So, Galen, we were sorry that your birthday was overshadowed by the election, Chadwick had a good idea to get you a little birthday greeting, so we wanted to play it for you here.

Oh, now the movie. Oh, my God, no. A man.

Happy 30th birthday. The election was absolutely crazy, and I know everyone obsessing about it, but it's over now. So the good news is let's get back to sports and stuff that we like, like wine going to Hell's Kitchen and all things gluten free. Happy 30th birthday. God bless you.

Let's get back to sports and stuff that we like. Wine.

Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics podcast, I'm Galen.

It feels like a year since we sat down last Monday to record our final pre-election thoughts. So thanks to everyone who's followed us throughout the past week. It was definitely a long one. As of Saturday, as listeners likely know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the president and vice president elect while the presidential race is decided. There is still a few states that have not been projected, along with various Senate and House races. So today we're going to check in on those outstanding races.

We're also going to take a look at how the parties are reacting to the results of the election. President Trump and many Republicans in Washington have not acknowledged Biden's victory. Democrats have very much acknowledged the results, including a debate about what went wrong in down ballot races that did not live up to expectations.

Lastly, Pfizer announced today that extremely preliminary data shows its vaccine is very effective and will be seeking emergency authorization from the FDA later this month. Now, the election is over. The challenge of a global pandemic remains for President elect Joe Biden. We'll discuss how that might impact the early days of his presidency. And here with me to talk about it at all, our editor in chief, Nate Silver. Hey. Hey, everybody. Also with us, senior politics writer, Claremont loudhailer I Gaylen and senior politics writer Perry Bacon, Jr.

. Hey, Perry, good to see you. Likewise.

So everyone rested up, everyone recovered from the past weeks.

I think it takes a little bit of time to wind down. You know, one of the things I've been doing off and on in the pandemic is playing poker. There's some games with friends and stuff. And like poker is usually a really great way to steal your nerves. But like this first time I played since the election, my nerves are totally shot. It's like I just want to shovel in and not have to sweat anything. No, it's like an election is weird because it's consequential for the country, obviously.

And it's the first and most important thing. It's also consequential for our line of work, you know, for being honest. And it's just a lot of work. It just a lot of stress. And you can't shirk away at the last moment because people are also relying on your coverage to kind of steer them through, especially in this era of blue chips and red shifts, steer them through this kind of very confusing data that I think the new normal is it's going to take off in several days to resolve.

So it's pretty good that it's over. We still have a lot of follow up to do.

There's a lot of news, but yeah, everyone else, thoughts, feelings, recovery plans.

I spent a lot of time outside this weekend was beautiful. It was really nice. Yeah, it was really nice in New York. How are things in Louisville?

I mean, I would say that I'm not resting a lot because there's a big story happening now about violence as of the government and so on. We'll come back to that. But I'm not really resting. I'm sort of reading a lot and tracking a lot at this point still. Yes. Being responsible. So let's begin, though, with uncalled races, because while the top of the ticket may be resolved down, ballot races have not necessarily been resolved and even some states have not been resolved as far as the top of the ticket is concerned.

So our colleagues at ABC News have yet to project the winner of the presidential race in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Alaska. When should we expect to know the results from those states?

So we'll go case by case here, Georgia. Joe Biden's going to win Georgia unless there's something very surprising. Georgia is going to do a recount. It's not automatic, but secretary of state is for one completely reasonable recount. Usually don't turn around, though, ten or eleven thousand vote margins like Biden has now. So whether you call it or not, as a matter of semantics and they do recounts for a reason, sometimes tabulation errors turn up, but usually not tabulation errors of that magnitude.

Arizona, I think, is the most uncertain remaining state. Arizona is transparency relative to other states, has not been fantastically different types of ballots. You have some so-called late early ballots, your ballots that were returned by mail that came in Monday or Tuesday. So they were later to be counted. You have to or dropped off at the election site, originally sent by mail, your ballots that were provisional ballots. You have ballots that are like large print or Braille ballots for people that are short of site.

So you have all types of miscellaneous chunks of ballots of which is in which category. Some of those groups have been relatively good for Trump, like the late early ballots, so-called, some had been more neutral. I think it does not appear that there are enough ballots left, other types that are favorable for Trump, for him to have a good chance, he might have an outside chance. Again, these counts, the ballots are kind of fuzzy sometimes not every provisional ballot will actually be counted.

