happy about is they're just blowing the doors off in terms of campaign spending right now in Iowa

Charlotte Howard [00:12:06] These are going to be the most expensive midterms in terms of ads ever.

James Bennet [00:12:09] It's just but again in like a place like Iowa the media market the political operatives say they're literally paying 20 times the normal cost of ad rates for a point of share in the Des Moines market right now. That's the downside Positive side is it's a really competitive campaign season in Iowa The Democrats, you know have it are likely to pick, you, know, Iowa was a state was a purple state Barack Obama won it twice, it's tipped very strongly to the Republicans in the last few cycles and Donald Trump has done extremely well there, he won by more than 13 points. But it's really competitive this year, the Democrats are likely to win the governorship, Rod Sand, who's running there, is a really interesting candidate, we can talk more about him, it is a very competitive Senate race, Democrats have a real shot at picking up three of four of the congressional seats. What was really striking about it is for a lot of the candidates, the competition is pulling them towards the center, like it's working the way it's supposed to. They're all talking about bipartisanship. The Republicans, a lot them are kind of running away or edging away from Donald Trump. And the Democrats are very much kind of trying to distance themselves from the national party. Rob Sand has run explicitly on the idea that the two-party system is stupid. He doesn't like either party. He just happens to be a Democrat. A very strong anti-corruption message. So, you know, there's signs of like unhealthy politics, I think, in terms of the spending, but also just healthy politics in terms like it's competitive.

Charlotte Howard [00:13:47] On the bipartisan observation that you made that even among Democrats and Republicans, this is this theme, right? Shoshanka crossed different races, particularly all these red states where Democrats basically have no business competing, right, whether it's Iowa, Kansas hasn't even, hasn't elected a Democratic Senator as we've discussed since 1932, you know, Texas, Alaska, you have independents running in Nebraska. So, you know, there are all these states where Democrats are competitive or an independent, in the case of Nebraska, and how are they competitive? They're running as individuals rather than as Democrats, as James said, because the Democratic Party's ratings remain absolutely in the dumps, right? And I think there is something, I mean, regardless of whether they win, and certainly they'd be bolstered by winning on election day, but the fact that they are so competitive, I see in this kind of incredibly. Often depressing political environment of polarization is you know a good thing as you wrote. James has an excellent column this week On Iowa what races are you watching in particular Shashank?

Shashank Joshi [00:14:55] Well, I think Alaska is super interesting. It's interesting for lots of reasons, right? It's a state that Trump won by double digits, but where Mary Paltola has looked very competitive. The betting markets have her odds on, I thin, sort of 70% odds of winning. Our model is a lot more conservative about her prospects for various reasons that Dan has outlined, but it's interesting, for a couple of other reasons as well. Number one, the voting system is a bit odd, right? It's a ranked choice voting system. It's possible that it could take a couple of weeks for all the results to be tabulated. And therefore, if you have a very tight set of Senate results, it's not impossible that we could be waiting on control of the Senate because of long delayed votes like Alaska, many, many days after the elections have closed. It could be quite chaotic in the immediate aftermath. But the other reason Alaska is interesting is because, as you pointed out, Charlotte, surprises happen. And I think we're still just about... We're recording this in October, so you can still call it an October surprise, but we've had reporting that it's become apparent that the Peltola campaign was linked to efforts to get someone to run with the same name as the Republican candidate, Dan Sullivan. This has prompted a wonderful debate about whether they're Dan Sullivan's or Dan's Sullivan as to how we describe them. But you've had the Trump administration... Taking legal action to say we should contest the vote if the Democrats win, which is a pretty thin legal case. But the state's Republican governor has also launched an investigation into whether any laws were broken. Now, I think legally this is all a bit of a red herring. I'm not sure legally that this is going to be a big deal. But politically, in such a tight race, in a state that broke so heavily for Trump in 2024. I think that this is a kind of thing that could really damage the Peltola campaign. It looks shady, and I think it could have a tangible impact on the elections next week.

