Nate Silver On What the Polls Say — And What His Gut’s Telling Him | The Ezra Klein Show

We are a week out from the midterm elections and something that looked almost impossible a year ago has happened. There is a path for Democrats to win not just the House but the Senate. So a Senate majority for Democrats to to sort of recap this. They need to defend the competitive Senate seats they currently hold. And then they need to flip at least four seats in states currently held by Republicans. A couple of those states had always looked possible, but then came the hard ones states where Trump had won by double digits. People weren't really talking about Kansas, but now [music] Kansas. And the remarkable thing about this cycle is that Democrats are polling competitively in all of them. In a handful of those races, they're actually far ahead. And so, I think the question is, can we trust these polls? What can we really say about where the election stands just a week before the vote? To talk about all this, I want to have Nate Silver on the show. Nate, of course, is, you know, internationally famous elections nerd.

>> The polling guru Nate Silver, >> he predicted [music] every state in the last presidential election. >> Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Silver. >> Absolutely. These days he edits a silver bulletin on Substack which puts out a ton of great analysis, polling, and election forecasts. He co the podcast still counting. Trump's approval rating is now lower than it was uh after January 6th when he was >> I didn't realize that. >> No, it's it's you know it's as low as it's ever been. >> And he's the author of most recently on [music] the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. Nate joins me now. >> [music] >> Nate Silver, welcome back to the show. >> Hey, Ezra. How are you, man? >> I'm good. I I wanted to ask I didn't follow up when you said this to me a second ago cuz I want to do it on air. [laughter] You said to me, looking a little far away in your eyes, that this election feels momentous to you. I've known you a long time. You don't usually say things like that. So, what feels momentous? If the election goes roughly as the polls say it will go, then in some ways it would mark the end of the Trump era, I think. [laughter] Um, he'll still be president for two more years. Um, but the minute the election, the votes are counted might take a while because of Alaska and California and states like that, the 2028 election campaign begins and if Trump has a bad night, as polls show, then he's a super lame duck, right? You

might draw an analogy to um to Bush after 2006. Um and like part of what people understandably are having trouble believing in the polls. It kind of looks like a different regime, right? Where Kansas is competitive, Texas is competitive, potentially gains for Democrats deep into Republican territory. But maybe we're on the verge of something different between generational turnover, between Trump being threequarters of the way through his two constitutionally provided for terms and um and with AI looming too. It's not quite clear to me how big an issue AI is in this election. I think maybe more than people assume, but um but it could be the biggest issue of 2028. I think I think you might expect it to be along with the economy the biggest issues of 2028. I was thinking as you said some of that about the conversations I had about the election a year ago. >> Yeah. >> And a year ago the conversation was Democrats will probably win the House and the Senate. I mean never say never.

>> Yeah. >> But no. And the the the reason was that to win back the Senate, Democrats were going to need to win in a number of places where Trump had won by more than 10 points. And given everything we know about partisanship in modern America, that wasn't going to happen. So, you know, when we're talking, it's about 2 weeks before the election right now, it'll be less by the time this airs, Democrats are at a 70 plus% chance of winning the Senate in your model. And not just winning the Senate, but possibly winning like beyond that despair. >> Why? What happened? So, I think a couple of things happened and some of them have to do with expectations maybe being miscalibrated. Um, you know, after 2024, there was talk of a I guess permanent conservative vibe shift. Um, that Democrats were on their back heels and Biden had failed and wokeness. >> That was dumb. The idea they'd be permanent.

>> Yeah. [laughter] And but if you look at the history of American elections, then the most regular trend in American elections, one of the few things that survives for decades is there is a backlash against the president's party at the midterm. Maybe a little bit bigger if a president is in his second kind of lame duck term, but you know, we can recite the exceptions on one hand. 1998 um after Monica Lewinsky, 2002 after September 11th, that's about it. 2022, Biden had a relatively gentle thumping in the midterm compared to what you might expect based on his approval rating. Um so you know look in the average midterm the environment shifts by seven and a half points against the president's party versus the previous presidential year. Um this year it looks more like 11 points. But why is 11 points important? Well um there are all these states like you said that Trump won by 10 11 12 13 points right? Ohio I think he won by 11 points. Um, so if you have an 11-point swing and it's fairly uniform, all of a sudden Ohio becomes a tossup. Um, what I think wasn't so clear is that Democrats have actually nominated in most important races pretty good candidates and or lucky enough to face weaker Republican candidates, right? Um, I'm not sure if James Talico is everybody's cup of tea, but like um, you know, he is able to take advantage of Ken Paxton's many sins so forth, right? Um, in North Carolina, Roy Cooper was a strong recruit from Schumer and Company. Um, you know, Democrats have

the strategy now of trying to nominate independents and kind of name only in states like Nebraska. I think both the candidates, Republican and the Democrat, are strong in Iowa, for example. Um, but, you know, I would say that probably the candidate intangibles. um you know they might move things by five points at most but you kind of do the math and you're like okay well Texas is a Trump plus 13 state the parson climate moves 11 points toward Democrats so now it's R plus two and then is Ken Paxton below average enough to turn R plus2 into D plus2 well that's the math right and that's kind of that's a logical enough story so one question that raises for me is Schumer and his team, [snorts] the Democratic Senatoral Campaign Committee. It's under Christian Gillibrand right now. They looked pretty bad a couple months ago and they looked pretty bad primarily because a focus was on the fight that they waged and lost in Maine to make Janet Mills the nominee and instead it was going to be Graham Planner. Graham Platner imploded.

