One Country Project's Hot Dish

Heidi (00:04):
Welcome to The Hot Dish, Comfort Food for Middle America. I'm Heidi Heitkamp.

Joel (00:08):
And I'm Joel Heitkamp.

Heidi (00:11):
One Country's Rural Progress Summit was last week and it really was incredible. I think our best ever. We're going to be sharing some of the conversations from the summit in the next few episodes, and we're going to be starting today with a conversation about political polling that I had with Tim Miller from The Bulwark and Tom Bonier of Target Smart, and I think it's going to be enlightening for a lot of our listeners. They're really hoping Joe Biden is going to be the president.

Joel (00:40):
But it's a report card, right? I mean, it's a report card right now. It isn't the final grade and that's what polling gives you. It's a long time until November. And for everybody saying that we're in huge trouble if you're a Biden supporter, I think yes. But it also means it's time to get off your butt and change those numbers if you're a Biden supporter.

Heidi (01:08):
We have two great friends of One Country and great folks to help us analyze and break it down. Tim Miller is from The Bulwark, writer-at-large, and the author of the bestselling book, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. He has previously served as communication director for Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign and the spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. Tom Bonier is a veteran democratic political strategist and CEO of the leading political data solutions provider, Target Smart. He spent over 20 years working in democratic and progressive politics and campaigns in all 50 states, as well as several countries overseas. As a consultant, Tom has worked for hundreds of campaigns including Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Jon Tester, and Tim Kane, as well as President Obama's 2008 campaign. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Can you explain a little bit about how polls are done and why you have to be really careful in this day where people don't have landlines, they aren't easily identified, they don't answer their phone? How difficult has that made accuracy of polling going into this election cycle?

Tom (02:25):
Yeah. And first of all, I'm excited to be here with y'all and I'm super excited to talk about polling. It's one of my favorite things and I'm going to try not to bore people. I'll give the quick answer because I know I'll have lots of time to dig in more. But best example I can give of this, just in terms of how difficult polling has gotten and why we need to sort of take the results in context with a little bit of a grain of salt, is if you go back like 20 years ago and you look at Pew or Gallup, that's these gold standard polls, they used to be able to get one out of five people they would call who would actually take the survey. They'd answer their phone, they'd say yes, and they'd answer all the questions, and they'd complete and that would be it.

(03:02):
I will speak for our polling team now, but New York Times has exposed some of this too. You are lucky if you get a response rate of 1.5%. And when we're talking about the people, the voters who we really start digging in on ... and in this election, it's a lot of these so-called lower propensity voters, younger voters, voters of color who are bizarrely in some of these polls showing maybe an openness to voting for Trump, which I don't necessarily believe, but we can talk more about that ... their response rates are significantly lower, meaning you might have to call 1,000 of them to get five of them to take a survey. So then the question we have to ask ourselves is are those five people representative of the other 995 people who they didn't have a phone number for, they weren't able to get a text survey through to.

(03:48):
And so yeah, as consumers of polls, we have to be a little bit more sophisticated and actually look at how the poll was conducted. Was it just landlines, which you generally wouldn't see nowadays, the New York Times surveys, which again are considered more of a gold standard poll, those are only conducted to cell phones. I teach at Howard University and I'll ask my students in every semester, "How many of you will answer a phone from an unknown number," and it's almost none of them. People just don't do that. So the kind of person who does is that skewed. When our polling team polls, we do what we call as multimode, which means you're texting people, you're calling their cell phones, you're sending them online surveys, you're using online panels. And even when you do all of that, you're still going to have bias. So again, I'm sure we can talk more about that as we get into this conversation, but to me, that's the most important thing to remember. It's just really hard.

Tim (04:45):
Yeah, you're right because you have to model. To Tom's point, the example that he was using. And Tom, feel free to chime in if there's anything I missed on this because this is your bread and butter, but if you call 1,000 people and 800 of the people that answer are over 55, because they're more likely to answer the phone calls, well then you don't have a real electorate because it's not going to be 80% 55+ than the electorate. Then what do you do? Well, you end up modeling, "Well, we know that the electorate should be about X percent 18-30," or, "It should be about X percent non-college or Black or White," or whatever. And so then you take the results you do have and you weigh it a certain way to kind of match the model, and that's how the polls end up.