On the other hand, sometimes states discover I don't mean that in a nefarious way at all. I mean, like, you know, there are other ballots that had not been included in previous counts, right? Some say to say, well, we have one hundred thousand ballots left to count, and that includes provisional. Some states it doesn't sometimes now and then the state cites a number of it's already been counted. Right. There's just some states, not Arizona, but some states ballots can arrive legally after Election Day as long as they're postmarked by Election Day or before.

Right. So it's a little ambiguous sometimes how many ballots there are. But I think the numbers came in over the weekend in Arizona were not quite as good as Trump needs. You're now running out of ballots. So I'd say Biden is likely to win there, but not certain. North Carolina is another state where you have ballots that can come in after deadline. And they haven't I think for whatever reason, they're kind of waiting until those come in to release the final count.

It looks to me like a really tall order for Biden. He would have to win these outstanding ballots by like 80 to 20 or something, which is like I mean, not necessarily totally crazy, given that like maybe this period can be very blue, but it seems like a tall order. It seems like that's a likely Trump state. And then Alaska, Alaska, just very slow to count its votes, is only counted in person votes so far, has not counted any male votes, which is substantial.

Biden and the Democratic Senate candidate Al Gore are way behind so far. They have to win the mail ballots by a very wide margin, although, again, I'm not sure we always know exactly how many mail ballots there are. So probably the North Carolina category of being likely Trump and likely Sullivan, meaning the Republican Senate incumbent. But yeah, it's Alaska. It's weird. So we'll see.

So maybe the states to focus on here are Arizona and Georgia. And I'm interested in hearing from Claire and Perry. What kind of coalition did Biden put together that made him competitive in these states that have been pretty Republican for decades now?

I think the short answer, particularly in Georgia, is Democratic organizers. The most prominent of which people are pointing to is Stacey Abrams, have been working on this register. Lots of new voters turn out lots of black voters, but also reach out to these white, college educated people, particularly in Atlanta. Atlanta obviously is a really huge metro area and has the suburbs and college educated places and voters of all races that are trending more and more towards the Democratic Party in Arizona.

I actually don't know the initial turnout numbers on Hispanic voters in Arizona. But, you know, when I talk to people there pre-election, they felt pretty confident. Democratic organizers felt pretty confident that they had created a decent outreach effort with the Hispanic community there. And then you also have Arizona independents trending more toward Biden, the Democrat, and then Mark Kelly in the Senate race, I think for interesting reasons. We've talked a little bit on this podcast about Arizona being like small C conservative, not necessarily captured by Trump, even though there are some pretty Trumpy characters out of Arizona in the past four years.

So it's kind of like a combination of turning out these pretty hardcore Democratic bases and then also a little persuasion, which is what a lot of elections are. But it was Georgia. Ninety six or ninety two, the last time a Democrat won in ninety 92.

Ninety two in Georgia, in 96 in Arizona.

So obviously a big change. So just in terms of the demographics of Georgia's electorate is about a third black. And the data we have suggests Biden probably won something like 90 percent of the black voters in Georgia, and that's a third of the electorate. And the question has always been, are in Georgia, can the Democrat win about 30 percent of white voters or in the 20s? And it looks like Biden probably got in the 30s. And that's an important part of his victory, mostly around the Atlanta area.

That's a huge number of Democratic votes there. Arizona's electorate is about between a fifth and a fourth Latino. And it looks like Biden won the lion's share, probably in the 60, 70 percent of the Latino vote there among white voters in a state like in Arizona, they're less conservative. I'm assuming he wants something like 40 percent, if not higher, of the white vote in Arizona. So that's the kind of not many black people in Arizona, not a ton of Latinos in Georgia, but some of those groups as well.

And in terms of the geography of the Phoenix area, is the lion's share of the votes, along with Tucson and Arizona. And then Atlanta, along with the Savannah area, is a big part of the votes for Biodome in Georgia.

So one of the trends we were looking at heading into the election was how Biden was performing with seniors. That is potentially more relevant in Arizona, considering that there are a larger retirement communities there. It seems like Biden did not do particularly well in Florida. That's partially based on the Cuban-American vote in south Florida, potentially also based on the senior vote. Obviously, Biden did better in Georgia than Florida as an interesting development. Are we able to parse whether or not in the end Biden did do well with senior voters in this election?

I think we'll eventually be. To do so, I mean, I have deliberately not spent very much time looking at exit polls. I mean, the current exit poll shows Biden lost seniors by three points, which is a bit better. The Democrats have done recently. Democrats have not won the senior vote since, I think like two thousand or something. So this is somewhat improved performance. But again, I think we have to calibrate based on when we kind of know final results and can be a little bit firmer in time.

