Anti-Establishment Sentiment In Both Parties Is On The Ballot This Week l FiveThirtyEight

[Music] hello and welcome to the 538 politics podcast i'm galen druke it looks like california governor gavin newsom might have some reason to worry about losing his job when the gubernatorial recall election effort began in california and up until just recently newsom looked like he could pretty easily beat it back but two new polls show that newsome's lead is now within the margin of error so today we're going to take a look at why his support is declining and how the recall election could shake out also this tuesday is election day in ohio and most notably the primaries in two congressional special elections will give us a glimpse into where the power lies within the two parties in ohio's 11th congressional district the more progressive and establishment parts of the democratic party are going head-to-head and in ohio's 15th the power of trump's endorsement is again being tested we've also got a good use or bad use of pulling for you all today but we're going to do that later on in the show so here with me to discuss it all our politics editor sarah frostinson hey sarah hey galen happy first monday of august how's summer treating you we're like i don't know is this like the kind of final part of the summer that we're entering now it's the final part of the summer but you know not that slow of a noose period so so there you go yeah well i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but at least we have something to talk about um also here with us is elections analyst nathaniel raykick hey nathaniel hey galen how are you enjoying this part of the summer i'm enjoying it i'm watching a lot of olympic baseball and softball which has been fun although it requires me to get up and stay up at ungodly hours which has been less fun i don't know i don't know if i should admit this i have i have yet to see a single olympic event wow is that crazy uh it's not that crazy if you're unamerican um but i haven't been watching lots of love island um and i will still promote uh 538 olympic coverage head over to 538.com we have the metal tracker and all kinds of other great stuff for people who are more american than i i'm kidding i love america i just don't follow sports um galen does love america i can attest to this anyway let's get to those two primaries in ohio starting with the 15th district so representative steve stivers resigned from his seat in may to lead the ohio chamber of commerce to replace him former president trump has endorsed coal lobbyist mike carey in a primary including 10 other republicans so eyes are on this race particularly after the candidate that trump endorsed lost in last week's runoff featuring two republicans in texas's sixth congressional district so i mentioned that trump endorsed carrie nathaniel what are the dynamics of the rest of the field is it like an array of different kind of trump levels of trump alignment what's going on yeah i mean everybody in the field is pro-trump but of course only one candidate has trump's endorsement um but yeah as you mentioned kind of after the texas sex i think there's going to be a lot of perhaps undeserved attention on whether trump's nominee or and dorsey um wins this time around and it's not at all clear that he will um there has definitely not been the kind of coalescing or coronation around trump's pick the way that you've seen in past republican primaries so in addition to cary you have um former state representative ron hood who has kind of emerged as the pick of the kind of rand paul libertarian side of the party there is a super pac they protect freedom pack that is spending big money i believe over six hundred thousand dollars on helping him win the race um you also have um ruth edmonds who is a minister who is endorsed by debbie meadows who's a conservative activist who is also the wife of trump's former chief of staff mark meadows you have jeff larae who was endorsed by stivers the retiring incumbent or resigning incumbent and in an unusual move actually stivers has spent three hundred thousand dollars of his own campaign cash kind of left over on airing ads for larae so he's kind of putting his money where his mouth is as well then you have other several other candidates um tom hwang maybe might be the most notable of those he is a a local businessman he owns a golf course and he has just pumped a bunch of money into his campaign um he's he's self-funded to the tune of half a million dollars um and so you have a lot of kind of spending coming from lots of different directions on this race it's not at all the case that everybody is is okay with trump's pick so that's led to a very unsettled race we only have one poll of the race it was an internal poll it was from two months ago so i really don't think people should be um reading too much into that i don't think we have a lot of data at all to go off of except for maybe these these kind of fundraising and spending numbers um but really i think you know the the there's a wide range of possibilities here as to who could win um carrie not carrie i think this race in particular you know what's been so unusual is when stivers resigned he kind of had his pick lorraine right but lorraine didn't really catch on stivers has put his own money into that trump endorses a candidate but that didn't really clear the field there either and as nathaniel said to be clear like all of these candidates running are pro-trump there's not a lot of daylight between them i think the one interesting contrast is you know we do have a recency bias right now with the texas six election being held last week and so you know trump the backed candidate there did not win so there's kind of that well what will happen now i mean the one poll we have it's from june it was an internal poll it did show a sizable lead for cary carrie's running as an outsider when you look at the fundraising numbers you know there really haven't been a lot of candidates catapulting to the top i mean yes someone like um hwang has you know self-funded his campaign but you know cell funders are often a regular type of candidate as well and you know one thing that i was really picking up on in the texas sixth race was you know people like former governor rick perry were saying you know what trump was sold like a fake bill of goods about susan wright you haven't seen that same kind of outspokenness here around carrie you have seen people like senator rand paul backing his own candidate mark meadow's wife backing her own candidate so there is disagreement but there is less like open maybe trump's pick isn't that good maybe he should be going um with another candidate so that gives me reason you know as nathaniel said it's really an open race there are 11 candidates it's hard to know who will pull ahead here but it does seem to be like a different um tenor than what we had in leading up to the texas sixth race nathaniel you said at the top that this race was maybe getting some undeserved attention regarding trump's endorsement and whether or not carrie will win why do you say undeserved i just think that if there are two consecutive losses in a row for the trump endorsed candidate that's going to set off a minor firestorm people being like oh trump is losing his influence within the republican party and i think that that's just a little bit hasty we have this kind of long track record of trump endorsed