(05:24):
And that's why one of the 2016 misses, this is kind of shocking really, is that a lot of pollsters in 2016 weren't modeling based on education and missed this huge education polarization that was happening in the country, where a lot of people that didn't go to college that had traditionally been Democrats were voting for Trump, and that Republicans who went to college were voting for Hillary or Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin. And so their polls got really skewed because they kind of missed this one. They're modeling on the wrong kinds of demographics that were more relevant to past campaigns. So it happens. There are polling misses. I will say to my fellow anti-Trump friends, my new friends from the Democratic side, a lot of my friends on the Mitt Romney campaign were convinced the polls were skewed in 2012 and I was deterred in the punch bowl in those meetings being like, "I don't think so actually. This seems right to me." And obviously, Mitt Romney didn't end up winning.

(06:20):
I feel that way a little bit now because I think that polling is challenging, I agree with everything you guys are saying, but the 2022 polls did a pretty good job. There were a couple of misses. There are some groups that are being missed. I think it's still really tough to get Spanish speakers in certain states, and I think that makes the Nevada and Arizona polling tough. I think it's tough still in certain states, like Maine was really tough to poll for various reasons, so I think there were some outliers. But directionally, 2022 was pretty good. So I think anybody that's looking at this and is like, "It's totally wrong. We're winning by 10," maybe. But that's not kind of my assumption here. Democrats are really outperforming Biden. That's the funny part. Whenever you hear Democratic advocates complain about the polls, they never mentioned the senate polls, which are looking really good. Those polls must be doing well because Democratic senators, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin, Ruben Gallego, all of them are outpolling Biden significantly.

Heidi (07:21):
So if I'm a Biden supporter who's watching this, tell me, number one, what the argument should be for not trusting these polls. And number two, you guys have both been involved in campaigns for a long, long time. What's the three things you would tell the Biden team to do right now that you think could plateau this trajectory or build momentum for?

Tim (07:47):
I do trust the polls, so sorry. I mean, I don't trust every single exact poll, but directionally speaking, I think it's about a tied race right now. And I think that a big reason for that, and this might be the area where the polls are a little bit off, is less engaged voters in the traditional Democratic coalition. And in 2020 I felt like my people, the former Republicans, college-educated, suburban Republicans in Atlanta, were super important. And I think we're important again because Biden's got to keep my people and the coalition, but that group is pretty solid from 2020. There's a little bit of bleed maybe just on the edges, but it's pretty consistent and I think there's potential room to grow there that we can talk about.

(08:34):
But the group that he's down with is Black and Latino men mostly that don't have college attainment and young voters across the board. Okay, so once you know that, then the question is how do you deal with these people? I think the first instinct of some people is to be like, "Well, he's got to do something about Gaza because he's got to be with the really Left people." No, that's not true. He is struggling with the really Left, young people, but these other groups, a lot of them are kind of either apolitical, non-political, independent, heterodox. Calling them centrist is weird because they're not like the Heidi Heitkamp-centrist. They just have a weird mix of views and they don't watch the news that much. They get all their news from TikTok and social media.

(09:17):
So how do you engage them? Well, I mean, the Biden campaign has to run an actual effort to talk to them and to speak to them about issues that they care about, and we got to scare the shit out of them about Donald Trump. That's really the reality because that group is not going to be posting Joe Biden memes by November. They're not like gettable, Biden super fans. The Biden campaign needs to demonstrate that they care about them.

Heidi (09:44):
They're not going to put a T-shirt on.

Tim (09:45):
They're not putting out a T-shirt.

Heidi (09:47):
Are these T-shirt wearers? Uh-uh.