Charlotte Howard [00:16:59] Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, this is of course not the first time that President Trump has faced midterm elections. So let's remind ourselves of what happened eight years ago. As America prepares to go to the polls, the economist wrote just before the 2018 midterms, the country is more divided and angry than it has been in decades. Back then, Republicans had control of both chambers of Congress. Polls predicted they would keep the Senate, but with Donald Trump's approval rating around 40%, they were on track to lose the House. And they did. With about half of eligible voters turning out, the highest share for a midterm in over a century, Democrats gained a net of 40 seats, meaning Nancy Pelosi would become Speaker of the House once again.

Speaker 7 [00:17:49] Today is more than about Democrats and Republicans. It's about restoring the Constitution's checks and balances to the Trump administration. Whereas Republicans are not.

Charlotte Howard [00:17:59] If Republicans had gone big on immigration, Democrats had campaigned primarily on health care.

Speaker 7 [00:18:07] It's about stopping the GOP and Mitch McConnell's assaults on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act.

Charlotte Howard [00:18:15] In suburban areas among women in particular and saw a surge in turnout among young voters. More than 100 women were elected to the House, a record, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York.

Speaker 4 [00:18:31] Privilege and honor to say that we have also elected the youngest woman in a

Charlotte Howard [00:18:41] Democrats faced a tough map in the Senate. Defending 26 seats, 10 in-states Donald Trump had won in 2016. They held on to some, such as Ohio, where Sherrod Brown was re-elected. You all showed the country that progressives can win and win decisively in the heartland. But Democratic incumbents lost in Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, and, after a recount, Florida, too. And despite a buzzy campaign by Beta O'Rourke in Texas,

Speaker 1 [00:19:12] Tonight's loss does nothing to diminish the way that I feel about Texas or this country.

Charlotte Howard [00:19:19] Democrats' dream of winning Texas did not become a reality.

Clip [00:19:25] It was a big day yesterday, an incredible day.

Charlotte Howard [00:19:29] The next morning, President Trump cast the elections as a victory for his party, whose Senate tally went from 51 to 53.

Clip [00:19:37] And last night, the Republican Party defied history to expand our Senate majority.

Charlotte Howard [00:19:43] He seemed to accept back then that he would have to work with the Democratic House.

Clip [00:19:48] Now is the time for members of both parties to join together, put partisanship aside, and keep the American economic miracle going strong. It is a miracle. We're doing so well.

Charlotte Howard [00:20:03] But he made it clear that any gridlock would be his opponent's fault.

Clip [00:20:07] Now what's bad for them is, being in the majority, I'm just gonna blame them. You understand, I'm gonna blame them, they're the majority.

Charlotte Howard [00:20:14] He also warned that Democrats should not investigate him.

Clip [00:20:17] If they do that, then it's just, all it is is a warlike posture.

Charlotte Howard [00:20:22] The 2018 midterms left a divided country with a divided government. The two years that followed brought a shutdown, stalled legislation, investigations, and failed impeachment proceedings. The Democrats now expected to take the House, and with a good shot at the Senate too, they are keen to make their next stint in Congress more productive. James, you hear there how President Trump is able to take a result and make it into a victory. And he did, I mean, gaining Senate seats in a midterm election is a feat for a sitting president. What have you made of his arguments as he's out on the campaign trail? I mean he's been in all these states. He's been Iowa where you were as well. He's just been in Mississippi, which I don't know the last time a Republican president felt the need to campaign in Mississippi to try to defend a seat. What do you make of his message in these last days of the campaign?