The exit polls to them.

Yeah, and I'll just clarify here that we do plan on talking more about the polls and our performance in this election. We also do want to dig deeper into exit poll data and other survey data that will come out once they speak with verified voters and things like that. I mean, one of the challenges of exit polls is that they can be pretty skewed and later on are basically pegged to what the eventual outcome was. And we don't have full results yet.

So the exit polls are not always all that correct to begin with, and they aren't as correct as they will eventually be once, as you mentioned, they are calibrated for final results. So we are going to have lots more conversations about this, but we are still a little bit in limbo, as with many of these races, because we don't have the final exit polls. Basically, let's talk about Senate races. We don't have projections yet in North Carolina and Alaska.

And then, of course, the two Senate races in Georgia are going to runoffs. I think you summed up what we expect from North Carolina and Alaska at the presidential level. Is there any reason to expect that the Senate level would be any different, particularly in North Carolina?

So Cal Cunningham, the Democrat running for Senate, is running a little behind Biden. So if Biden needs a minor miracle, then I'd say Cunningham needs a major miracle to the point where could a decision desk call that race already? Maybe. I guess there's no reason to jump out and do it. Alaska outgrossed and Joe Biden are running neck and neck, so they might be in the same boat. Alex Galvin, who is the Democratic nominee for the US House seat there, is running a little ahead of them.

So maybe if there's a big shift back, she might have slightly better chances than the other two, but they're not hugely different. And in general, a theme is that you did not see big ticket splitting, which you didn't expect to see. But like in most cases, you did not have that many Senate candidates running ahead of Biden. You had some maybe running House candidates running behind him. Right. There shouldn't be some voters who were like, OK, I will vote for divided government here, Biden for president, maybe my Senate race I'll feel different ways about.

But then for House, maybe go for the Republican if I'm on the fence here.

So based off of what Nate mentioned, it seems like the two biggest question marks now are the runoff Senate races in Georgia, which in our Pryors be going into those races.

This may be controversial or not, but I mean, I worry the media is going to spend a lot of time covering this. There's been a lot of money spent in Georgia on both sides. There will be a few polls showing it's within the margin of error. And then Perdue in Loffler win by five points, something somewhat predictable, the history. We have one example of Democrats winning in Georgia, Joe Biden on Tuesday. We have a lot of evidence of runoffs, Senate races and so on to suggest Democrats get between forty five and forty eight in Georgia.

Not much below that, not much above that. So I'm going to lean pretty hard and clear that I'm worried about me. A lot of hot air over nothing. The Republicans have an advantage. The polls will look close, but I will believe it when I see it, when I see Democrats win two special election runoffs in Georgia, giving them the control of the Senate. All right.

Coming out strongly to Perry's point, a good prediction is that this will kind of be reminiscent of the John Asaph, Karen Handel, and then, frankly, like the Doug Jones Roy Moore Senate race, where these races get nationalized, national Democrats start donating. Every celebrity's Instagram story is all about like moved to Georgia, call everyone in Georgia and then people in these states, which might be purple or frankly, red. The locals get pissed off and they're like, will this noise like you guys can get out of my state's politics?

And it ends up being a more walk away race for the default party in these cases, all Republican, because the nationalizing of these races often doesn't jibe well with locals that they want it to be about their particular politics, which I actually find pretty understandable. Right. Like, people do kind of like to say, like the place where I live is different for whatever reason, like everyone wants to be a unique flower. So I do think that nationalizing these races will probably have, as I said, a galvanizing effect for the default home team party.

Yeah. And of course, then also it brings national figures who may not necessarily be at all popular in Georgia into the fray. I think I saw the news already that Andrew Young is moving to Georgia to commit full time to electing the two Democrats between now and January. Nate, what are you thinking?

I think people. Charles Pryors here may maybe a little too strong because a Georgia has obviously changed a lot as a state. In fact, there's a chance that Georgia will end up being the tipping point state B.. Yeah, usually you think that if you kind of in a midterm environment where there's usually a wave against the incumbent president and Biden kind of as the president elect, I guess it's kind of analogous to like a midterm backlash. But there's something very weird about it, right?