Tim (09:49):
No, not T-shirt wearers. They got to believe that Biden actually cares about the things they care about, and they got to be scared to death of Donald Trump. And so that's not the most uplifting campaign, but that's the reality I think. And then I think that going back to the other group I was talking about, these suburban, Mitt Romney-voting, former Republican types, I think there's still a little bit of meat on that bone and I think Biden's already doing a pretty good job of speaking to them, and I think that the thing that he could do the best from here on out is do a full core press on getting validators that can speak to them. Romney, Liz Cheney, Christie, Kelly, Mattis, Tillerson, as many of those people as possible I want at the convention to try to nudge over the last 1% of these suburban, former Republican types that really don't like Trump already. So that would be my advice for the Biden campaign.

Heidi (10:46):
What do you think, Tom?

Tom (10:47):
Yeah, I think that's all right. I think if I can start on the polling just real quick because I have my pet peeves there, I'm not saying the polling is wrong. I think it is right and I do think this race truly is a very close race that it's within a point or two either way. A couple things I just want to note on that, though, that I think are the caveats that aren't reflected in how we're talking about this race. In 2022, Tim talked about how generally the consensus is that the polls were actually pretty good and historically that holds up. The average error in the Senate polling in 2022 was 4.9 points. The average error in the presidential polling in 2016 was 5.0 points. We think of 2016 as this massive failure and we think of 2022 as pretty good. Well, part of that is Senate polling is harder. There's less of it. It tends to be less accurate, so we're grading on a curve.

(11:36):
But the reality is it's reasonable to assume that the average error will be somewhere around five points and these polls could be more or could be less. The primary polling, which actually is correlated with general election polling error has not been great. So will that portend a bigger error? Possibly. That's what it has meant in the past. So we are still treating these polls as if they're laser accurate and this is exactly where the race stands, and for all the reasons we talked about at the beginning of this conversation, it's not there. We have to kind of build in five or six points either way, and if you do that, it's a shoulder shrug. We don't know where this stands other than it's going to be a close race, which I think is the safest thing.

(12:12):
Then the other question is, as Tim got into, it's a question of turnout. And I know that's trite, it's always about turnout, but in this case, it's really weird because these lowest turnout, generally Democratic constituencies are polling much better for Trump. The reason why I'm not as concerned about that is just general map on turnout. In 2020, 161 million Americans voted because the stakes were high, because people were very fired up, because of a lot of issues, and because we had the greatest liberalization of voting access that this country has seen in over a century. A lot of states have gone back. People don't feel super fired up about these candidates for the most part.

Tim (12:50):
Really?

Tom (12:51):
There's no reason to believe that ... Hot take here. Hot take here. I don't see turnout coming anywhere near to that 161 million. So a lot of people have said this, if I'm the campaign that is relying on turnout from people who didn't vote in the highest-turnout election in a century, I'm not feeling great about that. I do think when we talk about what the campaigns need to do, I agree with everything Tim said. I think that's all right. I do think that the Biden debate strategy was a smart one for that reason in that if the area where he is struggling is with these voters who generally just aren't paying attention and need to be reminded that Trump truly poses an existential threat in many ways, then how do you get on their radar? And look, it is actually natural and probably very healthy for these people to not be paying attention to this race now. It's not the healthiest thing that we're all here talking about it, but you can't stop.

Heidi (13:49):
You do make your living in campaigning.

Tom (13:49):
I do. I do. And so yeah, I'm undermining my own livelihood here. But the reality is things like the debate by itself, they're not going to tune in and watch the debate, by the way, in June. But will this influence the general public discourse? Yes. Will it impact the coverage? Yes. That's a big thing where Democrats are just currently losing. Where these people are getting information from, it is just overwhelmingly negative to Biden. And so if they can start to turn that around and turn it around earlier, I think it's positive for them.

Heidi (14:21):
And I would say that you never know. I mean, if we were sitting here in 2012 and you said North Dakota, you guys would go, "Yeah, right. It ain't happening." You just never know because candidates do matter, but this is against a trend that's been going on for a long time of nationalizing these Senate races. Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan never ran and won in an election where a Democratic president won. We haven't elected, North Dakota, a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but yet they were able to basically split ticket. Ticket splitting is just not the norm anymore, and so that's why in spite of polls, Biden's performance in the end will have a big effect. Let's say Biden doesn't do well in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. That headwind will have an effect on the Senate races. We don't know to what extent, right?