candidates winning their races you know there have been a couple of exceptions over the past several of years but you know like i think that two races shouldn't outweigh the long track record that we have in addition i think that there is there could be even if it's true that maybe trump is you know not as powerful as he was while he was president um i think there's room to misinterpret that as well i think you know it's not necessary i think a lot of people will want to say that oh like republican voters are turning on trump or like you know they um they're ready to to move on from him and it could be more that other republican elites are are kind of expressing their independence which would still be significant but you know we've talked a lot on this podcast of course galen about how republican elites probably have more power than they think they do in terms of influencing how republican voters feel and perhaps getting them to to break with trump and i think that you see this clearly there are a lot of people other politicians donors who are comfortable giving to and endorsing the non-trump endorsed candidate um and maybe we're just finding that when presented with a menu of options where you know a republican voter might be like oh trump endorsed this guy but this other republican who i like endorsed this guy so maybe there are multiple good candidates in this race and maybe they'll kind of split their votes because of that and also maybe we're just seeing that when republican donors give to candidates who aren't trump candidates they are able to use that money to then convince voters to vote for them and and so you know that doesn't necessarily mean that trump isn't still a popular figure within the republican party obviously yeah over the weekend fundraising reports showed that trump's political operation raised more money than any other republican in the first half of the year which is notable for a former president and that he now has a hundred million dollars on hand to spend in political fights like this you know when thinking about money spent in primaries that might have relatively low turnout or might not get that much attention like how are you thinking about that 100 million dollars like does that mean that going forward in these fights he's gonna have like you know a good shot at picking the winner i mean i continue to think that trump's endorsement is powerful within the republican party the question is whether it is kind of invincible um and that's an exaggeration because some of his endorses have lost before and again you know two out of you know hundreds isn't necessarily notable so you're right that like i think the hundred million it's a testament to the way in which you know the organization around trump that apparatus especially um his former campaign manager corey lewandowski is going to try in these races to kind of have trump's endorsement mean something and he had this great quote in a political article that was talking about this race in ohio and he was saying you know organizations that endorse candidates against the president's endorsement do so at their own peril meaning like you know they're going to remember this in the sense of you can see how that plays out if uh carrie here wins that you know why did meadow's wife endorse you know this candidate or rand paul do this candidate and remember you know rand paul and trump you know did eventually come to like play golf together essentially but paul's often been on the opposite end of trump here and so i think trump is mounting a very serious you know ground level game here in the primaries to test the water for you know the 2022 midterms but then 2024 and you know we're going to kind of see how this works out in real time but as nathaniel cautioned you know this is now the second primary you know here that we're kind of paying special attention to in terms of um you know loyalty to trump and we'll see how that evolves we've got a lot of time yeah they're going to be a lot of races in which trump has already endorsed 2022 primary races and i just don't think we should jump to any conclusions until we kind of see the overall win rate for the cycle um if it is significantly lower than it was in the past then that would be notable but we just don't know that yet and of course we'll be tracking that here at 5 38 one question as we wrap up on ohio's 15th and one other important piece of context here is like what kind of district is this as people see the results coming in like is this a district that we would typically think of as like closely trump-aligned is it more chamber of commercy like where does it fall um within the republican party and just how red-leaning is it yeah so this is a pretty republican seat it has a 538 partisan lien of r plus 19 which means in a neutral political environment theoretically we would expect a republican to win it by 19 points um so it's basically you know it's it's not like deep deep red but it is probably out of the reach of democrats in the general election in terms of the primary electorate you know it's a fairly wide-ranging seat it's in central ohio it goes from the suburbs of columbus out to kind of appalachia so um you know it would seem to bring in lots of different types of voters the outgoing representative steve stivers is literally resigning in order to become president of the ohio chamber of commerce um but of course you know the republican party has been moving in a trumpier direction generally over the last several years and perhaps the seat will be the next domino to fall in that regard and of course we'll be able to see as the results come in kind of where the preferences lie from those columbus suburbs out to appalachia but anyway let's turn to the primary in ohio's 11th congressional district where former representative marcia fudge resigned from her seat to become secretary of housing and urban development so vying to take her place are former state senator nina turner and cuyahoga councilwoman chantel brown among others but really the focus is on those two and turner is aligned with the further left parts of the party and was presidential campaign co-chair for bernie sanders brown is more aligned with the establishment parts of the party and has been endorsed by house majority whip james clyburn all right so we didn't necessarily have a great sense of how competitive the 15th district was do we have a good sense of how competitive this race is here in ohio's 11th we have kind of a distorted view of it and there haven't been any independent polls here but there have been a fair number of internal polls and enough that i think we can chart the trajectory so basically everyone agreed that early in the race nina turner was doing well she jumped into the race with as the candidate with the most money the most uh the biggest national profile she had a bunch of endorsements from basically the entire progressive apparatus so think bernie sanders uh congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez our revolution the group that turner herself used to lead in groups like that but i think kind of as the democratic establishment and particularly some people who turner had not played nice with in the past um kind of becoming aware that oh geez nina turner could become a congress person and become a real foreign on our side um they've kind of come off the bench and um and sided with brown who is kind of a um a