A Blue Wave is Coming for Trump. How Big Will It Be?

Check it out. Get your tickets now. Okay, as we head into the final weekend before Election Day, let's start with some mood music. In a classic of the genre that includes background interviews with 16 current and former Trump officials, the New York Times sees a grim White House and an angry president who has raged against bad stories and is increasingly cloistered with a small group of aides like Natalie Harp, who apparently now works out of Trump's private dining room, and Bill Pulte, whose role one Trump official described as court jester. Both Natalie and Pulte have been feeding Trump a steady diet of fawning press coverage, memes, and AI slop.

Which look? Otherwise known as the president's daily briefing. I was going to say. And, you know, to be honest, the whole story, a little hard to believe because, you know, the deranged, declining Donald Trump portrayed by the Times, it just doesn't comport with what the rest of us are seeing out there on the campaign trail. For example, here's the president stumping for Darlene Graham in South Carolina on Thursday. They forced meat down his throat. Tranny Annie is a mutilizer. if you're black or if you're jewish and if you vote for abdul you're crazy lindsey's looking down he said i'd love to be here but just didn't work out i don't even believe in polls donald trump is at 42 42 you mean times two and add 20 boy they are bad they're sick people fake polls if your president, Republican or Democrat, for whatever reason, you don't win the midterms.

We have the biggest rallies ever in history, and you'll never, I hope you enjoy it because you're never going to see it again. Now that's good news. Here's hoping. Here's hoping. Do you think, um, you think the Graham campaign got what they needed out of that event? Uh, the president saying, well, presidents always lose the midterms. Uh, Lindsey Graham's looking down, but couldn't make it. a lengthy diatribe about Abdul Al-Sayed who's running in Michigan, not South Carolina. A lot of Tallarico talk. A lot of Tallarico. Yeah, Tallarico likes meat. That was the beginning. Did a full episode of Polar Coaster about the Wedgwood polling scandal?

We didn't include it, but there was also like, it was a lot of Ilhan Omar. There was basically everything except talk about Darlene Graham and South Carolina. That was, I don't know. It appears there was a teleprompter. Yeah. Because every once in a while, he would just look up and then sort of read in a monotone, read something about Darlene Graham and then go back to the Trump show. I mean, it's truly, it's like he's trying to lose the midterms. Or, I mean, I guess maybe the way to put it is he just wants to do his thing without any regard to anyone else, which should not be surprising anyone.

But there's nothing there that would be seen as helpful to the candidate he's trying to help. I think in his mind, he has already lost the midterms. I think he believes that about President Obama loses the midterms. He probably thinks that, you know, maybe Republicans can keep the Senate. Maybe it won't be as bad as the polls suggest. But he kind of knows that, like, it's not going to go great. Like, I'm sure he thinks the House is gone, right? And so. So at that point, he's just having fun. He's going to say what's on his mind and enjoy these rallies because they might be his last rallies. They're definitely not his last rallies.

There's no way he will give this up. We will be watching those rallies. We'll be watching videos of these rallies the rest of our lives and just commenting on them, even if it's AI. Well, that's true. But I was going to say, like, I guess he'll campaign a lot for the 28 nominee for the Republicans. But, like, it can't be a situation like it was in Mississippi with Cindy Hyde-Smith, where the Republican nominee comes on stage for two minutes, leaves, and then Donald Trump just does the whole rally in 28, right? Right. Well, I mean, we'll have some gubernatorial elections in 2027 that he can participate in.

But I think the bigger point here is that if Trump really wanted to win the midterms, he would shut the fuck up and stay in the White House. The best thing for Republicans is to allow these to be a race between a Republican and Democrat, like Abdul versus Mike Rogers, Sherrod Brown versus John Husted, Annie Andrews versus Charlie Graham, although that's maybe not the best example of Charlie Graham. But just there's some cases where you can make it about individual Democratic candidates in red states, but Trump cannot cede the stage. So he would rather lose the midterms out in public than win them in hiding in the White House and have there be some narrative that he couldn't, you know, that they won because he wasn't out there campaigning or is hiding or whatever else.

