In this conversation, Dave Wasserman from the Cook Political Report discusses his journey into political analysis, the intricacies of handicapping election races, and the current political landscape as the 2024 elections approach. He emphasizes the blend of art and science in predicting election outcomes, the importance of polling accuracy, and the demographic shifts affecting voter behavior. Wasserman also highlights key swing states to watch, the dynamics of the Senate and House races, and shares insights on what to expect on election night.
Dave Wasserman grew up fascinated by politics and elections. Handicapping races involves both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Polling accuracy has improved since 2016, but challenges remain. Demographics are shifting, particularly among Hispanic voters. Pennsylvania is a crucial state for the upcoming election. The Senate race is more favorable for Republicans due to structural advantages. Democrats have a chance to regain the House, but it will be competitive. Political analysis aims for accuracy, not equivalency between parties. Election night predictions suggest results may be known within 24 hours. Voter engagement and turnout will be critical in determining outcomes.
Check out Election Hub
https://gspm.gwu.edu/2024-election-hub
Chapters
Alright, David Wasserman from the Cook Political Report, thank you for joining us on Mastering the Room.
Dave Wasserman (00:56.708)
Thank you. I feel like it's kind of a small room to master.
Casey (01:01.294)
Just wait, just you wait. We got a lot of ground to cover. So let's see if you say that at the end of this thing. tell us a little bit. Yeah, exactly. It's a deceptively big room. It's like the Oval, right? It'll knock you off balance. But let's hop right in here. I mean, this is the perfect time to have you on as a guest. No one is talking about anything other than the election, but it's much bigger than just the Trump vs. Harris election that we have coming down the pike. There's a lot of ground to cover. But before we get to that,
Dave Wasserman (01:07.194)
It's deceptive, I know.
Casey (01:31.32)
Tell us about your path to becoming known as the encyclopedia of all races in all the land. How did you get to where you are?
Dave Wasserman (01:38.714)
Well, those are your words, not mine, but I grew up a C-SPAN nerd in central New Jersey, which contrary to what some people say is a real place. But I was 11 or 12 when we had this glitch in our cable TV system in our house. And I don't know why, but we only got two channels. got QVC and C-SPAN. And so for a while I was really bored watching items for sale on QVC. And then I switched over to C-SPAN and I found it oddly engrossing. And I just loved watching the Florida bait in the house. And I had also seen Charlie Cook and Stu Rothenberg on CNN Inside Politics. And they were kind of the Siskel and Ebert of elections. And they'd go back and forth and Judy Woodruff and Bernard Shaw would ask them who they thought was going to win, like the Kentucky Senate race or Indiana's bloody eighth district. And I thought, wow, that's, that's a really cool job. And I had been
Casey (02:34.19)
Mm-hmm
Dave Wasserman (02:37.806)
reading the Almanac of American Politics at the library and trying to figure out who these people running for Congress were. And I never thought that I would get to handicap these races until I got to the University of Virginia. And I shamelessly went there because there was a professor named Larry Sabato who writes The Crystal Ball. And I got to write for his newsletter upon interning for his Center for Politics. And then I, through his recommendation, got an internship at the Cook Political Report in the summer of 2005 and got to meet some of my idols, Charlie Cook and Amy Walter. And when Amy briefly left the Cook Political Report in 2007, there was an opening for the House position. And I was, I eagerly accepted Charlie's offer to come work for the Cook Report, but I was also really intimidated because I hadn't engaged in real journalism before. I had been kind of an armchair pundit in high school and college and following this stuff from afar, but all of a sudden I was interviewing candidates and consultants and it felt like being thrown into the deep end. And it really took a few years before I felt comfortable in my writing voice, in my ability to interact with candidates. And now I've been there for 17 years and it's still evolving. But I find that covering the granular level of politics at the precinct level and congressional district level, it's a great way to get a feel for trends that may not be visible yet nationally. But sometimes these house races are good indicators of what's coming down the pike in voters' mood. So I've always been fascinated by these congressional races and I'll always cover them as best I can.
