Despite a party-wide effort urging Trump to pivot to policy, he just can’t seem to muster the discipline to talk about any issues. And for two former Senators who know the focus it takes to win a competitive race, it’s wild to watch. This week, former Senator Claire McCaskill’s Senate colleague Heidi Heitkamp joins her as guest-host. After weighing the latest musings from JD Vance’s audio vault, the two ‘post-menopausal grandmas’ remind him that older women are still able to vote. Claire also asks Heidi to give some perspective on the unique opportunity the Harris-Walz team has to reach rural voters. Then, Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman stops by for a deep dive into the latest Harris-Trump polling, how to understand the margin-of-error in a given sample, and how the down-ballot races are shaping up after the shift to the vice president’s candidacy.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Claire McCaskill: Hello, and welcome to “How to Win 2024.” It’s Thursday morning on August 15th. I’m Claire McCaskill, and I’m here with a very special co-pilot today, my dearest bestest buddy, Heidi Heitkamp. She is the former Senator from North Dakota. She is also the Co-Founder and Chair of the One Country Project, co-host the Hot Dish podcast with her brother Joel, and has a very big and important job running the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. If you’re not familiar with the Institute of Politics, go look it up. They do amazing work, getting kids engaged that are attending the University of Chicago, and Heidi is doing great work there. All right, Heidi, what do you think?
Heidi Heitkamp: I’m going to give a plug because we are bringing almost 300 students to the Democratic Convention, it’s a non-partisan event, to talk about getting out the youth vote and to do training on getting out the youth vote. And so, I’m very excited. We did it at the RNC and we’re doing it at the DNC. We think it’s so important at the Institute of Politics and important for our democracy to get people, at a minimum, young people, in the habit of voting and then building out opportunities to run for office. So, we’re very excited.
Claire McCaskill: And I’m sure I’ll see you in Chicago next week, so.
Heidi Heitkamp: Yes, we’re counting on it.
Claire McCaskill: We’ll have a chance to hug. Okay, there’s 82 days to go, and Heidi and I know how intense the coming sprint can be for any candidate. You know who’s having a real hard time keeping focus and laying out his policy vision. Yes, that would be Donald J. Trump. We’ll assess how badly he’s flailing as everyone in his party is urging him to pivot to the issues and quit talking about Hannibal Lecter. And now that the polls have had a chance to bake in a bit with the shift to the Harris-Walz ticket, Dave Wasserman, the Senior Editor and Elections Analyst for “The Cook Political Report”, is going to lay out what the polls are cautiously indicating for the presidency and how the map is shaping up for the down-ballot races in the Senate, in the House, and even governorships. But first, Heidi, let’s talk some strategy. And, you know, we do a thing in this podcast, “If I were in the room.” So I think it’d be fun for us, Heidi, to do “If I were in the room” for the Trump campaign. I mean, I don’t even know what to say. I mean, this guy is so off his game. It is unbelievable to watch. You know, flailing is an understatement. He’s got everybody in his party panicked, and I’d love to hear your take on what do you think is going on and is it possible for him to correct course at this point?
Heidi Heitkamp: Well, I think if you know Trump and I know Trump, we’ve spent a lot of time with him during the time that we were in the Senate, and he was the President. When things aren’t going well, he looks for someone to blame. And right now, he’s looking to blame his vice presidential candidate. And so, he’s spending way too much time talking about how that guy is the problem. He had a chance to pivot after the assassination attempt to a kinder, gentler, you know, “I’ve learned my lesson, don’t believe in political violence.” He went completely the other way. And so, is there a chance for him to pivot to a more normal tone in this campaign? And so far, he’s not only gone off the rails, so has his vice presidential candidate. And I think it’s an example, Claire, we always say this, that people think, “oh, that guy, he’s a senator, he’s ready for prime time.” He’s a senator for a hot minute, he’s never been in the spotlight, and he doesn’t think before he talks about, how is this going to be perceived by those all-important swing voters because he’s only spent his time talking to the radicals in his own party, genning them up and getting them engaged because that’s how you win primaries. And in red states, winning the primaries is everything, they don’t know how to talk to swing voters. And so, if I were in the room, I would show them data on what swing voters care about. I would say, “You need to be myopically focused on a policy message and not on grievance.” But I don’t think Trump is capable of walking away from grievance. That’s not Donald Trump. He’s right now looking for a scapegoat.