Yeah. Speaking of hiding in the White House, I don't know if you had any other favorite bits from that time piece. To your point that you just made, I did like in the piece, it says that Republican advisers and outside groups have warned the White House that Trump's appearances could have hurt candidates in close races. His team has largely discounted that concern. Yes, I'm sure they have. Yes. Yeah, we can see. And is concentrating on turning out Republicans in red states. I'll get to the piece in a second. But even if you wanted to say, yes, like maybe Trump can be helpful in Mississippi, in South Carolina.

These are Trump plus 18 states, plus more than that in some cases. But Trump going to Michigan is bananas. It's just a truly bananas choice, right? Ohio even, which even though it's a state he won by double digits, certainly not helpful, right? But it's through the piece. All right. It offends me to my latent political strategist soul that they're doing something this stupid down the stretch. And that not enough people are talking about how stupid it is. It's so obviously stupid that everyone's so like knocked upside the head with Trump always defies the expectations. It's idiotic. Everyone knows it's idiotic. No one in the Republican Party will say it.

The fact that Mike Rogers spent all this time running ads saying that he was against the kind of sort of against the tariffs, kind of said get the war. and then he has to stand next to Trump at a rally. Like, that's stupid. In the piece, and I'm surprised, I assume this is also your favorite part, where it says that Trump has been calling allies to regale himself about how long his crowds were, how big his crowds were, but to mention that J.D. Vance is not getting very big crowds. You know me. That's it. That's right. That's right. Top of my list. Yep. It's just so funny. Yeah. I mean, the 28 campaign, like, I'm not looking forward to our primary.

Yes, their primary is going to be amazing. Very much looking forward to that, to watching that shit show unfold. The human psychodrama is Trump tortures J.D. Vance the whole time is so good. It's like the saving grace for the whole year. I also like that Bill Pulte, the court jester, as he's known, his thing is memes, apparently, and he made a poster of John Husted. Was it of John Husted's ass? That wasn't clear. Yeah, it did not specify in the New York Times. who's got as a sort of respected institution. But the New York Times did say that he made a poster of John Hughes said, whose ass Donald Trump is being.

Whose physique, whose physique. Physique, yes, yes. Trump has repeatedly. I'm reading between the lines, yes. Has repeatedly praised. And then also, as I think Tommy guessed this on Tuesday's pod, but we did find out that Trump dictated the third. 1300 word Bill Maher tirade to Natalie after watching Bill Maher's monologue. So and now we know why Natalie, you know, she had one of the desks outside the Oval Office. But he's moved her into the Oval Office or basically to the private dining room off the Oval Office. And typical of Trump, don't necessarily think there's anything untoward going on there.

The reason she's there is so when he can watch the TV, he can just yell to her in the dining room and tell her to start doing some truth. and doing some posting. Well, it'd be really annoying to call her by the time she gets there, the segment's over. She's got to be in the moment with Trump. She's got to be right there. She's got to be just typing that shit out. So certainly the people who came to see Trump in South Carolina were excited to be there, minus the several protesters who interrupted the event. That seems to be happening a lot more these days. I have almost no recollection of it happening for years now, and it happens everywhere we go.

Yeah, it's interesting. It could be a sign or not. But then there was this guy who showed up at the rally. Tom, why are you here this morning? Well, in the late 70s, I was a little too young to get involved and go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get. So that's why I'm here. Wait, the Jonestown Massacre? That's right. There's nothing like seeing a cult right up front, man. All right. Maybe this is not a Trump supporter. Fucking hero. I did like that it took the Fox News reporter just an extra beat to get it. He was like, Jonestown massacre? Didn't get it then.

And then the guy was like, yeah, cult up close. And he's like, oh, oh, I get it. You're not a real Trump supporter. I think the fastest way of the Democratic nomination is to promise that guy the Presidential Medal of Freedom if elected president. I mean, that guy might end up on the ballot. Oh, you know what? If this were 2017, he would be, he would run right now. You know, if we were 2017, we would have figured we got to get him on the show. How do we not have that guy? Probably because he's at the rally. Probably because he's on the bulwark right now. Don't fuck it. It's going to happen. Tim's going to be dead serious.