Casey (04:54.566)
Beautiful and for the younger audience my students out there especially sis going over by the way they were movie critics so just so we know generation ship so making sure everyone's on the same page but when you. Describe a day to day for you i mean i just picture you drowning in spreadsheets drowning in data trans demographics polls all of it but how do you come up you say handicapping races first of all explain that to someone who may not be familiar.
Dave Wasserman (05:01.156)
you
Casey (05:21.676)
and then describe how you get to the decisions and predictions you make.
Dave Wasserman (05:26.298)
Yeah. So it's a mix of art and science. And Charlie Cook was the one who devised the seven point ratings system back in 1984 when he first founded the Cook political report. And now there are a ton of outlets that have some kind of shorthand, whether it's solid Republican or likely Democrat or lean Republican or tossup. And I, in the time that I've been doing this, there's been a real shift in the forecasting world from the qualitative to the quantitative side. And my philosophy has always been to try and blend those approaches because if you're only paying attention to the gossip that the campaign consultants and the candidates are engaged in, but you're not looking at the demographic trends in a district, you're missing half the picture. But if you're only focused on
Casey (06:20.11)
Thank you.
Dave Wasserman (06:25.426)
On spreadsheets and you're not talking to the players involved in the race, you're also missing half the picture because there are a lot of elements to elections that are just not quantifiable. And how do you really price in a candidate's biography in a quantitative way? If they have a life story that is unique or resonates with a particular group of voters in the district. Or if there's a scandal, sometimes scandals can tank a candidate's chances. Other times, candidates survive them. And it's really hard to develop an algorithm to predict which one is going to be the case. So I find that a lot of the forecasts out there that are really heavily quant, some of which is respect and think are very good, but a lot of them convey more precision than is really the case. And I think our way of rating races in broader categories, it has its limitations, but it also conveys to our subscribers, our readers that there are.There is a lot of uncertainty in the toss-up column and, you know, a race in lean D is competitive, but we see the Democrats as having a slight advantage and so forth.
Casey (08:02.314)
Beautiful. So there's a lot there. The quantitative, the qualitative. It sounds like you spend more time or purposefully spend some time talking to candidates, talking to voters, potential voters within individual districts to then inform your opinions and your ratings. Is that discounted? Do people assume that you don't do that? Like I even did that in my question to you about you're always looking at just data and letting the numbers tell the story, but it seems like you purposefully don't limit yourself to that.
Dave Wasserman (08:30.242)
No, and I think a big part of this job is trying to calibrate which metrics and which pieces of information matter and which matter less. And sometimes that's different from district to district. know, an ad dollar that's spent in Syracuse, New York, in New York's 22nd district goes a lot further than an ad dollar that is spent
Casey (08:52.27)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Wasserman (09:00.018)
on LA broadcast TV or even Phoenix broadcast TV in these really crowded markets. And so, you know, there's no one size fits all approach to, you the impact of how much money a candidate is raising or spending. But I always think that the most important baseline to start with is what happened in the last election, what happened two years ago. And then.
Casey (09:21.55)
Okay.
Dave Wasserman (09:29.208)
evaluate what's changed, what's changed in the political environment, what's changed to the district boundaries. And of course, we've gone from redistricting every census cycle to in many cases, much more often than that, depending on who's in control of state legislatures and state Supreme courts. How have the candidates' strategies shifted from the last cycle? I've seen candidates come in and pitch us on one strategy, one cycle, and then they lose and they fire all their consultants and their campaign team, and they learn from their mistakes and come back the next cycle and win. Angie Craig from Minnesota is an example of that on the Democratic side. it's really frustrating at points when races sneak up on us and, you know, they're
Casey (10:18.826)
Okay.
Dave Wasserman (10:28.782)
There are always a few close calls that we don't see coming. But if there weren't, then this job really wouldn't be any fun because we would know everything that was going to happen before election night. And that's never really the case.