Tom (15:23):
Yeah, I agree with that. I think to the extent that 2022 is instructive at all, it is this sort of formula of incumbents were strong, very strong in 2022, and Democrats won where Republicans nominated unqualified, extremist candidates. But keep in mind that some of those were very close, like Georgia especially. But the points that you both raised are well taken, that you do have the problem that this isn't 2022 and you have the presidential ticket, the top of the ticket, and you're right. All evidence suggests that ticket splitting is going to be lower than it's ever been. I agree with what Tim said. I think a lot of these races in the end, they look good, they look good in the polling, and I think they'll come through. I think either way it's going to be a seat or two. You aren't going to see a big wave for once, and certainly not for Democrats because the opportunities aren't there. Again, it would have to be Texas and/or Florida, and I got to see something else to believe that at this point.

Heidi (16:19):
Yeah. And we were coming fresh off the Dobbs decision in 2022. Women were energized to vote. Now there's been a bunch of decisions, whether it's the IVF decision, whether it is [inaudible 00:16:35], I talked to the woman who won in Alabama, won a state House seat, and she ran right at choice. And overwhelmingly, she had lost that district in a previous election by maybe five, six points and won in the special election by 10. And so I think, again, the question, going back to what is going to be the issue, if you said it's the economy, I would say no, it's not. I think it's immigration and abortion, and whatever angers people the most on that day is going to be who decides the election.

Tom (17:11):
If I can say on the abortion issue, I think in 2022, we saw this arc that we'll all remember, but just to remind people, where the Dobbs decision happened June 24th, the Kansas election happened that surprised a lot of people. Not necessarily that the pro-abortion rights "no" vote won, but that won by 17 points in such a red state. Obviously, Kansas isn't the reason. There are moderate Republicans there still. And then a month later, people calibrated and said, "Oh, this is going to change everything." And then it was after Labor Day, there were some bad polls that were suggesting that immigration, crime, and inflation were the top issues, and everyone said, "Well, Democrats overplayed their hands on the issue."

(17:52):
And in the end, what we saw, Nate Cohn from the New York Times, who's a pretty smart analyst on these things, he said after the election that there are polling myths where they looked at their polls and said, "Look, abortion is fading as an issue. It's going to be inflation." He said that was a bigger miss than their polling misses in the horse race in the Clinton-Trump race in 2016.

Heidi (18:12):
Wow.

Tom (18:13):
In terms of what was in voters' heads. I believe abortion will still be incredibly salient, but the problem for Democrats progressive and abortion rights supporters is how do you draw the connection between voting for a Democratic senator or a Democratic House candidate and protecting abortion rights? And we haven't seen evidence of that yet. We saw it in Michigan in 2022 because it was on the ballot. We've seen in these states where it is on the ballot, it's mobilizing these voters to come out. It has been harder. And you offered a great example that Alabama's special election problem is does that have any notable effect in a presidential election where turnout is already going to be high?

(18:52):
Florida's got it on the ballot, Arizona, it looks like, will have it on the ballot. I think that would have an impact. And I will say, just a last thing, on Florida, even though I wouldn't look at that and say we should be investing a lot or counting on that Senate race, I'm also not as down on Florida as most people are. Great candidate. You have the ballot initiative there. You also have candidates on the ballot there. And what happened two years ago, which is why everyone, I think, is especially soured because DeSantis just won so easily, the Senate race wasn't close either, Democrats just didn't show up in that election. It wasn't like there was a huge swing. Yes, the state is becoming redder, but Democrat turnout was the worst it's been in generations. There's no reason to believe that it'll be the same this time around. Again, I'm not predicting anything. I'm just saying I don't think it's quite as bad as everyone seems to be thinking. Will it be good enough? I wouldn't bet on that either.