>> Yeah. >> Uh Troy Jackson, who's the Democratic nominee now, you know, is ahead of Susan Collins by a bit. I think people are nervous about that race because Collins tends to outperform her polling and it's not that, you know, wide of a gap. But if you're looking over the the range of states, do they look pretty good? I mean, Turk in Iowa, you know, Pollah and in Alaska, Roy Cooper, right? It seems like >> Pela is a big one. I'm not sure that an average Democrat would be in a toss up. She's, you know, a slight favorite in that race, actually. Um, >> look, yeah, you have these big fights in Maine and Michigan. I I would share Democrats concern about Maine a little bit. I mean, that's based on nothing but just the fact that Susan Collins beat her polls by like literally like nine points in the last election. There's a whole argument about how persistent polling error is. We tend to assume that it's not, but um that's one race where the polls have gotten maybe closer by a point or two. There hasn't been a lot of polling in Maine. Um, Michigan. Look, I'm one of those people who says that other things held equal that a moderate can't able do better than a progressive, at least in a purple state like like Michigan, right? Um, and if you compare the governor's race there where Jocelyn Benson is ahead by eight points, Eliad's ahead by three or three and a half or something, right? Again, that, you know, there is a four or four and a half point candidate quality gap.

that is again within that range of what we think candidates how much they can matter in an environment like this one right um but um if you have enough wind at your back then you can overcome some of those problems and by the way in in other ways Elsa is a is a good candidate right he's very Michigan in certain ways right he in kind of a zoranesque way um doesn't present I mean he kind of is a bro right it's an interesting contrast to like Franchesco Hong or somebody and there are gendered parts of that comparison too potentially. Um he's also raised a lot of money and money is money is helpful. Um so but yeah I mean Michigan and Maine if Democrats were to lose one of them they'd still have a chance. If they were to lose both then probably game over for a Democratic Senate flip. >> One of the things that has been interesting to me looking at at the polls and and people have comment on this. This is not my original observation. Is it that Democrats seem to be overperforming more in redder states?

>> Yes. >> So they look better than you would think in a Texas, a Kansas, an Iowa, maybe like a little bit less good in like a Michigan, a Minnesota, you know, it kind of goes on like in the blue states, right? Is there something to this? And and if so, what do you make of it? Well, that's what I think makes Democrats nervous because it's the red states, especially in the heartland where um the polling over performance has been concentrated in in some of these recent elections. At the same time, the story does make sense on a couple of levels, right? Um number one, gas and diesel prices. Um, if you look at where diesel fuels are consumed, not usually by passenger vehicles, but by agriculture, trucking, petroleum, home heating oils, right, it's all kind of the colder Midwestern states where a lot of the battlegrounds are concentrated as it happens this year. Um, if you believe in kind of a last in first out argument, like what if we are reverting somewhat out of the Trump era? Actually, in 2024, um, for the first time in a while, you had very mild depolarization. Some of the worst states that Democrats had relative to 2020 were like New York and and California. Um, you know, younger voters of color, for example, and younger men in general kind of moved against Democrats. Um whereas you know like relatively speaking if you're

really looking in the weeds like Kansas is a state where Harris I think the PVI we call it the gap between that and the national spread declined in Kansas a little bit. Um, so maybe you're having some last in first out where the people that join the Trump coalition like Hispanics, working-class whites, maybe just moving a little bit back in the other direction or maybe just not voting, right? You know, one reason why Trump polls in 24 was overperformance among like young men. The one group you do not want to rely on to turn out in a midterm is usually young men. >> [snorts] >> So I I feel like there's another story you could tell and I'd be curious how this rates for you which is that it actually has to do potentially with candid quality on both sides. So in redder states Democrats have been I would say more rigorously following a view that they need more moderate candidates. So you think of like Adam Hamilton in in in Kansas. Um shared brown is like a longtime populist and you know very well but Roy Cooper in North Carolina. Um John Ov is this like I mean I wouldn't say George is a red state anymore but John Ov is this like relentlessly disciplined figure.

Nebraska with Osborne who's actually running as an independent. I wouldn't say Democrats chose him but obviously Democrats are uh aligned I think and excited about his candidacy and didn't run a Democrat um against him. Um, and as you get more into the more traditionally purple or bluer states, uh, you know, Maine, they have nominated like a more left candidate, you know, Jackson replacing Platner, who is also a more left candidate. Obviously, Abdul sayed in Michigan, the more left candidate won in Minnesota, the more kind of left candidate, one for the Democrats, and it seems like she's going to win, but is performing a little bit worse than people are comfortable with. So, I feel like one way you could squint at this is to say in redder states, Democrats have been, you know, very purposefully choosing candidates who just seem more independent, right? [snorts] You know, and that as you go down to where Democrats felt more comfortable and could take more risk, they're taking more risk and trading away some of the possible gains. Like that would be the moderation wins thesis of like what we're seeing. Well, in and Florida is a state where you had a DSA candidate that isn't on anyone's map because, you know, um she's now trailing by six or seven or eight points, which isn't that bad for Florida, but like but there you see the failure to select a uh a you know, you need a pretty conservative Democrat probably to win in Florida at this point. No, I think that's a lot of it. I think a lot of it also if you look at a state like Minnesota where Peggy Flanigan is ahead, but by three and a half or four points, >> not by nine or 10, which

>> Yeah. um you know the states where you have these democratic trifectas and you have critiques of democratic governance is where you tend to see more more problems potentially in Oregon where you've had a lot of critiques of liberal governance right um Tina Cotch the incumbent I think is only ahead by like one or two points in the polls um you know Kathy Hokll certainly looks like she'll win re-election but maybe by a relatively tepid margin you haven't seen that as much in like Massachusetts which is a classically well-governed state that's often had a Republican governor in the form of Charlie Baker Right. Um, but you know, I think people are there's an anti-inccumbent mood. [laughter] People, I think, are making this implicit calculation about who has kind of power over my life, right? >> But not against all incumbents, right? Like Austin is incumbent in Georgia is going to stomp. I mean, from what we can tell in the polls, his challenger, um, Roy Cooper is the incumbent governor in North Carolina. Yeah. Um, or, you know, obviously was like he's going to like win in a walk. So, like there are Democratic incumbents who are doing just fine here. I think Minnesota is the clearest example of this because Tim Walls's approval rating is 17 points underwater or something to the point where he was going to run for another term and and didn't. So, it's kind of like ground zero.