Claire McCaskill: Yes. And by the way, I’m glad you’re not in the room with them because that’s way too good of advice.
Heidi Heitkamp: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: But the good news is, he would never take it, especially from a woman. So, although they’re saying they may bring back Kellyanne Conway, who knows?
Heidi Heitkamp: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: By the way, he’s still playing golf almost every day, just so everybody knows. And that’s the other thing that’s really interesting here. The work ethic of the Harris-Walz campaign is going to start showing in ways that even swing voters and low-information voters and voters that don’t engage in the last 60 days are going to start noticing. You can’t do one campaign event a week when your opponent is doing seven or doing a bus tour, going to Pennsylvania all the way to the Chicago convention. These guys, Walz and Harris, are putting in 12-, 15-hour days every day, and besides that, you know, she’s happened to be Vice President, so she’s got work to do in that regard too.
Heidi Heitkamp: Well, and think about this, because when people say, age doesn’t matter, this is exactly what we’re talking about. It’s a lot easier for people who are barely 60 to keep up that pace, to not make mental errors. And I think Donald Trump, I think that they’re afraid to send Donald Trump out on that kind of schedule because the more tired he gets, the more kind of grievance-driven he is. And so, Claire, if I’m in the room, I’m thinking, how do I balance the potential of him basically creating a two-day news cycle with some major gap compared to keeping him golfing. And I think that the real deal here is, had they picked maybe somebody else for vice president, they were expecting Trump to draft behind his vice presidential candidate, if you’re into biking, you know what I mean. Draft behind that vice presidential candidate and the vice presidential candidate trips over their hurdles every step of the way, I mean, including this new thing with postmenopausal women, which we are, which by the way, why aren’t you taking care of your grandkids 24/7, Claire, and I have wondered, why aren’t I just go in there and taking care of my grandkids? We’re failing as grandmothers.
Claire McCaskill: Yes, I noticed Hillary tweeted this morning something along the lines. First, it’s the child as cat ladies. Now, it’s postmenopausal women have no purpose in life other than raising grandchildren. Do these guys don’t realize that women have the vote? That’s my only question.
Heidi Heitkamp: Well, and their swing voters, and their swing voters.
Claire McCaskill: Oh, yes.
Heidi Heitkamp: They have completely forgotten the game plan of six months ago.
Claire McCaskill: Yes. And look at their three issues, Heidi. There are three issues. You know, first of all, if I were in the room with the Harris-Walz campaign, I would be continuing to try to drive crowd size because that’s his kryptonite. He cannot help himself on crowd size. So the more we have thousands and thousands of people turning out for her rallies, the better it is because it really bugs him. But there are three big issues, immigration, crime, and inflation. On all three of those, the Harris-Walz campaign can go on offense. They can go on offense on immigration because it’s way down. I mean, I read this morning, Abbott hasn’t even been able to send a bus to New York since last year. They are not seeing the border crossings that they saw earlier in the Biden administration, and they turned down a really effective border patrol-endorsed bill. Crime is down. The Justice Department chose a 15 percent drop in violent crime. More importantly, because they don’t believe the FBI or the Justice Department. The Major Cities Chiefs Association is showing that the murder rate in the 70 largest U.S. cities is down more than 8 percent since Trump left office. And then finally, inflation. I mean, we’re seeing inflation and the consumer price index, all of those things are moving the right direction. And even though it’s still too expensive to buy food and fuel, it is better than it was, and people are beginning to sense that. So there are three big issues. Harris and Walz have a lot of room to pivot and punch on their three issues.
Heidi Heitkamp: And think about this, Claire, whenever they’re losing on the big issues, they pivot to cultural issues and that has historically been choice, and they are shocked. They are shocked that people are turning out to vote for a woman’s reproductive rights. They have played that issue in your state and my state for how many cycles and now, the worm has turned, and they have no ability to adapt. And I think it’s fascinating to watch them spin their tires. And, you know, we were talking about whether Kellyanne Conway is going to come back to the campaign. Guess what? She doesn’t have any magic answer to any of this either. She’s spinning on, “What do you do with this?”