Casey (10:49.59)
Speaking of election night, there's an election coming up. I'm sure you've heard about it, but let's go to exactly where our folks are interested in. Let's start at the top of the ticket. Give us the lay of the land. We're recording this late on Monday, September 30th. The vice president debate is tomorrow night, but a big picture, which is incredibly hard to do just a few weeks out from the election. Where do you see things? Whose camp would you rather be in? And if you're willing to throw out even just semi predictions out there, tell people to sound smart at their next cocktail party.
Dave Wasserman (11:22.874)
Well, you we've had two presidential elections in a row that have been decided by a cumulative margin of less than 80,000 votes across three swing states. And we are on a trajectory for the third straight election in which that's the case. mean, this is at least based on the polling, the closest presidential election that I've ever covered in my two decades doing this. But
Casey (11:47.086)
Okay.
Dave Wasserman (11:50.276)
There's no doubt that Kamala Harris has benefited from a very favorable set of developments and news environment in the last three months. And since she was tapped for the nomination, she had a really strong August where Trump was really flailing for a message to define her and Democrats were very effective in reintroducing her to voters as a change agent, which is something that's really hard to do when you're the sitting vice president. And she also has had a really good September. She had a emphatic debate win over Trump. And also we've seen a Fed rate cut. We've seen a big decline in the number of migrant arrivals across the southern border, partially in light of
Dave Wasserman (12:48.634)
President Biden's executive action restricting asylum, which is something Republicans argue shouldn't have waited until 2024 to happen. But nonetheless, it has rendered some of Democrats' biggest weaknesses a little less potent in Republicans' message. So all that has benefited her.
Dave Wasserman (13:14.906)
You take our polling average today, our national polling average, it has her ahead by 2.4. And we think that she needs to win the national popular vote by somewhere between two and three points to win the electoral college. So even with all of that, she is still more or less tied in this race. And at the battleground state level, pretty much the same story. We've got very slight leads for Harris across the Great Lakes states, but
Casey (13:38.858)
Dave Wasserman (13:44.932)
They're all within one or two points, all within the margin of error. Trump may be slightly ahead in Arizona and Georgia, but really I don't think we have enough polling data to know for sure where those states stand. And North Carolina has come back onto the map in a big way. So look, if the election were held today, I think you'd give the ever so slight advantage to Harris, but Trump has a lot of outs here.
And the first is that if the polls are off by even a fraction of how much they were off in 2016 and 2020 in his direction, then he would win. The second out is that voters still trust Trump more to combat inflation and deal with the economy. And at the end of the day, voters tend to vote their pocketbook more than based on personality, which is where Harris has.
Casey (14:37.706)
.
Dave Wasserman (14:42.08)
advantage in swing voters' eyes. And then there's probably not going to be another debate between Harris and Trump. And that's probably better news for Trump than Harris.
Casey (14:56.654)
So polling data, polling data, polling data. It's the best thing that you have to go off of though you have to mix your art with that science. And I'm wondering, I'm sure you hear this all the time as do I about, well the polls can't be trusted anyway. Look what happened in 2016. There were surprises in 2020. There was even surprises in the other direction to the extent in 2022 with the Congressional Blue Wave that came in.
Talk to our voters, talk to our listeners out there about what corrections were made from 2016 to 2020 and how that's been impacting the polls and how we should interpret them in 2024. How has the industry changed?
Dave Wasserman (15:40.73)
Yeah. So between 2016 and 2020, we saw pollsters who were not weighting their samples by college attainment begin to focus much more on that. Now there's still a lot of debate within the polling community as to whether that weighting really corrects for or has corrected for the error that we saw.
in 2016, because in 2020 polls actually under sampled Trump's vote by more. There have been a lot of theories. One that I find persuasive is that Democrats were more likely to take COVID seriously than Republicans and were more likely to pick up the phone. But I think the overarching issue here is
that Trump's voters skew towards people who have lower levels of social and institutional trust. And that includes trust in the media and polling included. so Trump's voters are less likely perhaps to pick up the phone. We have no.