James Bennet [00:21:20] And he's actually back in Iowa, I think, today, the day we're recording. He's been all over the place in the message, there's been no clear, coherent message from the president. And in fact, there has been, you know, the usual, he's doing his thing of trying to entertain people, holding rallies, talking about, you now, he was in Ohio talking about John Husted's physique and specifically his rear end. And then he reprised, oh my God, on and on about the man's, he used the word ass, if I may not lower our standards too much by invoking it here. And he was so pleased with the reaction he got, although it wasn't very strong, that he then did the same thing with Nicki Minaj in Michigan and actually had her stand up so the entire crowd could admire her rear end. So this is what politics is coming to in the waning days of this campaign. It's all, obviously, he's also going to places like South Carolina, you know, territory that the Republicans don't traditionally have to defend. That's partly a consequence of his unpopularity. It's also partly a consequences of his pushing candidates in places like south Carolina who are weak candidates, Darlene Graham, the sister of the former senator. And now he's trying to save them. And so in both these respects, he's just kind of put his party in a hole. And I think his campaigning is just evidence of that.

Charlotte Howard [00:22:45] Shashank, have you seen any more productive themes from the president as he makes his case to voters?

Shashank Joshi [00:22:50] Well, first of all, I must point out that she was being considered for press secretary, so that's...

Charlotte Howard [00:22:55] Nicki Minaj?

Shashank Joshi [00:22:56] A serious policy story.

Charlotte Howard [00:22:57] I would watch a press briefing with her.

Shashank Joshi [00:22:58] I'm afraid to tell you, but I'm all for it. I'm

Charlotte Howard [00:23:01] Yeah, that'd be better.

Shashank Joshi [00:23:03] But on a more serious note, I mean, I was watching the president's speeches in Ohio at these other rallies and tried to discern what's the message, right? What's the angle he's taking at this last phase of the campaign? And I can't discern anything coherent, right. It's a hodgepodge of defensive speech around justifying the attack on Iran, which of course is probably the single biggest contributor to his electoral misfortunes at this stage. And why it was important for him to avoid Iran's possession of a nuclear bomb. It's about taking Venezuelan oil and in a sort of misguided effort to show that this is somehow benefiting the American people. I think that'll go down quite badly. And then when I look at his social media posting, which is of course prolific and very varied, I noticed one of his last long messages was not a kind of disciplined message designed to punch through to undecided voters. Thank you to all of you for being with us today. It was about just how dangerous and dilapidated the East Potomac golf courses and how a staffer was hit violently in the chest by a golf ball and why this is imperative he be allowed to renovate this golf course. And to me, I don't think you could more effectively satirize a president whose messaging is just completely out of kilter with the grievances and problems that have led his party to this quite dire state.

Charlotte Howard [00:24:26] Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. If you think about the themes that he tried to play up in a structured way back in September when he was in Dallas and he had that big midterms convention, there was crime, right? He wants to talk about crime. They like talking about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the way that that returned money to Americans. We have an excellent set of analyzes in this week's Economist by our colleague Alex Dimash on the net effects of tax cuts to Americans, as well as higher prices from the war in Iran and tariffs, which show essentially that Americans above a certain income level have gained and those below the 50% threshold in particular have not. And I think that those figures really explain why some of these messages just don't land because people, you know, they drive around, they're filling up their car, they filling up their truck, they they feel these prices, and so an argument about their tax cuts doesn't land in the way the president would like. The other big thing that they highlighted back in Dallas at that convention and that we saw, was it just last week he was in Michigan when he had, is this the same rally where Nicki Minaj was... Showing her stuff, that they want to depict the Democrats as dangerous radicals who will usher in an un-American Muslim threat to the country. This is particularly salient in Michigan where Abdel El-Sayed is the candidate. James, you spent time in Michigan and you interviewed El-Sayed. What did you make of that speech that the president gave? Is that something that is gonna resonate in Michigan?

James Bennet [00:26:11] I look at so over the top, the accusations that they're making against El-Sayed. Mike Rogers, you know, has a history of he's a former FBI guy, he's former law enforcement, very much running as a national security candidate. So I think the calculation is that it just reinforces that positioning.