Claire McCaskill: Right. So, speaking of cultural issues, let’s segue to your area of expertise. The biggest divide in America, we talk about divides, partisan divides, but the biggest divide really in voter behavior at this point, especially over the last decade, is urban and rural. And you have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out why it is that rural voters are willing to vote against their own interests, economic interests at the altar of cultural issues. And I’d love you to spend a little time explaining how you think we can make progress with rural voters and whether or not you think Harris and Walz have a chance to make progress with rural voters in this election.
Heidi Heitkamp: Well, first, let’s talk about that shift. I mean, when we talk about the ability to overcome a 22-point deficit. Barack Obama lost North Dakota by 22 points and now, he still won. Why is that? Because historically, the Republican Party hated the farm bill, and they would vote against it, and we could beat up on the farm bill. When they decided to embrace the farm bill, guess what? They started winning it because that economic issue now faded in comparison to the cultural issues of abortion or marriage equality, whatever it was, whatever was the dividing factor. So, now, we’ve got this mindset. Number one, I think we should be talking in the Democratic Party about how the Republicans have failed to deliver a farm bill, creating certainty, that they talk the talk, they never walk the walk. Democrats walk the walk, show the public what this administration has done for rural America, the kind of investment through the infrastructure bill, the commitment that we have, to doing a farm bill, the commitment we have to biofuels, which is huge in my part of the country, and we need to lead with that. But I think that one of the biggest reasons why we’ve lost rural America is because rural America doesn’t feel respected by Democrats. And I think if you watched any of the national news, you knew that I was out there, 190 percent for Tim Walz. And the reason why, not because I disliked or don’t appreciate, I don’t know Shapiro all that well, I certainly know Mark Kelly, love Mark Kelly, but I wanted someone that I could point to and say, “That guy who is us is going to be at the seat of power. He is going to be sitting in there talking about rural America every day.” And if you don’t think she respects rural America, why would she pick him?
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Heidi Heitkamp: She respects what we have to say. And so, I’ve said things like, “If you need your oil changed in your pickup, Tim Walz knows how to do that. If you need to go fishing, Tim Walz knows how to dock a boat then get you in the boat.” And so, I think that when you look at Tim Walz and you look at this ticket, we have a rural champion as her partner. And I think that’s a ticket we can sell. And the enthusiasm for Trump, I’m not saying they wouldn’t vote for him, but you are seeing a diminished enthusiasm for Donald Trump and rural America, and so I have reason for optimism, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: I do too. And I do think what the president and vice president are doing today on healthcare costs, this negotiating for prescription drug costs, that’s going to save Medicare $6 billion next year and, you know, bring down the cost of some medicines as much as 79 percent for seniors. You and I both know that one of the crises of many crises in rural America, it’s healthcare.
Heidi Heitkamp: Mm-hmm.
Claire McCaskill: And the availability and the cost of healthcare is a big damn deal in rural America. And I do think they’re onto something here and they need to stay on it.
Heidi Heitkamp: And if I can add, Claire, for all your listeners, understand this, every state that adopted Medicaid expansion under Obamacare has been able to save many more of their rural hospitals than states that haven’t. And so, I think it’s interesting that Trump’s not talking about repealing the ACA, Obamacare, because he knows it’s enormously popular in rural America where people can afford health insurance for the first time in a long time in their lives.
Claire McCaskill: Yes, they’re not talking about healthcare at all. Well, we’re going to pause here. Up next, we’ve got Dave Wasserman of “Cook Political Report”. He joined us for a detailed view inside the latest polling and what down-ballot races look like after the shift to Vice President Harris. Back in a moment. Welcome back. My co-host, my buddy, my friend, Senator Heidi Heitkamp is still with me. And as we inch closer to November and the pivot to a Harris-Walz ticket, which has been amazing, we want to get a sense of what the polling is showing at this moment and how the new Democratic candidates have affected the down-ballot races. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Harris-Walz in the last two weeks, not as much time talking about the House and the Senate. So, we’re going to try to cover that ground too. No one is better to do that with than Dave Wasserman. He is the Senior Editor and Elections Analyst for “The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter”, recognized as one of the nation’s top election forecasters. Dave leads the development of key election data visualizations and manages coverage of the House and redistricting developments. Welcome, Dave.
Dave Wasserman: Hey, thanks so much. And might I add? It’s quite an honor to be with two of the winners of what we would consider to be the all-time greatest Senate races of the last century.
