transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics.

Speaker 2:
[00:08] I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover politics.

Speaker 3:
[00:11] And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

Speaker 1:
[00:14] Today on the show, the midterm battle lines are getting clearer with election results from Virginia last night. Voters there narrowly approved a ballot measure to redraw congressional district lines, a mid-decade redistricting that significantly favors Democrats. This was just the latest turn in a redistricting arms race. President Trump kicked off last year when he pressed Texas lawmakers to draw the state's congressional map to favor Republicans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries talked about the results on NPR's Morning Edition.

Speaker 4:
[00:47] Donald Trump indicated that he was going to rip away 10, 12, or 15 seats from the people of this country in states like Texas and Missouri and North Carolina as part of an effort to rig the midterm elections. That effort has now been thwarted.

Speaker 1:
[01:06] Before we get to what this means more broadly in the midterms, let's talk about what happened in Virginia. What do you two read into the results?

Speaker 3:
[01:13] Well, I mean, I don't know if Hakeem Jeffries knows how to do the Icky Shuffle or any, I don't know what his touchdown dance is, but that's sort of what it seemed like there, you know?

Speaker 1:
[01:25] Yes, he was spiking the football.

Speaker 3:
[01:28] Yeah, because the fact is, Trump started this fight, as a lot of the bumper stickers in Virginia said, Texas started it, and that was the argument, that yeah, you may not like gerrymandering, but we got to do it this one time to fight fire with fire. And in a year when Democratic voters are upset with the Trump administration and the intensity against Trump as high as it is, this is a huge win for Democrats, provided that the state Supreme Court upholds what happens here. This could net Democrats four seats, which is huge, especially considering the landscape is so small and the margin is so tight.

Speaker 2:
[02:07] And it's also worth looking at who didn't really weigh in that much. Ultimately, the midterms are a referendum on Trump and his return to office, but Trump didn't really campaign for the no side of this vote. I mean, he did a teller rally the night before, literally phoning it in. And that's actually probably why the margins were a little bit more narrow than they might have been otherwise, in part because you do have some Democrats that are still very much morally opposed to gerrymandering, even when it benefits their side, that made it a little bit more narrow than some of the margins we've seen like in the Virginia governor's race.

Speaker 3:
[02:46] Clearly, the message was very muddled in this, but a win is a win. Trump had said he wanted five seats in Texas to go his way, said he was quote unquote entitled to it. And this redistricting battle is really indicative of the landscape. I mean, this is this arms race we've been talking about with redistricting. And it looks like Democrats are coming out ahead of it when Trump had started this to say, he wants more seats to be able to ensure that Republicans hold the house. Now Democrats are the odds on favor to win the house. And that was true even before what happened in Virginia.

Speaker 1:
[03:19] So so much money has been spent in multiple states. There's been so much effort to try to tilt the battlefield in favor of one party or the other. And ultimately, what you're saying is that maybe there's a narrow edge for Democrats in terms of the redistricting battle.

Speaker 3:
[03:40] Yeah, I think on on net, it seems like with California, with Virginia, Democrats are able to very strongly counterbalance what Texas did and other Republican states. And some Republican states were buff Trump and weren't willing to go along with mid-decade redistricting.

Speaker 2:
[03:56] It is worth noting that Florida still on paper has a special session upcoming where redrawing the maps could be on the docket. And I say that with all of the careful, cautious words and tones in there, because part of the reason the redistricting effort has been awash for Republicans is in the time since Trump was elected in 2024, there have been a lot of regular elections and special elections where the coalition of people that voted for Republicans the last time has started to fracture and break. And so even though Texas redrew the boundaries for five of its house seats, the way voters have been voting suggests that not all five of those are guaranteed pickups for Republicans. And same with some of the changes they made in Ohio that were less favorable to Republicans than some had hoped. And even with the seats in Missouri and North Carolina, you have a situation where they call it a dummymander sometimes where you draw the lines thinking that you can benefit the party by drawing it in their favor, but a change in the electorate and a change in some of those swing voters and different groups means that it actually backfires and gives the other party more seats.

Speaker 1:
[05:10] And we won't know the answer to that until November, when voters really will get the final say on whether politicians get to choose their voters or whether voters get to choose their politicians.

Speaker 3:
[05:22] Yeah, it's totally true. And I think that the reason that redistricting in particular this year is very important is because the landscape has shrunk so considerably. I mean, if you look at the Cook Political Report, which rates these seats from solid Democrats to solid Republican, lean Democrat, lean Republican, etc., there are only 32 seats that are in the lean or toss-up category out of 435 total seats with everyone up for re-election. So this landscape has really closed considerably when you think about competitive seats.

Speaker 1:
[05:57] So is this all a miscalculation on the part of Republicans? That they started a war that they couldn't finish?

Speaker 3:
[06:05] I think that they did not realize or think through, or Trump didn't think through, just what Democrats could do in their states and how they would respond. And it does seem like it was a big miscalculation on Trump's part.