up-and-coming um figure within the local um party establishment there um so she kind of has the implicit support of marcia fudge whose resignation to become um secretary of housing and urban development is what triggered this special election fudge herself has said i can't endorse because i'm in the biden administration which isn't really technically true um but her mom has literally aired an ad that says um we're voting like you know marcia can't vote i can't endorse in this race but i can and we're voting for chantal brown um and you've also seen hillary clinton whom turner kind of famously defected from in 2016. she's endorsed chantal brown jim clyburn the congressional black caucus has lined up behind brown and this is all seemed to have an effect and there's also been a good number of outside spending on behalf of brown um and all this has kind of added up to an effect so now you see um some again internal poles and these are actually the ones from brown's campaign and her allies have been showing this as like a close race although turner's still leading by i think like six or seven points um so i would care kind of reading you know looking at the distortions there i would say that when you're releasing a poll that shows you're down by six or seven points you are almost certainly down probably by closer to 10 points but it does seem like brown has been building momentum in the race now of course you know we say about momentum it you know that doesn't necessarily last um you know it could stop here and then turn her wins by 10 points or so i do think it's notable though that turner herself hasn't released any internal polls she released an internal poll a few months back that showed her leading and if she had better pulling numbers now you would think that she would come out with them but she hasn't so i do think this is a competitive race if i had to pick someone to win i would pick turner um but but either outcome wouldn't surprise me so we've laid out the macro dynamics here kind of the national politicians who have endorsed in this race sarah what are some of the debates playing out within the actual campaign like what kinds of issues are they talking about yeah so i mean one question in this race you know has kind of been how far to the left to go you know at one point kind of you know a familiar fault line from the 2020 democratic primary around health care someone like chantal brown saying i support you know adding the public option to the affordable care act someone like turner saying you know i want medicare for all so the group that turner you know at one point once led here in 2017 our revolution is kind of rebranded in recent days as pragmatic progressives you know what that will actually mean particularly at this point of the race is kind of an open question mark because someone like turner is a well-established progressive in the field you know she famously compared the 2020 election to you know a bowl of in terms of the candidate choices between trump and biden and so there does seem though you know as we've seen in other races this year in terms of progressives like having to talk about what it means then around like you know policing in communities how important is that um so those issues are cropping up but this does seem at this point like largely drawn in terms of you know just like establishment credentials versus progressive and not a lot of nuance in between that but more so just kind of like which side of the party do you really want representing you in congress yeah and what's interesting here is that this race is really being fought on the establishment's turf the 11th district is a majority black district and as we know from the 2020 presidential primary and from other races black voters tend to be pretty moderate and pretty establishment so you would think that they would naturally go towards someone like brown and indeed brown and her allies have been trying to make this race a referendum on party loyalty so a lot of her ads and their ads have focused on a attacking turner for her disparaging comments against biden and kind of not backing like hillary clinton in 2016. and they've also emphasized how brown will really work very well with uh with biden and kind of be in this um tradition of past democrats from the district who have been very establishment and and worked toward compromise and results and things like that you also see interestingly on turner's part she has this natural national reputation of being a progressive and you know kind of a bomb thrower but before that when she was in the state senate she was actually kind of known as someone who worked well with others and she was a rising star within the party and you've seen her kind of return to those roots in her campaigning she has really kind of reached out to a lot of her old allies and gotten some key local endorsements she's also a lot of her ads are you know not really focusing on kind of these the red meat um you know issues and progressive ideals but rather on kind of more meat and potatoes stuff um that really portrays her as someone who is um is also kind of looking to just just get results and make people's lives better um so so you know in that sense um it does seem to be you know like both campaigns are catering toward um the more kind of consensus establishment focused median voter in this district so yeah i mean i think nathaniel made an interesting point about how this district you know is set up well for an establishment style candidate which is one reason why i think you're seeing establishment wings of the party invest so heavily it also though i think kind of reflects to something we've noticed in tracking primaries and endorsements in 2018 and 2020 which is that in an open seat race like this one that tends to be a better like fighting ground for progressives and as nathanael was getting at too you know something like turner makes her a great candidate because she already has such strong legislative roots in the state and so you're seeing establishment candidates like you know the congressional black caucus clyburn taking this race really seriously in terms of the level of investment that they're offering someone like brown but you know on the flip side of that progressives have really invested heavily in this race too and i think because it's an open seat you know there really is a lot of opportunity for him for them here you know one thing we found in 2020 was that of the progressive winds in which it was an open seat they had about a win rate of 69 which was much higher than understandably when they take on you know an incumbent already in office so i think you know with turner's credentials in the state as nathaniel was getting at um and the fact that right like the polls that have been released so far which have been internal from brown's campaign kind of suggest you know she has built perhaps kind of a winning coalition here for progressive challengers to look at in in future elections yeah of course we'll have to wait to see the results we said that you know it's kind of too soon to jump to any conclusions about the worth of a trump endorsement regardless of basically what happens in ohio's 15th congressional district you know when it comes to these races that have pit the progressive part and the establishment parts of the more progress sorry when it comes to these races that have pitted the further left parts of the party and the