We're going to wake up tomorrow and Tim's going to be talking to this guy. He may be doing it right now as we speak. Fuck. I'm going to start sending some slacks while I'm in this recording. Let's pause the podcast. Let's send some notes. Okay. I don't want to read too much into one man's successful infiltration of a Trump rally, But we did get a Time Sienna poll of South Carolina on Wednesday, which was a bit of a surprise, partly because we were you and I have been hoping for Time Sienna polls all week. Maybe by the time you're listening to this on Friday, there will have been another batch of Time Sienna polls that will have missed because they came out on Friday.

But on Wednesday, we got South Carolina, Florida and Minnesota. But the South Carolina one was pretty amazing because it has the race in a dead heat with Annie Andrews and Darlene Graham at 48% each. Silver Bulletin's polling average still has Darlene Graham up one and a half points. I think Nate's model, Flipper, still has like the projection is three points for Graham. But good poll, New York Times poll, 48-48.

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because, so it has Peggy Flanagan up 14 points. Largest lead any poll has shown for her. By far. By far. There's been some polls that had it quite close and made some people nervous. And, you know, you see it up 14 points. You see the top line. I was like, great. And then, you know, we all sent this around to each other. Nate Cohn wrote up his analysis of the polls. And he said, you know, if it turns out that the polls have underestimated Republican strength, we may look back and say that this Minnesota poll was a canary in the coal mine. And the reason he said that is because Minnesota is apparently the only state where you don't have party registration in the voter file.

And so usually you can solve for the problem of not getting enough Republicans with the party registration data. and because you couldn't at Minnesota, like maybe this is an unvarnished look at what happens when you just can't get enough Republicans in your sample. I didn't totally follow why that should be. canary in the coal mine um but what do you think yeah i it's i'm not saying nate's wrong because nate's quite smart but i they did self-identification in the poll obviously because they say in the poll how many Republicans Democrats are and then they weighted it to that the which is how most polls the new york times is a rare media poll that goes off the voter file they're one of the few media organizations that has the resources to conduct a poll that way that's how every campaign does their poll.

It could very well be this poll is an outlier. It's clearly an outlier. The one thing I would say, though, is that if you were just to say, look at the political environment and the partisan lead of the state, 14 points is almost exactly what the margin should be. If this is a plus 10 environment, Minnesota's a state that was plus about plus four for Kamala Harris in 2024, you're looking at a 14-point race. Now, that doesn't take into account... In the New York Times' own national poll, Yeah. It has a 10 and a half point lead, right? That's right. So like 10 and a half plus four points, which is what Connell Harris was, which it was to the left of the nation by in 2024.

But yeah, you're right. That does it. So like there's a word in which it adds up and it's exactly right. We just don't know. We'll see. We'll see. So while we didn't get any fresh time CNN Senate polls on Thursday, we did get a new round of CNN polls showing Democrats ahead by anywhere from four to seven points in Michigan, Texas, Maine, and Kansas. As of this recording, Flipper, Nate's model, has the chance of Democrats flipping the House at 95%. And the Senate is around 80%. I think it's 79 or something, but it's like right there. And if you're wondering what the White House political team is seeing, Trump just canceled his in-person rally in Kansas this weekend.

And he's replacing it with a series of tele-rallies, including one on election eve for the Republican Senate candidate in Louisiana? Um, now Trump was asked by a reporter, uh, why he canceled the Kansas rally and he flipped out, uh, very much matching the times piece, uh, called the reporter fat, not a shape. Um, it's quite something to say for him. Um, and, uh, and then said he's canceled the rally because, uh, Roger Marshall's doing so well. Which is what everyone is saying. Everyone is saying that, um, anyway, Louisiana. So go ahead, Dan, unburden yourself. Where are we with four days to go?

How are you feeling? Look at the whole map. What are you thinking?

tea leaves from the early vote, partly because you don't know how many people are going to turn out. You're missing the denominator because a bunch of people vote on election day. But I feel like I still look at the early vote in different places. In some places, it's more helpful and more useful than others. It doesn't seem like there's anything alarming in the early vote. No. I feel like that you can't look at it and say like, oh, great news. We're doing great here. But it doesn't seem like anything in the early vote is telling us that the polling is way off so far. Yes. We just don't know enough. And one of the reasons why the early vote has been wrong before is because either it's a party registration state where you know whether it's Democrats or Republicans, or you're making assessments based on demographics as to whether this person is likely to vote for a Republican or a Democrat. And in 2020, people were very off because who we thought were Democrats was, you know, we were looking at 2016 level Latino numbers and it turns out not what we had at all because there was a shift and then a bigger shift in 2024.