Heidi (19:44):
Yeah. I do want to make this point that as we talk today, Chuck Schumer has put contraception, for which he couldn't get anything other than two Republican votes, and they're mad about that, right? Because that's what we call a gotcha vote, how you put the gotcha vote on, and people are saying, "Well, contraception is protected," but that's not going to be an argument that people are going to listen to because they used to think that abortion was protected and they knew that abortion was on the ballot. So Tim, you wanted to weigh in on ...

Tim (20:16):
Well, I was just going to just go back to the house really quick on abortion because I don't have a ton of actual data to back this up, Tom, so this is back into my podcasting and vibes space. But look, if you look at the midterms in the states where the abortion issue, I think, for good reason, maybe didn't seem as sailing it because they're in blue states, the Democrats didn't do as well, right? In New York, in California, I think it's reasonable that maybe you might think that, "Man, crime is a more salient issue for me right now in New York. Abortion rights aren't going anywhere in New York. That sucks for the people in Alabama. I'm mad about it. I'm a feminist. I'm pro-choice. But I'm voting about safety in my community." That's different in a 2024 election if the Democrats can make the case that if these guys win full control of Congress and Trump is the president, abortion rights are conceivably at risk everywhere.

(21:11):
That is part of my calculus and why I think that the Democrats have a little bit more favorable House map this time. I'm not sure how much that helps in [inaudible 00:21:19] places.

Tom (21:19):
I couldn't agree more. I think that was exactly the dynamic in 2022. I've tried to be the data nerd that I am and come up with a formula for predicting where abortion rights would have more of an impact, or did, and it's really two things. It's perception of risk and perception of opportunity. And New York and California used to say they didn't see the risk. In places like Florida, they just didn't see the opportunity. They didn't believe that those races were going to be, or Texas as well, that their vote would actually contribute to winning. And you're right. Trump is trying to moderate on the issue. But in the end, I think for a lot of people, it's not just about will he or won't he enact a federal ban, but it's will he act decisively to restore the rights of Roe? And the answer to that is no.

Heidi (22:04):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he's now dodging on it should be a state's rights issue, which he's not getting punished from the Right for taking that position. I think one thing has happened that will have an effect. You think about Newt Gingrich and the contract for America. We used to call it the contract on America. You think about Paul Ryan and his budget and what effect that had on the Romney campaign, and I think it did because it had substantial cost savings, you could argue that way, or cuts in Medicare and social security, and then you have the Romney thing saying they're takers, not givers. And so it played into that kind of a lead, "We don't care," kind of thing.

(22:51):
And now, you've got the 2025 project and the 2025 project is real. You've got Trump basically asking the oil industry, "Give me a billion dollars," and then there's a report saying they're lining up with executive orders for the oil industry to reverse some of the climate work that Biden has done. And so for people who can make kind of a door-to-door argument, voter-to-voter, and, "No, this is a climate voter. This is a choice voter," and as much as Trump's tried to hide some of that and broaden his appeal to be just, "I'm not Biden," he's going to be hung with 2025. What do you guys think? Do you think I'm overstating that or you think that that's a real possibility?

Tim (23:42):
I don't. I think it's the biggest example of Trump being distracted by all his trials. A sharper Trump would not have let himself be saddled with this. I don't know why he's letting himself be saddled with this. He had no platform in 2020. There was a reason for that.

Heidi (23:55):
That's the point that I was going to make, Tim, is that he avoided all of this at the convention. Now, he's hung with 2025.

Tim (24:02):
Yeah. And it's crazier than what the platform people would put forth in a lot of ways because it's like the most extreme nerd in every vertical at the Heritage Foundation is writing their own wishlist, so I think it's a big problem for them for sure. It's all right though. They took it off their website so it doesn't exist anymore.

Heidi (24:23):
It's a big problem if the Democrats capitalize on it.