If Trump is making a lot of noise about not transitioning smoothly and or not conceding the election results, then maybe you don't get that effect right. If he's if he's making a lot of claims about voter fraud, there may be people who predicting this hasn't happened, but maybe turnout is discouraged. Right. It's also not clear that, like, ah, the lower propensity voters who might not vote this election, are they necessarily Democrats or might they be lower propensity white voters who might vote for Trump?

But I don't think that's clear either. And so can I pick Republicans to win these races, particularly the Perdue Sofres? I do think Loffler Lefler, by the way, it is Lefler, I thought was Luffler Lefler.

It's it's looks like it's pronounced Loffler by reading it, but she definitely pronounces her name Lefler.

Kelly Lefler ran really, really, really far to the right in this multi-way special election primary in a way that I think hurt her favorability ratings. It's not impossible to imagine some Georgians saying Lefler is a little too crazy for me, whereas Perdue seems fine. He's a trusted incumbent going to go Perdue, Warnock and we'll have a split delegation. They wouldn't shock me if. And by the way, there were polls and in those polls of the runoff, Warnock was ahead of Lefler by some margin.

How bad those are after the primary is done, I don't know. But like, you know, I could imagine it might end up being a forty nine fifty one split in the Senate with those races being split. I think it's not impossible.

All right. One final question on Georgia before we move on.

Are we going to have a forecast or polling average for the runoff?

Well, the polling average, we don't traditionally do probabilistic forecasts for like special elections and runoffs I don't think are going to, like, make an exception now. But we'll have a polling average up Zonker.

And I do want to move on and talk about how the parties are responding to the results. But there are a lot of outstanding House races that have not been called. Do we have a rough sense of how many seats Democrats will have lost once this is all said and done?

So far, there have been eight seats from Democrats to Republicans. Three seats have flipped the other way. So it's a net five gain for Republicans. But there are a number of uncalled races. Several those races are in New York. The issue with New York is that we we as New Yorkers, we haven't counted our mail ballots yet, which are likely to be very Democratic. And so I think a lot of people have said, oh, my God, how did Republicans do so well in New York when it's not clear if they did so well or just that when you don't count mail ballots like in Pennsylvania, then things are highly incomplete.

A couple of those are in California where it's not clear which way will they have a blue shift or red shift. But there's also a lot of uncounted vote in California. So it's not clear how many pickups the GOP will ultimately have. They are based on the current vote count leading and the majority's on call races. So I might want up being like, plus. Eight GOP at the end of the day, if I had to guess or something like that, plus eight plus nine for seven somewhere in there.

All right. And we do eventually, once we have better data, I want to look at where Biden outperformed some House Democratic candidates. Once again, as we've mentioned, we don't have complete data yet. We will get there. But I do want to move on and talk about how the parties are reacting to these results. But first, today's podcast is brought to you by ZIP Recruiter. Businesses have had to be flexible this year from working remotely to pivoting their business models for long term survival and growth.

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President Trump has not conceded the presidential race and perhaps he never will. He is making vague and baseless claims of voter fraud, much like he did after the 2016 presidential election. While Trump has telegraphed these kinds of claims for months, rank and file Republican lawmakers in Washington have also largely not acknowledged Biden's victory.

So, Perry, kick us off here. What is the current dynamic within the Republican Party? Why aren't GOP lawmakers acknowledging Biden's win?

I mean, I'm not sure I'm able to say why, because they're not going to give me a memo presenting. I mean, let me start with, like at this point, George W. Bush, Condi Rice, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski. There's probably a few others as Fred Upton, the House member. But the fact that I'm able to recall and I'm focused on which Republicans have congratulated Biden is the story because the overwhelming majority are not. And some of them are making some of those who are more direct kind of with the election is confusing.

We can't tell the results. Some of them are not coming at all. Mitch McConnell has made some sort of noncommittal statements. This is very disappointing and I would say discouraging that this picture is going around on Twitter about how after the election, Biden congratulated Pence in 2016. This is just like deplorable behavior that we have in an election. It's clear who won instead of acknowledging the results. We have lawsuits that seem to be pretty baseless in many cases in the Republican Party going along with them.

While the lawsuits are about Detroit and Philadelphia with the obvious implication that somehow black people cheated the Republicans out of something, this is deplorable behavior. And I'm really discouraged by to see this start so far, which is that Biden won the election. He's presented his speech on Saturday was very unifying in terms of his goals. And why Mitch McConnell can't say he won is absurd to me.

