00:25:26 · Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver, Tracy Alloway, Nate Silver
[00:25:26] S3: My son the other day told me he wants me to bring him up more on the podcast. [00:25:32] S1: Oh. [00:25:32] S3: He wants me to tell more. [00:25:33] S0: Is he listening? [00:25:34] S3: No, but he's like, he's like, he's like. [00:25:36] S0: Just tell me you mention him every day. [00:25:38] S3: Can you make me famous by telling, mentioning me more on the podcast? So I will tell a story. I've mentioned before, he's very into money. We were watching a University of Texas football game the other day and there was this, there was this ad that, for the Abbott campaign. I don't know if it was the official Abbott campaign or one of these outside groups. And it said, Gina Hinojosa's income tax plan will cost your family thousands of dollars. And my son turns to me, he's like, Dad, we're not voting for her, right? Oh, no. It's so funny. And I was like, this is like, you are exactly who this ad was targeted towards. My seven-year-old, you know, it's like, he's just like, Dad, we're not going to vote for her, right? This candidate that costs thousands of dollars. [00:26:20] S2: No, I was watching the World Series, and there were like three straight ads in the Mike Lawler, the Westchester County district, right? I'm like, no, even in New York, you can't really escape. [00:26:28] S1: Oh, my God. Yeah. [00:26:30] S0: Yeah.
00:26:30 · Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver
[00:26:30] S0: Yeah. [00:26:31] S3: At the end of the day, do you have a view, you know, there's the view of, well, should campaigns invest more on like things like turnout and knocking on doors, et cetera, or should they just spend a bunch of money on ads? Do you have in your, any of your research, do you have views on some of these questions? [00:26:50] S2: I think with ads, you guys, I. [00:26:51] S3: Think like David Shor says, just, just buy ads. [00:26:54] S2: I think you get pretty sharply diminishing returns with ads. I like David a lot. [00:26:57] S0: Yeah. [00:26:58] S2: But everyone in the system has an incentive to say that advertising really works. I think it's better to buy ads to improve voter awareness and expand the map potentially. But look, there's a famous story about Sam Bankman-Fried, talked about this in my book, right? Where for some reason, Sam Bankman-Fried wanted to back an effective altruist candidate in an Oregon house primary a couple of years ago, right? And gave him like, or not didn't give him, right? Spent $ 10 million- or something without his permission on his behalf. And that candidate who at one point was leading the polls wound up losing the election badly because I talked to him for my book and he's like, well, voters just got so much mail and who is this odd crypto billionaire funding, my campaign, right? It wound up backfiring a little bit.
00:26:58 · Nate Silver, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver
[00:26:58] S2: But everyone in the system has an incentive to say that advertising really works. I think it's better to buy ads to improve voter awareness and expand the map potentially. But look, there's a famous story about Sam Bankman-Fried, talked about this in my book, right? Where for some reason, Sam Bankman-Fried wanted to back an effective altruist candidate in an Oregon house primary a couple of years ago, right? And gave him like, or not didn't give him, right? Spent $ 10 million- or something without his permission on his behalf. And that candidate who at one point was leading the polls wound up losing the election badly because I talked to him for my book and he's like, well, voters just got so much mail and who is this odd crypto billionaire funding, my campaign, right? It wound up backfiring a little bit. [00:27:47] S0: This is the flaw in all of advertising, right? Like, you're just annoying me with your product placements and your ads and your intrusion into my life, and it doesn't make me want to buy things from you. [00:27:58] S2: That's why you need, you know, subscription businesses like terminals and. [00:28:01] S3: Yeah, that's correct. [00:28:02] S1: Newsletters. [00:28:03] S3: All right, here's another important question. Let's just say the Democrats end up having a very good night. What will we watch... within that, to know what the future of the Democratic Party is, whether the future is going to be a more DSA-inflected one, et cetera. You know, give us what we might learn about what works for successful Democratic Party politicians.