Tom (24:26):
Well, and speaking of a national abortion ban, the Comstock Act that's a part of this Project 2025 is they say, "Look, we don't need to pass anything legislatively. They've realized after getting beaten badly in places like Kansas and Ohio and Michigan and elsewhere that they're not going to win at the ballot. And so they have to find a different path and they look at it and they see these Comstock Acts, which are more than a century old, that, "Hey, we just need a Department of Justice that will enforce this." Because these are laws that are on the books that they believe now, because of Dobbs, are enforceable, and that at some point would seem farfetched. But now you've seen what Arizona and other states have done where they're enforcing laws from that same time period. It shouldn't be implausible to anyone. And so can Democrats get this out in the forefront? It's still a little bit esoteric, but yeah, I believe that that can resonate if we're repeating it.

Heidi (25:20):
The question of the hour is how do you see the conviction in New York affecting the presidential race?

Tim (25:27):
I think it helps Biden. I mean, the Nate Cohn poll, which is the most rigorous thing we've seen so far, they went back and talked to the same 2,000 people they already talked to and 2% moved in Biden's favor. So again, Tom can give all the caveats about this, about how rigorous that is, but that's telling because that's real people. That's not sampling error. That's not modeling. There were 2,000 people that said that they were Trump +3, and then the same 2,000 people were Trump +1. I think that's a good sign that there's a nudge in Biden's direction and I think it helps with these low propensity people were talked to. On the margins, I think that's helpful, but that's it.

Heidi (26:06):
So I want to talk about the debates. There's a lot of speculation out there that Biden's team did a great job negotiating a pretty good deal. What's your sense, I mean, you already said you think people won't necessarily watch them, but they'll watch the coverage of them. I think these debates are going to be heavily watched.

Tom (26:24):
I agree. I think people will watch it. I don't think these lower propensity voters who have been identified as one of the key groups, I think rightfully or potentially, will be tuning into them. But I do think in terms of the likelihood, and again, we're talking about 140, maybe 150 million people are going to vote in this election, I think a large number of them will see at least some portion of the debate, whether it's watching it live or watching the clips. I do think it was a smart move by the Biden campaign. I do think it's sort of an acknowledgement that they have work to do, which again, I think we need to give the Biden campaign credit because they have been underestimated consistently. Just going back to the primaries where remember in the Democratic primary in 2019-2020, they came into it and they said, "This is how we're going to win. We're not going to do well in Iowa. We're not going to do well in New Hampshire. But when it gets to South Carolina and Nevada, we're going to win because that's an electorate that looks more like the Democratic Party."

(27:19):
Everyone at the time said, "Yeah, that makes sense. Reasonable path." And then he loses Iowa and New Hampshire and it's panic, "What a failure." And then of course, he did what he did in South Carolina and Nevada and he went on, and he did exactly what the campaign said they were going to do. It's not a campaign that chases its tail. It's a campaign that quietly just lays out a strategy. I think the media wants them to admit on the record that they believe that they could lose or that the polling shows that they're losing, which is a sort of odd obsession with everyone in the media now. Even if that's truly what they believe, if that's what their internal polls believe, their concern is not being ahead today. Their concern is is the plan that they've laid out a viable plan to be ahead on election day? And I believe they do have a very solid plan and I think them doing what they did with the debates was a big part of that.

(28:10):
It was a smart move and it will begin to remind people the more that Trump is out there, the better things are for Joe Biden. We want him on TV more. We want him talking more. And we've seen this especially since the conviction last week. He seems less and less coherent. And how could this not rattle someone? He is a human. How could it not rattle someone? He doesn't seem to be dealing with it well.

Tim (28:34):
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, look, I think the debate, we've made it this far without talking about Joe Biden's big age, which is pretty good, but I think that he had to do it because of that. Frankly, a big question in every focus group, in every poll is still, "Is he up for it?" and it's the best opportunity to demonstrate it. And if you're seen as hiding from the debates, it's only going to exacerbate that problem. So from the start, there were some people that were like, "Biden isn't going to debate or shouldn't debate." I knew he had to debate from the beginning. And to date, knock on wood, in all these situations, he's always seems to overperform and Trump helps him with this by talking about how he has dementia and it's Weekend at Bernie's and stuff, which is not the traditional messaging strategy. As an old media guy, you try to raise expectations for opponents traditionally. So that's worked out in Biden's favor.