Same thing in 2024, you're like, oh, look at all these young people, it turned out. That wasn't as good for Democrats as it would have been in a different election year. So we just don't know, but there is, you know, every once in a while, there's like this giant warning sign in one state. Like it's often Nevada where we always get some of the best data. There's nothing there that is said there's a huge challenge. In fact, I was just going to raise this. Like in Nevada, there's the governor's race, which is the most competitive race. I think like the three Democrats. um, that are running in those three districts, uh, are doing, well, three of the four districts Democrats are doing really well. In fact, like, I think the Republicans have sort of stopped spending in, in most of them. Um, but the governor's race is close. Uh, Joe Lombardo and as the Republican and Aaron Ford is the Democrat who's been interviewed here on Pod Save America.

And, um, I've been reading Ralston's blog, John Ralston's blog. And again, the reason that you look at the early vote in Nevada is because everyone gets mailed a ballot. So, you know, the whole universe of voters. And so you can sort of do the calculations a bit easier. And I mean, if you just look at a graph of what was happening in 2024, in which where like things were getting worse and worse for Democrats as the days went on and then got a little better at the end, but still not much. And what's happening now, which is just like Democrats are just building this huge lead in ballots that is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger every day.

It looks quite good there, but we'll see. Don't want to get too excited but Nevada is looking pretty good. Now, what does that mean for the rest of the country for all these other races? Again, it's hard to tell, right? Because it's a very specific population in Nevada. It's heavily Latino, working class. You've got a governor's race there. It's not a Senate race. So, you know, a bunch of different things could be unique there but so far, so good. Pots of America is brought to you by Bombas. Cozy season is upon us. That means curling up on crisp mornings and soft layers. Bombas makes your comfiest fall staples so you can make the most of arguably the best season of the year.

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So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Ways to Well was designed for people who were done starting over. Actually, that was before I changed my diet. My sleep's been better for months. I've been taking that for three years. The heart rate was actually lower on my last meal. No, that's not when it started.

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All right, let's talk about Georgia, where our old boss held his final event of the campaign Wednesday night at a rally with Keisha Lance Bottoms and John Ossoff. And for all the conservative pundits and MAGA warriors who thought it was wise to pick a fight with the most popular political figure in America over a joke about Donald Trump's interior design aesthetic, Obama had this to say. I heard the president was not happy when I joked over the weekend that he's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a cheesecake factory. I lived at Chuck E. Cheese and California Pizza Kitchen and the cheesecake factory.

That was my jam for about a decade. Of course, the real problem is price has gotten so high, A lot of folks can barely afford to go out to eat. The president wasn't even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison, but he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comments. They mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke. The White House even called the Secretary of the Treasury. They told him he should hold a press conference in front of the Cheesecake Factory. And the Treasury Secretary, he happens to be a former hedge fund manager worth half a billion dollars, and he was out there in front of the Cheesecake Factory explaining how he ordered the delicious French dip cheeseburger instead of the egg rolls.

I inherited this major financial crisis. I never called my Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, said, man, you got to go to Harvard. This is what I mean when I say these are not serious people. They don't have solutions to actual problems. So they'd rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That's the game they've been playing for the last two years.

I mean, look, the most difficult part of responding to that is the whole Cheesecake Factory fiasco is so fucking nuts on so many different levels. It's like the elitist thing is crazy, but also the like, yes, we're making fun of Trump's interior design aesthetic because all he does is just renovate the White House in his elder years here as he is sundowning while at war in Iran and he's just running around the way.

And then the way that Trump responds to all of it is by going down to Mississippi, first of all, Mississippi, where he feels the need to campaign and talking to a crowd about the the fine artisans they're using in the White House and how he used exterior plaster and skim coating. So much skim coating. Talking about skim coating. And then, like, literally right after Obama delivered the riff we just heard, Trump spent several hours truthing photos of the government-owned golf course at East Potomac that he's been trying to renovate over a judge's orders because he cut down a bunch of fucking trees and, in the truth, claimed that the problems with the driving range netting caused a White House staffer to be, quote, sadly hit violently in the chest.

so it's like what do you expect and all these people being like oh obama's like donald trump is out there talking about his fucking golf course how he's gonna renovate that and then obama talks about it the best part of it is like obama does the cheesecake factory joke everyone's like all right this is our opportunity to turn the attention away from donald trump and his corruption and the fact that he's out of touch and the fact that everyone's pissed and we're We're going to do this fake fucking thing about Obama being elitist. Great. And then Trump's like, nope, I'm not playing that game. I'm not doing the play.