real effective way of measuring the extent of that. But it's worth noting that polling was much more accurate in 2018 and 2022 than in 2016 and 2020. I think that speaks to the fact that when Trump is not on the ballot and you have a slightly smaller electorate, that correlates more strongly with the types of people
who care enough to answer a political survey. When you get into an electorate that's much larger, and keep in mind, we had 160 million people vote in 2020, we had 112 million people vote in 2022, I'd say we're probably on pace for somewhere between 150 and 160 million this time. There are a lot of people who are more casual voters who are gonna be counted in this election. And I don't know if the polls are
Casey (17:47.694)
you
Dave Wasserman (18:07.834)
picking those people up effectively or not, but we know that the people at the margins of political engagement are more likely than the most civic minded voters to support Trump.
Casey (18:23.154)
So that seems like that makes your job incredibly difficult, right? Like I'm watching the Broncos on Sunday and I know that they have to be up 14 points just so they can win by three because I have to build in that margin as some fan knowing that there's some chance at
uncertainty out there, right? So I guess that's my way of asking, are there just, is there just a certain segment of the population, even if they answer a pollsters phone call that will say one thing to a pollster, then go into the voting booth and just choose something different? Is there a sociological effect where for whatever reason they don't want to say they're voting for this guy. And then we can get surprised by how many people end up in the voting booth and check that box with the Trump name next to it.
Dave Wasserman (19:09.124)
So what you're describing is a social desirability bias that we have no way of really being able to suss out or quantify. But what I'll say is that there are just as many parts of the country where it's unacceptable to socially undesirable to support Harris as part of the country where it's undesirable to support Trump. So I'm not convinced that's playing a large role.
Casey (19:26.136)
Thank
Dave Wasserman (19:37.946)
role or that there or that voters, Trump voters were lying in large numbers to pollsters in 16 or 20. I think part of it is just pollsters were having a really hard time getting at, in particular, lower to middle income whites without college degrees who don't really want to talk to pollsters, but
at the end of the day, still vote and are likelier to support Trump.
Casey (20:10.283)
Okay, fair. So a lot of time.
Dave Wasserman (20:11.226)
And also, you know, we're down to really small response rates. When you're talking telephone, polls were down to sub 1%. And so it's rather miraculous that polls have been as accurate as they are. Now, the reason I'm not automatically pricing in, in underestimation of the Trump vote and, you know, tacking two or three points onto Trump's total for every poll is that Democrats and Harris really do have
a stronger ground operation than Trump and Republicans to get out their vote. They have a much more traditional coordinated campaign. It's better funded. Whereas Trump has farmed out a lot of that effort to super PACs, including ones like Turning Point USA that are not that well equipped to persuade undecided voters or turn out Republicans. At least they don't have a strong track record of doing so.
Casey (21:07.849)
Okay, final presidential question. We all know it's gonna come down to a certain number of swing states. We know which ones they are. Tell me which one you are paying most close attention to.
and the reason you are. Which one are you going to just be laser focused on and what piece of data from that state are you going to use to then apply to the map in other elections?
Dave Wasserman (21:33.402)
It's Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania has really been the most important state for three cycles in a row. Some people weren't convinced of that in 2016. I felt like I was shouting that from the rooftops eight years ago. But Pennsylvania is really important for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's the biggest electoral prize of the seven battleground states, but it's also been consistently one of the closest.
And it's a state that Kamala Harris probably needs to win to win the electoral college. And it's a place where Harris could have a really hard time replicating Joe Biden's appeal. If you go state by state through all seven, you know, in Michigan, where there's a slightly larger black vote than Pennsylvania,
Casey (22:03.79)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Wasserman (22:30.746)
Yeah, it's easier to see Kamala Harris kind of replicating Democrats' success from 2020. And, you know, perhaps in North Carolina, Harris has a slightly better chance than Biden did because she's, you know, able to take advantage of a weak Republican statewide ticket and a re-energized black vote. But Pennsylvania, there are areas of the state where Biden had unique appeal.
And that included some more blue collar suburbs of Philadelphia. It certainly included the Northeastern part of the state and probably places like Erie and Southwestern Pennsylvania. And the parts of Pennsylvania where Harris will probably need to compensate for that under performance are suburban Pittsburgh, the more white collar suburbs of
Casey (23:02.634)
.