Claire McCaskill: ’06.
Heidi Heitkamp: Wow, wow.
Claire McCaskill: It was quite a year.
Heidi Heitkamp: Mine was ’12.
Claire McCaskill: ’12..
Heidi Heitkamp: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: Yours was ’12. Well, yes, and then that was kind of a special one for me. I was up to no good that it worked.
Heidi Heitkamp: Yes.
Dave Wasserman: Yes. You know, one of the projects we undertook this past year, “The Cook Report”, was digitizing all our archives going back 40 years to 1984. There are some great Senate race stories in there, but it’s hard to peg stronger overperformances in the modern era than what you, guys, posted, so hat’s off.
Claire McCaskill: Yes. Heidi kicked ass too. It was great fun. Okay, this week, “The Cook Political Report” relaunched their national polling average now reflecting of the general election matchup between Harris and Trump. Before we get into where the horse race is right now based on polling, let’s take a second to try to consume what is important for our listeners to understand. We’re going to eat our veggies and talk about the margin of error. What is the margin of error? How does it work? And I think we have to keep reminding everyone that just because somebody’s up by four doesn’t mean they’re really up by four based on the margin of error.
Dave Wasserman: Sure. Well, statistically, margin of error is the plus or minus that you have confidence a poll is accurate within a 95 percent confidence interval. What people have to understand is that even if Kamala Harris has a one- or two-point lead, that is within the margin of error given that the sample size produces a margin of error of around plus or minus four. But I think just as important as MOE is understanding that response rates have fallen through the floor. And so, polling is in the midst of a big question mark where people are just not answering the phone, and we haven’t yet fully moved on from traditional telephone-only polling even with large cell phone components, but we haven’t perfected the science of fully online polling either. We’re confident that these swing state polls that we put in the field do the best job we can of measuring what’s going on in the seven battleground states. We partnered with a Democratic firm, BSG, and a Republican firm, GS Strategy Group. And the difference between the polls that we put into the field in May and those that we just came out with is really with low engagement voters. Back in May, we were looking at Joe Biden ahead by four points, 49-45 among voters who were four out of four participating in the most recent four federal elections so voters who had shown up in ‘16, ‘18, ‘20 and ‘22. But he was trailing Trump by 10 points among everyone else, 41-51. And now, we’re seeing Kamala Harris, she has the same four-point lead among the high engagement voters, those who are paying the most attention and are most civicminded, 50 percent to 46 percent, but she’s narrowed the gap among the lower engagement, half of the electorate, to just three points. Trump has a 48- to 45-point lead in those seven battleground states. And what that tells me is that Kamala Harris is simply a much better pop culture candidate than Joe Biden. She has broken through on social media and channels like TikTok in a way that Joe Biden simply could not. And as a result, we’ve seen a collapse among RFK and third-party candidates, a shift in undecided and third parties to Kamala Harris’s column whereas Donald Trump’s number has pretty much remained the same.
Claire McCaskill: So, I have a question. When people talk about polling and they think about predictability, one of the concerns that I have is that when you say, Trump’s ahead four, and then on election day, because he hasn’t enthusiastically built his base, he says, it’s rigged. And one of the problems that we have with polling is that it creates expectation. And now, we have, you know, the challenges of, this can’t be true, the election was rigged. How do we fix that, Dave?
Dave Wasserman: You know, I think one of the hardest parts of building confidence in elections is the fact that it does take a long time to count the votes in these pivotal states when there aren’t laws passed that allow for pre-canvassing. And in 2020, it was, by design, a Trump and Republicans in key legislatures, including in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, to not adopt the same rules that states like Florida and Texas have that allow election officials to tally their ballots in advance of election day, so they’re ready to report at 7:00 or 8:00 P.M. when the poll is closed. People don’t understand why it takes so long to get election results, why it takes days, and it opens the door for bad actors to cast dispersions on election administration and to insinuate that something nefarious is going on. And we just saw in Pennsylvania that once again, the legislature in that state has blocked an effort to allow for pre-canvassing ballots. So, I think that’s another way in which Trump has laid the groundwork to question election results if Democrats win narrowly or even a little bit more than narrowly.
Claire McCaskill: So what is the bottom-line at this point? Is she ahead in the battleground states and nationally? And if so, should we accurately call this a really, really close election at this point?