establishment parts of the party on the democratic side against each other do we have enough data here to kind of really say that progressives are struggling in the post-trump you know now biden era um and and kind of to add some grist to this question the huffington post published a piece at the end of last week kind of looking at this conflict essentially intra-party conflict in ohio and they wrote that since biden took office quote the left's preferred candidates fell short in the special election in louisiana's second congressional district in april virginia's democratic gubernatorial primary in early june and the new york city mayoral primary in late june and then sean mcelwee the founder of the progressive group data for progress was quoted saying quote each race has its own unique circumstances but the broader narrative is that under the biden presidency progressives need an election message that resonates with our base voters and of quote maybe suggesting that they haven't found that yet so is this enough information here to to say that the tides have turned or like you know he also says does each have its own uh kind of particular you know reason that it can be explained away no there's not enough information here yet either um a lot of those cases like in louisiana and in new york were also kind of on establishment-friendly turf i would say um and so it doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily surprising that progressives weren't uh able to win um you know those races to to sean's point um but also of course just kind of the broader sample size thing you know actually like the establishment does tend to win when it goes up against the progressives like you know the progressive campaign apparatus is definitely kind of getting stronger and professionalizing but they have i still think they have a good amount of work to do to get to kind of the um you know the power of a lot of these party committees and things like that um so it's also like not necessarily that surprising that in a small sample of elections the establishment has tended to win um although you also have had kind of some like lower salience elections where progressives have one um to be clear but again i mean you know there again they're going to be dozens if not more of progressive versus establishment primaries in 2022 we should wait until we kind of have the full body of data in order to draw any conclusions about whether things have changed yeah and i mean you know the other thing too i think to keep in mind here is of the elections um that huffpo cited and its article you know those all had a very like different kind of progressive field for the race you know and turner has been in the lead here since the beginning she also has strong ties to the area and so i do think you know while understandably kind of the main divide in the race has been progressive versus establishment i'm not sure how much voters are actually using that to kind of make up their minds in this and it could be you know turner also has a lot of local endorsements there is a different dynamic to this race i think the flip side of that though is if she were to lose if brown were to win that probably will then kind of be seen as the biggest upset or setback for the progressive movement this year and i think that narrative will kind of take hold california is holding an election to recall governor gavin newsom on september 14th if newsom were to lose he would be replaced by whichever candidate gets the most votes on that same ballot now the election was triggered after republican activists collected about a million and a half signatures between last fall and this spring the race did not originally appear competitive but two recent polls show that's changed to some degree so a university of california berkeley poll found that 50 percent of likely recall voters want to keep newsom and 47 want to recall him and an emerson college poll found that 48 percent of registered voters want to keep new sim and 43 want to recall him so those margins are between three and five points we're bringing on a special guest to help us make sense of what's happening in california our very own intern emma riley is based in the bay area and is joining us now to discuss the recall election in her state welcome to the show emma thank you i'm so excited hi i'm excited to have you here so emma to kick things off why is gavin newsom being recalled on a you know political level we know the nuts and bolts they got enough signatures whatever like what is the what problem do californians have with gavin newsom so i think a lot of people want to attribute kovid uh to this but actually this is like the sixth attempt to recall gavin newsom since he came into office and with this most recent attempt was introduced in february 2020 so before kovid was even a thing and it was introduced by a group of trumpian conservatives the california patriot coalition um introduced this most recent recall attempt and it was mostly to do with new sims opposition and resistance to trump's handling of undocumented immigrants and just a lot of other kind of traditional ideological positions that don't have anything to do with um kovid newsom is just also a champion of a lot of democratic and progressive initiatives since uh being mayor of san francisco and kind of just stands for almost everything republicans are against but we've come we've come a long way since then so as you mentioned there were five failed attempts this may have well become another failed attempt if it weren't for certain things lining up in his opponent's favor so where where did it go from that original effort in february till now yeah so i think the reason why this recall attempt actually stuck this time has a lot to do with covid first on the procedural level petitioners had to get a certain number of signatures i think 12 percent of the turnout from the last governor election um so about one and a half million signatures and you have to do it in a certain amount of time which they weren't able to do but then a judge gave them an extra four months because of kovid um to get those signatures so the reason why they were able to get those signatures also has to do with kovid because of the french laundry incident and that happened in november when photos leaked of gavin newsom at this kind of fancy dinner unmasked indoors against all of his own kind of covid guidances which really upset a lot of californians so how do we get from you know an environment a state where someone like joe biden is winning the presidential election by about 30 points to a place where newsome is only leading in this effort to not be recalled by three to five points at the moment right so you have to think that there are people who support democrats who now don't necessarily support newsome you know what's the story of how we get to that place where like democrats seemingly or at least left-leaning independent or whatever are also not pleased with gavin newsom yeah well i think it's a couple of different things i should say i'm i'm in the bay area where support for gavin newsom pulls the highest in this area and also san francisco county is the most democratic county in california i think registered democrats outnumber registered republicans nine to one here so this is a very specific kind of uh californian democrat the interesting thing is a lot of the reasons maybe that republicans aren't