Dave Wasserman (23:27.768)
Philadelphia, she's got to do even better than Biden did. And then in Harrisburg, which is increasingly professional and white collar and in Harrisburg suburbs. So that's, just a fascinating state to try and game out. And it's possible we won't know for a few days because Pennsylvania did not adopt a change that would allow counties to tabulate mail-in and early votes.
to be able to report them on election night.
Casey (24:01.293)
Perfect. So the lessons we didn't learn part 984 from last election. But, okay, I told you that was my last question, but
When we're talking about demographics, we're talking about cohorts within voting blocks, which ones are you most paying attention to and comparing to previous elections? Is there big shifts out there? Are there certain age ranges or gender splits that you're looking at to apply and give us some predictive power in the presidential race and beyond?
Dave Wasserman (24:34.618)
Yeah. So the demographic groups that were focused on, they overlap with one another, but the biggest drop off that we've seen in democratic support has come among Hispanic and Latino voters. And there's some debate over whether it's more men or more women, but what we know is that in our average of cross tabs of the 20 national polls that we consider to be the most
well established and transparent.
Kamala Harris is only leading Trump by 12 points among Hispanic voters. That's about half the margin that Democrats carried Hispanic voters in 2020. So to go from a 24 point margin last time to a 12 point margin, that explains why Nevada and Arizona are such precarious states right now for the Harris Falls ticket. And I think it also speaks to the fact that over time,
immigrant groups tend to begin voting like the rest of the country more and more. Hispanic voters are becoming a genuinely swing demographic. Now, there's precedent for Republicans getting more than 40 % of the Hispanic vote, just look at George W. Bush in 2004. But if you look at 2016, Donald Trump alienated Hispanic and Latino voters because
His rhetoric about immigrants was so over the top and immigration and the role of immigrants in society was such a focal point of that campaign. His message in 2020 was much more about the economy and unlike 2016, he actually engaged in a robust Spanish language advertising campaign. And he's more or less trying to continue that in 2024. And he's effectively cast Democrats as hostile to
Casey (26:10.114)
.
Dave Wasserman (26:37.836)
many of the sectors that employ Hispanic and Latino voters, particularly along the border. And so we're seeing real slippage for Democrats in South Texas, which makes it harder for Democrats to win that state or win that Senate race. But then, you know, we're looking at a bigger gender divide than we had four years ago, and particularly among Gen Z voters. We are seeing
Casey (27:06.35)
Hmm.
Dave Wasserman (27:07.898)
Kamala Harris winning Gen Z women by perhaps 30 points, but it's a very close race among Gen Z men. And that raises the question, what validators, you we know Kamala Harris has really big celebrity validators for Gen Z women. But what surrogates, what validators does she have who are going to appeal to Gen Z men? That's a big question for the final five weeks of the race.
Casey (27:38.514)
You don't think Taylor Swift is reaching over to the Gen Z men? I got Taylor Swift blasted in my house every morning, but that's probably my daughter's fault.
Dave Wasserman (27:47.226)
Look, she has helped register hundreds of thousands of new voters, some of whom are men. I'm guessing it's not 50%. But I'm guessing that a fraction of those new registrants are in swing states. Trump has successfully appeared in settings that appeal to young men, whether it is
Casey (27:56.855)
Hahaha
Dave Wasserman (28:17.418)
F1 races or UFC fights or even sneaker con or, you know, hanging out with Elon Musk. And, you know, Elon Musk's favorability is very strong with Gen Z men. you know, this is a tough problem that Democrats face that really only emerged in the last couple of years, because when Barack Obama was running, he was doing very, very well with both.
Casey (28:17.902)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Wasserman (28:47.222)
young women and young men. And I do think that the prominence of the abortion issue in the wake of Dobbs has accelerated that gender gap.