Yeah, all of what Perry said. I think what's so interesting is I say interesting with a loaded sense. I mean, there's a clip going around that is very clearly Laura Ingram specifically talking to the president basically and saying gently, you've lost. But, you know, like President Trump supporters will still love him and he'll still be a kingmaker in the GOP, even if he loses. Frankly, I think the silence on the part of GOP elected officials is a little bit just coddling the president's ego.

I mean, he still hasn't come out and said anything. He's, I guess, been golfing for the past two days in Virginia.

There haven't been really any word from his mouth, which is pretty amazing. And I guess from the mouths of babes, a kid the other day asked me, like, so is President Trump going to go to Joe Biden's inauguration?

And I just said, I don't know. It's a good question. If I were a betting woman, I'd say probably not, which is not like illegal. I mean, it's certainly not gracious and it's certainly pretty unprecedented, at least in modern times. But I think everyone at this point, even if they're not saying it explicitly and shame on them that they're not acknowledging Biden has won the election, but everyone just kind of like, OK, this is going to be like an uncomfortable two months and then Trump will be out.

Right.

And really what we're saying here is this is not a partisan issue. This is like whether or not we live in a functioning democracy where the loser of an election concedes and the person who was democratically elected is helped out and encouraged to take their elected role because that's what the people decided. So what is the incentive structure here for Republicans? I mean, at the beginning of President Trump's entrance into Republican politics or at least presidential politics, they were very skeptical of him.

He's kind of been a thorn in many of their sides for the past four years. Why are not more Republicans at this point are saying, all right, he lost. We still probably have a Senate majority, we're going to move forward. Like, what are the incentives here to just not say that Biden won because they did pretty well down ballot?

And I think a lot of them know that. I mean, I think it's pretty notable that Larry Hogan, the extremely moderate governor of Maryland, who in a delightful bit of political, whatever you want to call it, was like a lot of people have asked me to run for president in twenty, twenty four.

And it's like, oh yeah, yeah. It was like many people are saying, it's like your wife, like, I don't know, that was just kind of a funny a funny thing.

But, you know, the fact that it's pretty much only these moderate Republicans who are coming out and saying, like Trump should concede, that's already kind of built into their brand. A lot of other people in the GOP. I think the nonresponse tells you a lot about probably the direction of the GOP in the next four years.

Like people keep on saying, like Trump is gone. No, no, no. Trump ism is here to stay. And I think that that's what you you see and feel. And I think that's a good way to phrase. It was like, what's the incentive? There isn't an incentive right now. Right.

In the sense that they want to be on good terms. With the large majority of the Republican Party is down with Trump, this is going to be a thing that will be important to remember is that Trump might be leaving the White House, but this brand of politics is here to stay like it resonated. Look at the down ballot races. I think there's a lot of hard thinking to be done about the staying power of that kind of politics in America.

Are we sure, though? I mean, you know, Trump is going to lose the Electoral College by. The same margin that Hillary Clinton did. The point is that usually if you lose, I think I disagree with everyone else in this podcast about this, but usually if you lose, you're a loser.

But, Nate, what's the proffered alternative in the Republican Party? I don't actually think that the people who have the ideological core currently have much staying power or resonance with the base. I mean, maybe I'll be wrong. And that's what reporting is all about. But my inclinations are kind of like there is a lot of momentum on the side of Trump ism, even if it's not this strategically best they have for years to figure it out.

No one would have thought at this point in 2012 that Donald Trump would be the next Republican nominee.

So then answer this question then. Why are the vast majority of rank and file Republican lawmakers not saying exactly what you said? You know, OK, you're a one term president now. We're going to move on.

Joe Biden is president elect because their feelings are hurt. Because they're trying to get in good graces with Trump and their base, right, because they think that that's the future of the Republican Party, I think you overrate people's rationality and also is their judgment. Their judgment can be wrong. These are people who are in denial. A lot of them. These are people that don't want to admit. I mean, it's a mix of everything, right? Some of them, I'm sure, cynically are saying some stuff and some of them sincerely believe it.

And some of them are consuming information that, like, is misleading. You know, I mean, look, we deal with like different types of readers have different beliefs about the election and we're different indicators, point and polls. And like we're in an environment now where, like, substantial numbers of people can just believe things that aren't true. And they have lots of ways to reinforce their beliefs, including people that are kind of in some sense, pretty intelligent and well-adjusted.

