00:05:40 · Nate Silver, Nate Silver
[00:05:40] S2: So what we know, number one, is that polling errors are correlated. That if a poll misses high on the Democrat in Iowa, probably in a similar state like Kansas or Nebraska, all three states are competitive this year, good chance you'll have a correlated error. So therefore, you cannot look at individual races as a Monte Carlo random. But A, they're less correlated in midterms than in presidential years because you have different candidates on the ballot in every state. That's important. In 2022, we saw this kind of really big red wave in like New York, New Jersey, tri-state area. And Republicans did really well in Florida. The rest of the map was relatively good for Democrats. John Fetterman won and people like that, given that Biden had like a 39% approval rating. You know, number two, we have had systematic polling errors that underestimated Trump in 2016, 2020, 2024, a little bit more modest, but still direction the same, right? In every election in the Trump era where Trump is not on the ballot, You have not had that error. And in fact, in like New Jersey and Virginia last year, you had a massive underestimation of Democrats and governors races. And so like, first of all, it could all be noise, right? If you like code up a, you know, have Claude or whatever, or GPT code up a SIM to just show you like what random polling error looks like in the past 20 elections, it looks kind of like, you know, it's impossible to distinguish it. [00:06:57] S1: Right.
00:06:57 · Nate Silver, Nate Silver, Tracy Alloway
[00:06:57] S1: Right. [00:06:57] S2: But one story might be that like Trump has this kind of magical power to attract voters low turnout voters that also happen to be hard for pollsters to reach and where they get screened out as being unlikely voters. Those voters don't seem to want to show up for like a Roger Marshall in Kansas or a Ken Paxton in Texas, right? It seems very, you know, Trump got a lot of young men last year who flipped to 2024, who flipped to him. Young men don't usually turn out in terms of watching the NFL or whatever, right? And like there's a consistent story where like conveniently this problem of like these missing voters aren't an issue if they don't vote. [00:07:38] S0: This was actually going to be my next question. But like what are you seeing in terms of early signs of turnout? And then what are the chances that a former Trump voter actually votes Democrat rather than just decides not to show up?
00:07:38 · Tracy Alloway, Nate Silver
[00:07:38] S0: This was actually going to be my next question. But like what are you seeing in terms of early signs of turnout? And then what are the chances that a former Trump voter actually votes Democrat rather than just decides not to show up? [00:07:53] S2: As compared to general elections or presidential elections, turnout is relatively speaking more important. in midterms. Differential turnout is almost always a factor in some of these bigger waves. I'm not an early voting expert, but there are people who are pretty good at it, right? It can be very ad hoc if you don't kind of set clear rules ahead of time. And they seem to be seeing good numbers for Democrats, better numbers in the polls. I don't know, because the polls are really good for Democrats, right? But it provides some more consensus evidence for it, particularly high turnout among Black voters who may fear being disenfranchised. high turnout or not high turnout, but comparatively high turnout among unlikely voters, people who in the voter files have voted no more than one in the past four elections. Democrats are getting a lot of those, but they're getting more than Republicans, right? I think some pollsters are finding there's very little D to R crossover. If you're any type of Democrat at all, this is not the year to indulge in a moderate Republican, right? Maybe a little bit of the reverse. But like, I mean, things tell a consistent story. It's just kind of this existential thing about whether people believe the story or not.
00:07:53 · Nate Silver, Joe Weisenthal
[00:07:53] S2: As compared to general elections or presidential elections, turnout is relatively speaking more important. in midterms. Differential turnout is almost always a factor in some of these bigger waves. I'm not an early voting expert, but there are people who are pretty good at it, right? It can be very ad hoc if you don't kind of set clear rules ahead of time. And they seem to be seeing good numbers for Democrats, better numbers in the polls. I don't know, because the polls are really good for Democrats, right? But it provides some more consensus evidence for it, particularly high turnout among Black voters who may fear being disenfranchised. high turnout or not high turnout, but comparatively high turnout among unlikely voters, people who in the voter files have voted no more than one in the past four elections. Democrats are getting a lot of those, but they're getting more than Republicans, right? I think some pollsters are finding there's very little D to R crossover. If you're any type of Democrat at all, this is not the year to indulge in a moderate Republican, right? Maybe a little bit of the reverse. But like, I mean, things tell a consistent story. It's just kind of this existential thing about whether people believe the story or not. [00:08:57] S3: Why is Trump so unpopular? Like, is it just gas and diesel prices? Like, break down the drivers of his unpopularity.
00:08:57 · Joe Weisenthal, Nate Silver, Nate Silver
[00:08:57] S3: Why is Trump so unpopular? Like, is it just gas and diesel prices? Like, break down the drivers of his unpopularity. [00:09:05] S2: Trump is kind of, well, people are bored of him and tired of him, right? I think people are just like, he's been president for, I guess, six years, right? But it feels like 10 years because he was still kind of the dominant figure of that kind of Biden interregnum. You know, he's 80 years old. But no, look, I think the basic story is that he has broken promises. most prominently on cheaper gas and on no more stupid wars. We can talk about how much the Epstein stuff affects him too. But yeah, one of the things about Trump's reporting number is like, of that 37% approval, like only 19% of it is like strong approval. I think there are permission structures that have opened up for Republicans to kind of distance themselves from Trump and incentives, right? You know, Trump, his endorsement will still matter after 2026, but like, you know, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, who are nominally leading candidates, have a big problem in that they kind of are, when Bush was this unpopular in 2026, and it got worse, by the way, after the 06 midterm, you didn't have Dick Cheney trying to run for president, right? You had a rebellious Republican in John McCain who ultimately got nominated instead. And so, you know, when you're a lame duck, the bottom can drop out potentially. [00:10:16] S1: Yeah.
00:10:16 · Nate Silver, Tracy Alloway, Nate Silver, Joe Weisenthal
[00:10:16] S1: Yeah. [00:10:16] S0: So at the moment when we're recording this, if you look at, I guess, the polling consensus and prediction markets, it seems like the House is pretty much a lock. Senate is a toss up at the moment. What's the actual range of outcomes for a Democratic win here? Like, what are the extremes that you could possibly see on both sides? [00:10:37] S2: I would push back on the Senate being a toss up. I think at Polymarket and Kalshi, Democrats are up to like 68 percent or something as when we're recording this. And in our model, they're at 70, high 70s now? [00:10:48] S3: To win the Senate. [00:10:49] S0: For the Senate? [00:10:50] S1: Okay. [00:10:50] S2: Oh, wow. Well, there's this kind of, both a blessing and a curse is to actually have to put out a forecast in the form of a probability, right? Because it'd be easy to say, oh, things are looking good for Democrats. but don't get your hopes up too much because polls can be wrong. And yeah, I guess it leans down, right? Like that's chickening out though. [00:11:10] S3: Like the thing is, it's like, we could all do that. Like this is, I guess, like part of what's interesting about modelers and what's interesting about prediction markets is We could all say, yeah, it looks like Democrats, like if you're going to provide value as the creator of a model, you got to be able to say something beyond it looks like a good night for Democrats, but who knows?