Instead, I'm actually hurt by the joke because I love my home renovations. Loves it. And I think my sense of design is top notch. So I'm going to talk about it even more. It's really the only thing that he cares about. That's it. He was genuinely hurt by Obama's joke. because he takes great pride in all of the shit he's doing at taxpayer expense and the expense of focusing on the problems that most people care about and have. It's just he just cannot help himself. I mean, it's really, it's a gift. I mean, imagine, like this would be a hard political environment for anyone, but he insists on making it worse every day.

He's like, what is the critique of me? And how can I double and triple down on making it effective? I also, I would love some New York Times, Wall Street Journal, whoever reporting on the backstory of how Besant got to the Cheesecake Factory. Like, what were the conversations? How did it end up being him? How was it? Of all the people, of all the people, you are- Well, it couldn't be our- Couldn't be RFK Jr. So he probably was off the list. You were trying to portray the ex-president as elitist for a jab about the Cheesecake Factory. So you send Scott Besant to the Cheesecake Factory to talk about his French dip.

It's like, how did Sean Duffy not get that task? Anyone. Pete Hegseth, for God's sake. I don't, anyone. J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance. He probably volunteered and they told him no. They're like, you can't pull this off, sir. It goes back to like the trying to lose the midterms. Sentencing Scott Besson is something you would do if you were trying to lose the midterms. Yes, yes. I remember, I think David Axelrod said this to you when you were talking to him, which is if he were trying to lose the midterms, what would we be doing differently? Right, if he wasn't trying to lose the midterms, what would we be doing differently?

I don't know, I don't know. All right, there's one new message Trump is pushing in the final stretch about Democrats That's that may or may not stick. Let's listen. Mary Peltola should resign from the race. I think she should be prosecuted criminally for what she did. Whoa. OK. What does she do, John? Well, for those just tuning in, that's him responding to The Times report on Wednesday that Peltola's team worked with the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee last summer to find other people named Dan Sullivan to get into the race and draw votes away from the incumbent with the same name, Senator Dan Sullivan.

They succeeded, of course. And as we've discussed, the DOJ has filed a lawsuit to try to stop Alaska from certifying a Peltola win if it appears to be the result of the other Sullivan's presence on the ballot. On Thursday morning, the Republican governor of Alaska ordered an investigation into the effort. Even though an Alaska court already ruled that other Dan Sullivan could be on the ballot, It's unclear what, if any, laws could have been broken. And Republicans worked to help spoilers all the time, including in Alaska during the cycle's primary. So question that I hear a lot of people asking, and it's a good one.

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Long play, our docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to long play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

health at ways2well.com that's ways the number two well.com but yeah so it seems like the most significant consequence here could be you know republicans using the episode is another justification for meddling with elections in the name of rooting out fraud. Thankfully, we haven't seen too many troubling signs of that yet, aside from already the Alaska thing they tried to do. They also tried to force California to set aside a bunch of ballots that the federal government is claiming are non-citizen ballots, though an appeals court just said, no, they can't do that. But there was also a disturbing MS Now story this week about how FBI agents are telling people they're scared they may be ordered to seize voting machines or interfere with people's rights in other ways.

Again, it's just a few FBI agents that talk to MS now, but still. Also, according to government court filings, ICE and FBI agents will not be acting as poll monitors, but ATF, DEA, and Bureau of Prisons officers will, but they won't be acting as law enforcement officers while they do, and they won't be carrying firearms. Yay. What do you think people should know about this, Dan? Because, you know, the most common question you get is like, are we going to have a midterm? What's going to happen? Is he going to fuck with it? I know the polls show Democrats winning, but like, what is he going to do to screw this up? I think let's start with the fact that, yes, Donald Trump would like to interfere with these elections. He would like to do that. But more than interfering with them, he wants not just to stop the election, he wants you to think he's going to stop the election so that you You will voluntarily cede your own political power.