>> He's had a real fast fall in rise and fall in politics. >> The trajectory of losing vice presidential nominees, you know, John Edwards had a rough fall from Grace, for example. Um, >> you know, Paul Ryan uh no longer in Congress, right? It's pretty, you know, pretty rough. That's a fair point. >> One one more thing for these hypotheses about the heartland and the Midwest. Um the economists had some data showing that like the closer that Trump voters live to data centers, the more likely are to flip and vote Democratic in this election. Um and in the West in general, you have a a lot of data centers, right? Because you want some space, but you don't want to be too far off the grid and too rural. And so and so that could be a hidden factor, too. There's something I was thinking about while I was like going through and trying to decide which of the candidates seem to me to be overperforming the most. I was thinking about how uncorrelated attention and performance is right now. So it's like if I go through the candidates who are all over my feeds and who are on big podcasts and and I mean obviously some of this is also their choice of of of how to run but it's like uh like Abdul said like omnipresent right James Taro omnipresent John Of he's not going on many national podcasts at the moment but his clips are absolutely everywhere you're not seeing sher brown right you're not seeing um you know very much of Mary Pollola right she does not do a lot of national press you're not seeing a lot of Roy Cooper

but It's really like you look at it and there is almost no connection between who are the candidates who are everywhere, you know, on social media and my feeds and who are the candidates who are doing practically well or poorly um at least in polls. >> Yeah, look, some candidates have different incentives. If you want to run for president in 2028, then you probably want a somewhat somewhat higher profile potentially. I think in a case like Taler Rico um or Elsa, they kind of inescapably feel that um they're going to get the maximum amount of attention anyway. But look, there's something to be said for kind of keeping a a a lower profile, too. You know, maybe Ohio is a good example of that. Maybe Iowa a bit. I mean, look, in midterms, um there are basically three big questions, right? Will your voters turn out? Will the other side's voters turn out? And then how much persuasion is taking place among, you know, the 15% of the elector that's possibly swing voters. Um, and you know, if Democrats were to come up short in a couple of races like Iowa or Kansas, they might say, you know what, this race just got like a little bit too much on everybody's on everybody's radar and Republicans managed to drag some voters off the finish line. I mean, the persuasion part of this is done. I'd be shocked if Democratic turnout wasn't high by midterm standards. We don't know if Republicans are going to turn out and and that will determine the range between Republicans hold the Senate and keep Democrats to 10 seats in the House and

complete 1994 style disaster. [music] So the right now I mean we're talking a little bit as if the thing Democrats are hoping will happen will happen. >> Yeah. >> But we often see polling error in midterms and maybe we see polling error in general elections too. So, how resilient are Democratic hopes to polling error and and how are you thinking about where the polling error might be? Like when you're building things into the model and thinking about like what you're trying to correct for, you know, you've seen Trump underestimated many a time, seen Susan Collins underestimated many a time. On the other hand, the pollsters know that has happened, right? How do you think about the polling error dimension of this? Look, the first thing I always tell people is that whenever you're looking at a series of polls in a Senate race or in Senate races plural, right, always ask yourself, what if they're off by three or four points in the same direction in every race? Um, you know, Democrats have a lot of threepoint leads in races like Ohio and Texas, more or less, right? Um, if you had a three-point polling error, you would have a a very long night where we might be waiting for rank choice voting in Alaska. But it's, you know, the House is different. If Democrats were not to win the House, then

there would be profound questions about what's going on with the polling and in some ways what's going on with the with the country, too. I I think Democrats have the emotional feeling that when there's a polling error, it is, you know, against them, right? Because it, you know, Hillary Clinton and and and and Joe Biden and just in general, polls actually have repeatedly underestimated Donald Trump. But but is that true? And is it particularly true in in midterms? Have polling errors been consistently against Democrats? >> It has not been true in the two midterms under in the Trump era. I guess 2018 was under Trump and their polls were, you know, one of the most accurate years for polling ever. 2022 similar. In fact, there were a couple of races that were high-profile like the Federman race in Pennsylvania where polls showed Oz closing the gap after Federman's stroke, right? And then Federman won by a pretty solid I think four or five points or something like that, right? But overall polls were quite accurate. There are also elections that are held in oddnumbered years, runoffs, things like that. In New Jersey and Virginia last year, the polls were five to 10 points low on on Democrats, which is a one of the biggest polling errors we've seen in a well-pled, you know, general election.

Um, so yeah, the critique I have of some of the people say, they'll say, well, you know, you're under sampling Republicans in these polls and Democrats are much more enthusiastic and much more likely to respond and trust the pollsters more. Every single person in the industry is is aware of that. Look, I think every pollster is aware that polls missed uh low on Donald Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Um, you know, the three presidential years was kind of the death nail for the gold standard of polling, which is like we're just going to go and survey people and and we'll wait to well-known census demographics and we'll just we'll just trust the data. The an Seltzer poll in Iowa, [laughter] which and bless I mean, she was literally the highest rated pollster. She and then your times were like I think tied for number one or something, right? Um but now >> now we stand alone. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> So say what happened with Nelzer because maybe some people are emotionally scarred and some people have no idea what we're talking about. >> Yeah. What was it was the weekend before the election right and I had like some dinner plans on Saturday and then I got like a text from a friend saying have you heard about this Iowa poll? There's a rumor that like Anseltzer, the um kind of, you know, Dame or Don of Iowa polling, right? Um who had predicted Barack Obama's big win, the Iowa caucus in in 2008, would have a poll coming out showing Kla Harris winning, I think, by three points in Iowa. Every other poll of Iowa had been Trump plus nine or something like that, right? Um and our model was pretty skeptical. you don't usually want to bet against an Seltzer, but like it kind of opened up