supportive of gavin newsom or yeah why he's not so popular on both sides on the far left and the far right are kind of similar in some ways like there's just a general distrust in kind of political elites and feeling like they're tied up in these kind of corporate interests of course the conclusions from from those are polar opposite from the far left and the far right but the reasons for why he's not so popular among both camps are strangely similar i would also say that actually i think it's more about disproportionate republican interest and depressed democratic interest in the recall than necessarily that newsome is suddenly less popular among democrats so you see that this in the in the polling number so the berkeley poll which was the the tightest poll it showed it being a three-point race where the um the recall effort was trailing by only three points that was among likely voters and in the past berkeley and actually this time also berkeley had pulled registered voters and the poll the was a lot less close so actually in this specific poll if you look at just registered voters 51 percent were opposed to the recall and 36 percent were in favor whereas when you kind of filtered down to just the likely voters it was a lot closer and that's because that the poll also found that 80 percent of republicans said they were absolutely certain they were going to vote but only 55 percent of democrats did so i think the challenge for newsom isn't necessarily that he's lost these democratic voters but he just needs to kind of convince them to vote and i think that there are several reasons why he might be successful in this i think one big one is that he just has a ton of money he has reserved over 12 million dollars in tv ads for the final month of the race um i think that's probably going to do a lot to just inform democratic voters that there is a recall election and i think that the vast majority of them because of simple partisanship will vote for gavin newsom to stay in office and then the second is that this is actually going to be an all-male election the kind of covid era election law changes that happened in 2020 have been extended through the end of 2021 uh in california and that means that everybody in california is gonna be mailed a ballot and um for an election like 2020 that might not matter because um you know everybody was going to go to the polls anyway because it was such a kind of high profile election for an oddly scheduled election like this one just getting that ballot in the mail is going to be i think an important reminder to people that hey there is an election i should vote in it and you know if that increases turnout it's not necessarily that male elections benefit democrats as we know but um when it just kind of it can it can guard against a scenario where you know it's election day and you know the polls are empty except for the really rabid newsome haters so if there's any kind of you know kind of representative voting across democrats independence and republicans in california in this election there should be enough of those democrats and independents um to save newsom although we should say that like there's been a clear shift in this election in the sense that even just a month ago we saw um a closer race so is it that just like over the past month um republicans have just gotten that much more enthusiastic um or are are there other issues playing out in california that have changed some of the dynamics so i kind of think it might be what emma was getting at right you know the polls show strong enthusiama it's strong enthusiasm among republicans but that's kind of always been true right they were the ones mounting the recall effort there have been die hard fans to get newsom out of office for a while now but if newsom you know his approval rating in the state um in both the emerson poll and then the berkeley poll kind of had him at 50 percent approval which isn't terrible but it's not really great either and so it's more so i think kind of you know this atrophy among democratic voters they're not necessarily against newsome but are they really that energized to go out and support him so before these most recent polls we saw polling from may and those showed you know a way larger gap between people who are for the recall and people against the recall and i mean that was right when newsome was kind of talking about this giant 76 billion surplus that he managed coming out of a 54 billion deficit heading into the pandemic and he met with the federal funds and this kind of tax scheme he was able to come out with this huge um budget state budget surplus and he was talking about how he was going to spend this money you know 6 billion for renewable energy and climate projects and for housing initiatives and education and public health and so at that time in may i think he was pulling a lot higher um and now the situation has kind of changed i mean the the race has gotten more heated as uh these other republican recall candidates have jumped in but also the situation has has changed i think um with like delta kind of making cases surge again the situation has become kind of fraught and um he's getting more criticism now than i think back then when things were kind of looking like they're going on the up and up yeah i'm curious either based on the data or you're on reporting what seems to be the most salient issues in this recall campaign i mean is it covid um because obviously california has been the topic of a lot of conversation about different challenges you know from wildfires to droughts to housing california is losing population in fact we learned from um the most recent census is you know is it all of it is all of that more kind of like news media narrative but not necessarily weighing on the minds of actual californians without a doubt across like both democrats and republicans housing is a huge issue there are 160 000 i think unhoused people in california um it's a huge problem and seems to be getting worse climate is another huge issue the ppic poll showed that um the drought is like the number one environmental issue um that being said gavin newsom pulls actually quite high um in terms of his environmental and renewable energy issues kind of similar to biden but he has faced um criticism from on the ground talking to people no one necessarily faults gavin newsom for the wildfires um and and wouldn't really be able to say i think a lot of people wouldn't be able to say who would do a better job with wildfires but there was an investigation um kind of recently about how um he kind of slashed the budget for wildfire prevention and um was i think promised to treat like 90 000 acres of wildfires and only ended up being like 12 000 a fraction of that but um yeah i would say housing definitely is the number one issue in california yeah if you look at the berkeley poll they actually asked likely voters what the reason that newsome should be recalled was so 48 percent of likely voters said that the governor should be recalled because he has failed to adequately address many of the state's long-standing problems and a slightly smaller percentage 44 percent said that he should be recalled quote because he greatly overstepped his authority as governor when responding to the kovid 19 pandemic so you know again to emma's point um from you know it does not seem like this is a covid focused thing it seems like there is broader discontent