Speaker 1:
[06:20] And it is a fairly remarkable thing that Democrats did in California and Virginia. They actually had to go to voters. This wasn't just legislators doing it in a state where they have full control. They actually had to go out to the voters. There had to be a whole extra election.

Speaker 3:
[06:39] Yeah, for sure. And they spent, I mean, a ton of money on TV ads. There was $81 million total spent on TV ads, according to Ad Impact. And the lion's share of that was spent by Democrats. $56.4 million, $24.6 million spent by Republican groups. That's the kind of thing I think we're going to hear a lot about during this election. I mean, you know, as much as Republicans came in at the end, getting doubled in the TV spending certainly didn't help their case.

Speaker 1:
[07:07] Yeah, and I think there is a lot of finger pointing going on right now among Republicans. Like, hey guys, this was close. Why didn't we spend more money on this?

Speaker 2:
[07:15] Well, and to that point, you know, Indiana is one of the states where Republicans were poised to try to redraw the map, to squeeze out another seat. And ultimately, state lawmakers there opted not to do it. So hindsight is 2020, or in this case, 2026, as Republicans look at things that they may be left on the table that they can't go back and change.

Speaker 1:
[07:38] And I will note President Trump is actively working to primary the state senators on the Republican side who wouldn't support the gerrymander in Indiana. And of all the places that President Trump allied committees have spent money, it's there, $1.5 million transferred to Indiana, of all places, for Republican on Republican battles.

Speaker 3:
[08:03] Which, you know, I mean, that's not the best way to spend your money when you're trying to maintain a majority. But for Trump, so much of what he's tried to do in this past decade is really take over the Republican Party, which he has and made into his image.

Speaker 1:
[08:19] Yeah, so I do want to just step back and look at this house map and where things stand. You know, the Republican majority right now is very narrow. What is the best guess about how this is shaking out?

Speaker 3:
[08:33] Well, I mean, President Trump, his popularity has really taken a nosedive, especially since the start of the Iran War. And a new APNORC poll really found Trump's floor much lower than we ever thought it could possibly get to. I mean, 33% overall approval rating at 32% when it comes to his handling of the Iran War and 30% for his handling of the economy. When they asked specifically about his handling of the cost of living, it was 23%. That is George W. Bush Iraq Civil War era type of numbers. And when that's the case, when a president's approval rating is below 50%, the party in power always does worse. And they usually do not so great in the first place. It's something Trump has talked about repeatedly. So given that landscape, if the economy doesn't improve substantially and this war isn't over soon, Trump is really and the Republican Party looking at increasingly, day by day, a larger and larger wave, even though the wave can't be that big because there's only that 32 seats or so that are available. But I will say the toss-ups, for example, from Cook have moved pretty significantly because now there's 16 toss-ups. In the beginning of the cycle, they were fairly evenly split by party. Now it's only three Democratic seats and 13 Republican seats that are in that toss-up category. And that's really making a lot of Republican sweat in those swing districts.

Speaker 1:
[10:04] All right, well, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, the Senate. And we're back. And Domenico, you've been taking a look at some of the most competitive Senate races come November. Republicans do control the Senate now, but their majority is narrow. What are you watching?

Speaker 3:
[10:22] I'm watching a few things. First of all, the landscape, like we talked about, the national political environment, the economy, cost of living. Does that change at all? Does it improve? Because I think a lot of Republicans and the ones I talked to really are sort of banking on it, getting a little bit better than where things are right now. At least they certainly hope so to be able to hold on to some of the places that they should be able to win in some of these Republican territory seats that they have. You know, Democrats, when you talk to them, they have sort of a core four states that they're looking at, because they need to pick up four seats to be able to win control of the Senate. Because Trump is the president, the vice president would come in to break ties. If it's 50-50, JD. Vance would come in to break ties. Right now, Republicans have a three-seat majority, so Democrats need to pick up four to flip the Senate. And those four seats that Democrats are looking at are North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, and Alaska. And if you think about Ohio and Alaska, those have been some pretty Republican-leaning states in recent years. And Democrats feel good about their candidates. Republicans also acknowledge that Democrats have pretty good candidates. They expect Democrats to pick up anywhere from one to three seats. Of course, they got to say that because they're looking to hold on to control of the Senate.

Speaker 1:
[11:40] So let's say some of those four states don't work out for Democrats. Are there any other states that you're watching where the money might end up flowing, where attention might move?

Speaker 3:
[11:52] Yeah. I mean, I would call these sort of reaches a little bit more. But, you know, state like Iowa is one where even Republicans, I was surprised to hear from them to say that they think that this could be more competitive and emerge as a surprising one to watch because there's, they think, a pretty good Democratic candidate running for governor. The tariff environment for soybean farmers has been so difficult. And there's a real, I would say, populist and anti-war streak among Iowans for the amount of times that we've been to Iowa for different things for the presidential race. You certainly can see that. And they also point out that this was a state that Obama won twice. And if the landscape and the issue set is turning back against Republicans on the economy, that could be a real difficult race potentially.

Speaker 1:
[12:45] Stephen, there was just a big campaign fundraising reporting deadline and you have been crunching all of the numbers. What have you learned from the money about where the parties think this is going?