this whole world like what if everyone's just kind of way overcompensating for past elections and and it didn't make a lot of sense, but she had gotten very far before just saying I'm just going to trust my data. I'm not going to overly massage it, not make too many assumptions about it. And the poll was off by what was it like 13 or 14 or 15 points. >> Trump insanely sued the paper as if like publishing a poll where he um was losing was defamation. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's never clear what the incentives are supposed to be. >> Can I stop on this polling thing for a minute though to let's let's get in the weeds methodologically for a minute because I find whenever we start discussing or I start thinking about how what is happening in polls to massage demographics to kind of answer all these problems of people don't pick up the phone or you know we're using online sampling and we don't know who will turn out. I I feel very disoriented. What do you do? Like what what are the pollsters doing? >> And I should say I am I'm not a pollster. I'm a forecaster, right? But I that distinction in some ways is becoming blurriier, right? Yeah, >> that's what I mean. They feel like they're forecasting. [laughter] >> I think the upshot of the ancelter thing is that um everyone knows that a poll is kind of almost like a a mini model with polling flavored inputs.

And I'm not sure what the right metaphor is. But people wanted to make it like it's some broken gauge that like you're um that you know on your beat up old car that when it says 25% of fuel left actually have to refill because the gauge is broken. Right? Instead this is a more of an iterative process. Right? You open a restaurant, the customers complain the food is too spicy. You tamp it down a little bit. Now some of your customers say no I wanted the spice back in my food. Right? And so but it's more of an innovative process. And I think um pollsters are now aware they'll be judged on their results in the final few weeks at least. And as much as they might say, well, it's just a snapshot of public opinion, there are huge reputational stakes on the line for for being right. So I mean the pers and for being wrong. >> So the pollsters have pretty good incentives to correct for these problems potentially. Um but you know, but sometimes when it I know it sounds kind of toological, right? when there are these big wave change elections or elections that are kind of unexpected and sometimes pollsters lowball them. In 1994, for example, it looked like a relatively bad year for Clinton that turned into a terrible year, right? You can also look at a year like 2014 is a parallel that I'd be worried about if I were Republicans because that's a year when the polls were never great for Obama, but you had a really, really big differential turnout where Democrats just weren't that enthusiastic. At the time, Obama was relying on more of a

multi-thnic younger coalition that traditionally does not turn out at the same rates in midterms. And that turned into a 9 seat loss, a total route for Democrats in in the Senate. >> Yeah. I mean, this is, I think, what I'm asking you, that we know the midterm electorate is going to be different than the presidential electorate, that some people are going to be more motivated to vote than others. I mean, are they just pulling people and saying, "Do you think you're going to vote?" And and and that's like the big screen just for somebody who does not like I have read analysis of these the upshot a while back and and Nick Cohen did a cool thing where they let you see like how different ways of moving the data around would give you a very different result on the same like underlying poll data. But is there like a a kind of conventional thing they're doing to compose a midterm electorate that is going to be really different in 2026 than it was in 2022? >> Yeah. So, one difference if you ask people, are you going to vote? How enthusiastic are you about voting? That produces a very democratic sample. Um, other pollsters try to predict whether people will vote based on other types of data, right? um and and those techniques tend to produce more modest results for Democrats. One thing you can watch in the early voting data, which generally I advise people not to do, but who was winning among like lower propensity voters, right? People of who have voted in no more than one out of the past three elections counting counting midterms. Um those low propensity voters appear to be quite Democratic so far. It

[clears throat] maybe probably will to some extent. Republicans will cast their vote by election day anyway and they'll and they'll catch up, right? But but if not, if Democrats low propensity voters turn out and the GOP doesn't, then that's where you might see a polling error that underestimates Democrats. >> So if Republicans end up having a better thanex expected night, what do you think will have ended up being the explanation for it? >> I mean, look, I think there are two versions of this. Like one is just Democrats lose all the toss-ups, right? Talerico loses by a point. Jackson loses by a point. Maybe Elsa wins by a recount. Shared Brown wins, but Turk loses by three points. Like that's very feasible in the kind of thick part of the probability distribution. And then and then I think you know with some questions about the polls, but that's kind of that's kind of in line. We'll say, okay, partisanship is still really strong. Maybe pollsters and Democrats had their hopes up a little bit too high to think you could win on these, you know, R +12 states, it would have been R plus 8, then yeah, but we just kind of reached the point where we ran out of like oxygen climbing up that that big red hill, right? If there's a if there's like a like let's say the House is kind of close, right? And Democrats only pick up North Carolina in the Senate, right?

I mean then that's kind of hard to contemplate almost right not just not because it's not theoretically possible based on the polls right like you know we have these in our model these like fat tails that say sometimes polls can by five or six or seven points or something crazy right um but that would kind of like defy everything that we think we know about how how midterms work there are I think a couple of races that feel to me like they have like a a lot of outsized narrative importance. Telerico feels to me like it's got a lot of narrative importance to people. You know, the possibility of Democrats being competitive in Texas, a sort of return of a religious left. Abdul sayed is going to be seen as a very important test of, you know, he's actually not a DSA guy, but sort of a more left populist, you know, unsparing candidate. Like I was watching this video where he just like absolutely annihilates this guy who comes to one of his town halls and is like will you denounce to the Muslim Brotherhood and I mean Elsiad who's a very very very smart guy leaves this guy like a smoking like crater on the floor.