at least among a highly energized republican uh electorate um with newsome's policies in general we've talked about news on why people might not be so happy with him what are the alternatives here and how heavily will that weigh on whether or not newsom is recalled because again on the ballot these are two separate questions right it's two questions on one ballot first question do you want to recall gavin newsom yes or no and then second question is who would you want to replace him and so you know you could get a majority saying they want to recall gavin newsom but whoever they want to replace him may not be the the majority consensus candidate it's you could just be a plurality winner so like how are the alternatives looking is there one clear alternative at this point i guess in the that berkeley igs poll it showed i think larry elder pulled the highest at like 18 and he kind of jumped into the race um last minute and has some of the greatest like uh name recognition and he's yeah very republican conservative talk radio show host um candidate so right as emma said larry elder uh you know has the most support in the poll but even still that's not a fifth of the response in the poll you have san diego mayor kevin faulconer running perennial candidate john cox who often campaigns alongside a bear and then i think kind of notably reality tv star caitlyn jenner you know despite getting a lot of media coverage when she first jumped in i think it's noteworthy that in either polls she hasn't really registered a lot of support and that maybe has something to do with jenner's former opposition to trump but at this point you know there's a lot of voters who are still undecided um that's kind of where the plurality of voters are yeah and i think i mean that was a huge part of gavin newsom's campaign raised to sending millions of dollars make sure there's no high-profile democratic candidate he's successfully able to do so there's i think the one other uh democrat candidate that i i know of i guess is a youtuber um and um yeah so but the upshot of that right is that if enough people vote um yes on the recall on that first question we would be likely have one of these republican um candidates replace him okay so given everything we've said here that the polls have tightened there are some reasons there that have to do with perhaps enthusiasm more than just raw preference at this point how worried should gavin newsom be i would say he should take the race seriously but as long as he does that he will probably be fine if i were kind of assigning this uh you know political report esque race rating i would call it a likely d race like i think clearly you know it is not with outside the realm of possibility that a that new sim could lose and that a republican could therefore become governor um but i mean the overall advantages the money i already mentioned california being such a blue state that he really just needs to get you know some number of democratic voters out to the polls or the the ballot mailboxes i guess and uh and then you know people are going to talk about the 2003 recall where democrat great davis was was ousted from office and of course famously honor schwarzenegger became governor but there are some key differences there first of all california wasn't as blue back then it was kind of more of a democratic leaning state than a solidly democratic one but then i think the big one is that gray davis was so so so unpopular his approval rating was in the 20s like gavin newsom is not in that universe as sarah mentioned earlier you know he's at got kind of this lukewarm approval rating but um you know again and the polls of the recall showed the same thing they showed you know there was very little doubt by the end of that campaign that davis was going to get recalled and this is showing you know even though the race the has heightened and those polls are within the margin of error and you know we would encourage any candidate who is leading within the margin of error not to take their their race for granted you know it is still true that newsom it does have you know it's it's not like the recall is winning by a slight amount in these races either so you know you would still kind of err on the side of it losing um so in the end i would be surprised but uh but i think it's it's going to be a race that we have to pay attention to yeah i would agree i think it's definitely going to come down to turnout i think you know historically in special elections and these kind of weird off-year elections um turnout is lower um the electorate is whiter older more conservative um so there is you know reason to maybe not worry but to take it seriously um especially with the polling and enthusiasm um and like we talked about earlier you know gavin knew newsom signed this bill that will guarantee every um registered voter will get a mail-in ballot um but we saw earlier this year in oakland at san diego that they were still really low turnout even with this you know mail-in ballot system so that doesn't necessarily guarantee everyone is going to go out and vote and um yeah and just asking people here in like the most democratic area um talking to people i think you get kind of one of two responses um one it's like oh yeah when is that when is that election again um and uh like what's going on with that or two just like yeah this is they might not be strongly in support of gavin newsom but they think yeah this is just not the right time it's it's a massively expensive like upwards of 215 million dollars being spent on this recall election um and a distraction at a time when california is facing kind of compounding crises of rising coveted cases because of delta historic drought and we're entering upon another likely terrible wildfire seasons so yeah i think getting up the enthusiasm i think we'll see that in the next couple weeks because mail and ballots actually will be coming august 16th in two weeks um and so i do think kind of these ads will start ramping up i think his strategy of tying it and nationalizing the recall election is probably um a good strategy in a state that biden won by almost 30 points um and yeah i haven't seen it yet but i do expect to see a lot more kind of new some ads floating into my social media pages and um in in the next week or so although i haven't seen that kind of buzz yet um but again you know i think it's important to to say like you know six million people voted for trump in california um it's not this would not be the first time california gets a republican governor in the last time it happened like you said nathaniel was in 2003 on a recall um so this is how it happens and in in general you know californians have voted on kind of more conservative policies even in 2020 a lot of the propositions i think progressives were quite disappointed in um like proposition 22 and um uh proposition 16 where voters rejected restoring reform affirmative action so it i think democrats feel quite safe here a lot of a lot of the time and even in 2020 when there was record turnout in the presidential election there is this feeling of complacency like oh like my vote doesn't even matter you know as a democrat in this deep blue state which um where you see that kind of discrepancy and enthusiasm between republicans who are um very passionate about this recall and democrats who um don't have um as big of an interest in it from that polling all right