00:28:03 · Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver, Tracy Alloway
[00:28:03] S3: All right, here's another important question. Let's just say the Democrats end up having a very good night. What will we watch... within that, to know what the future of the Democratic Party is, whether the future is going to be a more DSA-inflected one, et cetera. You know, give us what we might learn about what works for successful Democratic Party politicians. [00:28:28] S2: For the internal politics of the Democratic Party, the most important race is probably Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed beat the more moderate Haley Stevens in the primary. But not by much. Not by much. That was not a great race for polls, by the way. If he wins by enough, of a margin that the race is called on election night, then that will be like a feather in progressives cap. Maybe people like me will say, well, he won by four and the baseline is nine. So, oh my gosh, he underperformed his work. Very bad candidate. [00:28:56] S3: This is your impression of yourself. [00:29:00] S0: It's made silver squared, right? [00:29:02] S2: On the other hand, I kind of think if Democrats have a really, really, really good night and it's like, well, we can dominate all these moderate white guys. Adam Hamilton in Kansas is a pastor. Tallarico is kind of woke progressive, right? [00:29:15] S0: Yeah. [00:29:15] S2: But like he kind of has managed to brand himself differently. It might have helped him to have Jasmine Crockett in that primary. He got to define himself as like the sensible middle ground. [00:29:25] S3: But you talk about the Hamilton race in Kansas and what that would, yeah.
00:29:25 · Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver, Nate Silver
[00:29:25] S3: But you talk about the Hamilton race in Kansas and what that would, yeah. [00:29:29] S2: So Kansas, I have family in Overland Park, right? And for years it's been like, you know, Roger Marshall could be in trouble and I kind of never really believed them. Like, yo, it's Kansas. Kansas has low-key gotten a bit more democratic. It voted democratic on this abortion referendum. It elected Laura Kelly as governor twice. You know, Roger Marshall has these medical billing practices that are very unflattering. And like Adam Hamilton would be like, oh, we just want cheaper gas and integrity in California. In Kansas, right? And like that pitch might catch kind of the opposite. It's a relatively elastic state, right? There are opinions that can change. It's pretty well educated. So like, yeah. And, you know, last week, CNN had a poll showing Hamilton up four points in Kansas. But like, yeah, Kansas is one. Like, I have more trouble with believing the South Carolina polling than the Kansas. [00:30:16] S3: But basically, there is certainly a possibility that the day after election day, You're going to be like, look, you and Matt Yglesias are going to be like, look at Kansas. Democrats are right to nominate the middle ground white guy. And the DSA people are going to say, look, we are right to nominate. AES wins by nine points. He has a great night, like the polls say. And you just keep fighting. [00:30:40] S2: No, this is like it's a fairly clean national experiment. [00:30:44] S1: Yeah.
00:30:44 · Nate Silver, Nate Silver, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal
[00:30:44] S1: Yeah. [00:30:45] S2: Natural experiment, Michigan. I went to there. You know, there's never been a Muslim American elected to the U.S. Senate. So there are. reasons apart from his progressivism, why Elsa could struggle or be good. I mean, you know, he's bro-y, right? He doesn't come across as like, he's bro-y in a very Michigan way. He doesn't come across as like- I was going. [00:30:59] S0: To say, also, it's Michigan versus Kansas, right? It might be that you like fit the candidate onto the state, right? [00:31:06] S2: And Michigan's a, uh, You know, they have a strong gubernatorial nominee in our favorite in that race. I don't know if there's some degree of coattails or something. But, yeah, all we're going to, you know, from November 4th onward, the story of the next year and a half is going to be party infighting. [00:31:20] S3: What about this? Like, isn't there something going on like Florida AG or there's some race in Florida, right, where some socialist seems to be polling well? Do you know anything about that? [00:31:29] S2: Well, I mean, in the Senate race. [00:31:31] S3: Is it governor? [00:31:32] S1: Is it Senate? [00:31:33] S3: What's happening in Florida? [00:31:34] S2: In the Senate race, you had a DSA... Democrat Angie Nixon. [00:31:37] S3: Angie Nixon. Oh, she's running for Senate. [00:31:39] S2: She's running for Senate, and she's not polling that well. I mean, she's, yeah, Florida, one thing we should probably account for in our models is net domestic migration, right? [00:31:50] S1: Okay.