>> So it feels like there's going to be a lot of attention on how he specifically does >> um >> you know you've been very attentive to like the factional divisions of the Democratic party recently. I think you've you've cut Democrats into what is it the capital L left the abundance libs which I guess is me >> and then Richardsonism which you've named for Heather Cox Richardson who's you know the substacker and that's sort of the big like resistance libs no kings kind of thing but I I'm curious how you think different forms of the election might end up being interpreted and shaping the the Democratic party and its strategies. So the two big apart from who wins, right? The two big sub story lines of November 3rd are one, how do progressives do relative to moderates? But then is there evidence of like an AI backlash um from the state-by-state results, right? If people do these ecological analyses afterward, they find, hey, yeah, in states where there was a data center construction and Republicans underperformed by by three points, I mean, that might be important as well. Yeah. If if [snorts] I I'll say I were to lose, then win or lose the Senate, and that's a very bad narrative for progressives. I don't know what happens if like um you know, let's say that um Benson wins by nine points and Elsa wins by four, right? Maybe nerds like me are like, well, he had a below average wins of a replacement. That proves my thesis, but like I think that wouldn't really carry the day in the Democratic debate as much. Um, I I think for any race, an important threshold question is, was the race called on election night? Right?

That shapes narratives quite a bit. People who aren't nerds tend not to pay much attention to the margin as long as it seems unambiguous and clear. Um, I mean, look, people wanted to tell this oversupplied narrative of like the progressives like winning everywhere in the primary, and that wasn't entirely true. You know, Franchesca Hong was ultimately rejected in Wisconsin. Um, I don't know that Jasmine Crockett actually is more progressive than Taller Rico. She's more of a partisan bombthrower and and she lost that that race. Um, yeah, >> she wasn't a DSA person. That was not her her profile in politics. >> But like I think I think Democratic voters have exercised a fair amount of kind of rational discretion, right? I mean, there's nothing that says that voters have to or necessarily should maximize everything based on electability, right? You're allowed to say, well, I'm trying to calculate some like expected value score of what is the chance that this candidate wins times how much good will they do for the issues that I that I care about, right? Although, I will tell you one thing. Um the amount of Democratic infighting really dropped off after these races in Maine Michigan >> Wisconsin.

>> Primaries just create a lot of I mean and it's going to go up again when the 2028 primary >> it's going to be the only thing everyone's talking about for a year and a half or something. I would say and and this is like a step back I have. One narrative that I think is going to be true particularly if you have you know a bunch of these players win is the Democrats are coming into an an era of like elder millennial talent that I apologize to my Democratic office holder Gen X friends. I think like the like the late boomer and then um like the Gen X class and Democratic party ended up like pretty caught between political eras and communication eras. But when I look at the Democratic talent right now and I think about you know on the left people like Zan Mani and Abdul Seed and AOC who are hugely talented like I think El say'll be like a pretty superstar US senator if he wins. Um, you know, and then I look at, you know, people like Rob Sand who's, you know, looks like he's going to win the Iowa governor's race in a walk, but you think about Telerico who like is like really a star. John Of who has become an absolute superstar. Like I think you're just sort of seeing like the arrival of like a Democratic class that is just more native to this era. Like came in during Obama, then was shaped by Trump, understands communication now. just something to me seems to be changing that is actually across a different faction like they all now have stars in a way that I wouldn't have said was true

a few years ago. I think some kind of like a Steph Curry effect with Obama as an analog where like he starts shooting three-pointers from where no one has before and now kids are practicing that in in high school and they graduate and grow to college in the NBA. >> And who is Steph Curry in this analogy? >> Obama. >> Yeah. like in some ways >> I mean yeah Elsiad and Assa for instance are very both influenced by Obama in different ways you know Mayor Pete's got a little >> Mayor Pete yeah Pete Buddha Judge is another kind of elder millennial talent I would add to this >> um but like I think like in some ways what happened to Democrats after 2012 was kind of weird right where Hillary lost to Obama and Bill Clinton became president in 1992 right and for some reason it's like well it's it's Hillary's turn now, right? And she had a very competitive primary against Bernie Bernie Sanders and prevail, but like that in some ways felt like um a return to a different Democratic party than the party that Obama was trying to craft, right? And then and then Biden who was kind of expressly chosen by Obama because he was old and not seen as a threat to run for president himself kind of won amid this like flight to safety and then but like um I don't know obviously some of these were competitive nomination processes right but it feels like some trajectory [music] got interrupted in the Democratic party and and maybe now it's being restored I suppose a little

>> [music] >> So, we've been talking a lot about the Senate, and the Senate is like the charismatic megapon of midterms because there are only a couple races you have to pay attention to, and you can keep the characters of them in mind. >> Obviously, the House is not a binary outcome. it really matters if Democrats end up with 228 members of the House, 235, 240, 250. So tell me about what the modeling and the polling seems to suggest about where Democrats might end up and you know like the kind of sensitivity of that in both directions. >> Yeah. So, one of the big consequences of all this redistricting as well as voter self- sorting is that you have far fewer swing districts than than you once did, right? Also, Democrats had a relatively good 2024 in the House. I mean, there was still some doubt on election night whether Democrats might actually win the House in 24 despite Harris having lost.