Charlotte Howard [00:26:32] And Mike Rogers, by the way, not a comically bad candidate. I mean, there are other Republicans that the president has backed. Ken Paxton in Texas, Marshall in Kansas, where it's like a real problem. Mike Rogers is a real guy, you know, he could have a real chance of beating El-Sayed.

James Bennet [00:26:47] Yeah. And that should not have been a really competitive race for the Democrats. I mean, it's an opportunity for the Republicans to flip a Senate seat, partly because these, I think, these Islamophobic messages may actually resonate, and partly because of the campaign that al-Sayed has run. I means, he's a very combative politician. And he is very much identified with the left of the party. So he's running behind Jocelyn Benson, who's running for governor there as a Democratic candidate, running much more as a centrist, has run a great campaign. She may run up a big enough margin to kind of pull El-Sayed over the line, but we'll see. Now, it's a really important race in terms of the debate within the Democratic Party over what they should stand for nationally. If Dr. El-Said wins by... A substantial margin in the end that will reinforce, I think, the position of the progressives. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said when she was there a few weeks ago, she said if he wins it shows that basically progressives can win anywhere. I think we could expect that to be the argument that they make. But I think it's likely to be a nail biter that race. Yeah. Oh

Charlotte Howard [00:28:06] Obama so he's had a bunch of people campaigning for him. He had Ocasio-Cortez also Obama Obama's gotten himself in a bit of I don't know if it's hot water. I mean he made a joke that was classic Obama and that it was funny and also slightly condescending about how President Trump wants to redecorate the White House in the manner of a cheesecake factory as done by Saddam Hussein Do you? Shashank, do you think that Obama, as a counter to Donald Trump, as the story of the campaign trail, is actually being more effective, or is he trying to roll out the old tricks and it's just a different political era?

Shashank Joshi [00:28:46] Well, it depends what you think Obama's trying to do, right? And if the argument, as James pointed out, that turnout is critical here, there's an attempt at mobilization of Democrats and generating enthusiasm to get out, that will make a difference. I think Obama has been incredibly successful. This feels like a blast from the past, this past week, right, it's vintage Obama on the campaign trail. Even some of the slogans are being pulled out from the old times. And I think that's gonna be quite successful. Of course, the Trump administration has tried to use this as evidence of an out of touch, elite condescending Obama talking down to people. And for them, they're trying to portray it as another instance of clinging to gods and guns or clinging deplorables, this condescended talk. But I think I'm not sure how much of it sticks when the messengers are a president who is still fixated on a ballroom and a golf course and is very rich. And the Treasury Secretary Scott Besant. Cain comes out swinging, saying how much he loves the Cheesecake Factory and how much he loves, I think, the French dip at the Cheesecakes Factory.

Charlotte Howard [00:29:50] I love the Cheesecake Factory by the way. Have you been to one recently?

Shashank Joshi [00:29:55] Not recently, but. They're so good. They're still reliable. We should obviously have our economist Christmas party at the Cheesecake Factory. I had not been to one, Charlotte, I confess. So I had to look it up. And when I looked it up on Google Images, I immediately understood exactly what Obama meant by Cheesecake factory designed by Saddam Hussein.

James Bennet [00:30:14] Look, he's trying to solve a specific problem for Abdul El-Sayed, which is motivating black voters in the city of Detroit. His kids, one of the, I think, weaknesses of that campaign is that he hasn't done a very good job of mending fences within the Democratic Party. After what was a really bruising primary, black voters went overwhelmingly for his opponent in the primary, and he hasn t done a very job, I don't think, of connecting with them.

Charlotte Howard [00:30:39] Well that brings us to our next discussion, which is about who the constituencies are that may decide this election. And of course, so much comes down to turnout, as we were saying earlier, and whether in some of these races, El-Sayed can bring out these voters who are reliably Democratic but may just stay home. Similarly, in Republican-leaning states, you know, some of the Republicans may just stay home But we have a set of pieces that we've run this week in The Economist, including a really long look at Hispanic and Asian American voters. Owen Winter, who Dan referenced earlier, is a data journalist at The Economists. He's been looking at those two groups in particular and the impact that they might have on the midterms, but also just generally, and I found the conversation fascinating.