well let's leave things there of course we will watch what happens next but thank you so much for joining us today emma thanks all right so to wrap things up today we have a wonky good use or bad use of polling last week the u.s census bureau announced that it would not be releasing the results of the 2020 american community survey that's because according to the bureau response rates were historically low due to covid and did not include a representative sample of the american public so a little background on the american community survey before we get to judging whether or not this is a good or bad use of polling so the census tries to reach every single person in the country but that only happens once every 10 years meanwhile the american community survey or acs for short is an actual poll that just takes a sample although it's a rather large sample 3.5 million americans but they do it every single year as opposed to just every 10 years and the census also asks very basic information about age sex and race while the american community survey is far more detailed it asks about jobs income housing costs disabilities marital status citizenship status internet access health insurance even the number of vehicles owned by a family or the types of appliances that they have and so this data is used by all kinds of companies it's used by journalists it's used by us here at 538 frequently and census publications have cited that this data is used to influence more than 600 billion dollars in federal spending every year so those are the stakes here the american community survey is not just some abstract you know boring poll whatever here is the question only 71 of participants responded to the survey in 2020 that was the lowest ever response rate in the past in 2019 it was 86 percent year before that it was 92 the census bureau decided not to release the survey this year as a result is that a good or bad use of pulling so it's good in the sense that they are not going to release a poll that they are not confident in that they have a high enough response rate one thing though i think that you know it's an interesting challenge here in this is like the pandemic right and so in their memo the census bureau said that they weren't able to you know have a period in which they could try to solve some of the issues with the non-response rate they were though with the census and so i think you know in some ways i kind of wish that they had said you know what we're going to delay this even further to try to get the data in a way that it could be usable for 2020 they seem though to have instead moved towards like we're going to release an experimental data set um that you know with proper weighting can kind of be used as a replacement and i assume that had to have been done for like time and resources yeah i would say that this is a good non-use of polling the census bureau was transparent about the problem they are not releasing data that could have been skewed um but they are kind of releasing this experimental version in kind of like a hidden place on their website as far as i understand it so that researchers who are interested in seeing that and like playing around with that and and maybe trying to figure out what went wrong or how it does vary from reality can still play with it so i think that is a good use of kind of transparency and um and gatekeeping i think notably um you know something that we've said on the podcast in the past as we have criticized pollsters like political pollsters who conduct a poll and then think it's wrong and then don't with or don't release it because they don't want to be kind of harshly judged for being an outlier or something but i think this is very different because this is kind of you know it is a poll kind of methodologically um but its kind of role in society and in analysis is very different from a political poll because this is as galen mentioned kind of a foundational um data set for researchers and for policy makers and so releasing something that in in all likelihood is wrong um would really i think be damaging to a whole host of professions and and policies yeah my understanding too is that like when they release the experimental data they're doing a write-up too about like the issues they experienced what went wrong um as well yeah i think that's a really good show of transparency you know the first question i had when i saw this was if response rates were so poor for the 2020 american community survey you know how can we trust the results of the broader 2020 decennial census and i asked this in the context of people have been questioning the results of the 2020 census because of you know most maybe high profile at least in our world is the way that congressional districts have been apportioned because of the census data so like you know should we have questions about the census data after you know hearing this about the american community survey no because namely because the census had a lot more resources at its disposal so to be clear like what we saw with the acs what we've seen with other polls is a real phenomenon of non-response right however the census particularly because it's conducted at a particular time they deployed thousands and thousands of people into the field going and assessing addresses and you know collecting the data that way the ecs it wasn't possible to do it in that um manner and so that's why i think we're kind of in this experimental uh field now for how they're gonna release the 2020 data yeah it was interesting kind of the explanation that the census bureau gave about the non-response bias in in the american community survey um they said that the population that responded had quote significantly different social economic and housing characteristics from those who did not so is the american community survey essentially running into the same challenges that other even like election pollsters are and if that's the case do we know for sure that this is a coveted related issue and not a broader issue of non-response bias i am not a super census expert i should know more about kind of the nuts and bolts of it but i do not think that these are related issues so my understanding having read what the census um kind of put out there is that it is you know it is like pandemic related they seem very kind of convinced of that and they laid out all these reasons for why the pandemic really hampered their results so they actually they conduct the american community service by mail and then take in the results and process them and then send out people in person to follow up with people who didn't respond and that's very different from how political polls are conducted which is typically by phone or online and the census also had this very kind of wonky reason of why like physically like they they print their their things and and stuff the envelopes and then process the the results in like this big like warehouse in indiana and they physically could not do that task it's not a task that can be done virtually they physically could not do this task for months in 2020 um and so you know when you talk about the the issues with political polls i haven't heard as an explanation the fact that the pollsters operations themselves were impacted i don't see how that would be the case um you know when you do you know there are obviously been several explanations proposed for for what happened with the 2020 political