Heidi (29:24):
I was going to say keep doing that. And then they have to argue that he was on some kind of stimulus drugs.

Tim (29:32):
Drugs. Yeah, he was on drugs.

Heidi (29:34):
That's the argument. Well, listen, you guys have been a lot of fun. Not going to hold you to any of the predictions. You know what would be fun is after the election, if the three of us could get together and just kind of like, "Oh, missed that," "Oh, we were right about that."

Tim (29:47):
I'd love that. I'd love that.

Heidi (29:49):
Yeah. Thanks so much, you guys, for joining us.

(29:57):
Well, Joel, we got some great questions that we didn't have a chance to get to during that conversation that I had with Tim and Tom, and I think that we should try and get to them now. Why don't you start us off?

Joel (30:10):
Okay. Lindsay in Iowa has a question for you, Heidi. "You talked with Tom and Tim a lot about polling and how it may or may not be inaccurate this year. In your own race in 2012, the public polls badly missed your race with polling accuracy and declining in the 12 years since then. Isn't it more likely the polls are missing something than a massive political realignment that's taking place?"

Heidi (30:38):
Yeah, it's really hard to say. I think most people think polling is inaccurate. And that started not just with the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump race, where everybody thought Hillary Clinton was running away with it and come election day, it was Donald Trump who was announced the president. So I think people are like, "Whoa, boy. How did they miss it?" But I think Lindsay makes a great point, which is, and Joel will remember this, the Fargo Forum did a public poll. We could talk about what happens when news organizations go on the cheap and don't hire good pollsters, but it had me down, what, eight points a week before the election, Joel?

Joel (31:20):
No, it was actually 10. And it was a week before the election, which one could argue that it also was an attempt to have an influence ... Of course, the Forum being a long time conservative newspaper ... and it showed that Berg, your opponent, at the time was at 50 and you were at 40.

Heidi (31:39):
But I will tell you, our private polling, which was done by one of the premier Democratic pollsters, Mark Mellman, was showing us within range and we knew that we could win the race. We knew it was going to be really close, and it was. It less than 3,000 votes, which in North Dakota is about a half a percent.

Joel (32:00):
You talk about the Hillary-Trump race and the difference was well within the margin of error, and so you have to understand that the polling can be accurate. I get that it's up to the pollster. You made a great point there. But going backwards, Heidi, I always forget who it was, but somebody took a newspaper up to the podium. He was MCing that night of the race ...

Heidi (32:27):
Somebody.

Joel (32:27):
And they handed it to you once we knew you had won, and that was your Dewey-Truman moment, if I remember right. You held that up.

Heidi (32:35):
Yeah, it's still kind of a famous picture. But honestly, I didn't really want to do it because if you win the race, it doesn't do you any good to poke the nose of the largest newspaper in the state. But Joel looked at me and he goes, "If you've never done anything else for me, you're going to do this."

Joel (32:51):
And it sent a signal. I mean, it really did that don't always count on polling. And sometimes, the release of the polling, Heidi, matters as well. Because if you have somebody looking that far ahead, I think it can actually hurt, which means that a number of Berg supporters maybe said, "Well, he's got it won. I don't need to go vote."

Heidi (33:13):
Yeah, I don't think that happened though. I want to get to a lot of these questions. Andreas in Nevada wants us to talk about this, Joel. "The polling conversation talked about low propensity voters not turning out for Biden. No one talked about the huge disparity in the ground game between Biden and Trump. Biden has staff in every battleground state, but Trump has closed offices and barely has any staff because he's using GOP resources to pay his legal bills. Won't this disparity in the ground game make a big difference in swing states?

