Hour 2 - Shocking Election Eve Polls

Buck Sexton (0:00)

Second hour, Clay and Buck, day before the election, kicks off right now. And perfect time to talk to our friend, Ryan Girdusky, host of the Smash Hit Podcast. It's a numbers game on the Clay and Buck Podcast Network. You can also read his National Populous Newsletter on Substack, but the podcast in particular, I can tell you right now, a lot of key insights, information, analysis. Ryan, give it to us straight, buddy. The good, the bad, the ugly.

Nothing happens until tomorrow when the votes are count. We all know that. How is it looking right now and what has to happen for Republicans to win in the key places? Take it away.

Ryan Girdusky (0:44)

So it's looking different in different places. Let's just start with that. It's not uniform across the country. There are states that Republicans are really doing very poorly. Texas, terrible. Kansas, terrible. North Carolina, abysmal. Those are the three really, really bad. Florida also not in good shape, like really not in good shape. Other states, it's not horrible. Iowa, not horrible. Ohio, not horrible. There are pockets where I'm like, okay, this is pretty good numbers. We've seen a flurry of polling recently, especially from the New York Times. They released their last series of polls where they had Democrats not only winning every key Senate race, but winning every key governorship. I have serious problems with their methodology. Maybe they will be proven wrong and I will be proven right and I will be proven wrong.

They are predicting a lot of young voter turnout. In some states, that is being true. Texas, lots of young people are showing up in Texas, probably for Talarico.

That is not, the numbers aren't there for Sherrod Brown in Ohio. They're definitely not there in Iowa. I'm not even seeing huge numbers in Michigan with Abdul El-Sayed that you would expect to predict with this big progressive candidate. Certainly not record breaking, smash breaking numbers in the early vote.

That's where we're getting to a little problem with solid polling is what is the methodology they're making. Every pollster, like every political consultant, makes a worldview and says, this is what the electorate is going to look like. They're predicting, I think, a much more democratic electorate than I am. Also, the other big problem, and Nate Cohen from the New York Times says this, 30% of Democrats are 30% more likely to answer a poll than a Republican, white Democrats versus white Republicans. That becomes very sticky not only for the issue of answering the polls for Republicans but also independents who lean Republican, which is why I think some of these numbers are a little too rosy for Democrats in that poll.

Clay Travis (2:35)

Okay. Let's dive into the places that you said that you are most apprehensive, nervous, I think you used one phrase, abysmal. Let's go to Texas and let's go to Kansas because that's the middle part of the country.

I saw you tweet that a lot of Kansas Republicans are not backing Roger Marshall, and I know you just said with us that a lot of young people are showing up in Texas. What needs to happen in Kansas and in Texas for Republicans to win? You're talking to one of the biggest, most influential audiences in Republican politics, humbly, in the entire country right now with a lot of people listening in in Kansas and in Texas. Let's start there. What needs to happen?

Ryan Girdusky (3:17)

Well, first things first, in future elections, Election Day is not Christmas. You don't have to wait for Election Day, but what we've seen in Kansas, the problem is, is that Republicans are not hitting nearly what they did in the early vote, and Democrats are at close to 2024 levels. That's the narrative across the entire country, but especially in Kansas, Democrats are close to presidential level turnout, and they are at higher levels of lower propensity Democrats, Democrats who don't vote in every election. There's a lot of Republicans left to vote in Kansas. I'm talking probably three to four hundred thousand, four out of four always vote Republicans left to cast a ballot in Kansas, enough to get them over the finish line. They just all have to show up and they have to drag somebody who is less likely to go vote, a teenager, a cousin, a relative, a wife, a husband, whatever, who don't always vote. That drags them over the finish line. The problem I have with the New York Times, the Annapolis, they said that 17 percent of Republicans in Kansas are voting for the Democrat for US Senate. That is a higher percentage of Republicans leaving the party to vote for a candidate for the opposite party. Then Mark Robbins lost in North Carolina in 2024 Then Todd Aiken lost in 2012 in Missouri. He famously said that women can't get pregnant if they're raped, which is not true.