Speaker 9 [00:31:26] So I've been looking at Latino and Asian voters who are a growing share of the electorate. They're the fastest growing demographic groups in the American electorate and they are increasingly swingy. So those voters are kind of less partisan, partly because many of them are newer voters. They tend to be younger or they've naturalized into the elector as new citizens. So they have a less firm kind of view on the political parties. And our research suggests that they have a more kind of ideologically heterodox view of politics. So, whereas white voters have kind of polarized into some on the left who kind of tend to take a left-wing position on almost every issue and some on right who tend to take a right-winged position on every issue, Latino and Asian-American voters are much more kind of diverse in their political thinking. And that means we think they are more persuadable to both political parties. So, in 2024, the Republicans got some of their highest ever vote shares. With those groups. But in 2026, it looks like Democrats have managed to turn things around. And so we could be looking at a huge kind of swing from right to left among Asian and Latino voters.

Charlotte Howard [00:32:39] Can we go back to 2012? So after the election that year, when Barack Obama carried Hispanic and Asian American voters by huge margins, there was this famous post-mortem that Republicans undertook to try to understand where the party's vulnerabilities might be and where they might remain or even become greater points of weakness going forward. And in that, the growth of... Ethnic minorities within the American population was described as a grave threat to Republicans. So why did that not transpire?

Speaker 9 [00:33:12] Yeah, so I think it's really interesting that actually, you're right to say that Barack Obama won these huge majorities with Asian and Latino voters, over 70% of the vote according to exit polls. And this gave a kind of sense of inevitability to American politics where Democrats were kind of triumphalist about it and there was this idea of emerging democratic majority. And as you say, Republicans were very pessimistic about their chances of winning future elections. I think that was kind of an illusion, and those high vote shares weren't reflected in how Asian and Latino voters actually related to the political parties. So Barack Obama was very, very popular, but that doesn't mean that those who died in the world, Democratic voters, who would be Democrats forever. And that dynamic really shaped the 2010s, and as you say, Donald Trump being selected as Republican nominee was in some ways. Repudiation of that idea that Republicans had to moderate to win non-white voters who are growing in the electorate. And meanwhile, Democrats were still very, very complacent. And so both parties were approaching Asian Latino voters completely wrong in that period. And that's why we've seen since then a kind of de-alignment amongst those voters who don't have strong affiliations to either party and by 2024 had swung towards Republicans.

Charlotte Howard [00:34:36] So what do you credit as the main driver of this shift? Is it mainly the economy? How do the president's immigration policies factor into this? What do you think is the main force propelling these voters away from Republicans now?

Speaker 9 [00:34:53] Yes, so I think this is really an economic story. And because Asian and Latino voters are less kind of firmly fixed in their political views on many kind of cultural issues, things like abortion or same-sex marriage or immigration, the importance of economic issues to those voters is relatively higher. By kind of 2024, the economy really dominated amongst Latino and Asian voters. And I wouldn't say that they necessarily thought Donald Trump was great or, you know, this was a swing that was caused by this outpouring of affection for Donald Trump in particular. Many votes, I think, said, you, know, we don't like this guy, but he might get something done on inflation. And I think a lot of Asian and Latino voters were willing to roll the dice and vote Republican for the first time to see if it would make a difference.

Charlotte Howard [00:35:44] And what about the deportation campaign? I mean, it has been unrolled with ambition and ferocity from this administration. And my understanding of the data is that generally, many of these voters are actually more moderate on immigration policy than the left flank of the Democratic Party, for instance, which has seen the likes of the DSA call for abolishing the border with Mexico. So they are not supportive of that type of lenient immigration policy. But the. The policy that we've seen coming out of this administration has been very far in the other direction. So how much is that a factor here?