Joel (33:47):
Well, time's going to tell, right? I mean, I don't mean to say that this is all shuffling off. I'm not there when it comes to a nonbeliever, when it comes to polls. To me, I go back to what you said earlier, which is I want to know who the pollster is because to think that they don't use some of this in the equation ... As a talk show host, I get a lot of calls into my show from Minnesota, which is a big part of where I broadcast. And Joe Biden's numbers right now, as we speak, and I'm not saying it's going to stay that way, but Joe Biden's numbers are not good.

Heidi (34:25):
Yeah, you mean in Western Minnesota.

Joel (34:27):
Yeah, I mean Western Minnesota. And when you win these states, it goes back to an argument that we've made here on The Hot Dish, which is these rural states matter in the sense that in Minnesota, if you count for just the votes out of the Twin Cities, I mean, come on. For every vote you get in the rural area, if you lose three to one versus two to one, there's a big difference in that, right?

Heidi (34:54):
Yep. That really is kind of a consistent message of One Country, which is you know what? Number one, we shouldn't be divided regionally. We should have a conversation about how we all need to work together. You have a robust political discussion about good public policy. You can't have that if everything's one-sided. But by the same token, Democrats will never be a majority party with a large enough majority count to rule if they don't start paying attention to what's happening in Rural America and they only speak to Suburban America or Urban America. They've got to figure out how they can have conversations with people to expand their opportunities.

Joel (35:37):
Well, it's true. I mean, if you look at exactly what's going on, you feel so outnumbered. At the matter of [inaudible 00:35:46], you don't engage. You really don't. But the closeness of those races in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Nevada and Arizona ...

Heidi (35:54):
Wisconsin.

Joel (35:55):
Yeah, Wisconsin. Every rural vote matters. Now, Don in Georgia asks a great question. "I'd love to talk about Trump being a convicted felon. Heidi, do you think his conviction is going to make some voters reconsider, maybe even just stay home rather than vote for him?"

Heidi (36:17):
I think the bottom line is, Joel, there's just a lot of people out there saying what this conviction won't mean. I don't think they know. I don't think anyone knows. I think it's just really, really hard to tell at this point. We got a final question from Lisa in Texas, and she knows that the first presidential debate will be June 27th and asks whether we think Trump will back out. Joel, you have a take on this one?

Joel (36:43):
Well, I mean, think about this. First off, he said he was going to testify and he didn't, so let me put my partisan hat on just a little bit, so he isn't afraid to be a chicken. I will tell you this. The people that have talked to me keep saying the same thing, which is, "Why would he debate?" This debate, the debate win, Heidi, is a real must for Joe Biden. The format is such where it can take away some of the big concerns that people have about Joe Biden. And so if you're Donald Trump, and you know that's a risk out there with the format that they agreed to, you got to wonder whether he will drop out.

Heidi (37:26):
The question is, "If Trump believes that he's five points ahead in all these swing states, why would he debate?" I mean, he's gotten by with not debating before.

Joel (37:35):
Well, he can't help himself. I mean, he can't. To be on a stage in front of all of America, one-on-one with a man that he considers inferior, is something he's going to show up for. Well, if you look at it, the one thing you'd have to point out is the fact that Joe Biden had a good trip to France on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, and so that'll play into the question of whether or not Trump wants to be on a stage with him because they keep thinking that Biden isn't up to the task. And so while they may think that, they may be wrong. And if they are wrong, the numbers we were talking about earlier change. There's going to be polling each and every day after that, and so we're just going to have to wait and see.

(38:28):
Heidi and I want to thank you for joining us today on One Country's The Hot Dish, which is brought to you by he One Country Project, making sure the voices of the rest of us are heard in Washington DC. We want to hear from you. Ask us a question and make suggestions of what you'd like us to do on the show, and we'll do it. We'll weigh it and we'll probably decide that's something we need to include, just like we did today. Podcast@onecountryproject.org. I'm going to repeat that. Podcast@onecountryproject.org. And learn more about the One Country Project by visiting onecountryproject.org. That's onecountryproject.org. We're going to be back in two weeks with more Hot Dish, Comfort Food for Middle America.

Outro (39:21):
Voxtopica