Speaker 2:
[12:58] Well, the money is going and going and going to Senate Democrats in those races that could decide control of a chamber. John Ossoff, the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat in Georgia, reported $14 million in the last quarter. Former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper reported $13 million. And James Tolerico, the Texas Democratic Senatorial Nominee, had more than that combined, reporting $27.1 million raised in the first three months of the year, though he did spend a lot of money to raise that amount of money. The other thing worth pointing out is that for all of the polling and anecdotes and things that show that Democrats really don't like the National Democratic Party and its brand, they sure do love Democratic candidates. And to the point, in those Senate races, there's about 10 or 11 or 12 of them that could be in the universe of competitive. And almost every single one of them, Democrats have been out raising Republicans in those races by, some cases, large margins. And even in some of the deeper red states like Montana and Nebraska, independent candidates who were more aligned with the Democratic Party, raised more than the Republican Senate incumbents. So there is the disconnect between what people think about the National Democratic Party and the Democrats that they are willing to support financially.

Speaker 1:
[14:26] Yeah. And I think that this is a really fascinating dynamic on the Republican side. The party committees, the RNC, the various congressional campaign committee type committees, have raised a lot of money and the candidates themselves have raised less than the Democrats. But on the Democratic side, it's the opposite. It's like Democratic donors are personality driven or they want to give their money directly to the candidate. But that in the end reduces the flexibility to move money around to maybe more competitive races.

Speaker 3:
[15:00] That's true. I think that the key thing about money in midterms in particular is it's a show of enthusiasm. It's a show of activist force. And that's really, really important in midterm elections. It's not just because they can use this money to buy more TV ads or to get out the vote, which are important things, obviously, but it's also another indicator of which party is more likely to show up at the polls. And that's something we've seen in the data for polling also that Democrats are more enthusiastic about these midterm races than Republicans are, which is usually the case for the out party in these midterm years. I do think we should mention also that Republicans have some targets as well that they're looking at Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire, Minnesota. Those are all states where Democrats are playing defense and that Republicans feel like they have a chance to win, especially Michigan, where they have Mike Rogers, a former congressman, fairly moderate, who lost by a very small amount to Alyssa Slotkin in 2024. They think that he can come back and be able to win in an open race. You have a Democrat in incumbent Senator Peters who is not running for re-election. They think that there's more of a chance, but this is a state that used to trend blue. It's very susceptible to the economy. In a year that is unfavorable to the party in power, that one might be a little bit harder. The other place that they're really looking at, of course, is Georgia, where Stephen is, and the fact that John Ossoff, right now, both sides will say that it is a lean democratic race. You've got a Republican primary that they have to contend with, because the electorate in Georgia is very conservative, and they're all trying to outmag each other right now. So John Ossoff right now has the advantage. Republicans expect that that race will close and be tight at the end of the day because of the lean of the state overall.

Speaker 1:
[16:56] Stephen, sometimes where the money is spent or where they plan to spend it will tell us where they really think the race is or where the competition really is. Are you getting any of that from party leaders?

Speaker 2:
[17:07] To your point about the enthusiasm for some of the Republican donors, it is worth noting that the Republican National Committee, the House and Senate Campaign Fundraising Arms for Republicans and their associated super PACs have way out raised Democrats. And at the same time, they haven't spent very much of that money for now. So Republicans have a huge war chest to spend on any number of combinations of states and races and postures. And there have been some telegraphing of where some of that money might be spent. The Senate Leadership Fund has indicated hundreds of millions of dollars in spending in those Senate races that we talked about before. They anticipate North Carolina, which is going to be an open race, to be the most expensive state on the map. It's going to cost a lot of money to try to get Michael Watley, the former RNC chairman, introduced to voters and to try to take former Governor Roy Cooper down a peg. You're also seeing, like Domenico mentioned, a lot of signaled investments in those races, Georgia and Michigan, where they hope they can buck the trend and pick up those seats. So it's still early. We are still just barely out of the first quarter of the year. But on the Republican side, there is a signal from donors that the institution of the Republican Party needs money to help get their candidates across the finish line in November.

Speaker 1:
[18:39] I have a question about one other institution, which is the Trump-aligned super PAC, MAGA Inc. It has almost $350 million cash on hand, which is a whole lot of money. Do we have any idea what's going to happen with that money?

Speaker 2:
[18:57] We don't. So far, there hasn't been much money spent from MAGA Inc. But it's not clear what the president is going to do with his campaign war chest. We know from the endorsement side of things, Trump has skewed more towards endorsing incumbents and people that are kind of known winners. In a midterm environment where he's not on the ballot, there might not be a whole lot of those financially. So it remains to be seen what he could do with that money. But $350 million, that number is going to go up as more people give money. It could do a lot for Republicans or he could hold on to it and use it to try to influence 2028. All right.

Speaker 1:
[19:37] Well, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics.

Speaker 2:
[19:41] I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover politics.

Speaker 3:
[19:44] And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

Speaker 1:
[19:46] And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.