You will think your vote will not count. This is what all the stuff about mail balloting is. And we cannot let that happen. And here's the thing. More than 40 million people have already voted. Yeah. Right. Donald Trump has a lot less power than he thinks he has when it comes to elections. He doesn't decide how they're administered. He doesn't decide when they're administered. He doesn't count the votes. He doesn't certify the election. He has almost nothing he can do there. And so the thing that I would just encourage everyone is to recognize that Trump is going to try things, that Democrats really do have been thinking about this for a very long time.

They get a lot of criticism of the Democratic Party. One thing that we've been very good at is election law over the years. And the best and the brightest in our party have been working on this for a very long time. They're working on it right now. Our job is not to be deterred from voting, not to be freaked out about it, is to go vote, to get our friends to vote, to make sure our vote counts. and let's just go win the election. And if we win by enough, nothing they do can stop us. I was just going to say, to borrow the Trump campaign mantra from 2024, too big, too rigged. Like the larger the margin, the harder it is to pull something off.

You know, it's where you get problems is if it's like we're up and we're waiting and there's a recount and it's like a 0.2% difference. And then that's when Trump jumps in, you know? But that's why you got, the best thing you can do to prevent this is get a bunch of people who might not have a plan to vote to have a plan to vote. And don't freak everyone else out about it either. There was this thing that happened a few weeks ago where there was this photo taken of these National Guard members standing in front of a ballot box in DC. Oh, I missed that. It went immediately viral. Everyone freaked out about it.

There's no evidence they were doing anything other than standing in front of the ballot box. I don't know that I trust the government officials who've said that, but I also don't think that Trump's plan to seal the elections is going to start with the DC mayoral election. but that went viral people were like oh my god the National Guard is coming off that it's like be calm carry on go vote if we all vote they cannot stop us stay in line if you're there when polls close if there's a problem with your registration or eligibility you can ask the election official about the remedy for that get a provisional ballot where that's available and you can always report intimidation or voting problems to 866-R-VOTE 866-687-8683 by call or text.

So everyone have that number. All right, Dan, speaking of election day, we thought we'd talk a bit about what the two of us will be watching for.

I think Virginia is interesting because there's three house races there and it's sort of like a ladder of how good the night's going. So, like, Virginia 2, I think Nate's model has that, you know, projected at D plus 5.9 right now. That's Elaine Luria. She's running to get her seat back. So, that's, like, the most gettable, right? I think that's, like— I think Tripp won that by, like, less than a point, right? Right. So, we should absolutely get that one. Yeah. And then there's Shannon Taylor is running against Rob Whitman in Virginia 1. That is lean D.

it's like Nate has it as like D plus 1.6 so then if we're also winning that that's you know that's good too that's a little bit better and then Virginia 5 I mean Nate has that as R plus 5.8 it likely R right now so I think it's like if Tom Perriello is winning in Virginia 5 that's a Really good night. Yeah. Or at least it's a harbinger of a really good night. Yes. And, you know, when I did that, I did our Sunday podcast with Annie Walter a few weeks ago. It's worth, like, these are all potential signs. It's not, we should be, it may be that the wave does not hit. That's true. In the same way in every single geographic area or demographic group.

Right. Right. It may hit better in red states and blue states. Like you may see underperformance in New York in some places, but over performances like in Iowa too, in Iowa. Maybe better in heavily Latino places than whiter areas. Same thing with black voters, as you just mentioned, in Alabama. So, yeah, you have to sort of look at the demographic representation of the race that you're looking at in order to sort of make or to compare it to like other places like that all around the country. And then Michigan is going to be, like, obviously, where everyone's going to have their eyes good on Michigan, but there's just so much interesting stuff there.

Obviously, Abdul's race, but then you've got a bunch of interesting house races in Michigan, ones that Democrats should win, like Michigan 7, there's Michigan 9, there is how the governor does, you know, relative to how Jocelyn Benson does relative to Abdul. just that that is going to be a very, very fast one. You're going to have a bunch of these different benchmarks you can use to look, to measure success and like which voter groups you're doing well with. The other thing is some of these, like I saw this about Michigan too, you know, Michigan can count slow sometimes. And if Abdul is down or some of these House candidates are down and it's like one in the morning, but the votes that we're waiting for tend to be like, you know, areas like Detroit or places like that.