Dave Wasserman: Look, for the first half of the year, things were so static that it almost felt like something seismic was bound to happen. And we’ve had about a year’s worth of seismic activity in just the last 40 days alone. We went from a campaign that Republicans would say, felt like “Weekend at Bernie’s” to “Silence of the Lambs” if you’re putting this in Netflix terminology to “Catwoman” featuring J.D. Vance to then “White Men Can’t Jump” featuring the roster of Democrats Kamala Harris was considering for V.P. And I don’t want to say we’re at “Miss Congeniality”, but we’re seeing the most remarkable turnaround in a candidate’s image in quite some time. Kamala Harris was at, in the FiveThirtyEight average, 37 fav, 53 unfav on July 20th. Today, she’s at 44 to 48, which qualifies as almost deity status given how anti-partisan, you know, skeptical of both parties’ nominees’ voters have generally been all year. Now, Trump has also seen a slight bump in favorability from 42-54 to 43-52, but Democrats need to be aware because this does not mean, given the polling, you know, that we’re seeing in these battleground states, which now might show Kamala Harris ahead very, very narrowly. This does not mean that Kamala Harris is suddenly the favorite in this race. Keep in mind that in 2020, Joe Biden led Donald Trump by an average of seven or eight points nationally heading into election day. And he had clear leads in all of the key battleground states and yet he won the national popular vote by four and a half points and the tipping-point state in the Electoral College, Wisconsin, by just 0.7. And if you add up Biden’s cumulative margin of victory in the three closest states, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, he effectively won the election by 42,918 votes out of 159.6 million votes cast nationwide. And so, even while Trump was at a 41 percent approval rating, he was the incumbent, the spotlight was on him, he came within 43,000 votes of winning a second term. And it’s hard to imagine a better news environment for Kamala Harris than the one we’ve seen the past few weeks. Not only has she been able to reframe the race and reintroduce herself to voters in a way that makes her seem like the candidate of change rather than the vice president or incumbent administration. Obviously, Donald Trump has been rattled, he’s flailing, whether it is, you know, questioning her ethnicity or bashing Brian Kemp. These are politically insane things that he’s engaged in which, you know, by his standards, is reminiscent of elements of ‘16 and ‘20 but is certainly a change in tone from what we saw for the first half of the year when he was the favor.
Heidi Heitkamp: So, let’s turn to what Claire and I think about quite a bit, which is, what’s going to happen with our former colleagues and maybe some new colleagues. Given this change, any chance for any new pickups for the Democratic Party and how are some of our incumbents doing like Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown?
Dave Wasserman: Yes. And look, the down-ballot picture has not changed as drastically or nearly at all compared to what we’re seeing at the top of the ticket. And it’s amazing, you know, at the top of the ticket, what a difference it makes for Democrats when there are no longer questions about their nominees’ age. And I think, you know, we’re seeing Kamala Harris perform much more like a generic Democrat in this race against Trump. And the good news for Democrats, down-ballot is that we’re likely to see a much more conventional turnout on that side among young voters and among minority voters. We’re seeing better numbers obviously for Kamala Harris among Black and Hispanic voters. I would note, by the way, that in these polls, she’s making progress with those based Democratic groups, but she’s still not back to where Biden and Harris were in the final polls in 2020. And that is, you know, a reason for Democrats not to be overconfident right now in addition to the fact that in our poll, 53 percent said that she’s too liberal to govern the country effectively. And I think, you know, to sustain this momentum, she’ll need to be able to seize the middle. But how does this impact the Senate races? Well, for people like Jacky Rosen and Bob Casey and Tammy Baldwin, they were already running substantially ahead of Joe Biden. And in our most recent battleground state polls, there’s good news for Senate Democrats. Ruben Gallego, nine points ahead of Kari Lake in Arizona. We had Bob Casey running 13 points ahead of Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin by seven over Eric Hovde in Wisconsin. The real eyepopper was Jacky Rosen with a 54 to 36 lead in Nevada.
Claire McCaskill: Wow.