Um, so, you know, even the models, even our model that has them with a 90% plus chance of winning the House, that only translates quote unquote into I think 22 seats or something on average. Um and >> which like we've seen, you know, wave elections that are like 40 50 seats, >> right? I mean, was it 63 in in 2010, for example, >> which was like the big the very big one >> or 41 or something in 2018? Um >> you know, Republicans did gain a few seats from the redistricting process, mostly in the mostly one where they just cut out a majority minority district, right? So, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and some of those states, the Alabama district is actually kind of close in the polling. Um, but that's like a clean three seats wiped out from Democrats, right? Um, in Texas and Florida, you were not seeing many Republican gains because in Texas, the theory was that like, oh, we can now we can now take more risks because we now have a much firmer hold with lower income Hispanic voters. Well, if you believe the polls, those are the groups that are shifting most aggressively back toward Democrats. And in Florida, Dantis kind of drew a riskier map that was optimized more for presidential years and would have a lot of toss up to lean our districts in an environment like this one. Now, in Florida, Republicans have, you know, I we talked before about like, well, what if Democrats win in Kansas or Texas? At

this point, it would almost feel as remarkable if a Democrat won a statewide race. And >> you have I Florida I have never read what was to me a fully satisfying explanation of how Florida became so red. But Florida has gone, as you say, from being a canonical swing state >> to more of a Republican readout than Texas. I mean, Ronda Sanders barely won um his first race for governor. How did Florida become so red? >> I think it's 75% migration and 25% kind of a death spiral for the Democratic party that might be self-reinforcing. I mean, with the migration, um, Florida is a unique place in offering blue state amenities, but without [laughter] without as many libs, you know what I mean? Um, and that attracts, you know, a has always attracted older people. Um but yeah, I think you have a lot of like political self- selection in most states. If you look at like voter registration data, um people have begun to again register more as Democrats than Republicans, which which was not true for like four or five years in a row. Um this year you seeing those comebacks for Democrats in the Midwest in particular in Pennsylvania, but not in Florida.

Florida just keeps getting redder at the registration level. >> Okay. So, so that's like the center of house polling, but but we've talked about a two to three or four point polling error like not being unusual given incumbency advantages in the House, given redistricting. >> Yeah. Is this the kind of thing where if you get a three-point error and it turns out Democrats did better than expected by three points? Yeah. Where all of a sudden a bunch of the redistricting falls apart and Democrats like have this huge wave election and actually they are winning, you know, 40 seats in the house and they have this like huge majority under speaker Hakee Jeff. Yeah. No, it is a little bit asymmetric, right? And people love the flood and maritime metaphors, but but um if the wave gets really big, then one thing that happens is it inundates candidates who have not been prepared for that type of disaster potentially. I mean, I think the best example is like actually in in the Senate with Roger Marshall where I have um >> in Kansas >> in Kansas, right? I have a family that lives in Overland Park, Kansas, big in Kansas and Missouri politics and like boy, Roger Marshall's a really bad candidate, right? I'm like, you know, it's Kansas. It's I'm sorry. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Um but um but if you're caught up in this tide and like Kansas, you know, it's elected Theres Davis to Congress.

>> Sorry. You saw the thing where Trump then went to defend Roger Marshall. >> Oh, no. Yeah. >> And was like, Yeah. I mean, the reason he had to go after his candidates, his his patience for payment in that way, people trying to paint him. He used like an anti-semitic slur. >> Roger was given a real I know the guy. He's one of the He's a tough guy and all, but he's also high quality and he's a fine person. And he was given a bum wrap because he was mandated by law to request strongly money owed from patients. You're not allowed not to do it. You have to by law go after those people and they made it like, oh, he was some kind of a shillock type guy. >> There are times when I wonder whether Trump really cares whether GOP holds the center or not, right? I mean, he hasn't done a whole lot through Congress. It's mostly been through executive power, right? >> And I think Cornin would win Texas. Trump easily could have just ended that primary and made Cornin the the winner, right? That that was completely within Trump's power and Republicans would be in a stronger position in Texas and less likely to lose the Senate if that had happened. You know, Trump has on the margin not wanted to lose the midterm election. He did this weird midterm convention, but his whole theory of why Republicans might lose a midterm convention appears to be that he himself is not on the ballot and that if only people would act like he is on the ballot, Republicans would be fine. Then his other theory was to promise every

American a $5,000 check if Republicans win. So like to bribe people. It's like he's willing to win the midterm if he can win it in a way that is personally congratulatory of him. But if winning the midterm means giving Republicans space from him and you know backing people he doesn't really like >> then no. >> Look, Republicans are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place in elections where Trump himself is the dominant figure but not himself on the ballot. Right? that entire trench of elections. So 2018, if you kind of want to count 2022 as well, where something prevented Biden from having the wipeout you might get with a 40% approval rating, typically all the runoffs, including the two in Georgia, all the special elections, Supreme Court races, ballot initiatives, all that kind of stuff. It's all gone really badly for for Republicans. Um because the one magic trick that Trump has is to get a certain type of usually disengaged voter to kind of like crawl on glass to vote for him when he himself is on on the ballot. And furthermore, these are the exact voters that aren't answering polls or that are incorrectly deemed to be unlikely voters or anything like that, right? Um, those people are not gonna crawl over glass to vote for Roger Marshall or Ken Paxton, I don't think. But I I don't want to lose

the side of the big picture here, right? The I don't think we'd be talking about Democrats being favored in the Senate if Trump hadn't decided to go to war with Iran and spike gas prices into the mid4 per gallon. More here in California and places like that, less in some other places. >> You know, you obviously keep a close track of Trump's approval rating. Yeah. >> What is the story of its decline? It's dropped quite a bit since he took office a second time. Has that dropped been steady or has it been like discontinuous around certain events? >> If you want to like model it statistically then you know it's quite correlated with gas prices. Frankly, there's al also a time trend, right? In general, you see it jut up and down a little bit based on gas prices and kind of economic anxiety. It dropped a lot during Liberation Day. Was that April 2025 concern about tariffs? Um, >> but it's been a pretty steady decline and I think people kind of learned some incorrect lessons from the first Trump term, right? um when voters felt like the economy was good and objectively it was pretty good in the first three years of Trump. That just kind of serves as like a a halo that allows you to say, "Oh, Democrats are complaining about democracy this and democracy that and and race and xenophobia and whatever else, right? But you got more money in your paycheck. You have a good job. The stock market's up. Your house is appreciating in value, right?" And now that people question all those things, it makes the culture war stuff seem kind