People are losing track of reality. I don't mean to sound alarmist, but like some people are losing track of reality here and you can get your kind of filter, bubble or whatever it's called, where you kind of only consume news that reinforces your view and kind of consider everything else to not reinforce your view. A lot of people who voted for Trump have what we call low social trust. That means you may not actually have as many social context as someone that might reinforce behavior were going down different rabbit holes.

We all have lower social contact or almost all of us during the pandemic that might reinforce these little holes you get into. I mean, I think it's kind of dark, but like, I don't think the appropriate lens is necessarily to look at it as being highly strategic. I don't know. It's part of it. It's like strategy adjacent.

I agree with the idea that Republicans are doing this because they don't want to offend Trump while also thinking that maybe they're overly obsessed with not offending Trump, like sucking up to Trump is what they're doing. That may not actually be a good political strategy. So I think that that is their incentive. Their incentive might be wrong, their judgment, their base might be wrong. I'm not totally sure throwing it forward.

Do we think this is indicative of the kind of relationship the GOP will have with President Biden?

I'm not sure that. I mean, like if you look at the last couple of days, the obvious thing would be the Republicans are going to block Biden. Everything he does, he can't appoint a cabinet member, etc.. I think it's too soon to know. I'd be curious to see what Biden's approval rating was like in April, like what he does in April, how he's handling the coronavirus. If there's a vaccine. I mean, I don't think the Republicans are going to sign onto the Green New Deal or the public option, obviously.

But are they going to oppose everything Biden does? I'm not sure yet, but I think the indications are not good. If you look in terms of the Republicans, in terms of democratic norms, are they going to keep passing potentially laws to make it harder for people to vote, for example? I think yes, because they seem to be on a course of not following democratic norms. And this week is another illustration of that. All right.

So that's where Republicans stand in this moment. Democrats, of course, are celebrating their victory, but they're also taking a look down ballot, probably with some trepidation and confusion about what happened. There were plenty of places around the country where Biden did run ahead of House Democrats, whereas polls suggested that they would likely pick up House seats. As we mentioned earlier, they are likely to lose somewhere in the range of seven to nine House seats instead. So before we try to get to what did happen, why did Democrats lose those seats?

Can we talk about how the party is talking about it? Because we're still going to have to wait for better data in order to come to maybe full conclusions. But the party is already having this debate and pointing fingers. Claire, in which direction are the fingers being pointed and why?

Yeah, I mean, I think the Democratic Party this is not news to anyone, has a very vocal, progressive base that has even before we knew that there's a good chance that the Republicans might hold the Senate and Joe Biden might be picking more moderate nominees and Cabinet members, you already saw progressives sounding the alarm bells about Biden's going to be too conservative. We're going to see Clintonian or frankly, like Obama era only giving credence to the experts and the establishment of the center left.

You're already seeing a lot of that. You know, I think Biden is talented at being in the center always of the Democratic Party. And I think someone earlier said or at one of our many election podcasts, that Biden has a very progressive, if not the most progressive platform, ran as a progressive candidate. But I do think his inclinations are towards probably more of the center left. And so I think that there are going to be some very vocal disagreements in the Democratic Party.

I think a lot of them initially will probably be centered around Biden's pick for chief of staff and. You're probably going to see some stuff in the Georgia Senate race, I think Andrew Yang is already getting pushed back for having you know, people say he's mischaracterizing the working class base of the party and not giving enough credence to voters of color who are working class and messaging to them. So you're just starting to see a lot of the arguments that we've been seeing for four years.

But now Democrats are in power, so it gives it a different valence, frankly.

Yeah, I guess to put that more bluntly, in the very immediate aftermath of this election, there were leaks from the House Democratic caucus call in which moderates were pointing at progressives saying, like, you did this by talking about defunding the police. And one of the courts was like, I never want to hear the word socialist again. To what extent are we able to tell at this point whether it was on overly liberal or progressive agenda from the left of the party that turned off voters down ballot?

I mean, I think there's some tentative evidence for that in Nebraska's 2nd District, for example, which Joe Biden won by a solid margin and picked up an electoral vote. The very progressive Democratic candidate, Karen Eastman, is down four point eight points based on votes counted so far. I don't know that will tighten at all, but that is on the verge of being data and anecdote of talking about one race. I have seen some attempts to quantify if you're controlling for like support for Medicare for all and look at Biden's performance or from underperform.

I mean, there's some evidence that you underperform, maybe not dramatic, though. One of the things that I think the conventional wisdom has deluded itself about a little bit here is the notion that like, oh, now it's all about turnout. It's not about appealing to the center. We're actually in our analysis, our research, it still is about appealing to the center, among other things. And so your prior probably should be that. Yeah. If you're seen as more far left or far right, then you'll be punished for that at the ballot box.