Dave Wasserman: Even though Harris is down three of the state now, of course, that is an outlier. And there are far more polls that show a closer race than that for Nevada Senate, but still, Jacky Rosen has had a massive spending advantage in the last couple months outspending Sam Brown, the Republican, something like 14 million to 1.7 million, and bashing him on abortion. The real problem for Democrats in the Senate is in these red states of Montana and Ohio. And the one place where I don’t think the switch at the top of the ticket is helpful for Democrats is Montana because, you know, a surge nationally in Black and Hispanic turnout really doesn’t show up in a state as white as Montana but also, Tester has realized that it’s probably unwise to endorse Kamala Harris given her liberal image, her California image in a state that is likely to vote for Trump by close to 20 points. And I think we are beginning to see some separation of that race from the others where Tim Sheehy appears to be opening up a slight lead. Now, I think Sherrod Brown is still very, very much in the fight.
Claire McCaskill: He’s hanging in there.
Dave Wasserman: Yes. And ahead —
Claire McCaskill: Yes.
Dave Wasserman: — in most surveys narrowly, not at 50 percent, but the math in Ohio is a bit different. You know, an increase in nonwhite turnout is going to benefit Sherrod Brown there.
Claire McCaskill: Yes.
Dave Wasserman: And also, Bernie Moreno had to get through a really competitive Republican primary where he had to take stances to the right on abortion that are out of step with where the majority of Ohio voters are.
Claire McCaskill: Right. And just briefly, Dave, are Democrats engaging in the dream that we have every once in a while, that we could actually beat Ted Cruz and Rick Scott? Is there any chance in Texas or Florida? It feels like there is to me, especially with abortion on the ballot in Florida and how bad Texas has been on the subject of abortion, but what do you think? Any chance? Tell me there’s a chance, tell me there’s a chance.
Dave Wasserman: You know, we don’t have a lot of great data from Florida and Texas in the past few weeks, but it’s hard to imagine these states being winnable for Senate Democrats if there’s no national investment in the presidential race in these states. And in Florida, you know, you look at the trendline here, it’s a state where Trump expanded his margin between 2016 and 2020. And obviously, Ron DeSantis blew the doors off in 2022 when Democrats just stopped believing they could win. And I think that has corrosive effects when it comes to the Democratic base in the state, not only are you seeing states kind of attract likeminded people based on the governance and abortion policies quite frankly of the states, which I think is causing fewer democratic voters to move into Florida, probably prompting some to move out of Florida, but also that lack of belief and lack of money into Florida and Texas makes it very hard for Collin Allred and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell even if those Republican incumbents have unique liability. So they’re still in our likely Republican column.
Claire McCaskill: Well, I’m going to just tell everybody right now, I believe it can happen. Next up, how the map is looking for the control of the House, this is where Dave’s a real expert back with Senator Heidi Heitkamp and Dave Wasserman of “Cook Political Report” in a moment. Welcome back. Former North Dakota Senator extraordinaire Heidi Heitkamp, and I have been speaking with Dave Wasserman, Senior Editor and Elections Analyst for “The Cook Political Report”. Dave and Heidi, let’s head to the House. What’s it look like over there, Dave? We all thought that it was a sure thing. We’d have a House pickup of a majority for Democrats before the wheels fell off the Biden campaign and then we all got very nervous. Chief worry among those were Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi. Should they feel a little more comfortable now?
Dave Wasserman: You know, I don’t think that the House picture has changed all that much from where it was in, say, May. Now, had Joe Biden remained the Democratic nominee and there was a fatalism that set in among Democrats then I think you would’ve had a problem that really hurt Democrat’s ability to win the House. But the dynamic in the House has been a little bit more favorable to Democrats than in the Senate, actually, a lot more favorable than the Senate for a couple of reasons. Number one, they’re fighting on more favorable terrain than in the Senate. You’re not talking about defending Montana and Ohio as much because there are 16 Republicans sitting in Biden districts up for re-election and five Democrats sitting in Trump districts, and Democrats only need to pick up four seats on that to get to 218. And most of those vulnerable Republicans are in California and New York. And most of those Democrats in Trump districts are pretty strong incumbents, people like Jared Golden and Mary Peltola and Marcy Kaptur. And then the second reason is you have seen, and I think this is validated by the Senate battleground polls that we just came out of field with. Voters, to the extent they believe Donald Trump has a good chance of winning the White House, they want to put a check on him. And Democrats have benefited from the desire of voters to vote for a Democrat to prevent Trump from going too far in his direction. We saw, I think, the opposite dynamic in ‘16 and ‘20, when the polls showed that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were going to win by a mile. And you had a number of suburban independence, particularly women who decided, well, if Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden’s going to win, you know, I’m not voting for Donald Trump, but I’m going to vote for a more conventional Republican down-ballot who is not Donald Trump, who will prevent Democrats from going too far and left. And I think we’re seeing that dynamic show up in House polls where, you know, Democratic incumbents in particular have been running ahead of Joe Biden all year long. Now, they’re still running ahead of the top of the ticket, but Kamala Harris has come closer in many districts to where those House Democrats already work. And then the third part is that House Republicans have been a mess. It took them 15 votes to elect a speaker. It took only eight House Republicans to oust that speaker last October. And Democrats picked up George Santos’s seat in New York, and now, they are within four seats, and they have a financial advantage in most of these toss-up contests. The reason I still think it’s going to be tough for Democrats to get over the top in the House is some of these open seats. Republicans don’t really have any vulnerable open seats. Democrats have two toss-up open seats in Michigan where Dan Kildee is retiring and where Elissa Slotkin is running for Senate. And then also in Virginia and California, there are a few that Democrats need to defend. So, the House is going to be really close.
