Blue Wave Watch

Marianna Sotomayor (0:02)

Well, Democrats are feeling so incredibly confident. It's not even a conversation of if they're going to win back the House majority, it's now how big is their majority going to be.

Peter Hamby (0:17)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Huck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Wednesday, September 30th. Today, I'm joined by Marianna Sotomayor for a vibe check on the midterms. Dems are feeling themselves, the polls could be pointing to a blue wave, and some Democrats are advocating for last-minute investments in reach Senate races like South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida. But as Marianna and I discuss, other signs suggest that Democrats need to be more realistic. The current map is the map, and Republicans could pull out some surprise victories too.

We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Wednesday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague Marianna Sotomayor for some fantasy politics. We got four weeks left until the midterm's control of Congress is up for grabs, governor's races, Democrats are cocky, they're playing everywhere, they're spending money, although they don't have as much money as Republicans, they're investing in red states. But that also means Republicans are playing defense. Donald Trump is gonna campaign in Nebraska, where they have a Senate race and maybe one House race that Democrats can possibly pick up. So if you're looking at all the clues, who's on offense and who's on defense, it's pretty obvious the Dems are on offense. But Marianna, the polls. People are always worried about the polls, especially Democrats, they've been burned before. You're starting to see in some of these Senate races, like a Marist poll came out that had Josh Turek up by like eight points in Iowa against Ashley Hinson in the Senate race. I think a lot of people are like, that feels a little off. You're starting to see some pollsters and some data dorks on Twitter talk about how white people are not responding to their polls as much, which is making some Democrats worried that there might be sort of shy voters out there, some non-response bias, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It still feels up for grabs. The models generally say that Democrats have an over 80% chance to take the House. So let's start there. You cover the House. You're an expert. How are both parties feeling right now with about a month to go until election day?

Marianna Sotomayor (2:46)

Well, Democrats are feeling so incredibly confident. It's not even a conversation of if they're going to win back the House majority. It's now how big is their majority going to be.

And there is a lot of wishful thinking happening because, yes, there are some really good candidates who could potentially flip districts that Trump won by like 10, 12, even 15 points. But that optimism from Democrats is just so big. They're now like, we could maybe win Elise Stefanik's district in Northern New York, which Trump won by 21 points. And that's not everybody. Like, there's a lot of Democratic strategists who are like, okay, wait, hold up, let's be real.

Let's not get too excited. Let's not think about diverting resources to the races where, you know, we can probably and most likely can flip. Like, let's still stay realistic. And that's kind of the message that's broadly being given to a number of candidates. Like, look, the polls may show this one day. They might show you all of a sudden up by a gazillion points.

Act as if we are the underdogs, right? Because no one kind of wants to lose sight of just winning this thing, even though there's so much, like, just wide eyes open. And you mentioned the money. That is the number one thing, the advantage, that Republicans have. And our colleague Leanne put it really well earlier this week, where she said that's like the one thing that Republicans are talking about. And that's because that's the one thing they can actually tout as a positive, that they do have so much money making it much more difficult for Democrats to potentially compete in these very Trumpy conservative areas. And like we're in the season right now where money talks a lot. We're going to soon see all of the big campaign arms start to move and shuffle money. It'll tell us like where Republicans have potentially lost hope, where Democrats are saying, we have to leave that seat on the table. We can't compete there. So that's going to be saying a lot. But to your broader question, how are Republicans feeling? They're not feeling good. I'm hearing much more like realistic talk from a number of Republican campaign strategists, privately, of course, where they are admitting, you know, we're probably not going to keep the majority. Obviously, it goes against what a lot of leaders have been saying and continue to say out on the campaign trail. So many more conversations about like, okay, what does a minority look like? But there's still that conversation, I would say, on both sides of how big, realistically, will a Democratic majority be, because there's not that many competitive seats. And as much as the issues are completely on Democratic side, again, that money advantage that Republicans have, there's just like all these other factors that might limit the potential of this huge majority that would make Hakeem Jeffries' life that much better and easier.