And if you're Susan Collins and kind of straddle the difference, then you can survive a wave. And there's a big gap between how well Biden did and how well Gideon did in Maine, which no kidding, I don't think, but is about probably Susan Collins and trying to balance different incentives. So I think there's preliminary evidence for this narrative. But like, we have to collect a lot more.

Yeah, I mean, the debate itself that started with Abigail Bamberger and Connor Lamb criticizing the squad basically, and then AOC being interviewed in the Times and defending herself. And then Conolan, to me, this all seems a little bit like the moderates cabelas we shouldn't talk about even the police was one thing they brought up. But the number of House Democrats who are for defund the police is a very small number that maybe is for and might even be zero.

The number of Senate Democrats who are for that is probably zero. It's just like it's not clear to me how the Democrats can get away from defund the police, because that's not a good argument from the result is an argument from activists like activists are saying that. And then they get sort of grabbed out and put on Fox News, like in some ways criticizing their colleagues. That's not the most unpopular kind of liberal things are not really coming from congressional Democrats.

And a lot of ways I find that hard to be. You know, we're going to have activists can't say even the police in election years. I mean, it's like a sort of that part of it is problematic. The second part is that Biden is a different kind of politician. So it seems like Biden ran ahead of some liberals and some moderates. It may be a sense that Biden is a good politician and has a record and it may not be the left or the right is wrong.

The sort of moderates or the liberals are wrong. The other point being that the Democrat discussion leaves out the point that maybe some people voted for the Republicans because they agree with the Republicans. It couldn't be that like the Democrats didn't do anything wrong, but the Republicans did things right. Did voters appeal to both? Conolan and Aoki's seem to be saying that if our strategy was different, we would win more voters. I'm not sure some of those people might just want to vote for the Republicans, though.

And I guess the last point is this left center debate is kind of over, I think, in the party. I mean, it's actually not hard to appoint someone who's not an uber liberal or Rahm Emanuel centrist. And I think Joe Biden, being a non idiot, will find some people who are like in between then and so I think the media is sort of very primed for this left center story that I think is going to end up being Biden is going to pick people who satisfy both and are not in either camp.

And that's not brain surgery.

I feel like the Rahm Emanuel being inserted into this narrative in the past few days is weird because it's like, yeah, he's not going to appoint Rahm Emanuel. Rahm Emanuel was just on your television for a couple of days saying things which feels like the reason why he's kind of coming up. But what he just said makes me think about. It's been activists who have been really effective in messaging the message they want, and that's the point of activism, is to give effective messages that shake people up a bit and hopefully influence.

But maybe just the Democratic Party doesn't have a super great media strategy. However you want to put it like that. Their communication is not. Sexy that activists on the left have gotten communication down and that, like AOC has gotten a lot of applause for the way she communicates with voters.

And I think at first you had a lot of older lawmakers saying, like, what is she doing, giving makeup tips to Vogue? And it's like, well, she's doing YouTube videos where she talks about her narz lip pencil, but then is also talking about health care, you know, whatever the idea of sort of innovating a communication strategy. That to me is interesting. And maybe there is something in there about the fact that some of the organs of the Democratic Party aren't actually innovative in their communication style.

And that's a problem if you're a whatever a center Democrat to you to use. The thing that that kind of just is the debate is over. But the idea is if you're in the establishment that, like, maybe you actually should come around to different experiments with communicating your message now that you're in power.

There's also a dynamic here that we've talked a lot about in the past, which is that the idea of the moderate centrist is a little bit off in the sense that moderates are not usually somebody who is actually right in the center on every issue. It's more somebody who has idiosyncratic views. And if you line them all up and add them together, then you get something that looks more moderate than a left ideologue or a right ideologue, and that a lot of those kinds of voters would score as relatively progressive on economic things and relatively conservative on social things.

And so there are certain aspects here in which both arguments may be somewhat correct in that raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars is overwhelmingly popular, as was even a wealth tax, whereas some of the like cultural things, arguments may not be quite as popular. Yeah. All right. We're going to spend more time looking at the state of the two parties down the line. But before we wrap up, we should mention today's development in coronavirus vaccine news.