of desperate and silly. also just kind of fatigue. Um, you know, Trump likes to say it's his third term, but it kind of feels that way. He's been the dominant figure in American politics since whatever mid 2015. That's a that's a really long time. He's also um 80 years old, you know, like you, Ezra, you and I were both kind of early on that Biden is too old. I don't know if you have to censor that bandwagon. Um, but Biden began to develop more problems at roughly this point in his presidency, you know, and it's like, okay, you we've already mentioned the two things that are maybe not hard to explain, but like why the war with Iran and then why is Trump taking this very unpopular stance on data centers, which feels like kind of the perfect issue for a populist to do some mild demagoguing in the other direction, right? like data centers are like a a 8020 issue against data centers now roughly. And when you ask people do you want to have LA AI accelerate or slow down. It's like 3% for accelerate and like 60% for slow down and 30% are not sure or whatever. Well, I I could give two, you know, I give a substantive and a less substantive reason for Trump.

I mean, one is that I think he actually is persuaded we're in a military and geopolitical and economic race with China. I mean, as he likes to say, whoever wins AI wins. And the other is that if the AI boom, if something shifts sentiment, then the one economic indicator Trump has that is looking good for him, which is uh the stock market. >> Yeah. >> Collapses. And then he's got nothing, right? Then you've got high interest rates, you've got terrible debt, you've got, you know, anemic growth, you've got a weak stock market. And like the thing where all the investment was going is no longer maybe working out. And also, and I think it's not nothing here, a bunch of AI execs have donated a ton of money to Donald Trump and Elon Musk personally, and I want to talk about this too, is like individually financing at this point the Republican midterm campaign, right? Like I mean, what's he put in? It's hundreds of millions of dollars >> for like 400 some million.

>> Yeah. And it's hard even to know if we know everything that's gone in. And so, you know, he may also not want to like alienate his tech, right? Um, you know, even tech center constituency. >> I think that's a lot of it. I think I think, you know, I'm not a I'm not a Trump whisperer, right? It does seem like the one thing that consistently motivates him is that he doesn't like seeing red arrows on the stock market ticker. Um, and you know, you've seen increasing amounts of investor anxiety about about maybe not I think the AI bubble argument is getting more sophisticated, right? It's like [sighs] how can we land this plane without instrumentation we've tested before and this kind of narrow strip of runway, right? You know, you've also had just in the past week or two, you've had oil prices increase sharply again in the Middle East. I don't know. I mean, if there were to be a last week surprise, [laughter] the most obvious surprise would be some kind of market downturn that would kind of further hurt Trump potentially.

Things can break a lot more. >> I mean, this is you were using the Bush 06 analogy a few minutes ago. You know, you talked about sort of Bush as a super lame duck and one and I was thinking as you said that though that the final two years of Bush's term were tremendously eventful um leading up to a global financial meltdown at the end of it. And yeah, I look at Trump and I look at the economy and I look at the geopolitical situation and what I see is risk everywhere. Right? If you told me we were going to have like a massive recession or stock market correction or correlated financial crisis, you know, next few years, I'd say, "Yeah, that totally tracks to me." >> If you were to tell me some like Russia Ukraine or Iran America or Israel, Iran or some combination of things like Gulf State like that it like flies even more out of control than it already is. Like that would seem totally plausible to me.

some kind of rogue AI behavior. Yeah. That attacks like, you know, an American AI swarm attacks China or a Chinese AI swarm attacks America. Like the world feels full of risk to me. And like we've seen, you know, lame duck presidents like that. Like really things begin to like blow up in their face and they have very little power or public credibility to then handle it. >> And he'll be 82 years old by by the end of the term, too. Um, look, in some ways, Trump was pretty lucky in the first three years of his first term in the White House that kind of not nothing kind of literally or figuratively blew up, right? It wasn't like Biden where Ukraine happened under Biden's watch and Gaza happened under Biden's watch, right? You know, if Republicans lose the Senate, probably one of the first people that should be blamed is Pete Pegsith, I think. Right. Um, I don't think there are very many people who would serve a secretary of defense that would have thought that going to war with Iran with this very ambiguous war plan and very ambiguous goals was a was a smart idea. But but it's the other way around. I'm not saying you're saying anything different here, but Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to go to war in Iran.

And Donald Trump had named Pete Hegsth a Fox and Friends correspondent to be defense secretary because he wanted somebody in that position who would never under any circumstance say no to him. Like I think it's very likely he pretty quickly gets the axe after the midterms or at some point. But he's very unlikely to be replaced by a like a thoughtful commanding general who has the personal stature to say no to Donald Trump. Right? It's not going to be they're not going to bring back Jim Mattis and that has I mean you've seen this on tariffs right Gary Conn the um Goldman Sachs head who is the NEC director national economics council in Trump's first term would not have presided over this tariffs regime he just would not have Trump and his team wanted to come in and make sure Trump would be surrounded by people who always said yes. um what does this all look like if the stock market goes into freef fall because it turns out AI isn't not ready for prime time because it's actually too dangerous or you know what if we do end up in confrontation with China like the number of things that could go wrong and not just go wrong geopolitically but in a way that would then correlate into the economy in like a catastrophic fashion potentiating some crazy meltdown to say nothing of like the way Trump might act if he's really cornered in the last two years and begin like going into like high tilt strategies to use one of your poker turns and Trump older and surrounded by

Pete Hegaths. Yeah. Um it makes me anxious to to be honest, right? I mean I the AI thing alone, >> this is a different episode, right? Probably makes me anxious. We're just like, okay, the future could look very different um 5 years from now, 3 years from now, right? Um, if you're in middle age, right, you want to kind of think, oh, I can keep doing what I'm doing, do it for another 20 or 30 years, and then whatever, retire. And now it's like, oh, who the knows what's gonna, you know? But like, but Trump is not the ideal president to have [laughter] at the helm when you're on the verge of I don't think we're necessarily on the verge of a singularity, right? But like with perhaps the most important technological advancement in in decades, to put it modestly, right? I'm not sure that's the person that you'd want to have in charge as an 82-y old Donald Trump. Does the Musk money dump matter? Does money in general matter this late in the election? >> I think money is generally overrated in politics. I qualify that by saying for any high-profile race, so Senate, governor, um certainly president, where you encounter diminishing returns, if you were to look at the frontier of like the House map where maybe name recognition, and visibility is an issue.