Speaker 9 [00:36:21] Yeah, it's a big factor because, as you say, there was a lot of common ground between Asian and Latino voters and Republicans on immigration policy. They disapproved of Joe Biden's handling of the issue. They tended to believe that there should be more patrols on the border, there should be stronger enforcement. But I think most Asian and Latino votes now see the heavy-handed immigration enforcement by ICE as a form of government overreach. And they see it as racist and kind of harassment of their communities. So, you know, I think Democrats, a lot of Democrats have been wrong in the past to suggest that immigration is a kind of vote-winning issue amongst Asian and Latinos because they are naturally predisposed towards immigration. I think that's wrong. But Republicans have obviously taken things too far and they've shown that it can be a vote-losing issue.

Charlotte Howard [00:37:18] So I'd really encourage listeners to go check out the piece that Owen has written in collaboration with our colleague, Dan, who we heard from earlier. Because just on so many dimensions, this is a fascinating constituency. And particularly in the ways they have these heterodox combinations of views, where certain categories of Americans are so entrenched and so predictable in the way that they think about American politics. And you have, you know, Hispanic voters who might be against abortion, but are very in favor of other left-leaning policies similarly Asian Americans who you know support regulation of pollution, but that might be more right-leaining on on other issues, so they the way in which they cast their votes the views that they have Has this effect potentially of being this very dynamic force within American politics, which I think in in in a country where? You know, 70% of Republicans view Democrats unfavorably and 80% of Democrats view Republicans unfavorable that any kind of dynamism within that system, I think is very welcome. They're of course not the only swing voters though, right Shashank? I mean, we've seen other voters in this election move away from Republicans because of Donald Trump's economic record. So which are the other groups that you're keeping an eye on?

Shashank Joshi [00:38:41] I think there's a few other groups. So first of all, there's younger voters. There's those aged 18 to 29 who were much more cautious in their support for Democrats in 24, and they've swung considerably. And that swing is very, very important, I think, for next week. Another one is non-voters, people who just didn't vote at all in 2024. And you can see them coming back in as likely voters this time round. And then there's other of interesting religious groups that cut across racial boundaries, so Catholics. Quite interesting Catholics, you know, sort of have also swung, and if you look at the polls as a block are now three points in favor of Democrats, and that includes sort of both white and Hispanic Catholics, among others as well. So there's a whole interesting set of voters moving around in addition to Asians and Hispanics here.

Charlotte Howard [00:39:29] James, you were just in Iowa, of course. There we have a situation. I'm wondering how you think about this turnout versus persuasion question, because this is a calculus that politicians are always making. You know, are you trying to turn out your base, and that's clearly what Donald Trump is trying to do, right, in these campaigns, versus persuade them, which is what Rob Sands, the gubernatorial candidate who you mentioned earlier on the Democratic side, Josh Turek also in Iowa. They're really. Having this message that is not, you know, deep blue, democratic campaigning. It is about trying to win some of these people from the other side. So do you have a sense that people are gonna turn out for that? There is gonna be, you that as it leans towards Dems, they'll be effective in persuading some of those Iowa voters pissed off about tariffs and diesel prices and so on.

James Bennet [00:40:18] Yeah, I mean, look, the Republicans are facing real headwinds across the Midwest and particularly in a rural state like Iowa, where, as they say, it costs a thousand bucks to fill up a combine now. Fertilizer prices are a huge issue. Prices generally are a big issue, and cancer rates in Iowa. Every state is, every unhappy state is different in its own way, and that's a which it's been tied to, at least by the Democrats, to water quality in the state. So there are all sorts of issues bubbling there, but the reality in Iowa is that Republicans have a huge advantage in terms of registered voters in the State. They outnumber Democrats by, I think it's about 170,000 voters. And so that's why turning out the base is what Donald Trump and the Republicans are falling back on there. NO! There's also a huge number of independent voters are actually they outnumbered Democrats and those are the

Charlotte Howard [00:41:22] Are those real independents? Because people like to call themselves independents, are they actually republicans?