So the pandemic is going to remain the biggest challenge for President elect Joe Biden. Monday morning, Pfizer released a statement saying that its vaccine showed promising results, but the data is still very early and only represents a small slice of the trials participants. I will say here that we have a podcast fully dedicated to the coronavirus pandemic. It's called Podcast 19, which people should go check out and subscribe to. But because this is going to still play a big role in American politics going forward and a big role in all of our lives, as everyone can see who is watching this on YouTube, we're still in our own homes and not in a studio next to each other.

But I know that you've been tracking this a lot. So I want to give you the opportunity to weigh in here on how you see this shaping the country's experience with coronavirus and of course, also our political experience with the coronavirus.

Yeah, I will defer to a podcast, 99 to other things that you read on five. Thirty eight in other places. This is clearly a big deal, right? I think there are differences of opinion about whether this is like a Richter magnitude 10. I guess the 10 is let me get off the earthquake scale. Right. You know, I would say is a ten out of ten absolute. Wonderful, miraculous news, some people say, to six out of ten pointing in the right direction would be cautious, right?

I mean, this and the show, we usually urge more caution about things, but the reasons to think it's really good news. Our number one, if it is 90 percent effective, that's just kind of a higher ceiling than a lot of people thought. A lot of people thought with the first vaccines we would get, you know, anything about 50 percent might get approved. But again, with all the caveat, it's science by press release. The sample size is an enormous yet, you know, 90 percent since the higher ceiling that I think people were hoping for.

Number two, I think the thing that's most important is that this technology, Mirena, that Pfizer is using is also being used by other platforms. Something like the protein it's targeting is the same as the protein that's being targeted by other platforms. So the Pfizer vaccine is kind of going to be hard to distribute. It requires really cold storage. It requires two doses. But, you know, there's like a modern vaccine that's very similar, frankly, that has fewer storage issues.

And also they're going to be different manufacturers that are already creating doses of Pfizer and Maidana. So what that means is that you may get more vaccines, plural, in the hands of more people sooner. What's that mean? It does not mean this winter. I mean, I think this winter is likely to be very difficult and cold climates. You might get a few emergency use authorization bases, vaccines distributed like health care workers. It would be good or maybe teachers or something like that.

But like we still have to come up with a distribution plan. But I think it is pretty bullish news for like what things will look like by this time next year, by the second half of next year, certainly. I mean, this is good news. People should be happy, but understand that, like it's going to take a while to get these vaccines distributed. I think the safest thing to say is that like twenty, twenty one is going to be a year of recovery.

That doesn't mean that things are going to be recovered on January 1st. January 1st is really going to suck still for lots of reasons.

So to clarify here for political purposes, this is still very much going to be the urgent challenge that a President Joe Biden will deal with in his first term.

I think there are political implications and the implication is that. Joe Biden is going to be most likely presiding over a year in which there is increasing optimism. And improved outcomes on the pandemic and the economy, which, of course, are tied together over the course of the year, he might have a tailwind that's very different than, for example, Barack Obama, where actually the worst job losses from the financial crisis actually occurred right when his term was beginning.

So that is fortuitous for Joe Biden, that twenty, twenty one is probably going to be a year when people feel like we're getting over this. Things are improving. Probably not when he takes office. Right. But by the spring will kind of be like a literal and proverbial thawing out. You know, I mean, there are reasons to think that, like, Biden might be fairly popular in his first year in this context. Fairly popular. I mean.

I mean. Fifty two percent said it. Forty three percent probably a narrow range. Right. But, you know, there's a little bit of luck involved in when you become president. And for Joe Biden, the timing might be decently lucky.

Biden put out a statement today about this and he said, for the foreseeable future, a mess remains a more potent weapon against the virus than the vaccine. Today's news does not change this urgent reality. Americans will have to rely on messaging, distancing, contact tracing, handwashing and other measures to keep themselves safe well into next year. Today's news is great news, but doesn't change that fact.

Yeah, and I think especially as Thanksgiving approaches and people are trying to make a lot of hard decisions, it's probably a good reminder of what actually works right now.

All right. Well, let's leave things there. Our first post election results podcast of many to come. So thanks to everyone once again who stuck with us and listened throughout those five long days and the five years that actually we've been doing this podcast. We look forward to many more podcasts to come anymore. Many, many more. All right. Thanks, mate. Claire and Perry. Thanks again. My name is Gail and Tony Chow is in the virtual control room.

Claire Better Gary Curtis is on audio editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast at five 30 dotcom. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple podcast store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we'll see you soon.