Casey (29:01.762)
Fair. Okay. Let's leave the presidential because there's a lot of other elections going on across the country. So let's go down the ballot one level to the Senate race. As quick or as long as you want, tell us the state of play there and whose camp you would rather be to have the majority gavels come next January.
Dave Wasserman (29:20.122)
feel like the Senate is the clearest of the three races because Republicans really do have a structural advantage in the battle for the Senate. Democrats only have 51 seats because they have two independents who are representing West Virginia and Arizona and Democrats are guaranteed to lose West Virginia. So the Senate really starts out at 50-50. And they also hold two seats that they have very little business holding.
But they have really tough incumbents there and Sherrod Brown and John Tester. But it looks like Montana might be slipping away from Democrats. And you never count John Tester out, but it's a really tough race for Tester considering that Republicans do have a stronger candidate than they had there six years ago. And Kamala Harris really does him no favors. She's probably going to lose Montana by somewhere between 16 and 20.
And Brown has a better chance in Ohio, that would be Republicans' 52nd seat. Montana would be the 51st. But then in the second tier of targets that Republicans are hoping will generate a larger majority, the two that increasingly look viable for Republicans are Wisconsin and Michigan. And Democrats are still the favorites there because Tammy Baldwin,
still has a slight advantage over Eric Hovde and Democrat Alyssa Sotkin has a lot more money to spend than Mike Rogers in Michigan, but those are really the two to watch for, to see if Republicans can get higher than 52. And then, know, Democrats desperately want Texas and Florida to be in play. But, you know, I think a lot of Democrats...
Casey (30:52.974)
Mm-hmm
Dave Wasserman (31:14.33)
don't understand how far Florida has fallen for them in a short amount of time. Democrats had a hundred thousand vote voter registration advantage in November of 2020 in Florida. Today, Republicans have a one million vote voter registration advantage. Ron DeSantis benefited from that and won reelection by 18 points last time. I don't think it's going to be an 18 point presidential or Senate race in Florida this cycle, but
Casey (31:30.163)
Holy tomatoes, dang.
Dave Wasserman (31:42.778)
I wouldn't be surprised if it were eight or nine. And then in Texas, Democrats would need everything to go right for Colin Allred to beat Ted Cruz. And Beto came very close in 2018. He came within two and a half points, but he also massively outspent Ted Cruz that year. And the spending in this year's Texas Senate race is going to be very close, almost at parity. Maybe Cruz will end up spending a bit more than Colin Allred.
Casey (32:11.182)
Okay.
Dave Wasserman (32:12.49)
And the Hispanic electorate along the border is not as robust for Democrats as it was. I went to El Paso a couple of weeks ago and very few Democrats there believe that Colin Allred will match Biden level numbers, let alone Beto numbers in that part of the state. And the rear Grand Valley, we've seen even more erosion for Democrats. So that makes winning statewide very difficult.
Casey (32:41.516)
Which leads me to a question, and I don't want to get you in trouble, but I gotta know just because you know these numbers better than anyone, that when you see these races that people are trying to gin up expectations of a chance to pick off a seat. So let's say Colin Allred in Texas beating Ted Cruz. For Democrats, that's an ornament on the Christmas tree, right? That's like their star that they want to pick off, not only because it's a Senate seat, but it's Ted Cruz, right? And so,
They pump in a lot of money to these races. They bring in donations for these races, but you see the numbers and you're probably saying like, this ain't a good ROI here for you folks. There's better return on races elsewhere to be spent. So does it drive you crazy when parties do this and they raise funds on kind of the misguided expectations of picking off a seat that they have no business winning?
Dave Wasserman (33:31.29)
Well, let's be clear. I don't think that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is really steering a lot of donors to Texas specifically. I think they're pretty clear headed about the Senate map. And I think this is very different situation from, let's say, a Democrat raising millions of dollars to run against Marjorie Taylor Greene, where clearly it's more than two to one Trump district and, you know, Democrats spending
Casey (33:52.596)
Right. Which also has happened.
Dave Wasserman (34:01.018)
$5 million might narrow the gap from 37 to 35, right? Texas is fundamentally different. You are seeing some polls that have it in the low to mid single digits. I'm skeptical that it's really that close, but it is a race that is on the edge of being competitive.