If you were to look at like state legislatores, those are really important, especially now that state legislators and governors play into the now apparently every two years redistricting that we have. The other thing too is that like when you are um buying ads with voter donated money, you get better rates and also you get better rates if you have that money raised earlier and and lock that in when it's less competitive, right? So you hear about the Republican financial advantage. Um because that's primarily corporate money and party money. Um it's probably translating to more like 50/50 in terms of actual ad impressions that voters are seeing. Right before the 2024 election, you published a piece, you can correct me if I'm wrong about some part of this where you basically said, "My model says Kla Harris is going to win." >> Yeah. >> And my gut says Donald Trump is going to win. >> Right. I think you did this pre-election. Yeah. This a pre-registered take. Yeah. Do you is your gut in any way different than your model this year? >> Well, what I talked about in that piece is that like it would be more embarrassing for the industry, meaning pollsters, forecasters pundits whatever etc. if once again, Republicans beat their polls in the Midwest, right? So, like emotionally, I feel some need to hedge against that. And yeah, I'm a little skeptical of of Kansas maybe and Iowa and that tier of states. What's different though is that like so in 24 um I had an exercise where

I'm like here are I think it became like a list of like 21 reasons why the political environment favored Donald Trump. And I'm like I'm going to do one to be fair for why it favors Harris. But I could like only come up with like four or five things. Right? This here that's the reverse. The fundamental conditions feel terrible for Republicans, right? You have the secondterm 80-year-old president who had a bad midterm when he was younger and more popular and the economy was perceived as better in 2018. Um, and now you have Iran, you have 450 gas, you have Jeffrey Epstein, right? Um, you have corruption in in the White House, you have the strong batch of Democratic candidates. You know, in some ways it's um you'd imagine that it would be a worse year for Republicans in 2018, right? And if that's true, that means like Democrats win the popular vote by the House by for by for by by like 10 or 11 points or something. And so my my my guts really contradictory, right? I worry more about the state polls being wrong than the national race being being miscalibrated.

>> I think that's a good place to end. Always a final question. What are three books you recommend to the audience? >> Okay. Esther, this is tough because I'm a frequent listener of the show and some of my recommendations have been taken by other >> No, that's good. I feel like the audience takes it more seriously when there are uh repeat recommendations. >> Well, I picked three slightly weird ones. So, um the first one is um The Rise and Fall of American Growth by the economic historian Robert Gordon. It was written in 2016. Um I remember kind of reading this book when I was um in Paris at a poker tournament in Paris as one does, right? Um, and like Paris is so timeless. And meanwhile, this was like the week when the US went to war with Iran. It was the week when the Department of Defense and Anthropic got in a big fight. Things just felt like they were excited. >> You read this book recently. >> I read it recently. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and the kind of justosition between like the timelessness of Paris and um this acceleration to AI and other things got me kind of like thinking a little bit about like economic history and like and but anyway, Gordon's book talks about a couple of things. one the thesis which is implied by the title is that actually the huge gains that the United States made came between like roughly 1870 and 1970 it's also a reminder that like the um the industrial revolution because this is kind of what the AI optimistic case is right well the industrial revolution worked out okay and wound up making people live longer and wealthier right for many years the industrial revolution produced terrible living conditions for for people right where you had like you know dickens and you

had like child labor. You know, the most vivid image I have is he talks about like how much like horse manure there was on American streets, right? And you didn't have like indoor plumbing. And so, um, so it's a fascinating book. It's very detailed. It's not like a beach read. Um, but, um, but very compelling about all these massive changes that aren't well measured by GDP. And then I tie that to my France thing because it's like Europe has kind of opted for lower GDP growth, but arguably um, higher quality of life. Maybe in the best time talking about France this week, but still. Um, book number two is called You Can Just Do Things by Kate Hall. Kate is a former poker player and kind of a fellow traveler. Um, she was at one point the highest ranked um, uh, women poker player, female player in the world. She developed um, a a drug addiction and kind of dropped off the map for a couple of years. um but is now back to working in in the Bay Area scene. And it's kind of a self-help book for a certain type of of nerd that emphasizes the importance of of agency, but a lot of it really is about like how to handle personal relationships better and how poor people are at at communicating sometimes basic goals and needs and wants and relationships because they think it might feel weird or whatever else. But like she's like, "Look, just have honest conversations with people, get honest feedback, and that will that will go a long way in life." So, I recommend that book, too. Um, last one

is another oldie but goodie. Um, there is not. So, I read a lot of like poker strategy books, like probably not appropriate for the Esper Klein show for recommendations. Probably the best poker related book of all time is called The Biggest Game in Town. It was written by a guy named Al Alvarez in 1983. It's a it's a short, compact read. So he was like a British literary critic and poet who did this thing where he kind of like went into the desert in Las Vegas when the World Series of Poker is coming into being and talks to like all these oldtime like Texas Roadhouse gamblers. It's very well written, a very maybe slightly overwritten, like kind of magaziney way, but like this part of the world's important to me, right? And it's one of the few books about gambling that doesn't fall into cliches and captures this part of the world that I'm fascinated by very well. >> That that book sounds great. Uh Nate Silver, thank you very Thank you. [music] Hey hey hey.

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