James Bennet [00:41:27] I think they've become Republicans. But again, it wasn't that long ago that Iowa was a much more mixed state and even Republicans will say the degree to which it's become red can be overstated. So I'm sorry to give you an answer that's basically in the end, I don't know, but that's what's happening here. And to go back to like the Latino vote again for a second, it's just, Yes, they are swing voters. There's no question. Oh, it's done a really interesting analysis I think it's also true that this is just another area where Donald Trump had an incredible opportunity To make durable change In the Republican coalition, and I think he kind of has blown it and it's created a huge vulnerability for them in Texas You know this cycle and it is going to be very interesting to see you know the Republic this is Part of Donald Trump's strategy, in my view, more dirty tricks was to do this mid-cycle redistricting, redraw these districts. He started in Texas, and they carved up these new districts partially based on how well Donald Trump did with Latinos in Texas in the last cycle, now that he's alienated so many of them. Those newly created districts are much more vulnerable to the Democrats, and it'll be interesting to see along the border. It'll be really interesting to see on Tuesday where the Democrats will end up winning some of those that they might not have otherwise carried.

Charlotte Howard [00:42:54] Do you think that Democrats, after this campaign, and we'll talk next week when we're all bleary-eyed after having been up all night, but do you think the Democrats have soiled themselves in this campaign in any way, in the type of ads that they're running, in the gerrymandering that they pursued themselves in response to Trump's mid-cycle gerrymander, right? We saw California take those steps. Know, do you think that there's a way in which they too have blown it or is it all opportunity for them still?

James Bennet [00:43:26] I think the Democrats have, you know, actually let me connect this also back to the history package where we heard in that cycle in 2018, you could say the Democrats had a pretty clear message about protecting healthcare. I think it's very hard to say that there's any clear democratic message this time around.

Charlotte Howard [00:43:46] Really interesting challenge past November, you know? So regardless of exactly how this nets out, there's still an open question of, it's not, there's no open question about what Democrats are against. They're against Donald Trump, they're against his economic agenda, they're again him personally. And what are they for? You know, they are for lower prices, I guess. There's no real plan, as you say, for how to get there. If you think about the tools at Congress's disposal, particularly over the next two years, what will they do? And so that's the big risk of over-promising and under-delivering such that you again become the party that voters are dissatisfied with and rebel against in whatever the next election is. But Shashank, when you look at the closing arguments from the Democrats, do you share James's assessment that it's a bit muddled and incoherent or what are you seeing?

Shashank Joshi [00:44:42] I think that this will fade away as we see the aftermath, and the anti-Trump message will carry them quite a long way, because let's forget about the Senate here, if the House is likely to change hands, and then we'll have this huge debate over government funding which will run out in December. It will expose some of these divides on the Democratic side. Hakeem Jeffries, on the one hand, will face pressure to shut down the government on pain of extracting concessions from the administration on all kinds of things, like the Iran war, which may be flaring up by that point, on the fate of people like Pete Hexeth, the very divisive secretary of war, and on other kinds of thing. Progressives will want him to shut the government down. He himself may want to try to avoid a full shutdown that will kind of compromise his own agenda on oversight of the Trump administration. So some of these debates will happen. But I think the ability to go after Trump hard and fast will be a salve over some of these more difficult and wonky debates over how you solve affordability. And I have to say, Charlotte, more broadly, whilst I think the Peltola stuff is pretty iffy, while I think some of the messaging on, we've talked about this on data centers is kind of pretty populist, crude, simplistic, and may come back to bite them down the line, To me, it kind of pales into insignificance in contrast to the One of the most openly racist campaigns I've seen in some of these places for many, many years, whether that is Robert F. Kennedy saying that Arabs have not invented anything to try to discredit El-Sayed, whether it is JD Vance saying that he has zero connection to the land, implying the sort of a return of blood and soil nationalism, or whether that is Trump effectively poking fun of Arabs, continuing this long lineage of racist attacks. Made his career on in claiming the barrack obama was not a u.s. Citizen that's sulfurous uh divisive repugnant style of campaigning to me is the defining feature of these last days of the campaign and i think it kind of washes out any of the cynical games Democrats have been playing on their own side.