Heidi Heitkamp: I want to make this point, Dave, because I think when you look at 2020, because of COVID, Democrats didn’t run a very aggressive field game. And I think that’s why you saw the polling not match the outcome in a lot of the swing states. Now, there’s been huge amounts of investment in field, especially in those swing states when we talk about Michigan. So how does the Democrat turnout machine that I think will get cranked up after the convention, how will that affect these House races?
Dave Wasserman: Well, it’s a good question, particularly in those states where you have overlap. So, you know, there are two toss-ups each in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona. And, you know, those seats are going to depend a lot on the party’s ground games. And the Republicans have taken a big risk by outsourcing Trump’s ground effort to super PACS, including Turning Point USA, whereas Democrats have a well-funded and more conventional coordinated campaign to knock on doors in most of these places. And that stands to benefit Democrats running in these close seats. But keep in mind that most of these toss-up races are going to be in California and New York. And we have 22 toss-ups out of 435 seats. If you add up all the seats that at least lean towards Democrats, there are 203 seats in our ratings. If you add up all the seats that at least lean towards Republicans, there are 210. These 22 toss-ups will come down to people like Mike Garcia, a Republican in Northern L.A. County, or Mike Lawler, a Republican in Westchester County, outside of New York. And they are talented Republicans who are fending off well-funded Democratic challengers. And, you know, one thing we noticed is that incumbents on both sides of the aisle are doing quite well, but Democrats only need to knock off a handful of Republicans to get to 218.
Claire McCaskill: Yes. And I think it’s important on this ground game. We’ve tried to cover this in previous episodes. You know, the ground game is really where campaigns identify voters that are low frequency, that are not as engaged as your likely voters, your four-out-of- fours that you referred to earlier, Dave, and they find these folks and then they actually have to do this a lot with volunteers, a lot with volunteers. You cannot pay enough people to knock on the doors, identify the voter and then do the follow-up you have to do to push them towards the polls. And the interesting thing is they basically shut down their ground operation when Lara Trump took over the RNC when she and Sevidas moved in there. And they put all those resources into this bullshit voter intimidation, voter suppression, let’s see if we can’t figure out a way to not certify elections. They put all the resources there and then outsourced the traditional stuff. Now, I don’t know, but I don’t know very many volunteers that show up for a bunch of paid people with some organization they’ve never heard from, they don’t know about. I can’t envision how these paid PACs, how these super PACs are going to get the bodies on the ground that you need to do this effectively. I know how many we had to have in ‘18. We knocked on more doors than any other Senate campaign in the country. We had thousands of volunteers. And I can’t imagine they’re getting that many volunteers for their ground game.
Heidi Heitkamp: So, Claire, let’s add to that, since Kamala has joined the race, the amount of volunteers has exploded. So, we know that that’s happening, more people wanting to be engaged. Plus, I want to tell a story about Iowa because I think it illustrates what you’re talking about. When I was in Iowa during the Republican caucuses, I heard story after story because Nikki Haley outsourced her ground game to the Koch operation, right? And there were people going door-to-door for Nikki Haley that when they were challenged at the door, “I’m voting for Trump,” the people at the door said, “So am I, I’m just getting paid to knock this door.” And so, here is exactly the example. When you don’t have believers knocking the door, you have paid people just knocking the door, that’s not a formula for success. You need true believers who are going to be respectful but also tell the story.