Casey (34:06.178)
Mm-hmm.
Casey (34:24.533)
Okay. So let's move down to the house, right? It is a razor thin majority right now. All arrows are pointing it to being a razor thin majority for one party or another in the house. So what's the state of play there and who would you rather be?
Dave Wasserman (34:41.466)
You know, that's a really tough question. think Democrats might have like a 45 % chance in the house at the moment. And there are three reasons why Democrats are within striking distance of winning 218 seats. Right now they're at 214 and Republicans are at 221. So Democrats need to net four seats to win back the house. The first reason Democrats have a decent chance here is that the house is being fought on
or favorable terrain for Democrats than the Senate or perhaps even the Electoral College. And I mentioned those red state Democratic Senate seats, but in the House, you've got 16 Republicans running for reelection in Biden won districts compared to five Democrats running for reelection in Trump districts. so Democrats can hold their Trump seats and, and, know, none of those Democrats is any worse than even odds to hold those seats.
Casey (35:14.13)
.
Dave Wasserman (35:40.218)
And then they can win a fraction of those Biden Republican districts, a lot of which are in California and New York, then they could get to 18. The other reason is that, and this makes the House quite a bit different from the Senate, Republicans have been a mess in the House for the last 20 months. it took them 15 votes to elect a speaker last January.
just eight Republicans to overthrow that speaker last October. And that personnel change at the top has had some downstream consequences for Republican fundraising. Because Kevin McCarthy, even though he was in an ungovernable situation as speaker, he was the most effective recruiter and fundraiser that House Republicans have had in modern history.
Casey (36:34.222)
you
Dave Wasserman (36:34.746)
raised $260 million to help Republicans take back the House in 2022. He personally recruited dozens of women and minorities to run for swing districts as Republicans. And now a lot of that's gone out the window. And Mike Johnson is very green when it comes to the political aspects of the job. And McCarthy had spent a lot of 2024 on a vengeance tour. It wasn't a very successful one. But what we're noticing is that the median Democratic incumbent
has about four times as much cash on hand entering the homestretch as the median Republican challenger, whereas the median Republican incumbent only has slightly more cash on hand than the median Democratic challenger. So that means that in a lot of races, Democrats are gonna be the ones dictating the narrative on the airwaves for the final five weeks of the race. And that could tilt some of these contests to the Democrats.
Now we are noticing some separation between races in California and races in New York. Those are the two states where Democrats really need to win back a lot of Republican seats. But New York is not as favorable to Democrats as California because Kathy Hochul and Eric Adams are albatrosses around Democrats next in the empire state.
We're noticing better polling data for the Democrats running in places like the central Valley of California or Orange County or in Northern LA County. So those are, but I really think that the house will be decided by the toss-ups in three other states, which are the two open seats in Michigan, the two Republican incumbents in Arizona and the two Democratic incumbents in Pennsylvania who are in our toss-up column.
Casey (38:09.994)
.
Dave Wasserman (38:29.54)
Those are the ones I'd watch.
Casey (38:31.759)
Beautiful. And let's do some quick hitters that will get you out of here, because I know you got a jam schedule for the rest of your life, but.
Just some quick thoughts from someone who's spent decades in this business. And the first one is something I like to ask people who are known as the best. And that is what do you wish everyone would know about what you do? What do they get wrong or assume to be wrong? And you just have to explain over and over again. Let's lay it out right now.
Dave Wasserman (38:57.978)
I think there's an assumption out there that that we are purposefully trying to split the baby or or purposefully trying to to set up equivalency between the parties on everything. In reality, the reason why it it seems like we're
you were disseminating good news for Republicans on one hand and good news for Democrats on the other is that right now politics is very closely fought and there are just as many good developments for Democrats and Republicans, or at least something very close, close to that when you evaluate the, the house landscape. And so, you know,
Our incentive is not to drive the most clicks. You know, even though I noticed that when we shift a race in Democrats favor, tends to get a whole lot more likes and retweets than if a race shifts in Republicans favor. But our goal at the end of the day is we honestly want to be right. And it, you know, it can be painful when our forecast is upended by a surprising
Casey (40:02.35)
Hmm.