polls including kind of the um mistrust of institutions uh explanation but the kind of one pandemic related thing that i have heard is that um democrats were staying home more and listening to coveted restrictions whereas republicans were flouting them more and going outside and therefore democrats are the ones at home picking up the phone and and i don't think that is the issue here because the acs isn't measuring democrats versus republicans um and in fact the like the aapor report that we talked about on the podcast the other day which tried to kind of diagnose the um the problem specifically said that the polls weren't having trouble coming up with a representative sample of americans based on demographics race sex and the things that the acs measures it was specifically that they couldn't isolate like they couldn't weight their way to a representative sample of trump versus biden voters so there was something about trump voters specifically that was being missed and again because the acs isn't asking about this um that is i think um that that that's the key here um in fact um i'm just going to refer to something from the aopr report which i thought was very interesting so they actually tried to adjust the results of some of the surveys that were wrong to kind of weight them retrospectively to the results of the election and as jennifer agesta at cnn wrote this exercise did not significantly move the numbers for demographics like age race education or gender but it did move the numbers for partisanship and for self-reported 2016 vote um so so that's why i kind of just don't think that this is that the acs is running into the same issue because it's not trying to measure the same thing so i actually disagree with nathaniel a little i mean obviously fight fight yeah i have nerdfight um no so i mean obviously the what the census is collecting is very different from a horse race poll i completely understand that that said though this concept of non-response rate and the idea that is concentrated among people with lower income and lower educational attainment that's also true in what we've seen in the post-mortems here for the political horse race polls so i do think we have seen an erosion of trust in our institutions whether that is a political poll asking who you will sort support for president or whether it's you know the census bureau trying to understand who you are as an american and yes there have been specific pandemic related issues particularly for the census itself but remember like the data the census is collecting is a lot less granular than what the acs collects the acs you know wants to know a lot more about the highest level of education you receive median household income who lives in the house what your role is in the house and that kind of data you know if trust in institutions is already low why is someone going to respond to that versus a poll asking who they'd support for president i don't know if people would draw a distinction of like trusting one and not the other and the fact that you know in both instances that kind of non-response rate has been found and as galen cited at the top we've seen response rate to the acs dip in the last you know three cycles it's been asked i think that kind of does suggest that there is a larger problem here in terms of getting people to respond that is representative of um the whole us see i thought the galen's numbers um were pretty suggested that it was the pandemic because the numbers were 92 and 18 86 percent in 19 and then all the way down to 71 percent in 2020 and so i do feel like if the if it had been about kind of just mistrust of institutions that would have shown up earlier i know that that is a kind of a slight decrease but like and clearly that drop off from 19 to 20 was very steep and and just kind of logically speaking it seems like the pandemic is to blame and again just because like we do know i mean maybe maybe the answer is both but um we do know that like literally the census bureau was unable to mail physically mail these things for three months and so there is this huge gap in the data what i would like to know um actually you know i'm glad that we kind of had this back and forth is that like i wonder what the response rate in 2018 and 2019 were kind of on that first wave so like part of this issue is that they mailed they eventually were able to mail things but they weren't able to do like in-person follow-ups so i wonder what the response rates in 2018 and 2019 were to just the mailing and then how much extra they got from the in-person follow-ups and maybe once you kind of take out the in-person follow-ups and do an apples-to-apples comparison with 18 and 19 you would see more similar rates um i don't know i'd be curious during the pandemic you heard from political pollsters that their response rates were actually increasing um and and the response rates for political polls are so much slow like you know these numbers we were talking about of 90 80 even 70 these are very very high um versus political polling where the response rates are in the single digits so i just there's just a lot to me that isn't apples to apples with this where i would leave it though is in terms of we seem to be dancing around this problem both in political polls census polls polls from pew about getting the right people to respond there are people not responding to polls it seems to trend lower income lower educational attainment and so i think you're right in the sense of like there are a number of motivating factors for why that might be some of it is just pandemic related can't contact them but i think some of it could speak to well why aren't they responding to the poll do they feel alienated do they not trust democracy you know are there other factors here then at play for why people don't want to engage in this not civic duty but you know a way in which we understand the data in our in our country fortunately they conduct the american community survey every year so i think we'll all be you know paying close attention to what kind of data and what kind of response rates they're able to collect it you know this year in 2021 which again is maybe not quite a normal year but we'll see and you know going forward with 2022 so we will keep our eyes on on this as well uh but let's leave it there for today i think all around we decided that this was a good use of polling if you don't think you have good data say so so thanks census bureau uh but also you know important questions underlying that uh as well but thank you sarah and nathaniel thanks again my name is galen druke claire bettigary curtis is on audio editing and is also in the control room today alongside emma reilly our intern thanks again emma for being so great on the podcast today you can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts538.com you can also of course tweet at us with any questions or comments if you're a fan of the show leave us a rating or review in the apple podcast store or tell someone about us thanks for listening and we will see you [Music] soon

Channel: FiveThirtyEight

Views: 7,382

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Keywords: FiveThirtyEight, 538, podcast, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-, ohio, special election, nina, turner

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Length: 59min 17sec (3557 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021