Claire McCaskill: Yes. And before we leave, Dave, I want to make sure we get in a couple of minutes on the governor’s races because we’ve now done presidential, we’ve done the Senate, we’ve done the House. Tell me what you’re seeing in the governor’s races. Any chances for pickups for the Democrats in the governor’s races?
Dave Wasserman: Well, the only real chance for a pickup would be New Hampshire. And keep in mind, there are only 10 governor’s races on the ballot this year. Now, Democrats are in a decent position to hold on to North Carolina because, keep in mind, Roy Cooper is leaving, Josh Stein has opened up a lead, according to our latest poll against Mark Robinson, who has —
Claire McCaskill: Is a nut.
Dave Wasserman: — said a variety of things that, you know, Democrats can frame as, you know, kind of being from another planet with regard to his views on women and abortion. And so, Josh Stein has basically just flooded the airwaves with Mark Robinson in his own words. And that has transferred this race from basically a tie back in May to, in our latest poll, 48-40 lead for Stein. So, you know, that seat looks better for Democrats than it did. But most of the governor’s races we’re watching are in safe state. Now, I’ll be very curious to see what these longshot Democrats are able to put together in Indiana and Missouri, two states where you have had some Republican infighting that, you know, could at least make those contests more interesting.
Claire McCaskill: Yes. And we have abortion on the ballot too in Missouri. I’m not giving up on Crystal Quade, who is the Democratic nominee for governor, and I’m certainly not giving up on Lucas Kunce, who is running against a guy that I think people know by the name of Josh Hawley, the He-Man, the manly man, the guy who has the nerve to write a book about manhood when he ran through the hallways of the Capitol, like a scared little puppy, when the folks invaded. Can you tell I really like this guy? I try not to trash him too often because it’s not good for my mental health, but you know.
Heidi Heitkamp: Yes. Well, I call him the hand razor.
Claire McCaskill: Yes.
Heidi Heitkamp: You know, yay insurrection, the yay insurrection guy. And so, I think, you know, even though abortion’s not on the ballot in North Carolina, it’s on the ballot in North Carolina because of their gubernatorial candidate. And I think for your listeners, Claire, it’s really important that you understand that these races are not separable in terms of turnout. You could have somebody who turned out for the governor. We haven’t seen split ticket voting in a long, long time, certainly as it relates to the president and the Senate. What I’m watching is, are we going to see again split ticket voting come back to the American population, American democracy, which I think would be a good thing? That’s me from a red state. As a Democrat, I always relied on split ticket voting. It went away for at least the last 10 years. It might be coming back this cycle.
Claire McCaskill: The only place that we really saw a significant split ticket in voting in the last Senate cycle was, in fact, Montana and Ohio and West Virginia.
Dave Wasserman: Right. And we are seeing a comeback in split ticket voting in some of the Senate polls this cycle, and that’s really a testament to, I think, how much voters were down on Biden for most of the cycle, but we’re not ready to embrace Republicans and wanted balance. And I think we’re still seeing that to some extent, the question is whether Democrats can sustain it all the way to November.
Claire McCaskill: All right. Well, this has been great. Really appreciate you, Dave. Thank you for your time. Thank you for educating us about the polling and all of these places. And we’ll look forward to checking in with you because, who knows? This has been quite a rollercoaster ride. I’m not sure we’ve seen the last incline or the last dip. There may be others in the future. There usually is in October. We’ll see how the debates turn out. But it’s been great to have you, we really appreciate you.
Dave Wasserman: Thanks for having me.
Claire McCaskill: Thanks for joining us for today’s installment of “How to Win 2024” and a huge thanks. I hope you can feel it in my voice how much I love this woman. I can get choked up, I love her so much. A big thank you to the best thing to ever come out of North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp.
Heidi Heitkamp: Well, listen to one of my favorite postmenopausal grandmas in the whole wide world. I love you to death and I love your whole family. You know, Claire, it’s always so much fun when you and I are together.
Claire McCaskill: Yes, let’s do it again.
Heidi Heitkamp: Absolutely.
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