James Bennet [00:46:55] I would add to that your list, your excellent list, Shashank, I just think we can't call enough attention to the horrific advertisement that Vivek Ramaswamy ran against Amy Acton in Ohio and the decision that the national Republican leadership made to embrace that kind of politics. And that, you know, is just terribly, terribly, I think, degrading. Listen on the on the broader question. I do think You know, the way Newt Gingrich put the contract with America together in 1994 and ran with a very clear message about what the Republicans intended to do. I think there might have been an opportunity for the Democrats to do something like that. But the reality is the kind of questions I was talking about are only hashed out in presidential campaigns. And that's, I think, you know, what begins on Wednesday is that contest over what is the Democratic Party, what do they stand for, and that's going to be resolved over the course of the primaries in the next couple of years.

Charlotte Howard [00:47:59] I agree with that. I think also the fact that Donald Trump is there and that his record is what it is. Why would Democrats make the campaign about anything other than that? Right. I mean, there's a cold political calculus there. Okay, we are now going to have a quiz, which is a type of contest which is equally consequential as next week's midterm elections. I have it in front of me here. This is going to be a list of Senate seats that flipped after a midterm election. And you have to tell me in which year. It flipped, it's all in the 21st century. So in which election year did this occur? It was a Pennsylvania Senate seat that changed from being held by Republican to one that was held by a Democrat.

James Bennet [00:48:45] From a Republican to a Democrat. I mean, I don't know if this counts, but when Arlen Spector switched parties from Republican to Democrat, that switched the seat.

Charlotte Howard [00:48:59] The correct-ish answer, or one of the correct answers, is 2022 with John Fetterman, who's now, of course, a target of ample Democratic angst. He appeared at that midterm convention with Donald Trump in Dallas. Okay, question two. Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia flipped from having a Republican senator to a Democratic one.

Shashank Joshi [00:49:22] 2006.

Charlotte Howard [00:49:27] That's right, correct. Point for Shashank. That was when Sherrod Brown first was elected to the Senate. Sherrod brown, who of course now is in a heated race in Ohio. Question three, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin changed hands from having a democratic senator to a Republican one.

Shashank Joshi [00:49:50] 2010 under Obama.

Charlotte Howard [00:49:54] Well done. That was good. Yeah, that was in 2010. Democrats, though, lost even more seats in that election, nine, sorry, in 2014, a few years later. That is it. Shashank, you won.

Shashank Joshi [00:50:06] I was already to file a legal claim for a contested election, but I will be withdrawing all of those allegations.

Charlotte Howard [00:50:17] Uh, yeah, we're going to draw this out for as long as possible. We may need to have the house clerk decide the outcome on January 3rd. That is it for today. Shashank, thank you.

Shashank Joshi [00:50:30] Thanks, Charlotte. Thanks so much.

Charlotte Howard [00:50:31] And James. Thank you.

Shashank Joshi [00:50:32] Thank you.

Charlotte Howard [00:50:40] This episode was produced by our editor Harriet Noble and Mithli Rao, sound design and mixing by Carla Patella. A big thanks as well to Jamie McWherter, Millie Booth, Anna Bucks, and Claire Reed. If you like this podcast, please let people know and leave us a rating and a review. We also have a checks and balance newsletter, which you can sign up for at Economist.com slash newsletters. I will be writing this week's. You can get in touch with us by email. The address is podcasts at economist.com. Thanks very much for listening. We will have more checks and balance next week after the midterm elections. Looking forward to it.