Dave Wasserman (40:26.732)
election night, but we, at the end of the day, have a pretty long track record and are proud of our accuracy rate in evaluating these races.
Casey (40:46.264)
What are you doing election night? Where will you be spending it?
Dave Wasserman (40:50.074)
So since 2008, I have been a member of the NBC News Decision Desk team. And I'm probably best known on X or Twitter for my catchphrase I've seen enough. that, in addition to being kind of an accidental catchphrase that came about a decade ago, it's something that I only use on kind of
Casey (41:05.838)
Yep.
Dave Wasserman (41:19.328)
non-major election nights because I'm dark on social media on the really big election nights. And that's a deliberate choice on my part. I know that there's so much information coming at us so quickly that no one person can really be an effective decision desk on presidential or midterm general election night. And so I prefer to work with a team of people behind the scenes to
crunch the numbers and make judgments about who's gonna win. And I'm still kind of pinching myself that I get to do cool things in this field like that.
Casey (42:00.893)
Cool. And what do do when you're not?
doing your job what do you read what are you interested do you have a hobby or you have to wait until next february to have a hobby again.
Dave Wasserman (42:07.185)
Ha
Dave Wasserman (42:11.194)
So I'd say, you know, my main passion apart from politics is traditional music. And by that, I guess I mean kind of bluegrass and Celtic music, but I'm a fiddle player. And so I really love jamming with, with friends. And each year I go up to a camp in Maine and I forget about politics for a week. just play music with people and it's.
know, one of the highlights of my year, but I don't think that I could sustain doing what I do as a political analyst unless I had some other creative outlet. And so I think those two things are kind of necessary in my life. And then, you know, this is the first presidential election cycle that I'm a dad. And so I've sought to balance two kids.
Casey (42:42.19)
Mm-hmm
Dave Wasserman (43:10.458)
and family with the rigors of trying to track 435 congressional districts. And I'm really grateful that we've hired on some really talented younger staff at the Cook Report. For a long time, we were kind of a bare-bones staff of five, and I was the only one covering the House. Now we have two young writers, Aaron Covey, who's our new US House editor.
and Matthew Klein, who's a staff writer and analyst, who are both doing a great job diving into the weeds of these races. And I'm really happy to get to mentor them and also work with them.
Casey (43:54.539)
Wasserman on the fiddle. I did not have that on my bingo card, but good to hear. The final one, probably the hardest one. When will we know the winner of the election? What's your best guess on that?
Dave Wasserman (44:08.058)
You know, I think the odds are that we will know within 24 hours because the most likely scenarios and, you know, my friend and colleague, Nate Silver wrote about this on his sub stack the other day, but you know, the, most likely scenarios is that the swing States break overwhelmingly in one direction for either Harris or Trump. And we should know.
North Carolina's result fairly quickly. That's going to be a really important early indication. And we are likely to have a few complete counties in Pennsylvania in short order, particularly the smaller counties, even if we don't really know the outcome in the largest ones. And then we'll have a good idea of how Georgia is voting.
I think the odds are that we'll know sooner than in 2020, but if those East Coast states split, then we really could be waiting for more than a week to find out Arizona and Nevada because the count is so slow in those two states.
Casey (45:24.936)
Perfect. Dave Wasserman, Cook Political Report. Thank you so much for joining us on Mastering the Room. Get some sleep when you're able and appreciate it. Stay strong through election night.
Dave Wasserman (45:36.068)
Well, thanks Casey. And when I said that it was a small room earlier, it's really just cause it was the two of us, but I look forward to it. It did. But I look forward to listening to more episodes of the podcast. So thank you for having me.
Casey (45:44.382)
It got bigger, didn't it?
Casey (45:53.198)
I appreciate you, man. Thank you.
Dave Wasserman (45:55.972)
Take care.