Or we hope. Or we hope, right? You just got to wait. You just got to wait. Yeah, it's... Michigan, I think, is the one that... I mean, maybe these new polls will be right and Abdul will win relatively easy, but that's one you could see yourself waiting for Wayne County and being very... Which is where Detroit is being very nervous about because there are... There have been questions based on his primary performance, although it hasn't shown up in all the polls about how Abdul would do with Black voters. And so you don't know what you're going to net out of there. So it's... The whole thing is fascinating.

Scary. Scary. Yeah. Last thing before we go, we know you're probably feeling anxious about how Tuesday is going to go, and you're not alone. We thought we'd play some questions from our subscriber-only voicemail line and take a crack at responding. Hi, this is Ted calling, Groton, New York. I heard yesterday a recent NPR poll, which looked not great. Low enthusiasm for younger voters. a little bit of a bucket of cold water. So I'm wondering, hoping you can address that poll. Thank you. Hello, this is Brian. I'm calling from Medford, Massachusetts. What if all these polls are wrong? I'm seriously worried that we're going to have a serious miss and like the blue tsunami is going to be more like a blue trickle, kind of similar to how the 2022 midterms turned out. Thanks. Bye. Hey, this is Jen in Philly. I'm wondering, is there historical election data showing whether there's a point in the run-up to a midterm or even a general when the polling leader becomes meaningfully predictive of the eventual outcome.

Is it possible that's a real predictive factor or can you offer similar reassurances for the bedwetters? Thanks for what you're doing. I do appreciate Jen trying a different avenue there. Like, is it, can I, I'm looking for certainty so bad that I just want to know, is there a specific date by which it is more predictive? I really respect that question. Go ahead, Dan. So much there, right? And this is, I mean, I know you hear it too from everyone you talk to. This is the fear.

to wash the Democrats into the Senate majority. Yeah, and I think it was like, you know, it was fun for some pundits to talk about a blue trickle for a while. But like if we don't win the Senate, but we win the House, get a bunch of seats and we come close to the Senate and pick up a few seats like that's not a blue trickle.

No, it's just not just the last thing on 2022. Everyone's focused. on this the polls were right in 2022 the republicans never had anywhere near a 8.9 point 10.11 point generic ballot lead it was like three points they end up winning by like two and a half it is the the the idea of the red wave is not borne out by the polls it came from bad analysis of the polls the polls were actually correct and they predicted what you would get which is a narrow republican house victory and democrats holding the senate which is what we got All that said, of course, there could be a polling error. Yeah. Of course.

We can't give you that certainty. The only certainty we could give you is if you go have some conversations with people about politics and make sure your friends and everyone in your social network has a plan to vote and that you're available to ask any questions if they're not sure how to vote for Democrats, then you're going to be in good shape. There's plenty to do between now and Tuesday. You go to votesaveamerica.com and we will find plenty for you to do. find five people in your life who you think may not have voted yet and remind them to vote now. It's the best thing you could do. It's the best thing you could do.

And the next best thing you could do is to become a subscriber. Become a friend of the pod because then your voicemail could end up on this show. And more than that, you get ad-free episodes. You get all kinds of subscriber-only benefits and shows that we do. Like Polar Coaster. Like Polar Coaster. The essential subscriber show. and you get to support it's the best way to support the work we're doing here at Crooked which is to try to make sure we have more pro-democracy independent media in this country because right now there's too much right wing slop out there so go to crooked.com slash friends and subscribe thank you to Ted, Brian and Jen for calling in and a reminder you too can leave us a voicemail with your questions if you sign up to be a friend of the pod subscriber that's our show for today Tommy will be back in the feed on Sunday talking with CNN's Harry Enten about the state of the race in the closing days.

Then Tommy and Lovett and I will have your regularly scheduled Pod Save America on Tuesday morning and on Tuesday night. Dan will be here in LA with the three of us for Alex's election night live stream and then a late night bonus episode that'll be out Wednesday. So lots of content coming. Talk to you soon. Bye everyone.